Ep. #527: Nancy Pelosi, Dr. David Katz

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Welcome to an HBO podcast from the HBO Late Night Series, Real Time with Bill Ma.

Start the clock.

Okay, thank you very much.

Thank you.

Wow, what a crowd.

Oh, please.

The crowds get better every week here.

And what can I say?

Happy Friday, or I like to call it 420 day five.

Yeah, wow.

It was 420 this week.

Not that I need another excuse to get stoned all the time, but wow.

Yesterday I binge-watched my hand.

Yeah, that's what they call it now, binge watching.

Binge watching, staying up all night watching television.

Yeah, we used to call that doing cocaine.

But

it was also Earth Day this week, and people are right.

Nature is healing.

That is the one bright spot in this.

The deer have returned to Griffith Park.

There's fish in the canals of Venice.

The swallows have returned to President Trump's skull.

Oh, I stopped watching the briefings.

I can't.

Why?

I mean, to watch this guy lie and blame and point fingers and pat himself on the back.

It's like, what?

I watch them.

It's like ashtrays when I see them on an airplane.

I say to myself, why do they still have these?

Yeah, Trump was pissed off this week because they finally got back the largest study so far to be done about hydroxychloroquine or chloroquine queen, whatever it is.

And, you know, this is the shit that Trump has been saying, you know, what do you have to lose?

He's been pushing this like a Buick dealer trying to unload last year's Skylark.

But the study came back and it turns out it doesn't work.

It's dangerous and it hasn't been vetted.

If it was a person, he would have hired it.

But, I mean, what is this?

What do you have to lose about a dangerous unvetted drug that has side effects?

This is why my mother told me, never take medical advice from a fat guy in clown makeup.

Oh, and as if things aren't bad enough, how about a side order of war to go with what we're going through?

Because Trump tweeted this week, I am not making this up.

I couldn't make this up.

He tweeted, I have instructed the United States Navy to shoot down any and all Iranian gunboats

who may be harassing our sailors.

That's right.

And if they fuck with us again, we're going to sink their planes.

Are we sure that the makeup is not lead-baked?

Could I just get that question answered?

All right.

So anyway, Trump, yes,

he's having a bad week.

So he's going back to his greatest hits.

He announced this week a travel ban on everywhere.

He says,

no more immigrants till he figures out where Fauci's from.

Also, a 60-day halt we're going to put on green cards, people who want green cards.

So all of you who are planning to moving to the most infected country on earth, ha ha, tough luck on you.

But let's...

Let us end with a little note of happiness, a little bright light of optimism.

Researchers have found, especially for people this is, who may be married or living with someone, they have found that the coronavirus cannot be spread through flatulence.

The researchers also say that their careers in research didn't really pan out the way they hoped.

All right, we got a great show.

We have Nancy Pelosi.

Wow, Dr.

David Katz and Jay Leno is here.

Let's get right to it.

Okay, I think everybody knows my first guest.

She's the representative from San Francisco and the 52nd Speaker of the House for the United States of America, Nancy Pelosi.

Thank you very much for doing this.

Welcome to my game room.

And I have many questions for you in these difficult times.

The first one being, everyone seems to agree testing.

is the way to get back to normality in America.

And it's the most frustrating thing is it seemed like it would even help Trump.

But he seems to be dragging his feet on this most important issue.

Is there any way Congress can pass their own plan?

Well, what we passed today, which we just finished passing, is the testing.

We have $25 billion in there for testing, but we require that there be a national strategic plan.

for testing and that we have reporting back as to how it is impacting all communities, communities of color, and diversity in our country.

So it insists on that.

But

we passed our first bill.

This is our fourth bill, all bipartisan.

First bill was March 4th.

It was called testing, testing, testing.

Here we are more than a month and a half later and we still have to pass another bill.

It's very hard to understand.

why they are dragging their feet or whatever, their brains or whatever, not to realize that if we want to open up the economy,

test, test, test,

contact, trace,

incubate, isolate that.

You know, it's so simple.

You have to not only test, but trace and shelter in place until the coast is clear.

Okay, you mentioned that this is the fourth bill you've passed.

I think the total now is coming up on $2.7 trillion.

That's a lot of

money in a very short period of time.

I know Congress controls the purse strings.

I can't imagine there's much left in the purse.

I just don't get it.

I don't understand how, I know we can bail out certain sectors as we have done in the past.

I don't know how you can just keep indefinitely writing checks.

We were 20 trillion in the hole to begin with,

and all world governments who are already in debt are doing this.

How can the whole world be writing this funny money?

Well, because it's a matter of life and death.

Nobody made as big a fuss as we did when they passed their nearly $2 trillion tax break for the wealthiest people in our country, 83% of the benefits going to the top 1%

and the debt that that laid on our kids to pay for in the future.

