The Peter Attia Drive - #104 - COVID-19 for kids with Olivia Attia

00:00:00.000 Hey everyone, welcome to the drive podcast. I'm your host, Peter Atiyah. This podcast,

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00:00:47.740 here's today's episode. Hey everyone, welcome to a special edition of the COVID series. This is

00:00:55.480 going to be COVID for kids. So my guest today is my daughter, Olivia, and this was mostly her

00:01:03.760 interviewing me, but also a little bit of a discussion in me asking her some questions as

00:01:07.600 well, all pertaining to the coronavirus, but really through the lens of questions that Olivia had.

00:01:13.200 So if you're a listener of the podcast and you have kids, this might be the one episode that you want

00:01:19.460 to sort of bring your kids into because hopefully it answers a lot of the questions that they've

00:01:24.380 probably been asking you. And maybe these are some of the questions you don't have answers to.

00:01:28.600 So anyway, I hope you enjoy this special episode of the coronavirus series, Corona for Kids.

00:01:40.100 Hey dad. So I know you've done podcasts about questions people had on the coronavirus for adults,

00:01:45.440 but I thought we could do one for kids. So the first thing I'm going to ask you is what even is a virus?

00:01:50.640 Well, a virus is a sort of living kind of living thing that has genetic material in it,

00:02:00.580 which all of your cells have genetic material in them, but these viruses, they can't replicate on

00:02:08.460 their own. So you know how like you get big, your hair gets longer, your nails get longer,

00:02:13.360 you get taller. All of these things are cells in your body that are dividing.

00:02:17.220 Yeah. Well, viruses can't divide without using another body. They don't have the machinery, 0.81

00:02:26.120 so to speak, to divide on their own. So they have to infect a host. That's the term we use to do that.

00:02:35.680 Now it's important to understand how small a virus is. Do you have a sense of how small they are?

00:02:40.380 Kind of.

00:02:41.160 Do you think you can see them?

00:02:42.700 No way.

00:02:43.280 That's right. No way. So a virus is like about a hundred nanometers wide. Do you know what a

00:02:51.780 nanometer is?

00:02:53.000 Something very small.

00:02:54.540 Yeah. It's like a billionth of a meter. So if we were to cut one of your hairs,

00:03:01.720 and you can barely see the end of your hair when it's cut, right? How many coronaviruses do you think

00:03:07.020 you could line up across the tip of your hair if it were cut?

00:03:12.460 Probably hundreds.

00:03:14.140 Yeah. About a thousand actually.

00:03:16.080 A thousand.

00:03:16.900 So think about how small that is.

00:03:19.340 That's very small.

00:03:20.560 So we can't see these things, but these virtually invisible things without special types of

00:03:25.980 microscopes, they get into our bodies and the bodies of other animals, and they use our body

00:03:33.320 to make more copies of themselves. And a lot of times when viruses do that, they don't really

00:03:38.800 hurt us or hurt the person or animal that they're infecting, but sometimes they do. So when you think

00:03:46.060 about bad colds that you've had or nasty GI bugs that you've had, that's just a virus that is causing

00:03:53.980 that pain and suffering to you as part of its replicating process.

00:03:59.040 Okay. So I'm sure a lot of people are wondering this. So how do you know so much about this virus?

00:04:05.880 Well, I don't think I know that much about it. I mean, to be clear, I didn't know anything about

00:04:10.640 it until a couple of months ago. So there are people who spend as much time as I spend thinking

00:04:16.140 about longevity or Formula One or all the other things that I love to think about. There are people

00:04:21.580 who spend their whole lives thinking about these viruses. And so I just have talked to a lot of

00:04:27.400 those people. And that's how I've learned the little bit that I think I've learned in the last

00:04:32.040 couple of months. But the reality of it is I'm pretty much a noob.

00:04:36.700 Okay. So how did the coronavirus start?

00:04:40.200 Well, I think we have a pretty good sense that this virus, this particular coronavirus, and to be

00:04:46.300 clear, there are many coronaviruses. But this particular one, which now has a formal name,

00:04:53.680 that name is SARS-CoV-2. So just like your name is Olivia, that guy's name is SARS-CoV-2.

