October 2, 2014 - Lynn Sherr

EPISODE NUMBER: 11004 (October 2, 2014)
GUESTS: Lynn Sherr | Kent Sepkowitz
SEGMENTS: Intro - 10/2/14 | Deathpocalypse Now: Ebola in America | Deathpocalypse Now: Ebola in America - Kent Sepkowitz | Solitocity | Lynn Sherr | Sign Off - Hand Sanitizer
SUIT REPORT: Dark Suit | White and Light Blue Stripped Shirt | Yellow and Blue Stripped Tie
VIDEOS: Thursday, October 2, 2014

Intro - 10/2/14

Tonight, a deadly virus hits America. President Obama, it is time to reinforce our salad bar sneeze guards. Then, a battle over our nation’s beaches. I have had it up to here, until the tide goes out, and then I’ve had it down to here. And my guest, Lynn Sherr, has been covering NASA since 1981, that’s 33 in Earth years. Adam Sandler has signed a four-movie deal with Netflix. Big deal. I get unlimited movies from them.

Deathpocalypse Now: Ebola in America

• Folks, let’s face it, there’s only one story to talk about tonight and that is Ebola. The first thing you have to know: Do not touch me.

“Breaking right now. The first confirmed case of Ebola right here in the United States.”
“The first case of Ebola diagnosed in the United States. A man in Texas, now in isolation.”

• Folks, that is crap-your-pants terrifying in that crap your pants is one of the symptoms of Ebola.
• Remember, folks, anybody can get Ebola just by coming in contact with an infected person’s bodily fluids, including “blood, sweat, feces, vomit, semen, and spit.” So you might want to avoid the next gathering of the Juggalos.

Dr. Dalilah Restrepo: Ebola is not as contagious. It’s a very infectious virus, but it’s not as contagious.
Elisabeth Hasselbeck: You have a very calm tone. I think it must come by nature with what you do professionally, doctor. But I think the rest of us are saying, “Wait a minute.”
Brian Kilmeade: I wonder if they’re just trying not to panic us or them.
Dr. Dalilah Restrepo: Again, it’s because those [coughs] - sorry.

• Did you hear that cough?!! Did you hear that cough?!
• Come on! She clearly has Ebola! And now so do all the Fox and Friends. And if we do lose one of them, thank god there’s a spare Doocy.

“You’ll vomit conntrollably. You’ll bleed from your nose, eyes, ears elsewhere. Your organs will start to fail. Your skin will become yellowish with jaundice and the bleeding becomes severe. And there is no cure.”

• No cure? I thought Nyquil was the sniffling, sneezing, fever, jaundice, bleeding from the mouth, nose, eyes so you can rest medicine.
• And with our government just clueless about this crisis, once again it falls to the pundit sector to solve it.

“Should we be stopping taking flights from these Ebola hot zones in West Africa?”
“Why are we not stopping air travel between Liberia and other nations?”
“Why are we allowing these flights into the US right now?”
“Should we just isolate the countries that are experiencing this?”

• Clearly, we have to cut off all contact with places with Ebola, starting with a border wall around Texas.

• Even that might not be enough. We got to treat this like the zombie apocalypse. I say we re-route the Keystone Oil Pipeline into the Mississippi River and set that f***** on fire!
• It serves you right for having radio stations that begin with “K.” Everyone over there, every on that side of the river is going to have to take one for the team. But remember, there’s no “I” in Mississippi.

Deathpocalypse Now: Ebola in America - Kent Sepkowitz

• Folks, these are clearly the end times, and I hope you’re spending them with your closest loved ones. I am spending them with someone I never met before. Please welcome the head of the infection control program at Memorial Sloan Kettering Hospital, Dr. Kent Sepkowitz.