So, but this is more of an investment.

in the lives and the livelihood of the American people.

And we have to think big about that.

The more we invest in science and health, the quicker our economy will recover from the pandemic.

Well, it will recover unless people get wise to the fact that we're just writing checks for money that doesn't exist.

I mean,

what is the point of bailing out banks who are then just going to loan back the money that doesn't exist to us again?

It seems like it's a house of cards that could, in the end, wind up hurting more people than the disease.

Well the point is to keep people working.

It's paycheck retention.

And so the point of

this legislation for the

paycheck protection program is that the small businesses would be able to have some relief.

And if they kept their workers on, then they would have debt forgiveness.

And that is a very important part of it.

We were concerned when they asked for more money right away.

We said, well, wait wait a minute, we want to make sure, we want to see the data.

And the data that we have seen anecdotally, not scientifically yet, is telling us that many low, so we say, underbanked communities were not getting any of this money.

Whether it was women, minority-owned businesses, Native American veterans, rural communities, et cetera, were not getting these loans because they just didn't have banking relationships that were putting them higher up in the line, further up in the line.

So it is probably,

well, it is an investment and it is stimulant to the economy when that, probably when that comes, it is

not anything in comparison to the irresponsibility of a tax cut of almost $2 trillion when you count the interest on the debt that all of these deficit hawks, these fiscal conservatives, didn't even give one ounce of thought to.

The fact is we expect a return on this money.

When we invest in food stamps, that's stimulus.

When we invest in unemployment insurance, that's stimulus.

When we give a direct payment, that's stimulus.

And hopefully when we keep these people in their jobs, and that was the point of the small business, but also the assistance to the aerospace industry, the airline industry, like that, the point is they keep the people in their jobs.

and therefore they have paychecks and therefore they can survive people can can survive it's a tough time because their lives are threat their lives are threatened as well as their livelihood

as well as our democracy i might add that we're going to have money in there uh for elections for direct for well the the uh cdc this week said it might come around again in in the fall um can we afford to do the whole thing again can we afford to spend this kind of money a second time in one year

i think that uh

should it be clear that this is not doing the job that it is set out to do completely, that we may have to consider some other options.

Others have proposed a sovereign fund,

profits for which go to these unemployed people or guaranteed income, other things that may not even be as costly as continuing down this path.

But there is a reverence for small business in our country as the entrepreneurial spirit, the optimism of job creation, wealth creation, and the rest.

And it's a good place

to help people stay in business.

But even if they stay in business, because we're giving this loan, which if they keep people employed,

they don't have to pay back.

Their rent is paid, their utilities are paid, their employees are there.

At the end of the time, they still have to have customers.

And that's really why we need everybody to Braziliate.

That's why we need another bill.

That will be costly.

And we call it our heroes bill.

And that's for state and local but that's not what it's not state and local bureaucracy bureaucracy it's health care workers police and fire emergency services people our teachers our transit workers all the people that are paid for by the local and state and local public sector they need jobs too and they right now are the ones on the front line risking their lives to save other people's lives.

And

on top of that, they may lose their jobs because of the uh

the loss of revenue to the state so that will be our next bill and it will be hundreds of billions of dollars as well to states and localities counties municipalities cities some bigger than uh small towns but nonetheless all having the responsibility of meeting the needs of health care needs of coronavirus but also recognize the revenue loss that they have and that has to be recognized as a cost of the coronavirus.

So

there's more to come, whether it's not necessarily in the same vein of small business, but it's jobs, jobs, jobs.

So the way we see it is all about keeping people employed, keeping people employed.

But that's why we're having,

we passed today, I was very pleased, a select committee on the coronavirus, to make sure that the money spent is money that is spent for helping people keep their jobs, not enriching shareholders or dividends, bonuses, corporate CEO pay or anything like that.

That angers the American people and it's not right.

Secondly, people want their paychecks, whether it's unemployment insurance, whether it's direct payment, whether it's

PPP, the

small business initiative.

And the third thing is they,

first and foremost, I should have said they want these first responders to be protected, the healthcare providers, the the first responders to be protected for what they are doing.

They're our heroes, but we, I think, are unworthy to praise them and thank them unless we're going to support them.

Okay.

Well, I thank you for doing this.

I hope Trump doesn't steal all that money.

I do worry about that.

He's done it before.

That's why we have this committee to make sure that the money is spent to the best.

And by the way, the good news is the American people are paying attention.

They are watching.

And we want, and what we are doing to change, make change.

That's so all this hundreds of billions of dollars

is not a way to harden the disparity in access to credit that is there, but to melt that down.

And that's what the bill that we're passing today

strives to do.