00:05:02.400 It causes a disease called COVID-19. That virus probably originated in bats. But the most recent

00:05:13.520 evidence we have suggests that it went from a bat to something called a pangolin. You know what a

00:05:23.660 mini ant eater. Like picture a little tiny scaly armadillo looking thing that eats ants and little

00:05:30.860 insects. And these are little tiny mammals that are actually quite protected in China because they're

00:05:38.180 endangered. But there is some illegal poaching of these things. And people do, I believe they use

00:05:44.680 their scales for medicinal purposes and things like that. So I think the current genetic analysis

00:05:50.380 suggests it went from a bat to a pangolin to a human. The first person was infected with that in this

00:05:58.220 part of China called Wuhan, probably in about November of last year. So relatively recent.

00:06:03.720 So like you said, this isn't the first time corona has showed up, but it's definitely the worst time,

00:06:08.520 I'm assuming, right?

00:06:10.200 Yes and no. I think it depends how you define the worst. It's definitely infecting a lot of people,

00:06:17.980 but there have been other coronaviruses that have shown up, two in particular in the past 15 or 20

00:06:24.500 years that have been more lethal, meaning a higher number of the people who got the infection died.

00:06:31.040 So one of those was called SARS and one of those was called MERS. And those would kill somewhere

00:06:37.600 between 10 and 30 percent. SARS about 10 percent, MERS about 30 percent of the people who got it. That's a

00:06:43.720 huge number, right? That means in the case of SARS, one out of every 10 people that got the infection

00:06:48.640 died. In the case of MERS, one out of every three people died. Think about that. But the good news is

00:06:54.480 those viruses didn't spread very far, so very few people got them. So in some ways, those were worse

00:07:00.100 viruses. Of course, this one is spreading a lot. At this point in time, we've got over a million

00:07:06.580 confirmed cases. But of course, we probably have tens of millions of unconfirmed cases. But there

00:07:13.920 are other coronaviruses that come and go every summer that have infected many more people than

00:07:18.580 that, but they just don't cause anything more than a miserable cold. All right. So like you were saying,

00:07:24.400 this has been a problem before, but do you think it will show up again after this, assuming it's all

00:07:29.640 resolved at some point? You mean this one in particular or another one? This one. I think it's a bit too

00:07:34.520 soon to say, but probably. Could another one show up? Yeah. All right. So this next question I'm going

00:07:42.000 to ask you is probably the one all kids are wondering. When do you think we're going to be

00:07:45.560 able to go back to school? I don't really know. If I really had to guess, I don't think you're going

00:07:52.980 back to school this year. All right. And I've heard some people say that not even until maybe next

00:07:58.960 year. Is that true? Oh, I think it's really too soon to say. I know that sounds like a cop-out

00:08:04.320 answer, but there are so many things we don't yet know. Like we don't actually know how many people

00:08:09.580 have this infection. And it could be that a lot of people already have the infection and they're

00:08:14.180 doing really well and it's not causing that much harm. And in that case, people who aren't at very

00:08:20.340 high risk for getting very sick could mosey on back to school and move back into work and things like

00:08:27.080 that. But it's also possible that we have to be much more careful and much more concerned.

00:08:32.680 And if that's the case, then this quarantine might be something that lasts a little bit

00:08:38.140 longer. Yeah. So I've just recently heard that the US has hit more cases in China. Why do you think

00:08:44.220 that is? Well, that's a long story and it's one that gets my blood a little bit boiling. So I don't

00:08:50.500 like to talk about it too much. I mean, basically we didn't do a good job. Of preparing for it?

00:08:58.620 Of a couple of things. So we didn't heed our warnings. So we had very clear warning signs

00:09:06.960 that this virus was out there and that this virus was very infectious. Furthermore, we had lots of

00:09:17.620 evidence that it could easily spread outside of China, but we didn't take a bunch of steps we should

00:09:25.400 have taken. Now, part of this is not just what we did or didn't do in the last couple of months,

00:09:30.440 but really this is a much bigger problem that goes back a number of years. We don't really have

00:09:37.600 the infrastructure in place to prepare for something like this because for example, we don't have,

00:09:44.360 you know, a national stockpile of the type of equipment that doctors and nurses would need

00:09:50.080 to be protected from this if they're taking care of a bunch of people that got sick.

