Scientist Peter Hotez On Germany's Low Coronavirus Death Rate, Smoking, Vaping | Joe Rogan

No, no, let's talk about Germany because I found that really fascinating when I was reading on Germany and their low mortality rate What do you attribute that to is that? the Healthcare they have there or what is that? Well, let me give you first the opposite side of the coin and then we'll talk about the opposite side of the coin What's happening in Italy in Spain 10% mortality. So 10% of the people who are who are being diagnosed with COVID-19 have died Which is higher than just about anywhere else. I think what's happened there is When the health system gets so overwhelmed? that so many so that in other words if transmission goes on for a long time and you haven't picked it up and Then all of a sudden people start showing up in the ICU then it's too late Then you start having massive numbers of people come into the ICU the hospital can't take care of everybody They can't intubate everyone. They can't give everyone the highest quality care Possible is no fault of the doctors and nurses. They're heroes But the the fact that they're completely overwhelmed with patients. That's when mortality starts to To really rise so we saw this in parts of Wuhan and we saw this In in Italy and that was the big worry about in New York that the same thing would happen to New York But I'll hold that thought for a second in Germany So far we think it's a combination that it's been more younger people getting it and the fact that the hospital system was getting Ready and they've got that infrastructure in place To manage that surge although they're worried now too that it may start going up and overwhelming things and then you look at okay so if that's true, what's the story on the mortality rate in the United States and Interestingly so far one of the highest has been New Orleans And I think what happened there was they kept the Mardi Gras open. They had lots of Mixing and people a lot large numbers of people getting infected number one had overwhelmed the health system Just like in Italy. So there is so in in New Orleans right now The case fatality rate is between four and five but there's another factor going on in New Orleans lots of people living in extreme poverty and Poverty is very linked to diabetes and hypertension and we know diabetes and hypertension is a big risk factor for death So New Orleans is getting hit twice one because the health system is getting overwhelmed and second I think you have a lot of African Americans living in poverty with underlying diabetes and hypertension and that's causing that to Skyrocket so, you know, I was just on The phone today with the leadership of Houston and saying, you know, you know We have a similar demographic to New Orleans in many ways where sister cities after Katrina kind of linked at the hip and And you know, there are sister city We love them, but you know, we have to recognize that even though if we can handle the surge with our Texas Medical Center We still have that demographic of African Americans Hispanics with underlying diabetes and hypertension Really worried we're gonna see high mortality in Texas now is another factor with Italy and their high mortality rate Smoking because when I was in Italy, I was stunned by how many people smoke young people old people It seemed like a large percentage of the population smoked Yeah, I'm really glad you brought that up. I should have I've should have remembered to say that so yeah, so in So for instance Chinese older Chinese men and really high mortality rates and here's something very interesting smoking actually up regulates the receptor in the lungs that the virus binds to so it seems to Make more copies of the receptor for the virus to bind to so that may worsen the disease. So I think you're right I think smoking is a factor. The one question that we don't know is What is vaping do does vape is vaping also doing that and could that be? Linked somehow to the young and all the young adults that we're seeing in the United States who are getting hospitalized They actually don't have higher mortality But they're still getting very sick and their lives are being saved because they're being intubated and put on the vent But is there a vaping connection again new question? We don't know it's something that's gonna have to be looked at Boy this there's gonna be a lot to unravel when all this is over and along the way people are dealing with a lot of Misinformation which is one of the reasons one of many reasons why I'm so thankful for you for coming on the podcast and trying to Educate us on this thing What about that's the reason I'm going up been going on In between word, you know, we I co-lead a team with my 20 year science partner. Dr. Mary Elena Patazzi We're trying to we've developed vaccines including coronavirus vaccines We're trying to get those out the door in clinical trials in between. I'm going on Fox News, MSNBC and CNN And that's not an easy needle to thread either going on Fox News I miss MSNBC and CNN that's been really interesting, but I love the opportunity and And I'm doing it because there's a lot of bullshit out There's a lot of misinformation trying to get accurate information and also explaining the science behind it because sometimes you hear something That doesn't sound right and it sometimes takes a couple of minutes to to explain that and and those three cable news networks have been Great about giving me some time to to explain the thinking behind it, which they ordinarily wouldn't do