Thank you very much.

I appreciate it, everything you do, Madam Speaker.

And I hope I see you in person very soon.

And I share your concern about the national debt.

It's a bill that we don't want our children to pay.

So we have to grow the economy to make up.

Well, national debt is one thing.

I'm worried about the whole thing collapsing and we going into a depression.

But let's end on a happy note and hope that doesn't happen.

Thank you so much.

Make sure it doesn't.

And that's why we have to win the election in November.

Okay.

Yes, I agree with that.

All right.

Thank you.

Take care of yourself.

You too.

Stay safe, please.

Thank you.

All right.

Jimmy, Jimmy Fallon.

Hey, hey, bud.

You're not responding to my tree climbing challenge.

Come on, pal.

What do you say?

Climb a tree for a good cause?

Come on, Jimmy.

I'm up in a tree.

It's fun.

You keep acting like a pussy.

Trump's going to grab you.

All right, my next guest is the founding director of the Yale Griffin Prevention Research Center, who recently recently volunteered his time fighting COVID-19 at a hospital emergency department in the Bronx.

Please welcome Dr.

David Katz.

Doctor, thank you for being here.

Thank you.

Your credentials for talking about this are impeccable.

I know you were at the Einstein College of Medicine.

You got your degree at the Yale School of Public Health.

Nobody questions your credentials.

They did some people question your op-ed that was in the New York Times about a month ago.

It was called, Is Our Fight Against Corona Worse Than the Disease?

I think it's good someone's at least asking that question.

We can't just lapse into groupthink.

Let me quote the thing you said recently that I think is most interesting and gets at this point.

You said, if all we do is flatten the curve, you don't prevent deaths, you just change the dates.

Explain that.

Yeah, and Bill, first of all, again, thank you.

Great to be with you.

That's taken directly from some of the world-class risk modelers that I've been working with since that op-ed in the New York Times.

So I wrote my op-ed.

Tom Friedman wrote a column channeling mine, ran it up a high flagpole.

And then a who's who in public health and economics found me, and we've been working together ever since.

And so some of these risk models basically show, you know, essentially what flattening the curve does is keeps people away from one another.

and away from the virus.

So the virus doesn't spread, but you also don't cultivate any immunity.

If you do a really effective job of locking everybody in place and preventing viral transmission, there's still some low-level potential for viral exposure out in the world, but very few of us get that exposure.

The minute you release those clamps and let people back into the world, we're all vulnerable.

So most of the models suggest that flattening the curve makes sense in phase one so you don't overwhelm medical systems, for example.

But you've got to have a phase two.

If you don't transition to a phase two, whenever you release the clamps, the virus is out in the world waiting for you.

Everybody's vulnerable.

And that big peak in cases and that big peak in deaths that you were trying to avoid really just happens at a later date.

So you would be suggesting something more like what Sweden is doing.

Sweden, we know, has kept open its schools.

You can go to a bar, you can go to a restaurant, you can get your hair cut.

They haven't had numbers that are that different

from countries that have locked down.

How do you sum up that?

Yeah, so

let me start, Bill, by saying essentially what I reject, because I think we're a very polarized society.

I think the way media hype things up actually amplifies the extremes.

So at one extreme, we've got the, you know, lock everything down, hunker in a bunker until A, there's a vaccine 18 months or years or whenever, B,

forever, or C, you die of something else, whichever comes first.

That's just horrible.

It's inhumane, makes no sense.

But at the other extreme, we've got the liberate blank, fill in the name of the state, which is basically, you know, everybody in the water, including grandma, and never mind the riptides and the sharks and

every man for himself.

That's also absurd.

So in the middle, what you do is you identify who is at risk of a severe case of this infection and who's not.

Who is at risk of dying of this at a pretty high frequency?

And who's at extremely low risk?

So this is just like risks we take every day.

Yeah, some young people will die of this, but sadly, tragically, some young people die crossing the street or in a car crash every day.

There are risks we willingly take on every day.

Sweden's approach is a little too close to the everybody in the water, don't worry about the riptide end of the spectrum for my taste.

I think we can do even better.

We can kind of look around the world and say, okay, if you don't lock this down at all, if you don't protect the vulnerable, mortality in Sweden does look to me to be higher, not massively higher than every place else, but higher.

Why put those lives at risk?

On the other hand, if you lock everything down, you destroy livelihoods, you destroy jobs.

And what I was saying in what I didn't really think was a controversial op-ed at the beginning is there's really more than one way, Bill, for this situation to hurt people or even kill them.

and all of them are bad and there's more than one way to protect people and save them and all of those are good so one thing we want to do is keep those vulnerable to severe infection away from this nasty bug but we don't want to destroy people's lives and livelihoods and means of feeding their families and and interestingly you know i i am just back from three days in an emergency department in the bronx where i was volunteering as a physician to support my my colleagues who i applaud you know they've been in there from the beginning they'll be there through the end but but this is exactly the view that prevails there.