00:09:55.000 At the beginning of January, when the Chinese government and Chinese scientists were able to

00:10:02.080 figure out exactly what this virus looked like, that's called sequencing. That's when you can

00:10:06.680 actually look at the, basically the fingerprint of what this virus looks like. So you have a very

00:10:13.580 unique fingerprint. If I took one of your hairs and took it to a lab, they could tell me exactly

00:10:20.320 what your DNA sequence looks like. And you're the only person in the world that has that. So we would

00:10:25.000 know exactly what Olivia looks like. And similarly, at the first week, second week of January, the

00:10:31.120 scientists in China had already done that for this virus. And that would have been a great time 1.00

00:10:36.620 to have doubled down on developing tests in the United States or taking tests that others had

00:10:43.880 developed and making sure we had enough of them because testing is a really important part of

00:10:47.660 this. That's a big way that you can help understand how people have it and don't have it and how you

00:10:53.040 need to isolate the people that have it from those who don't. So without having all those systems in

00:10:59.120 place, we were also a little bit late to the party in terms of understanding what to do when people

00:11:05.540 showed up and were infected. So we had our first case basically at about the same time that a country

00:11:12.980 like South Korea had their first case. But we have now had more than five times the number of deaths

00:11:20.700 for an adjusted population. Meaning for every million people in the United States versus every

00:11:28.620 million people in South Korea, we've already had five times the number of deaths, even though we both

00:11:33.200 started at the same time effectively. And that speaks to sort of not being able to put these

00:11:40.040 measures in place. All right. So you were saying that you weren't very prepared and listening to

00:11:45.180 the warning. So how could we have been better prepared and more aware of this? Well, I mean, I think

00:11:50.520 it's sort of what I just said. Part of it is non-specific type of preparedness. So it's having

00:11:58.060 the infrastructure in place to deal with pandemics. So it's having like a pandemic

00:12:04.460 preparedness program that is well funded, that has all of these things that don't seem that

00:12:12.740 interesting when you don't need them laying around ready. And then part of it is very specific to this

00:12:18.560 case, which is this is a really tough virus because it spreads pretty aggressively, more aggressively than

00:12:24.980 say the flu virus. And look, I just don't think our leaders were doing a great job.

00:12:33.240 Do you think it would have helped if people started to quarantine sooner than they actually did?

00:12:37.520 Yes, I think it would have, especially in places like New York, New Orleans, probably Florida.

00:12:46.000 So there were places where a lot of things just went kind of sideways. Like New York has a high

00:12:52.820 density of people. You've been there a bunch, you know, what New York is like compared to San Diego.

00:12:57.440 You can imagine that a virus that can spread basically by you breathing on somebody is much

00:13:04.020 more likely in New York. Imagine you're sitting on the subway. You have these people that have to

00:13:09.300 commute in and out of Manhattan every day from these different boroughs. So you just have a high

00:13:15.280 population that's close together that has these commuting challenges where they're in close proximity to

00:13:21.860 others. And so all of those things would lead to kind of an amplification. And I think that in some

00:13:28.160 ways, New York has done the best job it could. But it probably started a little later than would have

00:13:35.060 been ideal compared to what we now know from other countries. Yeah. So some people are saying they just

00:13:41.700 want to get the virus and be over it, meaning they won't have to quarantine anymore. And they've already

00:13:46.500 been exposed to the virus. So it would be a lot easier. Does you think that's a good idea?

00:13:50.980 Yeah. So the technical term for that idea is called herd immunity. You know what a herd is?

00:13:57.180 Probably when you get it so that your body is used to it.

00:13:59.940 Well, yeah. But like the herd means everybody, you know what I mean? So the idea would be

00:14:03.940 once you have chicken pox, do you remember when you had chicken pox when you were a kid?

00:14:09.320 You're lucky you didn't have to get it that bad because you already got a vaccine for it. But when I was a

00:14:14.060 kid, we didn't have a vaccine for chicken pox. So when we got it, it was really bad.

