Hi, I'm Jay Fidel. It's the 230 block today, and we have a very special show. We are honored to have Mary Elena in copier, who is the executive director of the National Immigration Law Center in Washington and LA. She joins us here in between a number of appearances that she's making elsewhere in the state and the legal community. Hi, Mary Elena. Hi, Jay. It's so great to be here, and thank you so much for the invitation. Two things occurred to me. One is the Ben Foren statement to his family every day. He was the prosecutor in the Nuremberg trials, one of the prosecutors. He said to his family, what have you done to improve the world today? And you're doing that. We should all do that. Second thing is the Emma Lazarus poem. Give me, I can repeat part of it, but I don't have time to repeat all of it. Give me your tired, huddled masses yearning to breathe free, which affects us all Absolutely. Really, because we're all immigrants, and we should all care about, well, everyone, really.  Thank you. Thank you. It's a great honor to do this work, seriously. I think when you mentioned Ben Foren's comments to his children and his family, I remember my father. My father, we immigrated from Colombia. He was recruited to work as a textile factory worker in Rhode Island at the time that there were textile mills there. And the youngest of 10, we immigrated in the 1970s, and both my mother and my father were so clear that they had made personal sacrifices so that we would have a better life, better opportunities in this country, just like millions of immigrants and refugees have. And they also were very clear that as immigrants to this nation, we had a responsibility to leave this country a better place than we found it. Yeah. So I definitely relate that. I'm hoping those who might have helped you coming forward. Absolutely. I'm actually a director. You have oversight of the entire operation nationally of the National Immigration Law Center. That must be a terrific job. Can you tell us what the National Immigration Law Center does? Yeah. So we are working to ensure that today's immigrants, especially those that are low income immigrants and more vulnerable, have the same opportunities that previous generations of immigrants and refugees have, so that they have the tools and the resources to thrive, to be their best, to support their families, to realize their dreams and to contribute to this country, and again, making this country a better place. They're part of this country. They are this country. We are all. That's right. That's right. Yep. Yep. I get a little emotional. Sorry. Completely understandable. This is a fight for the soul of our nation, Jay. I mean, this is a defining issue of our times and what we are experiencing in this country at this moment, and in fact, in a lot of parts around the world, will dictate the future of our nation. Yes. It is happening now, too. Yeah. You know, sometimes we think, oh, this is a process that's not going to have an effect on us until later, but no, it's having an effect on our moral suasion right now. That's right. So let's talk about some of the issues that are happening. I think it's the ones that come to mind first, and this is not because it's the most important, but because it is most recent. Is this whole affair with the change in the census questions to add a question about whether the individual being interviewed is a citizen of the United States? Can you talk about that? Yeah. So this inclusion of the census question, citizenship question into the census is deeply, deeply troubling for all of us, right? I think as you said, this is one of those issues especially that impacts everybody in a state like Hawaii has so much at risk because if every single person in this state and in every state across the country is not counted, then you're not going to get the federal dollars that you deserve and that you're not going to be able to have the resources necessary to provide services to all of the residents of the state. And the inclusion of this citizenship question simply is pernicious. Yeah, another example of an administration that is trying to instill fear in immigrant communities and to have that undercounting at the end of the day. It's about political power. It states and have the at risk of losing members of Congress because of that count. And so I think the Trump administration is trying to change the entire structure of our country, of our democracy. It's engaging in changes in the law that would result in disenfranchising voters as well. Like voter suppression. Absolutely. It's voter suppression. It's completely related to voter suppression, yes. And the troubling part about it is that it will have an economic effect on various states and various groups. It will skew the distribution of your tax money. Absolutely. Maybe to the wrong people or at least not an equal... It won't be equitable. It won't be based on the number of people with that. What the Constitution asks for is that every person, it doesn't say every person based on when they came to the country or their citizenship status is like every person should be counted. And that has been the case for several hundred years. And here we are now trying to undercount intentionally. Affirmatively trying to undercount. We're trying to do that. In my view, we're trying to do that to A, limit voters. B, skew the money. And C, keep people out. Scare them and deprive them of a reasonable life. It's one of many things this administration is doing. It's, may I say, it's racist, isn't it? Yes, I mean, this administration is implementing many policies and changes in the law that are coming from people that identify as white supremacists and white nationalists. I mean, Steve Bannon, Steve Miller, make no... They're unequivocally in support of a white nationalist government and society. And they are engaging in policymaking to that end to ensure that people like me, people like my family, my loved ones are either excluded or ultimately feel so disenfranchised that we leave affirmatively. But we're not going to leave because this is our nation, right? This is our country that I've been here for 40 plus years now. And