You know, there might be the notion that, well, the frontline people, they're much more concerned about staying away from the virus than they are about, you know, can we open society up?

Not true.

They're parents.

You know, I was talking to my colleagues and say, I'm really struggling to balance my clinical duties with homeschooling my kids.

And then, you know, think of a scenario like this.

Dad is a nurse.

Mom's a paramedic.

They've got two kids at home and there's no school, no daycare, no nannies, no old pairs, nothing for them to do.

One of these frontline people who really wants to be in the battle has to stay home to take care of the kids and they're really torn.

So there's a middle path and the middle path essentially is high-risk people are protected from exposure.

Low-risk people go out in the world early.

And here's the odd part, Bill, that I think people have a hard time.

confronting and accepting.

We actually kind of want to get this and get it over with and be immune because that is the path to the all-clear that doesn't require us to wait for a vaccine, which optimistically is 18 months away, but could be much longer.

Yeah, I think you make a lot of sense there.

And I think it's a shame, you're talking about politicization, that people like you who sound reasonable, maybe it's not the exact one true opinion you hear somewhere else, has to go on Fox News.

to say it.

You know, you're not a Fox News guy.

I'm not a Fox News guy.

But you know on the other hand i am a bridges not bunkers guy and you know it doesn't really help the world if all we ever do is talk to other people who already own our opinions it was interesting i i really debated you know do i go on fox news do i not that's not my usual crowd but the simple fact is we should come together in common cause on common ground maybe there's a real opportunity here for an aha american moment that's between the extremes of left and right where we all say yeah, actually, we want to save as many lives as possible.

And, you know, one of the interesting things, Bill, it's sort of the left side of the spectrum, the liberal ideology that seems to be so resistant to talking at all about unemployment and the economy.

But that's the very same camp that tends to appreciate that the single leading driver of bad health outcomes is poverty.

Social determinants of health are massively important.

So, you know, frankly, 30 million people unemployed, that falls disproportionately hard on the people who can least bear the unemployment, who are at most risk of food insecurity, who are at most risk of depression, addiction.

All of that's important, too.

So maybe there's a real opportunity here to say, hey, there's a middle path.

We've been neglecting it.

It's the way through this thing, and it leads to total harm minimization.

We want to minimize deaths and severe cases of the infection.

We also want to minimize the fallout, the health fallout of societal collapse and economic ruin.

Yeah, I think philosophically America got too used to the idea of win-wins, and they need to get used to the idea of lose-lose.

That's more what life is like sometimes.

Lose, lose.

There's no good choices here.

There's only the least bad choice.

And

I think when you talk about the fact that we have this president who is so inept at dealing with this, but he's not going away.

He's not going away.

He is the president.

He's going to be there.

Let me ask you this about testing.

It doesn't look like we're going to have testing for a long time.

So,

look, in the war movies, when they say to the pilot, you know, your equipment is out, he says, I know, but we're going to have to fly blind on this one.

Is that this kind of situation?

Are we just going to have to say the least horrible choice is at some point we might have to do this without the testing?

The people who say we can't open up the economy until we have the testing, well, that can't go on for a year and we might not have the testing till then at the rate we're going.

So a few things.

So you said it's not win-win, it's lose-lose, in a sense.

And in public health, we talk about harm reduction.

You know, so for example, a needle exchange program that says we can't get everybody to stop using intravenous drugs, but we can give them clean needles so they don't get HIV, for example, that's harm reduction.

And so when you're in a lose-lose scenario, you look to minimize harm.

Maybe you can't maximize benefit, but you can minimize harm.

So from the beginning, we've been posting materials, my colleagues and I, under the rubric, total harm minimization.

That's what we want to achieve here.

Yeah, listen, you know, a historic pandemic is a bad situation.

A historic pandemic with a fairly, you know, inept group of federal leaders is an even worse situation.

You know, if only we had grownups in charge.

But on the testing front, We're making a mistake there, Bill, because we do have testing.

It's not great, by the way.

You know, so one day,

one of these 12-hour shifts in in the emergency room in the Bronx, we admitted maybe 20 people we were sure had COVID.

You know, there was just no doubt about it.

They absolutely, positively had COVID.

And either 19 or 20 of them tested negative.

So the testing's not great.

And the false negative rate is high.

But some of the test kits work pretty well.

They're certainly better than nothing.

And here's the thing.

What we aren't going to have anytime soon is the capacity to test the whole population.

But we deal with that all the time.