00:14:17.960 But once you get the chicken pox or once you get the vaccine for it, you're not really going to get

00:14:23.080 it again. I mean, technically you can get a cousin of chicken pox called shingles when you get a lot

00:14:28.040 older. So that's what people want. They think they won't be able to get it again. That's right. But

00:14:32.380 there are a couple of things. One, we don't really know exactly what the immunity looks like. In other

00:14:38.820 words, we don't know that once you get this coronavirus, if you recover from it, and let's say you're one of

00:14:44.880 the majority of people who recover from it. And to be clear, most people who get this virus recover

00:14:49.420 from it. At a minimum, 80% do, but it could be significantly higher. It could be 95%. We don't

00:14:55.380 know if that immunity is going to last them for another six months, another year, another five

00:15:01.400 years for the rest of their lives. We don't know. The second thing is there are certain people who

00:15:07.640 are at high enough risk to get sick from the virus that you might not want to take the chance of

00:15:13.440 letting them just get infected. So you and your friends are at virtually no risk from this virus.

00:15:21.100 In fact, in the United States, as of this time, there is not a single person your age who has

00:15:26.680 died from this virus. That's good. Yeah. It's good for you, but you have to understand that you could

00:15:32.940 still transmit it to somebody. So if you lived with your grandparents and you were back at school and

00:15:37.760 you and all your friends had it, and obviously it would be great that none of you would get very sick.

00:15:41.840 But what if you came home and gave it to one of your grandparents or gave it to somebody

00:15:45.740 who was at a higher risk and then they transmitted it? So it's a bit complicated to think of that,

00:15:53.440 but it's definitely something that might end up happening and we just don't know it yet. In other

00:15:58.880 words, we don't really know how many people have already been infected.

00:16:01.680 So you're saying different age groups can have a better or lower chance of getting it?

00:16:05.360 I don't know if it's a better or lower chance of getting it, but it's definitely a better

00:16:09.880 or worse chance of dying from it or being hospitalized for sure. So the younger you are,

00:16:17.160 the better you are, your risk is. And the fewer diseases you have, like high blood pressure

00:16:25.540 or diabetes or things like that, the better your chances of surviving it.

00:16:31.940 All right. So what should a proper quarantine look like? Because I know that

00:16:36.700 while we're quarantined, we sometimes order things from Amazon and when they order the packages,

00:16:41.180 we have a specific way of taking them out. Like we don't bring them inside. We have to wash our

00:16:44.900 hands and take it apart outside. So explain that kind of.

00:16:48.560 Well, do you know why we're doing that, by the way? What are we afraid of?

00:16:51.480 You don't want to bring the germs in.

00:16:53.120 Right. There is a chance that there could be some virus on the cardboard box. So let's assume

00:16:59.000 that the person delivering the bag or someone or the box or the person who touched it a few hours

00:17:04.680 earlier has the virus. Maybe they don't even realize they have the virus and the virus is

00:17:09.700 sitting there on the cardboard. And then that cardboard box gets dropped off at your door.

00:17:13.940 So there was a study that was published about three weeks ago that actually looked at putting

00:17:19.980 the virus on different surfaces, cardboard, plastic, steel, copper, those sorts of different things.

00:17:29.000 And it started to measure how long the virus could survive on those surfaces.

00:17:34.680 And what came of that study was that this virus can live for a day, maybe two days on cardboard.

00:17:42.780 So what you want to do is sort of assume that anything you come in contact with

00:17:48.140 potentially has some amount of virus on it. Now, that study doesn't really tell us you can get

00:17:54.180 infected from that. Because maybe there's not enough virus that's really surviving that you're

00:18:00.480 going to get it all over you. And if you don't take appropriate precautions, it's going to,

00:18:05.480 you know, infect you. But it seems to me, at least, that the safest thing to do is to assume

00:18:11.860 that anything that shows up has some amount of the virus on it. And that virus could potentially

00:18:17.480 infect you. So what we're doing is we're opening Amazon packages outside. We're cleaning off the

00:18:24.480 contents of them and then just washing our hands really thoroughly. And you remember how long we

00:18:28.440 have to wash our hands for? 20 seconds. You got it. And that is a lot longer than it feels like,

00:18:34.340 isn't it? It is.

00:18:36.660 Reese is the best at that, by the way. Is he?

00:18:39.760 Yeah, that kid can wash his hands.

00:18:41.760 Huh. Well, Aerie just throws soap everywhere. 1.00

00:18:44.500 Yeah, he's not so good at washing his hands.