this is home as it is home to so many other immigrants. And we're going to fight for this nation. And we believe that we have not only a right but a responsibility to make sure that we actually get our country back on the right path. Regrettably, I think the fight on the immigration, rather the citizenship question and the consensus form may be over in the sense that we've already had a tipping of the hand by Kavanaugh and Gorsuch in the oral argument a couple of days ago. So that's a problem that's probably going to go the wrong way, don't you think? Well, it's hard to say. Honestly, as a lawyer, Jay will never try to predict how judges are going to rule. Good for you. Absolutely. I've been surprised. And I think I was sharing before the show my first experience was with a very conservative senior white male straight judge who ruled in my favor on behalf of my first client and actually his decision set the legal precedent for the right of undocumented workers to not be retaliated against by their employers. So I was surprised. We should hold that lesson. Yes, I will always withhold judgment. And then the other thing is we've seen under this administration in the last couple of years that the courts have served as a really important check and balance against this administration. And so that both Republican appointed and democratically appointed judges are ruling against the administration. And that's also a good sign. That's a good sign of a healthy democracy. Yes. That at the end of the day it should be based on the Constitution, not on what party you are in. Yes, but would not you prefer a reform of the immigration laws? Absolutely. A modernization in Congress and Congress has been neutered. Absolutely. And at a better time we would have Congress look into this and have hearings and talk to people and learn the fabric of our society and reflect it in a modern immigration code. Absolutely. And in fact, Jay, I think one of the concerns that I have is that at a time when our democracy is under attack, Congress has not been doing its job. They are the legislative chamber that is supposed to be holding the executive. It's that check and balance that the courts provide, that the legislature provides, and the executive, Congress hasn't been doing their job. Now on the House side we are seeing with a democratic majority once again they're doing their oversight job, which is critical. And so if the Supreme Court were to rule and say that the citizenship question is allowed, then once again we're going to be relying on Congress to try to repeal that. They can change it in no time. They could, they could. So it's going to be up to we the people to see if we can get them to do the right thing. Well, you can only, and if they don't do it, then there's always the next election to hold their feet to the fire. That's right, which is just a little bit over a year away. So, you know, this all brings to mind, you know, the issue in the wings is always the border these days and the wall and all the very totally bizarre, mean, evil things that are happening on the border. Can you talk about, you know, what is happening from a legal point of view and what the National Immigration Law Center can and should and is doing about it? Sure. So a couple of things. I think the border and particularly this really painful heart-wrenching images that we keep on seeing about mothers and fathers having their children ripped apart, physically, literally. I think of Jose Antonio, who is a man who had his three-year-old son physically ripped apart from his arms and separated. The father and the child were sent to different jails. The father was in jail for several weeks, not knowing what had happened to his child, if his child was even alive, he ended up committing suicide, just the anguish of not knowing and feeling like he had failed his son. So what's happening is not only unconstitutional, but it is immoral. It is immoral and this nation, like, our history will judge this administration for what it is doing and the long-term psychological trauma that is being inflicted on these children who are being ripped apart from their families. Fortunately, again, the courts have really helped stop a lot of this. There are a number of lawsuits that have been filed. We have a lawsuit against the Border Patrol that actually predates this administration in the Tucson sector, which has to do with the detention conditions at that particular border crossing. We continue that litigation. So the litigation is one angle, but the administration every single day is trying new policy changes. So just recently, the new Attorney General Barr announced that a policy change where now they will be indefinitely detaining any families that come together, they will keep the family together, but they will stay in jail until a final decision is made about their asylum claims, because, again, this is an administration that is blocking people from the ability to seek safety in our nation and to apply for asylum, which they're able to do legally under both domestic laws and international laws. So the fights are going to continue in the courts. They'll continue in Congress. There are a number of bills introduced, but to be honest today, I think we'll continue seeing the same thing. We don't. This is not an administration that is backing down. They will continue engaging in unconstitutional actions. They will continue engaging in cruel and inhumane actions until the voters vote them out. Give me your tired, huddled masses. Yearning to breathe free. We have departed from all of that. We are mean. We are immoral. And you are the barrier. You're somebody who's doing something about it. So one of the cases we talked about before the show started was about benefits, government benefits, of people who are in this country legally. You have no problem with their papers. They're entitled. But the government is acting against them, too. Talk about it. So one of the things that's really interesting about the immigration debate in the country is that so much of it is supposedly about undocumented immigrants, people who are here without authorization, or people who are arriving at the