The CDC routinely does what's called representative random sampling, where they randomly select people and make sure that they traverse the gamut of age and socioeconomics and zip code and health status.

And then you extrapolate the whole population.

We could do that with 10,000 people.

And we have the test kits for that.

So we really need grown-ups in charge.

We need federal oversight.

We need a commitment to getting the critical data.

And frankly, that could happen fast.

It's the work of 72 hours.

In the absence of that, we're turning to states.

So, for example, we just heard there's widespread testing in New York.

I think Governor Palma was doing a great job there.

And it looks like at least 20% of the population of New York may have antibodies.

Well, that's close to 4 million people.

And what that means is the death toll in New York, tragic though it is, and you know, again, all these deaths are real people, and my condolences to the families.

But just looking at the statistics for a minute, 20,000 deaths out of 4 million people, that's half half a percent.

You know, we're starting to see that the mortality toll of this, when you get the denominator, is really small.

And I think the denominator is even bigger than that.

So we're not totally blind.

Yeah, I think we do have to fly in a bit of a fog, but we're not flying totally blind.

Okay.

I worry when I hear people talk about how we deal with this, that they leave out the immune system.

I mean, obviously, we know that that's a big part of it, but I feel like that gets such short shrift.

And I worry that the country is going to think that the way to deal with microbes in the future is to lock yourself away and it cannot be that.

Germs are ubiquitous.

They are everywhere.

You can't avoid them.

You have to win the battle inside.

You wrote a book recently called How to Eat,

which has been a pet theme of mine since I've been on television.

That the main thing about our health is what we eat.

And you write 80% of all chronic disease and premature death is preventable using lifestyle as a medicine.

Yes, stop shaking hands, but you can't avoid germs.

They're everywhere.

Yeah, so great point and a great segue.

So, first of all, I just want people to understand, again, I'm a physician.

I do public health.

I'm trained in epidemiology.

It really still looks to me as it did that month ago when I wrote my piece for the New York Times.

98 to 99% of the cases of this infection are mild.

Most people don't even seem to know they have it.

And this is true even in the emergency department.

A small portion of the cases are potentially severe.

And that's what makes your point so important here, Bill.

The severe cases occur in people who are old and people who are sick.

Now, those two things go together, but sadly in America, they also splay apart.

There are a lot of young people with coronary disease, obesity.

type 2 diabetes, hypertension, and by and large, those are diseases of lifestyle.

I'm a past president of the American College of Lifestyle Medicine.

That's what we advocate, lifestyle is medicine, because it can fix all of that.

Here's the interesting bit.

The stuff we can't sell to people, eat well, exercise, don't smoke, don't drink excessively, get enough sleep, manage your stress, because it's such potent medicine.

We can't sell it because the timeline for harm is too long.

You know, essentially, heart disease stalks you in slow motion.

Type 2 diabetes stalks you in slow motion.

And our DNA is wired to fight or flight.

You know, if it's not coming at me in minutes or days, I'm sort of blind to it.

Well, COVID is coming at you in minutes and days, and everybody is alarmed.

And all the same things are risk factors.

So essentially what this pandemic has done has turned America's chronic health liabilities into an acute threat.

And there is an opportunity, a crisis dangerous opportunity.

The very things that we're always telling people to do to promote their long-term health actually do fortify your immunity against this virus.

If you start eating optimally, start fitting physical activity into your your in-place routine, if you maybe get enough sleep, that can affect how your immune system functions in hours, certainly in days, and a whole lot in a span of weeks.

There's a better time for America to get healthy.

If I were one of the grown-ups in charge of this mess, I would have a national health promotion campaign as part of what we do in an organized way.

Look, we're all social distancing, sheltering in place.

Let's make lemonade from the lemons.

Let's turn this into an opportunity to get healthy.

It will protect you in the the short run.

It'll help protect your loved ones.

And when this is over, we'll be a healthier nation into the bargain.

Great point.

I really appreciate you doing this.

I think you make a lot of sense.

I hope I see you somewhere other than Fox News because I don't like to watch it.

All right.

Thank you.

I understand I'm going to be on your show, Bill.

So I'm cheating up on you.

We'll be on it again, hopefully in person.

All right.

Take care.

You too.

Stay well.

Hi there.

Welcome to one of the many bars in my house.

I have two bedrooms and three bars.

Is that wrong?

Anyway,

we thought this would be a perfect locale because I was reading about how the coronavirus is really taking a toll on single people.

It's one thing if you have a partner around, but single people are having a tough time.

But of course, we will go back to normal.

And when we do, they're going to need pickup lines in the post

corona world that we're going to live in.

So would you like to hear some of the pickup lines people will?

Because they're going to go out to bars and clubs again.

They are, and they're going to need them.

