Sam Harris, Ph.D.: COVID-19—Comprehending the crisis and managing our emotions

**Peter Attia** (0:11)
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Now, without further delay, here's today's episode.
Welcome back to another special episode of The Drive Podcast, where we're really focusing on the COVID-19 pandemic. My guest today is my good friend, Sam Harris. Sam's been on the podcast in the past, as you may know, and we spend quite a bit of time on this episode talking about really two things. One is really talking about lessons learned. I offer some thoughts in response to Sam's questions around what I think is happening, what I think is going to happen. And at the time of this recording, which was Monday morning, as you'll tell, I was not especially optimistic, especially in New York.
And again, this is less of me interviewing Sam as it is a discussion. And then of course, we turn to talk about something that I think is equally important, which is how do we, as people sitting here, watching this slow motion or fast motion train wreck in different parts of the world and different parts of the country, how do we manage ourselves, manage our own emotions, our thoughts, and our responses to it? And some of you may have noticed, I put something up on social media last week where I just had a really, really bad day and did a bunch of stuff that I was pretty ashamed of as a dad. And that sort of prompted part of that discussion. So without further delay, let's get to this episode. And I think you'll enjoy the discussion today with Sam.

**Sam Harris** (2:10)
I am here with my friend, Peter Attia.
Peter, you are a top flight physician and you have a background in finance. I can't imagine you had much to think about in the last few weeks.

**Peter Attia** (2:21)
Yeah, very little.

**Sam Harris** (2:24)
This has been, I'm sure everyone feels this way. This has been a period of time, unlike any other in our lifetimes. There's really no analogy. Early on, I said 9-11 was an analogy, but in truth, this is really nothing like 9-11.

**Peter Attia** (2:41)
Yeah, I actually had the same thought, which was, I remembered where I was during 9-11. It's obviously everybody who's old enough can remember exactly where they were on that moment. And then of course, in the hours, days and weeks that followed. But yeah, it is actually kind of different. And this has sort of an expanding array of confusion, at least for me.
And also somewhere in the back of your mind, you have to realize now that between SARS-1 and MERS, and now SARS-CoV-2, it's not like coronaviruses are going away.

**Sam Harris** (3:13)
Right.
Yeah, and the idea that we are so fundamentally surprised by this and caught back-footed is frankly scary. Bill Gates pointed this out some weeks ago that this was perhaps the most predictable disaster. We knew this was coming. I think he even gave a TED Talk in 2015 on this topic. And everyone has been sounding this alarm in infectious disease for years.
And yet, I'm not even sure that after this, we will allocate the appropriate resources to have a network of virus detection or clamp down on the crazy, bad eating practices in China. I mean, I just, I feel like once this is over and we rebound and we, in the best case, we have a successful antiviral treatment and a vaccine and the economy is booming again. I just feel like we're ready to go to sleep on this again. It just, we appear so masochistically short-sighted in the way we focus on risk. I just, I'm to say nothing of our inability to think about something like climate change in light of what's going on here. I mean, just the idea that a slow moving emergency is something we could orient to when we can't even get our head together, when we have Italians Skyping us and giving TV interviews where they're bursting into tears telling us about what's coming and we're still debating whether we can keep Disney World open.