border to seek asylum. The fact is that at the core of the strategy of this administration is to radically change our legal immigration system. So this administration has done a number of things. One is it has terminated programs like DACA for immigrant youth. So these are immigrant youth who have been here since they were children, who had temporary protection from deportation that we were able to obtain through the Obama administration. It has also terminated temporary protective status for a range of immigrants from certain countries who also had protection. All of them are now at risk of greater deportation because the administration is trying to make them unlawful. The last thing, and this is the one that will have the greatest impact of it. This is my personal favorite, this one. This is so outrageous. And this is the one that would have the greatest impact out of all of the immigration proposals is that the Trump administration is trying to change the legal immigration system. They're literally trying to do an end run around Congress by saying that if you are lawfully present and you are currently under law entitled to access certain programs like nutrition assistance, health care, housing, and other enumerated benefits, if you use those benefits, you could actually be denied the ability to remain here permanently and get a green card. And that means that families are foregoing critical medical care, nutrition assistance, other supportive services that they need just to thrive, to be just the basic needs of their family because they're afraid that they're going to be separated. They're afraid that they will be denied a green card when they're up for that green card. And where the estimate is 26 million people will be directly or indirectly impacted by this if it becomes law. And we've learned just in the last days that this is at the top of Stephen Miller's agenda. He wants to finalize this over the next weeks. And if it does, this will have an impact on Hawaii, which has a lot of lawfully present immigrants as well. They need our help because they're at the bottom of the economic ladder. Anyway, as recent immigrants trying to make a living. And so this will hurt them where they live. It will hurt them to the point of hurting their health. Their health, our general well-being in the country. And I think the thing about this today is, again, these are folks who are lawfully present, folks who've been playing by the rules. They're eligible for these programs and to suddenly change the rules and say, if you use those programs, which you have been eligible for, you're now going to be penalized and be separated for your family. Sends a chilling effect. And so what we're seeing now is so much confusion and fear in immigrant communities that even people who have a green card are afraid that it will affect their ability to become citizens. People whose children are U.S. citizens. Also legitimate fear, isn't it? Absolutely. It's a completely legitimate fear and a lot of confusion because the proposed rule was 480-plus pages. And even lawyers, we're experts in this area and it has taken us months to fully understand the complexity of this proposed rule. It hasn't been through the process yet. It isn't a rule that's finished and effective, but it scares people. That's right. Because they wonder if it will be effective and if it will, can Congress do something about this? Well, we have to see what the final rule is. We have to look at the language of it. If it does, in fact, get finalized, we at the National Immigration Law Center are absolutely planning to sue over it. And hopefully, again, the courts will block this from going into effect. We are also, I hope so, we're also hoping that Congress will look at the impacts of this, limit the extent of this, and then states and localities actually have a really important role to play in this as well, both in educating their constituency over what the final rule is or what it says or doesn't say what it means, letting their residents know at the state level here in Hawaii or here in Honolulu what programs will continue to be available for them. And again, to make sure that there is, that we counter that fear and instead help our residents feel welcomed, feel that we are all fighting together so that they can thrive and could become successful members of our society and participants. Caring about each other. That's right. So, Marilena, we're gonna take a break in a minute, but before we do, I just wanna follow on the Ben Forenz notion that we should all be doing something to help our country and our world today. If somebody is concerned about these issues, somebody concerned about caring for his fellow man, woman, human being in the world today, especially immigrants who have such a hard time, how can they do that? Can they do that through you? Can they sign up in some way? Can they do volunteer? Can they provide some help to you? Tell the people. Absolutely. So, I really encourage all of you to visit our website which is www.nilc.org. Again, it's nilc.org. National Immigration Law Center. That's right, and so through our website, you can sign up for email updates so that you can stay up to date. I think one of the things that's so difficult is that immigration is such a complex area of law, and because we are seeing changes and proposed changes in policies and laws almost every day, sometimes multiple times a day, it's really important for the public to be, to stay on top of it, and what's one of the things that people rely on us for is that timely and accurate legal information. Yeah, sometimes I think the immigration, whether the administration doesn't want us to know all the strange and terrible things it is doing. So, it's really important we stay up on things. Absolutely. We'll take a short break, Mary-Laine, and we'll come back, and we'll talk then about sanctuary cities. We'll talk then about what is happening in Central America and what the right approach would be. Great, absolutely. We'll be right back. Aloha, I'm Wendy Lo, and I'm coming to you every other Tuesday at two o'clock live from Think Tech Hawaii, and on our show, we talk about taking your