- [Man] Can I see my friends yet?

How close are we to a vaccine?

(upbeat music)

- Hi, my name is Erin Bromage.

I am a Professor of Biology where I focus

on immunology and the controlled infectious diseases.

- My name is Dr. Stephen Morse.

I'm Professor of Epidemiology at the

Mehlman School of Public Health.

- [Woman] Is it safe to fly right now?

- So determining whether you want to fly or not

is really a personal choice that needs to be made

based on a lot of different factors.

- Do you need to, how important is it to do it?

- If you have any of the comorbidities

that have been discussed then flying becomes

a much more risky endeavor.

- Where you going?

Are you going to be going from someplace

that doesn't have very much virus circulation

to another place that may not have

much virus circulating around?

- Some of the other things you need to consider with flying

is how common are new infections in the area

that you're leaving from?

So if you find yourself flying out of New York

or out of New Jersey or even Massachusetts,

out of Boston where we are seeing

a lot of community spread, then getting on a plane

with 100 or 200 other people presents a higher risk

than what it would be if you were flying out of Alaska

where they only had a handful of cases yesterday.

- Probably there are as many dangers going

to and from the airport and waiting in the airport.

- [Man] Can I go to the beach?

- If we maintain the precautions,

especially social distancing, and if we are with

other people, they should be people we know and trust.

- The beach being outside allows you

to physically separate from other groups,

to create that needed space, that buffer that we need

to get away from the respiratory emissions

that could potentially infect you.

- Not everyone is able or perhaps willing

to maintain the social distancing we talk about.

So some beaches have gotten very crowded.

If so, I think you should head for another beach,

try to find a more secluded spot.

- So you can go to the beach but physical distancing

is still important.

- [Man] Can COVID-19 live in the water?

- If you go to the beach and it's saltwater

the chances are that there's gonna be a lot of dilution

if there is any virus in there.

Even if it could survive the tides are going to

sweep it away, there's going to be a lot of water

to dilute the virus.

So there's probably very little risk in that situation.

- This virus we haven't really studied in detail

to know that yet.

But if we look at other coronaviruses

we know that infectious viral particles

can persist in both fresh and saltwater

for an extended period of time.

Contracting it from the water would be very hard

when we're dealing with an ocean or a large lake

because it's not just exposure to the virus

that gets you infected.

It's exposure to enough virus.

- [Man] Can I see my friends yet?

- Any time that you possibly can have an interaction

with your friends make sure that you're doing it outside.

Outside is much safer than inside.

'Cause when we get inside the chance for transfer

of the virus just through those tiny little droplets

in the air is dramatically increased.

- I think gradually we're expanding our circle

to seeing more friends in small groups

and limited settings.

- Just understand that the longer that you spend with them,

the closer that you are, the riskier

that particular interaction becomes.

- If you trust your friends and they trust you

or if you've all been indoors staying home

and not at risk of having been infected,

you can probably see each other.

- [Woman] When is it safe to see family again?

- So seeing family again follows the same rules

as everything else we've been talking about.

You've got to think about the risk factors

of your household and the people, your family

that you're visiting.

- There are so many grandparents, I'm in that category,

who want to hug their grandchildren

and see their grandchildren again.

So that's a really hard decision.

- If you're looking at visiting your mother

or your grandmother or grandfather

and they have a lot of comorbidities and age

then you need to take much more precautions

if you want to have that visit.

- I think that gradually as we learn more

things will open up a bit and a lot of the risk

may very well be in how you get there

and what happens in the interim.

- [Man] Is it risky to stay in a hotel now?

- So risk again comes down to personal factors.

- Hotel rooms are always a difficult choice.

- Any time that you interact with somebody

or a new place you have a chance of becoming infected.

- If you have to stay in a hotel because you're traveling

look for a hotel that really seems to be

enforcing good standards.

- Some people become infected and don't become sick.

Some people become infected and only get a little bit sick,

then others get really sick and up to and including death.

So you've gotta look at your risk factors

about whether staying at a hotel is actually

a risky endeavor.

The risk from a hotel really comes down to

how well that hotel is maintaining the cleanliness

of their rooms, of their lobbies, of their elevators.

- They should be wearing masks.

They should have good hand hygiene,

that is to say keeping their hands clean,

and probably you'll see bottles of hand sanitizer

for you to use.

That's usually an indication that they're

taking this seriously.

- [Woman] Should I wear a mask?

- You absolutely should be wearing a mask

when you cannot physically distance all the time.

- In China, they feel very strongly that masks are helpful.

And we do know that masks can prevent

the transmission from people who are infected.

- A mask stops most of your respiratory droplets coming out.

They get caught on the inside of the mask

and just lowers the overall viral burden

that's in the air.

- So yes, we should wear masks.

Many people have asked why didn't we do this earlier?

And we probably should have.

- [Man] When will it be safe to travel again?

- Safety with traveling comes down again to risk factors.

- I think it depends a lot on how you're going to travel.

You know travel by car for example

has always probably been pretty safe.

But everything in life carries the risk.

- I think we're going to find that travel in general though

is very country focused for quite a while now.

- So a lot of it is really taking precautions

to reduce your risk and decide what's appropriate for you

and what's appropriate for the people

you come in contact with.

- [Man] What if someone sneezes on you?

- If someone sneezes on you, ninja roll away

as quickly as you can.

- I think it depends on where and how they sneeze.

- So a sneeze can emit thousands upon thousands

of viral particles, infectious viral particles into the air.

So that's why we need the six feet space.

That's why we need masks.

Because a mask in six feet space

will stop any of those droplets coming towards you.

- If we're keeping that social distancing,

hopefully we would take a few steps back.

If we're close and they're sneezing on us,

you know I certainly wouldn't want to be anywhere near them.

This is why we want people to wear masks

to protect not only themselves but to protect

others when they're sneezing, for example.

- [Man] How close are we to a COVID-19 vaccine?

- Our fastest vaccine that we've produced to date

is about four and half years.

So if we go by old standards we're looking at

four to potentially 10 years for a vaccine.

The upside with this particular vaccine

is that I have never seen more companies focused

on a singular effort than this one.

So with that alone that gives me much more hope

that we will get out of the bench phase

and into the phase one, two, and three trials faster.

- There's a lot of hope obviously for a vaccine

and the answer is we don't really know.

The speed with which vaccines are being developed

and tested is unprecedented.

So I'm hopeful that we will have some vaccines soon.

- Even though you may not be concerned about your own health

understand that you actually do have a role in this

and that you may be part of the transmission chain

that leads to it getting into a nursing home

or getting into a school or getting it into

a place where people aren't so fortunate

with their health and that can lead

to devastating outcomes of that group of people.

- I hope we'll learn some good lessons from this.

One lesson is that if we'd acted quickly

on the global level as well as nationally

we could have probably prevented many of the infections

and deaths we see today.

(dramatic music)