00:18:47.160 So is there anything else we haven't covered that you think kids should know about this virus?

00:18:52.640 I don't know. But there is something I do want to use as an example for kids to think about.

00:19:01.140 Because I've been thinking about this a lot with you as we're going through this. So you can probably

00:19:05.360 tell. I mean, do I seem like I've been more irritable in the last month than normal?

00:19:10.880 Yes, kind of.

00:19:11.680 Yeah, I apologize for that. But I think part of the irritability, I feel, is just a frustration

00:19:19.700 in what I consider to be kind of incompetence. And I think it's worth using this as a teaching

00:19:29.580 point. Because you asked a question, how did we get here? And the underlying theme to how we got here

00:19:35.200 is, we didn't really do the things we needed to do before it was too late. And so why does that

00:19:43.400 happen? I mean, is it because we don't want to? I mean, I think the point here is, it's sometimes

00:19:49.960 really hard to do things for which the payoff is far in the future.

00:19:55.480 But that's kind of what you're explaining this morning, right?

00:19:57.600 Yeah. So we're talking about the thought experiment of imagine mom and I never once

00:20:08.660 harped on what you ate, what time you went to bed, how much you looked at your iPad,

00:20:14.940 how much TV you watched, when you exercised, what sports you played, what activities you did,

00:20:20.420 when you did your homework. Like imagine you could do anything you wanted. You could watch as much

00:20:25.980 flash as you wanted. Okay. That sounds kind of fun. You could eat as much ice cream as you wanted.

00:20:31.480 Think through how much fun you could have if you were allowed to do anything you wanted.

00:20:36.540 I think it would be fun for a little bit, but then I would obviously in the long run,

00:20:40.820 it would be really rough. But how do you make that trade-off?

00:20:45.460 You have to have discipline now so that it can benefit you later.

00:20:49.900 But that's hard. It is really hard. You know it because you and me and we all struggle with this.

00:20:55.980 We make these decisions today that don't always feel good. You make these sacrifices. Remember

00:21:03.340 what Jocko's, what do my Jocko shirts say on them?

00:21:06.660 That before the enemy or that one, but discipline equals freedom.

00:21:10.520 What does that mean?

00:21:11.860 It means the more you have discipline, the more free you'll be.

00:21:15.800 Eventually.

00:21:16.760 Not in the moment, but eventually you will be.

00:21:18.800 Right. And so when you think about why it is that you can't just eat all the ice cream in the world,

00:21:26.720 even though in the moment it feels so good, it is undoubtedly more pleasurable to eat ice cream

00:21:32.940 than not to eat ice cream. It is undoubtedly more pleasurable in the moment to watch as much flash as

00:21:38.220 you want and do as much TikTok as you want and screw around on your computer as much as you want.

00:21:43.180 Those things feel awesome. I can't deny that. But the problem is you will pay the fiddler tomorrow.

00:21:51.720 And life in some ways is a balancing act between enjoying things for the sake of enjoying them in

00:21:58.340 the moment and indulging, but also being responsible enough to make sure that when something goes wrong,

00:22:05.340 you're prepared.

00:22:05.880 I think if you're a kid and you're listening to this, it's important to understand that the adults

00:22:12.340 screwed this up. This is a great example of the adults not doing their homework, not saving their

00:22:21.540 allowance, not eating their vegetables, not exercising, just completely dropping the ball.

00:22:29.360 And now we're paying the fiddler. That's a problem. I think it's a huge problem. And that's probably

00:22:35.140 the thing that on a deep level has me most upset right now. It's that a whole bunch of innocent

00:22:41.480 people are suffering badly because the people who are supposed to be in charge, the grownups,

00:22:48.300 so to speak, couldn't make the long-term trade-off. They couldn't sacrifice in the moment. They couldn't

00:22:56.740 invest the time, the money, the infrastructure in science that was necessary to make sure that when this

00:23:04.640 happened, we were prepared. And so I have to hope that this is a wake-up call. And I have to hope

00:23:12.240 that when this is over, maybe you guys will be the ones to tell the adults, quit screwing around.