health back, and what does that mean? It means mind, body, and soul. Anything you can do that makes your body healthier and happier is what we're gonna be talking about, whether it's spiritual health, mental health, fascia health, beautiful smile health, whatever it means, let's take healthy back. Aloha. Hi, I'm Rusty Komori, host of Beyond the Lines on Think Tech Hawaii. My show is based on my book also titled Beyond the Lines, and it's about creating a superior culture of excellence, leadership, and finding greatness. I interview guests who are successful in business, sports, and life, which is sure to inspire you in finding your greatness. Join me every Monday as we go Beyond the Lines at 11 a.m. Aloha. Hey, this is Mary Elena in Copier. She is the Executive Director of the National Immigration Law Center, a very important organization for the preservation of our democracy and our morality here in these United States. So I wanted to move on to sanctuary cities. This is a very interesting concept. I don't think this has happened before the Trump administration. It's certainly happening now. What are your thoughts about that? Should cities do this? Should cities be made to do this, you know? Where is this all going? Yeah. So it's a great question, and I'll first start, Jay, by the concept of sanctuary, which actually comes from the church, comes from the faith community. Way back when, yeah. That's right, and especially in the 1980s where the faith community was providing safety, sanctuary to refugees coming from Central America, and of course throughout history that has been the place of many houses of worship to provide that. So that's the first thing I would say. And the same concept applies to how cities, localities can provide that safety to their residents. And the Trump administration has done a great job of demonizing the term and politicizing a term that, frankly, everyone should be in support of regardless of what your party affiliation or ideology. It goes deep in our history and culture. That's right, and it goes deep into that place of morality once again and about the ability for all of us, every human being wants to be safe and should be safe, and our laws and policies should actually promote safety. In the immigration context in the last couple of years, what this has meant is that because of the fear, because of the immigration customs enforcement agency ICE or the border patrol, which are two agencies that have been, their budgets have increased year after year, actually in fiscal year 2012, I believe I was, so this is even predating the Trump administration, the immigration enforcement at the border and in the interior was combined over $18 billion, was their budget. More than all federal law enforcement agencies combined, more than FBI, DEA, CIA, all of them combined. And so one of the things that's interesting is that the current administration talks so much about a porous border, there's an invasion happening, there are all these people here unlawfully. The facts actually don't say that at all, the facts say the opposite. There's been a net zero migration from Mexico, for example, from Mexico. What we are seeing is an increase in migration from Central America and we could talk separately about why that's the case. But because of the fear and because the immigration and customs enforcement and border patrol are agencies that have pretty much operating with complete immunity, no accountability, detaining people based on racial profiling, detaining people who have been here for a decade, two decades or longer, many localities are basically saying we actually need to ensure that all of our residents are safe and that if they are a victim of a crime or they are a witness of a crime, they should feel confident that they can come forward and report that to the police and that we, the police, will protect them and the community. It really is all about public safety. Less haven't, really has nothing to do with immigration status, but instead is that the local police is gonna do their job about increasing public safety for all of their residents and is not going to collaborate with immigration enforcement because if they do, that then creates that fear and distrust by their immigrant residents and not being able to, or not wanting to report a crime for fear that they will be placed into deportation proceedings. And good for San Francisco was that San Francisco has said, send them down. We'll take your tired, huddled masses yearning to breathe. Right, that's right. And you know, it's not only San Francisco, there are many, many localities around the country. Again, in blue states and purple states and red states that are saying actually, we the police, we have too many different challenges to deal with, we're not immigration agents and that's not gonna be our job. We're gonna focus on ensuring that crime is stopped and that everybody, regardless of their immigration status, should come forward and report a crime or as a witness or a victim. And I mean, I always ask myself, Jay, for people who say they're against it, I always ask myself, if you had a family member that was assaulted by someone and there was a witness, there was one witness that would help you actually get justice for your family, would it matter to you if that person was a citizen born here, a refugee, has a green card, undone, came out here, you would know. You would want that person to feel free and want to collaborate with the police and that's what this is all about. Something that was relevant also that, what's her name, Kirsten Nielsen, who was not my favorite person at all, nobody's favorite person who did really horrible things. That's right. I guess for Trump, I think he was telling her to do those things and then he was throwing her out because she did what he told her to do, that kind of thing. So now she's gone and they got this, Trump has this other guy who was brought up from the chain who was supposed to be meaner still and then he says to him, don't worry, as long as you follow my instructions, I will pardon you. To me, that's one of those really special, award-winning violations of the letter and spirit