And we have a few for you here.

For example, what's the name of that disinfectant you're wearing?

Why don't you come over to my place and slip into something less protective?

Would you handle my package if I let it sit outside for two days?

You make me want to be a better man, or at least change into a clean pair of sweatpants.

You know, until I saw you, I was just bored stiff.

I have toilet paper,

pickup lines.

What do you say we get at Zoom?

Check out my hazmat suit.

You know what it's made of?

Boyfriend material.

And of course, hello, I'm Gavin Newsom.

Okay, my next guest.

You all know my next guest.

CNBC Jay Leno's Garage.

New episodes air May 20th at 10 o'clock on the East Coast.

He is the only man to be twice fired for being the crime, for committing the crime of being number one in the ratings.

Jay Leno!

Hello, Bill.

How are you?

Jay, great to see you over there wherever you are.

And gosh, I wish we were meeting under better circumstances.

I know you've always been kind of a glasses half-full guy.

Have you been able to maintain that kind of optimism even in these times?

I am optimistic.

You know, I saw this Dr.

Fauci.

That's how I say it, Fauci.

Yes, of course.

And I watched him on TV, and he says, this virus is a war.

We have to fight it like a war.

And the reporter says to him, well, how do we do that?

He says, by staying at home and watching TV.

And I say to myself, if there was ever a war, Americans are qualified, uniquely qualified to fight.

And this is it.

I mean, I've been training this my whole life.

Stay at home and watch TV.

Really, how hard is it?

Like, I saw, I'm not going to say the celebrity he was, but I saw him on one of the shows, and he said, I feel like a prisoner of war in my own home.

And I went,

the difference between this war is

when the prisoners are released, they're fatter.

It's the only war, when the war is over, the prisoners are fatter than when the war began.

Yes, this is the only crisis where you can see a celebrity telling you not to panic from their panic room.

Yeah, exactly.

Exactly.

And

the support team we have,

Mama Celeste, Chef Boyard, Famous Amos, Ben and Jerry, Aunt Jemima,

Uncle Ben.

I mean,

they're all helping us, Bill.

They're helping us get through it.

Thank God.

So, Jay, look, I don't want to give away where you live exactly because there's crazy people out there, but I think people know you're a very successful guy.

So, let's just say somewhere in the Southern California area where the very rich people live.

I live in a similar kind of neighborhood.

Yeah, about a mile away, yeah.

It's a little different how the rich areas are handling this, don't you think?

Yes, it is.

I mean, it is different.

Well, I mean, Beverly Hills is affected.

And celebrities react differently.

Like I read, you know, Jesse Smollett.

Yes, of course.

Okay, he's a little paranoid.

He actually had two guys beat him up on FaceTime.

I mean, that's okay.

Because he was,

you know, he was

afraid of the virus.

Caroline Laughlin?

Yeah, sure.

She paid an official to get her daughter into medical Because they wanted to be prepared.

Yeah, so

yeah.

Are you still driving?

Because I've taken the car out a number of times just so it doesn't freeze up in the garage for nowhere to friggin' go.

Right.

And it's one of the few things you can do where you're not hurting anybody.

You're alone in the car.

But

it's depressing having you drive.

I'm driving.

The traffic is unbelievable.

I mean,

do you realize this, in the last three weeks, they've given out 2,000 tickets for people going well over 100 miles an hour on the 101 and the 405?

No, true.

That's true because people, they've never seen it like this before.

So, and what about food, Jay?

You know, you and I have never really seen eye to eye on food.

Food, I was just talking to Dr.

Katz, a very important part of immunity.

I've never known you to eat a vegetable in your life.

And it's affecting the way people live, you know, because it's the economy.

I mean, I saw a mafia don picking up food to go at an olive garden.

That shows you how bad.

How bad.

Oh, my God.

That is bad.

That is bad.

Well, the economy is,

you know, I worry so much about the economy.

I saw Louis Farrakhan wearing a clip-on bow tie.

That's how bad.

That is a bad economy.

Do you have any other examples of why the economy is?

I do have some, Bill.

What?

In West Hollywood, I saw a gay bar having Ladies' Night.

That's how bad

the economy is.

You actually could have ladies' night at a gay bar.

That's maybe a dated joke there.

I saw Tom Seller get turned down for reverse mortgage.

That's how bad it is.

That is, that's terrible.

It's terrible.

So, Jay, you're home.

Now, you're a road warrior.

Yeah.

I'm not nearly the road warrior you are, but I am on the road all the time, as people who watch the show know.

It always ends, except in these days, with me saying, I'll be at.

Right.

And now there's no, I'll be at.

But for a guy like you, who has,

you know, how many nights a week did you work before this?

I was doing 210 dates a year.