00:23:18.560 So we were talking about this this morning and an example you used was that Reese was watching a show

00:23:25.240 called Biggest Little Farm. And the people in that show, they had to grow their own food. They had to

00:23:30.280 produce everything by themselves. And if they didn't wake up one morning, even if it was raining and

00:23:36.460 they didn't go outside and garden or help their animals, then they wouldn't have food in the long

00:23:41.960 run and they would starve. So they kind of had to do what they needed to do for the future.

00:23:47.220 Yeah. I'm glad you remember that example. I think that's another great one is farming. Think about

00:23:51.600 if you have to go out there and plant your crops and go and tend to them and tend to your animals. And

00:23:56.480 if you just for a month decide, eh, I don't feel like doing it. I mean, I'd rather just screw

00:24:02.160 around. Well, you're going to starve when winter comes. Another question I had was, I was wondering, 0.96

00:24:08.780 is this China's fault? It has become incredibly convenient to blame China for all of this.

00:24:17.440 Consider the following scenario. You don't drive yet, but you know what it's like to be in a car with

00:24:22.180 me or your mom, right? I know it's like to be in a race car. Yep. So imagine you're driving down the

00:24:28.880 freeway and somebody changes lanes in front of you and cuts you off and they don't signal.

00:24:35.780 Is that their fault or your fault? That's their fault. That's right.

00:24:39.980 Now, how you respond to that is up to you. I could honk my horn or I could just.

00:24:47.560 Well, okay. Yeah, that's true. But I'm saying like how you respond from a safety perspective is up

00:24:52.160 to you. If you're paying attention and they cut you off, I mean, that happens like 10 times a day.

00:24:57.580 So if you're doing everything right, you're probably not going to die when somebody cuts you

00:25:04.360 off on a freeway. So like if you're texting and they cut you off, that could be a worse situation.

00:25:08.660 Exactly. Now imagine for a moment that you're speeding, you've had a couple of drinks,

00:25:15.340 you don't have your seatbelt on, you're texting and somebody cuts you off.

00:25:20.380 That's not going to work out too well for you.

00:25:22.500 Now whose fault is it?

00:25:23.980 That's my fault.

00:25:25.240 Well, it's both of your faults at this point.

00:25:27.800 True. Because that person did cut me off, but I was kind of not doing the right thing either.

00:25:32.560 You were not doing your best to be ready for the situation.

00:25:37.160 Okay.

00:25:37.440 And that's kind of how I think about this. To sit here and blame China for all of this,

00:25:43.400 even though that's clearly where the virus originated. And it's probably in part due to

00:25:49.680 practices of food handling that we would never do in this country. And all of those things are true.

00:25:55.880 But again, we have to take responsibility for all this. So China may have cut us off

00:26:01.700 in the freeway, so to speak, but we were driving too fast. We didn't have our seatbelts on. We had

00:26:07.060 a couple of drinks in us. We were texting and we were looking back to check on our kids in the car seat

00:26:13.420 and tell them to stop arguing. I mean, we bungled every aspect of this. And I just think that in

00:26:20.940 the moment when you're spinning out of control, it's easy to say that guy cut me off. But at some

00:26:27.120 point you got to be like, I was doing something wrong too.

00:26:29.840 Yeah. You were doing a bunch of things wrong. I want to ask you a bunch of questions now.

00:26:33.680 Okay.

00:26:34.540 So Olivia, we went into quarantine a week before your school closed.

00:26:38.780 Right.

00:26:39.540 That was about as upset as I've seen you in a long time. When you went to school

00:26:42.960 on a day and I said, Hey, Olivia, this is going to be your last day at school for a while.

00:26:47.180 So can you please bring all your books home? What did you think when I said that?

00:26:51.700 I thought you were absolutely out of your mind because I've learned a lot about the virus since

00:26:57.020 then. And at that point, when you said that, I didn't even realize how bad the coronavirus was.

00:27:04.180 And I didn't start learning about it until a couple of weeks ago. And none of my friends

00:27:08.740 were leaving school like I was. So I thought it would be really weird. I thought it would

00:27:12.940 fall behind in schoolwork and I thought I would be the only one. And I thought it was very odd and

00:27:19.820 I couldn't leave the house. So I couldn't do basketball. I couldn't go to drums. I couldn't

00:27:24.360 do anything. I couldn't do singing. And yeah, I was really upset at first. But then the next day,

00:27:30.040 a few of my friends dropped out and then the next day school closed.