of the Constitution and our democracy. Yeah. But let's remember, this is a president who believes he's above the law. I mean, he really does believe that he is not accountable to anyone nor the Constitution and especially not to us as voters. And so it's not surprising. I think we're gonna see a lot of things like that. And as we get closer to the 2020 elections, one of the things that the president has already said is he actually wants to get tougher on immigration. And so we expect to see much worse. And this is again where I really call on all voters and really urge everyone in the state of Hawaii and across the nation that this isn't even about immigrants or immigration. This is about our democracy. It is about our Constitution. It is about our standing in the world. It is about our morality and it's about the future that we are embracing or not in this country. And we have to respect ourselves. That's right. We have to feel good about ourselves and we're not feeling so good. What amazes me to anybody supports this kind of policy. Hearing it from him, there's a lot of people who support this policy. I really can't imagine that. They just uninformed is what it is. Well, I think that there's very intentional misinformation happening. There's a lot of confusion and chaos being created. And one of the things that the president is really good about is actually exploiting fear and race. He's using race very much. So much of this is simply race. Absolutely. He is using race as a way to instill anger, to I would even say instill violence. And one of the things that we're seeing is that so many of the people I believe that so many of the people who have supported the president who voted for the president are not only misinformed but frankly like their own humanity is being denied that they are experiencing a lot of economic insecurity. They're feeling what's called cultural anxiety because they see their local community or the country changing or whatever that is and that if we had a chance to sit just across from each other just like you and I are doing and they were able to understand that we as immigrants share the same fears, the same hopes, the same dreams and we could see each other as human beings. That's right and as human beings that we would be able to create a much more equitable inclusive society for all of us because we actually need to be fighting for all of us. I think one other element in all this divisiveness and scapegoatism on a scale the world has never seen before. Even in Europe the percentage of people, the number of people who are involved as scapegoats here is huge and the reason to scapegoat them of course is to enhance your own power and that's very scary in terms of our democracy. One last question though Marylena and that is so this is all in the southern border and it is racist but it reflects a problem south of the border in Mexico with a degree in Central America to a larger degree and it seems to me American policy has failed in terms of maintaining a stable America, America's right in all these countries. That's right. And that includes Venezuela which is coming apart. Absolutely. Maybe the press didn't cover it this morning but you know it's still coming apart. Absolutely. And so the question I put to you is where exactly have we failed and what can we do now to stem the flow, to stem the violence, to stem the gangs, to stem all of these things that are happening that create these caravans that worse. Yeah. So it's such an important question James so glad you're asking because one of the things we need to understand is that people are coming from the Northern Triangle right from Central America from Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador in particular because those are countries that have become so dangerous that a mother makes a decision every single day about whether I save my children and leave this burning house or this burning country and seek safety and make that dangerous journey for 20, 25 days walking without anything in search of safety, right? So if we have a history in our nation of accepting refugees that's exactly what these individuals are. They are seeking refuge in our nation but the situation in Central America is what it is today because of US foreign policy. I mean we actually have created this crisis there. The crisis at the border is completely manufactured. Everything that's happening at the border about the wall or the caravans that's all manufactured by this administration, what isn't manufactured where the real crisis is the root causes in Central America that are forcing people to migrate and so for us at the National Immigration Law Center we believe that the long-term vision is that we must ensure that people have the freedom to remain and what I mean by that is we need to ensure that economic development is happening. That foreign policy, economic trade is not actually forcing people to migrate and that people can remain in their home countries that they have the basic needs that they need to thrive that they have access to opportunities, educational employment, that the natural resources are not being exploited by transnational corporations. It's all of these different things that result in the drivers of migration that force people to migrate. Look, the reality is most people want to remain their home country making that journey to another country where you don't know the language, you may not know people, you don't have any ties. Whiskey business. Exactly and so that one requires so much courage and resilience. Most people want to remain in their home country and people should have the freedom to remain and from our policy perspective we actually should be looking to ensure that we can elect a next president that understands that you can't address immigration unless we're addressing the root causes of migration. You know, looking at this, listening to this discussion, especially if you were a young law student perhaps or a young lawyer, may make you want to go into immigration law. Absolutely. Do you have comments on that? What do you suggest to somebody who might be dealing with that issue? So one of the things that's so