Stephen: What are the odds that I’m going to get Ebola?
Kent: Zero. Next question.
Stephen: What do you mean zero? That’s what the President said. The President said it’s unlikely we’re going to get an outbreak of Ebola in the United States. And now he’s turned out to be wrong. You’re saying you’re righter than the President?
Kent: I’m righter than the President, that’s correct

Stephen: The proof is we have it now in America.
Kent: We have one case now. There is actual science behind this. This is not rumor and punditocracy doing this. There have been studies. We have had 20 outbreaks of Ebola in the last 40 years.
Stephen: Never one this bad.
Kent: Never one this bad. We know how it’s transmitted. We even know how it’s transmitted in the household. In the household it’s not even that contagious, and that’s when you have a sick mum or dad and there are family members. One in seven family members comes down with Ebola, even in that close confine.
Stephen: This guy — seven family members — may have exposed Ebola up to 100 people.
Kent: Yeah, yeah.
Stephen: Does Ebola make you popular?
Kent: It makes you very popular.
Stephen: 100 people. That’s a lot of people.
Kent:That’s Texas numbers.

Stephen: So what can I do to avoid Ebola?
Kent: I think you actually said it- don’t get physically close to someone who is bleeding to death would be my main advice.
Stephen: Okay.
Kent: It’s very clear that the amount of virus in blood is sky high in someone who is infectious. […] And the only way to get infected is to touch that blood bare handed or smear it on your face which maybe you would be inclined to do.
Stephen: It depends on how good the party is.

Stephen: The pretty lady on TV said no cure.
Kent: No cure.
Stephen: Is there no cure for this?
Kent: The body’s own immune system is the only cure. There is not an approved drug.

Solitocity

• I gotta tell you- and I don’t suppose it’s necessarily any kind of news flash right now, but being rich is great. The only drawback is sometimes you encounter people who have less money than you have.

• And what we rich people want more than anything else is to feel separate in our exclusiveness. This is a state known as “solitocity”. It’s a secret word that only rich people use.

• Vinod Khosla, a silicon valley zillionaire and Barack Obama Vindaloo.

• Khosla owns 53-acres of beach front property on the Pacific Coast but because of some dumb rule that you can’t buy the ocean, the unwashed masses kept up-washing on his beach near his property, and he took action.

“The judge has ruled against a billionaire who closed off access to Martins Beach, even though Khosla owns the 53-acre beachfront property, the entire California coast below the high
tide line is actually public property.”

• You know what they say- you can’t buy happiness, but Khosla proved you can buy other people’s sadness.

“Khosla gained control to the only road to the beach, built a gate, and called the cops. Families who had flocked here for generations were suddenly shut out.”

• Khosla is a trend-setter and other opulent Americans are already following in his footsteps on the beach. This time there’s only one set in the sand. Because Jesus couldn’t get past the gates.

• Best of all of these guys is California media mogul David Geffen who is evidently tired of beach goers parking near his house, and he found an ingenious new way to tell them to geff off my lawn.

“These are designed to look like garage doors but they’re not actually garage doors. It looks like you can’t park here, but if you look really, really closely, these are actually sealed shut.”

• These fake garage doors are keeping beach goers away, and if he paints a tunnel on them he can finally defeat that Coyote [Wile E.].

• It’s so distasteful driving on the same road with the normally monied. Now I drive wherever I want because I have a yield sign attached to my front bumper.

• But once I get where I’m going, I still want the privacy. That’s why now I always travel with my own velvet-roped V.I.P. section.

Interview — Lynn Sherr

My guest tonight is a journalist who’s book is called “Sally Ride: America’s First Woman in Space.” She really shattered the glass stratophere.

Lynn: Women were in the lowest paying jobs in NASA, and by the time NASA got around to recruiting women, which was 1976, the rest of the country had pretty much figured that out already, but they got there. And once they got there, they went for it. So, it had been a men’s club - a white men’s club - and then along came their recruitment for women and minorities and the world changed.
Stephen: It was revealed in her obituary…Tell the people what the last line of her obituary said.
Lynn: It was that she was survived by her sister and her mother and her partner of 27 years, Tam OʼShaughnessy.
Stephen: Not every obituary has a plot twist right at the end. It’s revealed that she had been a lesbian. The entire time? Or did space do that to her?

Stephen: Did she see herself or did she feel her role was an icon of science or of feminism? Because both of those frighten me. I don’t understand them.
Lynn: You know what? I have to tell you - You would have really liked her. Stephen: Would I?
Lynn: You would have really liked her, because the answer is: Both. She saw herself both as a feminist and a scientist. She believed women could do anything. She grew up with parents who believed women could do anything.