My first guest tonight is a neurosurgeon, a podcast host and the chief medical correspondent for CNN.

Please welcome back to a late show, Dr Sanjay Gupta.

Sanjay, Thanks for being here.

Thanks, Stephen.

Thanks so much for having me great to be here.

You and I are already is experiencing the weirdness of this interaction for the people at home who do not know you were my last guest on the last night that we were actually in the Ed Sullivan Theater.

What do you remember of that evening?

Some seven months ago?

You know, it felt it felt very surreal.

I mean, obviously, we're in this empty theater, but we're also talking about sort of this impending storm, something that you could expect to have happened.

But it hasn't really hit yet, right?

And so I remember trying to really modulate my my tone.

I mean, you know, e think this is really serious.

This is something we have to worry about.

But, you know, it's not here yet.

So how do I convey that to Steve?

And that's what I was sort of thinking, you know, That was and again, that was seven months ago feels like seven years ago, and then a lot obviously has happened since then.

And the bad models of the time We're 60,000 by May, maybe 150,000 or 125,000 by August.

How did those models work out like?

Give us some perspective of how bad?

Uh, people like you who?

Medical professionals who kept your eye on the sort of thing and what actually played out Well, what what we're seeing here in these models, you know, there's a joke within.

Among statisticians, they say all models are wrong, some are useful and and that's how I would look at these models as well.

I think what a lot of people were looking at was let's project how things were going here.

But also, let's look at a previous pandemic, the 1918 flu pandemic and sort of see, how was that behaving during the same time?

And it sort of started around the same time a year 1918 is this started in 2000 and 20 and within the first seven months or so of that pandemic 100 years ago, 75,000 people have died.

The population of the country was a third of what it is multiplied 75 times three, 225,000.

Which is exactly roughly how many people had died in this pandemic at this time.

So it was tracking almost exactly with that 1918 flu pandemic.

I mean, we have hospitals, we have issues, we have therapeutics.

We have all these advanced technologies, and we're basically behaving exactly the same 100 years ago.

Okay, well, that that that gets to my next question, Which is where are we now?

Both in the United States and globally.

Like, how is the United States?

Um, comparing right now to other countries that are dealing with coronavirus?

It certainly feels like we're kind of at the bottom of the rung in terms of our, um, mitigation off the spread of the coronavirus.

Is that Is that the truth?

Are we actually shank in this right now?

I think I think sadly we are.

I mean, we've learned so much about this virus.

We know what it does to the body.

We know how to greatly reduce the spread.

And that's sort of where the story stopped in the United States because then we didn't implement those things.

And so, you know, there was this fascinating study came out of Colombia, basically said, Okay, let's look at other countries around the world.

And let's say if we had done the same things in this country that had happened in that country, where would we be?

So take South Korea.

South Korea is important because the first patient was diagnosed in South Korea on the same day first patient was diagnosed United States.

So it's a good sort of starting point.

If we had done in the United States what they did in South Korea, Stephen 2700 and 99 people they estimate on Lee would have died.

2700 versus 225,000 Japan.

We have done what Japan had done.

4300 and 15 people.

They model Australia 11,619.

I could keep going.

The point is that there were so many countries around the world they didn't have a vaccine.

They didn't have some magical therapeutic.

They had nothing we didn't have and had we done what they did, which was just basically these public health practices.

We'd be in a much, much different position right now, Mark Meadows this weekend said.

We're not going to control the pandemic yet.

At the same time, I believe, is it.

Today?

The Trump administration put out a list of the president's accomplishments, and one of the accomplishments that they list for the president is stopping the coronavirus pandemic.

Do do those, can you?

Your reaction is a medical professional to the idea that the president has stopped the coronavirus pandemic.

That's in the mission accomplished box, huh?

Yes, I suppose so.

70,000 people infected half a million people infected this past week.

Hospitals are overrun.

I mean, some of these air people that I talked to on a regular basis there in their communities, looking at buildings right now going, Could that be a hospital?

Could that be a hospital?

I mean, you just heard the projections.

152 100,000 more people may die, you know, within the next few months, so we're nowhere near that.

The thing that's frustrating, I think Stephen, is that there's been the sense that, you know, we surrender.

You know, this whole waving the white flag and I think it z even worse than that.

In the sense that we didn't even just surrender.

We kind of open the door for the virus and said, Come on in and it was this herd immunity sort of idea.

Just let people get infected, and that seems to have really been the plan from the beginning.

As much as you know, Fauci came out and said that he advised the president very early on.

When the president said, Just let it wash over the country, what happens if we do that?

Fauci said.

You'd have millions of dead people.

That's why you can't do that.

But it seems that that really, is the plan.

E mean.

It's certainly what the policies have led to in this country.

We don't have a national strategy.

We're still not doing basic public health measures.

There's probably five times as many people out there that have been infected that even know it because of the lack of testing.

So it certainly seems like it.

But you know, what was interesting is I started talking to people over the last few months.

Steven.

It's this idea of American exceptionalism in the sense that we're going to have the home run hit with the vaccine.

We're putting all of our eggs in that basket.

Where are we with that?

What we know because he keeps dangling like a carrot.

It's right.

He does, and it's not going to be.

You know, there may be an emergency use authorization for it by the end of the year.

Maybe it starts getting distributed by middle of next year on.

Even then, it may require two shots.

I mean, if we're talking about vaccinating the world, Stephen, this will be one of the largest vaccination projects we've ever seen.

You know, the distribution alone and these things need to be stored in a very certain temperature.

So it's it's gonna be a huge undertaking, and it is happening.

I mean, it is worth celebrating how fast the medical innovation has occurred here.

I mean, we don't even know what this disease was a year ago.

We may have a vaccine by the end of the year, but it's not gonna flip a switch.

And I think that that's that's the critical point is that, you know, we we thought this would be the home run, and it will be very helpful.

But in the meantime, we didn't do all the other things that would have made a huge difference.

It's kinda like that.

Have you ever seen the, uh, Purple pill commercial for Prilosec?

It's basically like eat whatever you want and then just take this purple pill right.

That is a metaphor for how the United States dealt with this coronavirus pandemic.

Do whatever we want.

And then we got the purple pill, which was the vaccine.

But it's not here, and it's not gonna do what people think it's going to dio.

We have to take a quick break, but stick around, we're right back with Mawr Dr Sanjay Gupta.