excited about this painful moment that we're living is that being a law student or a lawyer is a wonderful gift in this moment. We get to shape the laws and policies of the future of this nation. Well, we have a duty, don't we? Absolutely. We have a duty to protect, preserve the rule of law. That's right. That's right. And we've seen an increase in law students wanting to study immigration. We've seen an increase in lawyers wanting to help out. And so I, especially these days that I'm here in Hawaii and learning about the law school which does amazing work under Dean Abhi Safir is really to encourage law students to consider immigration as a law practice. I think if we increase the number of law students and lawyers that are engaging in immigration that are fighting not just for immigrant communities but are fighting for a more inclusive and equitable society. That gives me a lot of hope and I look forward to working with all of those future lawyers and law students. I hope you run into John Egan if you haven't already. And Claire Hannes, they're both excellent immigration lawyers. I have, I've gotten a chance to meet with them and break bread with them over the last couple of days. So amazing. You know, Honolulu is lucky to have them. And I'm lucky to now be partnering with them as well. And we're lucky that you exist. We're lucky that you're doing what you do. Thank you for doing what you do. Thank you so much, Jay. Really appreciate it. Mary Elena. Thank you. Thank you so much. Aloha, mahalo.


All right, well welcome everybody and thank you for the opportunity to update folks. I imagine many of you here are situationally to understand what was announced yesterday in more detail and specificity as it relates to the first, apparently first community sourced transfer of the virus. I want to first though contextualize this moment and contextualize California's role as it relates to the issue that is in front of us. I've been very proud to be a resident of this great state for over 50 years. The privilege of growing up in and around San Francisco through the HIV and AIDS epidemic I saw firsthand the incredible capacity and resolve and compassion, empathy, drive, the innovative spirit that defined our march to meet those moments in the past, how richly resourced we were not just financially but in spirit and in resolve I had the opportunity over the course of decades in public service as a county supervisor and as mayor of a county San Francisco to work very closely and collaboratively with the state of California federal agencies to address issues large and small, issues around MERS and SARS, issues around H5N1, just H1N1, issues around Ebola and our response to those situational challenges and crises. I saw firsthand the incredible expertise and commitment and resolve of people at all level of government and as a consequence many of those things are in our rear view mirror as it relates to the acuity of our consciousness and focus. Accordingly we'll meet this moment. We will express and advance similar resolve on the issue of this novel coronavirus and we will accordingly attach ourselves to a little bit understanding of our history and our capacity to meet the pandemics head on both in pre-planning, both addressing pandemic in real time and more importantly in many respects post-pandemic. Over the course of decades now the state of California formally has adopted some renewed strategies and those strategies are advanced on an annual basis through formal efforts at the local level, regional, state and federal level to work to build capacity and build partnerships. The state of California invests millions of dollars a year to require communities large and small in the state to advance protocols to do very comprehensive annual event plans and to continue to develop relationships not just develop policies and planning documents, relationships and trust at the end of the day matter more than anything else. We had a number of those by the way conducted at scale last November. It was just a month or so later last December that we first were afforded the opportunity to learn more about what was happening overseas in Asia. I am very proud being a former mayor of San Francisco with the first and largest China town in the United States, one of the largest Chinese populations, Asian populations more broadly defined per capita in a part of our country, accordingly being governor of the most diverse state in the world's most diverse democracy also affords us a capacity of understanding and again strong formal relationships that have been developed over the course of decades. Those relationships allowed us to advance in real time and understanding and scoping of the challenge that inevitably would be presented. We worked more formally with the Trump administration and continue to work formally and very collaboratively with the Trump administration at all levels to coordinate and collaborate. That coordination and collaboration you may recall initiated in a number of repatriation flights that came to the United States and rather than turning our backs on those repatriation flights we supported with partnerships at CDC and other federal agencies those repatriation efforts as American citizens first as Californians advancing our values second and we coordinated those first flights the first flight particular in January late January down into Riverside at Marsh. We had a number of other flights including the most recent at Travis Air Force Base in Solano County over 800 people have come in on those flights but that's a small part of the overall picture. Thousands and thousands of other people have come in on more traditional flights through the state of California some 8400 plus are currently being monitored with 49 local jurisdictions doing those protocols and monitoring as it relates to more traditional commercial flights that came in from points of concern and potential points of contact particularly in Asia. As you may know as of today and I say as of today at this hour we have 33 confirmed positive tests of the virus. Five individuals have subsequently moved out of state so there are 28 people that we know in the