00:27:32.680 I don't think school closed till the following Monday, but I think they told you in that they

00:27:36.380 said a few days later, Monday would be the last day.

00:27:37.880 Yeah. So a lot of my friends started dropping out and I was like, oh, oh, okay. Because I thought

00:27:43.000 me and my brother would be the only ones that weren't going to school. And the first few days,

00:27:46.980 all my friends were texting me, where are you? Why aren't you at school? And then kids started

00:27:51.280 dropping out super fast and then school was closed.

00:27:55.180 So what's been the hardest part of this for you?

00:27:58.480 No friends. Because I'm a really social person. I usually have a million playdates.

00:28:04.540 And so not seeing my friends has been really hard for me, probably. And also no sports because

00:28:10.020 basketball season just started and I couldn't play any games until next fall now.

00:28:14.980 What's been the hardest part about working, doing online classes and stuff?

00:28:20.080 Definitely having questions because usually at school, if you have questions,

00:28:23.580 you can ask the teacher after class. But now that teachers have things to do after each class,

00:28:29.520 you can't really stay online because you have another class right there. It's kind of hard to

00:28:34.040 explain, but online, it's hard to ask questions because everyone's talking over each other.

00:28:39.360 It's total madness. Like I have a headache after each class. And yeah, I do not like online school.

00:28:45.360 I wish we could have school back.

00:28:47.020 That's interesting. So when you go back to school, assuming you go back to school in the fall,

00:28:51.380 back into actual school, what will you appreciate now that you probably didn't appreciate in the

00:28:57.760 past? Just school in general. Like me and my friends are saying how we took school for granted

00:29:02.740 and we didn't realize how amazing it was to have school because now we wish we had school.

00:29:10.820 That's interesting. What has been the best and worst part of your dad not traveling for the longest time

00:29:20.260 ever? Well, I have to work out a lot, so that's not fun. But I do like you being home more because

00:29:27.260 you made crepes this morning and you're just here to help more. And I think it's really fun that we

00:29:33.580 have a puppy during quarantine. So that's like really lucky that we got her a few weeks before

00:29:38.480 quarantine started. And so, yeah, I mean, quarantine is good and bad in some ways.

00:29:43.960 Yeah. What's the deal with this puppy? She pees every three seconds of her life. Yeah. 1.00

00:29:51.060 Is that ever going to stop? I hope so because, yeah, you could always walk around the house and

00:29:56.500 if you step in a puddle, you know what it is. So you don't regret that we got her? No, I don't.

00:30:02.020 I really like her. You don't think she's too much work? No. 1.00

00:30:05.120 How many watts are you up to on your zone two workouts now?

00:30:10.860 65 to 70, but I think I can start going higher because I'm doing longer rides now too.

00:30:15.900 Yeah. What was your last lactate level at 70 watts?

00:30:19.400 It was like 2.1 or something like that. 2.3.

00:30:23.000 Pretty good. Do your friends think you're a freak that your dad does lactate testing on you?

00:30:27.220 They don't really know that part, but they do know that I work out. They just don't know what

00:30:31.060 lactate is, which I didn't until a couple months ago. Well, Olivia, thank you very much for making

00:30:38.280 the time. I know you've got a lot of things going on today. I hope we answered questions that your

00:30:44.040 friends would find interesting. Yeah, me too. Is there anything else that you want to know about

00:30:48.860 the coronavirus or that you think your friends might want to know? I think we've covered it all,

00:30:53.480 but yeah, I think that's it. All right. Do you think there's any chance we'll get Reese on the

00:30:58.800 podcast? Oh, that would definitely be crazy. I mean, I'm sure he'd love it. And you guys talk

00:31:04.520 about gardening and trash cans and what else does he do? Trains, Legos, probably talk about that.

00:31:12.220 We'll see if maybe he'll hear this one and he'll decide he wants to do one too.

00:31:15.900 Yeah. Speaking of which, I have online drums to go to now.

00:31:19.960 That's right. Yep. All right. Thanks, Olivia.

00:31:22.960 Thank you.

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The Peter Attia Drive - April 08, 2020

#104 - COVID-19 for kids with Olivia Attia

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