210.

Yeah, about four nights a week.

So that's like five nights a week.

How are you coping?

What's your wife doing with you home?

She must be going nuts.

No, no, it's okay.

I like to spend time with my wife.

And you know that.

She.

Huh?

Well, no, it's good.

See, the nice thing about being married 40 years, see, this is different.

This is something you could never do with a 25-year-old.

But when you're married 40 years, like my wife and I sat down to watch a Netflix movie, I fell asleep about halfway through.

I woke up.

I said, what happened?

She said, I don't know.

I fell asleep.

So I said, good, we can watch it again tomorrow.

You know, I never understood why my parents watched the same Matlock over and over.

But now I do.

Now I've watched, actually, I've watched this Netflix movie three times because I never quite made it to the end.

So it's okay.

You know something?

I can live in whatever environment I'm forced into.

And I was always one of those guys.

I never wanted to be one of those performers who turned down a job.

Because when I started out, you know how it is when you start this, there's no work.

So I never want, how much money?

I'm not going for that money.

And what are you doing for that much money on a Tuesday night?

You can't go do that job.

But now I'm forced.

So now I'm forced to actually relax and take time off.

And I'm enjoying it.

And you know something?

If there is a good side to this, I talked to a friend of mine who was in Italy.

He said, for the first time, there is fish in the canals in Venice.

Right.

You know, and the ocean seems a little cleaner.

L.A.

seems remarkably cleaner because planes are not flying.

This is sort of like nature's way of dealing with global warming.

I mean,

oil is zero dollars per barrel.

You cannot literally give it away at this point.

Who would have thought last year at $100 a barrel this could happen?

So it's almost like...

The Earth is sort of healing itself.

I know I sound like some sort of new agey person.

Obviously, I'm not.

But so I'm just trying to see the good side.

Obviously, it's a horrible thing and people are suffering and that's terrible.

But

that's just one of the artists.

Well, I know you're always a guy who helps when crisis comes along.

And

the thing you're doing, I think, is so marvelous.

You have a 3D printer at your garage.

Yeah, we have a couple of them.

You're making masks, right?

We're making the masks and we make them free.

And I was going to bring, I don't know, I left it sitting at home.

It's a mask with the glass, you know, the

plastic, clear plastic front.

And we make them and we give them to the fire department.

They hand them out to first responders and hospital workers.

And the 3D printers went 24 hours a day, and they just keep turning these out, turning these out.

At the end of the week, we give them all to the fire department and they hand them out.

And it's fun.

I mean, it's great to feel like you're part of something.

You're actually sort of helping out, not just, you know, having food delivered every five minutes, you know.

So, so that's that's good.

I'm, I, I, don't you have a mask with you, another kind of mask that you do an impression with, Jay?

Do you have that?

No, I had a joke.

I had a coronavirus joke for you.

Let me see.

Okay.

Old guy in the hospital.

Nurse comes in.

Guy goes, yeah.

Nurse, could you check to see if my testicles are black?

Nurse goes, sir, I can't do that.

I'm just an intern.

No, we just check to see if my testicles are black.

Says nurse, out.

Yeah, thanks.

Truck going by.

Timing.

Sound fun part about doing a show in Phil's backyard.

When you live on Van Nuys Boulevard, that's what you get.

Anyway, so the guy's sitting there.

He goes, check to see if my testicles are black.

She goes, sir, I'm not even a registered nurse.

I'm just a train.

That's why I'm asking you.

Just check to see if my testicles are black.

All right.

So she reaches up under the guy's gown there and looks.

She goes, sir, you're fine.

The guy goes.

No, I said, check to see if my test results are back.

It's It's a stupid joke.

Jay Leno, everybody.

It's a stupid joke.

Jay, it's great to have you here.

Are you home?

Is that where you are?

In your backyard?

Yo, this shows how clueless you are.

Where do you think I am?

Oh, I think you must be home like we all are.

All right.

I want to show you how bad your security is.

Bill, I'm in your backyard.

Behind you.

Turn around.

I've been back there.

Crying out loud, Jay Leno.

Thank you.

Good security.

That's far enough.

Got to keep six feet apart.

Okay, now it's time for new rule.

New rules, everybody.

I can hear you clapping at home.

Okay, new rule.

While there's no way of knowing exactly what post-virus America will look like, we all must agree that one thing that is fucked is bowling.

Fingers in the holes, wearing other people's shoes.

I can't believe we did it before.

Besides, if there's one thing we've learned during the lockdown, it's that we can get drunk and knock things over at home.

New rule, stop telling me what you did for 420.

You know, it's been 420 for the past two months.

I've smoked so much weed that in LA we had an earthquake the other day when it happened.

I thought it was just a train going by.