state of California that are positive the case yesterday understandably generated a lot of attention but didn't surprise any of the folks standing to my left or right we knew this was inevitable as it relates to the nature the epidemiology nature of these viruses that that incident would occur accordingly when hearing about it we initiated a series of protocols that we were prepared to advance those protocols include deep tracking and tracing of individuals that would be in contact with this individual working again in collaboration partnership with our federal partners and working with the extraordinary extraordinarily talented and committed frontline workers both in the healthcare sector but more broadly defined at the local and county level. We are currently in deep partnership with CDC on one overriding protocol that drives our principal focus right now and that's testing and the importance to increase our testing protocols and to have point of contact diagnostic testing as our top priority not just in the state of California but I imagine all across the United States. We had conversations just almost a moments ago but within last few hours with CDC assuring us that the testing protocols will be advanced with urgency. We have just a few hundred testing kits in the state of California and that surveillance testing as well as diagnostic testing that's simply inadequate to do justice to the kind of testing that is required to address this issue head on and I'm very pleased the CDC is moving expeditiously on that and have made firm commitments to the state of California that will significantly and exponentially expand our capacity to advance those testing protocols nothing more important than point of contact diagnostic testing that can be readily made available so that we can have full spectrum testing of this disease and so that is or rather this virus and so that's our top priority is relates to the moment and again we are pleased with the response that we have just received from our representatives of the federal government. We have today though representatives from a number of state agencies that will talk more learnedly and more specifically about the protocols and procedures that are underway as it relates to modeling this virus in the state looking at vaccine protocols when not if when the vaccine avails itself looking at the strategies of cooperation at a multi-jurisdictional level be it not just with state and local and federal officials but also nonprofits and GO's and private sector participants that's why we have assembled here today the head of our health and human service agency who will speak just after me he'll hand it off to Dr. Angel who represents public health system and someone many of you in California quite familiar with the head of our office emergency services not to elevate anxiety in relationship to the office emergency services but our leaders it relates to wildfires and relating to natural disasters but also our leader in logistics as it relates to the modeling and gaming out of our next phase strategies if they are necessary. I long windedly have just said the following we're meeting this moment we have been in constant contact with federal agencies we have history and expertise in this space we are not overreacting but nor are we underreacting to the understandable anxiety many people have as it relates to this novel virus at the same time no better resource state in America to address this issue head on and no better team assembled that have taken account and responsibility from day one to meet this moment so it's in that spirit that I now ask Dr. Galli to come up and express his points of view and he will pass his podium on to the two other representatives of agencies and we're here of course answer any question you subsequently may have Dr. Galli. Thank you governor my name is Dr. Mark Galli I'm secretary for California's health and human services agency today I want to walk through what we alongside our colleagues at the governor's office Cal OES our local partners our private partners in the hospital system the clinic system our many physicians and nurses across the state have been working towards as well as our great partnership with the CDC and other federal agencies we are here and have been doing our work around the clock for many weeks and months now to protect California's health and safety since we first learned about the novel coronavirus I will then turn this over to Dr. Sonia Angel to my right who is our California public health officer who is also the director of the California Department of Public Health and she will go into more detail about specifics on the particular case that I know many of you are interested in learning more about I do want to spend a moment just setting a bit of a ground rule around what we'll do here today as a physician along with Dr. Angel we take very seriously patient privacy we may not be able to be in a position to answer questions about the most recent case when it comes to the condition of the patient their age and where they are we are also not going to be discussing in great detail issues around the federal repatriation efforts as as many of you are aware we are in active conversations and in litigation around that with our federal partners and the local entities I want to start by saying it's natural to feel concerned about the novel coronavirus but I want Californians to know that we have rigorously planned for this public health event just like this as the governor mentioned when I was with him in San Francisco we prepared for the H1N1 situation we've gone through this with Ebola and being prepared and many other events like it in the past and our goal is to take every precaution to protect California's health and safety this is a rapidly evolving situation we are leveraging all the necessary state resources to address it we are in constant communication with our federal partners and yes it was just moments ago that we were on with the CDC's director learning about our ability to expand testing here in the state to receive more testing kits and to be an active conversation on redefining what triggers a situation a