And I don't live by a train.

New rule, however, in honor of 420, while we're rightfully lauding the healthcare workers on the front lines, let's not forget America's other heroes, the marijuana delivery guys.

Yes, if not for these intrepid couriers, 43% of Americans would have murdered our families by now.

And only that, they make the couch seem more inviting and the bean and cheese burritos more tasty.

And because of them, that completely unfunny email your parents forwarded actually made us laugh.

New Rule, you can't watch Seinfeld without wondering how these New Yorkers would have handled coronavirus.

Jerry breaks up with a woman because she coughs, then wants to get back together because she's hoarding toilet paper.

George pretends he has it to get out of work and then really gets it and no one believes him.

Kramer believes the virus is a hoax and Elaine gets back together with an old boyfriend because the lighting in his place makes her look better for Zoom meetings.

New Rule, now that this 93-year-old grandma has gone viral after holding up a sign, I need more beer,

we must all agree not to send her too much beer.

You know, whenever this kind of thing happens, the whole country goes nuts and sends one person a shitload of whatever it is they're asking for.

Let's pick one person to send her a few six packs.

Oh fuck, really?

You couldn't have waited until I was done?

And finally, new rule, stop trying to get me to watch Tiger King.

It's not gonna happen.

I already have to watch one bottle blonde from reality TV.

And the other reason I'm not watching Tiger King while sequestering, because torturing animals is what got us into this mess.

That's the lesson.

we keep refusing to learn, that you can't trash the environment, including animals,

and and not have it come back and kill you.

Two weeks ago, I called out China for reopening their wet markets, and miraculously, people from both sides of the aisle reached out to say, good for you for saying that.

Well, here's another hot take that may not be as popular.

America's factory farming is just as despicable as a wet market and just as problematic for our health.

Factory farms have a lot more lobbyists, but ecological time bombs tick the same.

Americans should not get too high and mighty about wet markets while we are doing this.

Most, if not all, infectious diseases are zoonotic, meaning they start in animals and jump to humans.

AIDS likely came from primates.

Someone butchered a monkey or fucked one or something they shouldn't have been doing with a monkey.

Mad cow came from cattle, eating cattle, which is like feeding a chicken an omelet.

Just two weeks ago, a fatal strain of bird flu was confirmed in a commercial turkey flock in South Carolina.

Now,

to thwart the coronavirus, we've been told to create distance, avoid others who are sick, lower stress, and exercise.

Are you surprised that diseases flourish among animals when they're forced to live in conditions that are the complete opposite of all of that?

They're on top of each other.

They can't move.

They're stressed out.

I've seen airports treat luggage better than we treat animals.

Egg-laying hens are starved and given no water for weeks to shock their bodies into molting.

Beaks of chickens are removed.

I could go on.

Have you ever driven by a high-density feedlot?

Yeesh.

To get relief from the stench, you have to stick your nose in an egg salad sandwich.

If you think the market in Wuhan is gross, you should visit one of our giant poultry processing factories.

But of course you can't because we have ag gag laws that make it a crime to report the crime.

And it is a crime of animal abuse that goes on in our food industry.

You're worried that the male man is coronavirus?

80% of pigs have pneumonia when they're slaughtered.

Because we make them live in conditions that would make a zombie vomit.

And then, so they don't die before we kill them, pump them full of antibiotics that in turn get passed on to humans.

That in turn leads to antibiotic-resistant diseases, that in turn leads to us dying from ever-evolving contagions.

It's six degrees of tainted bacon.

We're on the cusp of returning to a pre-antibiotic era where strep throat was a death sentence.

Let me put it as basically as I can.

If we keep producing food the way we do, you're going to get sick with something medicine cannot fix.

You don't have to care for the sake of the animals.

I wouldn't want to mess with anyone's reputation as a heartless asshole.

But do it because animal cruelty leads to human catastrophe.

Do it because barbecue is why you've been masturbating for a month.

And get the fuck away from me with Tiger King.

I don't care that he sees the light at the end.

So did Darth Vader.

There's no such thing as keeping a wild animal pent up, but treating them well.

Just ask Siegfried and what remains of Roy.

Joe Exotic is in prison partly for killing five endangered tigers, which are endangered because of people like him.

I don't get why the woke left loves this show so much and isn't on this guy-like pink sequence.

People should take their meandering outrage and focus it on this issue.

You keep animals in cages, be they tigers or turkeys, and look who winds up being the prisoner.

Okay, that's our show.

I want to thank my guests, Nancy Pelosi, Dr.

David Katz, and Jay Leno.

We'll be back next week.

Thank you, folks.

Catch all new episodes of Real Time with Bill Maher every Friday night at 10, or watch him anytime on HBO On Demand.

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