clinical situation to be tested California continues to be an active federal an active partner with the federal government helping lots of impacted Americans get home as the governor said we welcomed home the first first of many flights to the state we have been participating with all of our public health resources our clinical resources to support those federal efforts we are the first in the nation to begin to roll out testing and we are going to be expanding that in the hours to come we have been actively and extensively planning with our local health partners that includes our delivery system the hospitals and doctors and nurses that we all trust have been deeply engaged i'm grateful for those wonderful partnerships and relationships we have with those agencies and organizations across the state because those relationships matter at a moment like this it makes it more seamless and gives us a better chance to be prepared as we have experienced in the last many weeks as in any public health event our medical and health coordination center has been activated and is coordinating its response across the state and preparing for more and possible community transmission California continues to prepare and respond in coordination with even our local hospitals in solano county and in many other counties that have stepped to the plate and really taken on a clinical load that weeks ago wasn't anticipated we are providing information guidance in documents and in technical assistance in regular phone calls and webinars with all of our state partners who need to continue to work with us to make sure that we have the best interest of all Californians in mind this includes guidance to facilities such as schools universities colleges child care centers all across california because the questions are many and we want to make sure we give a consistent and clear voice we continue to coordinate with the federal authorities and local health departments and implementing screening monitoring and in some cases quarantine we've had over 8 000 passengers returning to the u.s. from china and other parts of asia over the past many weeks and we have supported and worked with our local health departments to make sure those individuals are safe and that we are giving good and appropriate guidance based on the most up-to-date information we are continuing to work with our federal partners on giving our feedback on all of their guidance and criteria so that we make sure that it is current and meets the needs of an evolving situation we look forward to continuing those strong relationships and we are working hard to ensure that our local health capacity is preserved for those individuals with significant symptoms if that is developed so we are working hard to make sure that our local health partners are communicating accurately when people who are experiencing symptoms whether they've had exposure or not should be emerging and coming forward to health facilities we live in an age where telehealth telemedicine phone advice many other types of modes of getting information and sharing your clinical condition exist and we are urging many folks to use that before they come to emergency rooms or urgent care centers or their physicians practices in order that we ensure that the hospitals and our capacity during a important time in flu season and when other emerging other patients with clinical needs would naturally use the emergency rooms so we're trying to work hard with those partners to make sure that we use our scarce but critical access within our acute care hospitals in the most responsible and appropriate matter. I will now turn to Dr. Sonia Angel who will go in to more detail about the sort of state of affairs of coronavirus across the globe across the nation in our state and some of the specifics on the important development from yesterday. Dr. Angel. Hi good morning I'm Dr. Sonia Angel I'm director of the California Department of Public Health and State Public Health Officer and I'm welcoming you all today here to our Medical Health Coordination Center this is where we coordinate with all of our agencies a very important response that we've put in place for novel coronavirus otherwise known as COVID-19. Navida coronavirus COVID-19 is new but it is part of a family of coronaviruses that have been around for a long time that we are very familiar with in fact coronaviruses are responsible for the common cold so it's something that all of you may also be quite familiar with the cause of the current outbreak that originated in China is a new member of this family the most common symptoms of COVID-19 include fever cough and shortness of breath our experience to date though is that most people more than 85 percent will have mild or no symptoms some may move to a more complicated course including pneumonia but that is not the most common manifestation of novel coronavirus we're learning more about its transmission and as I said the most common symptoms are respiratory therefore its primary mode of transmission is from coughing or sneezing particularly when we don't cover our mouths after we sneeze or cough or don't wash our hands there have been a limited number of confirmed cases of COVID-19 in California today as mentioned 33 positive cases in California 24 were from the repatriation flights the other nine confirmed cases include seven that are travel related one due to person-to-person contact but that was from a very close contact a spouse living in the home and now is mentioned yesterday this new case from an unknown source this particular case could be the first possible instance of community transmission of COVID-19 in the United States and it's here in California it's in an individual in Solano County who is receiving care in Sacramento County with no travel history and no known exposure to somebody with confirmed COVID-19 we currently have people in the field working in the community at the local from this from the local the state and also from the CDC they're investigating the cases and they're taking action they're contacting any individuals who might have been exposed and they're isolating them this is a fluid situation at this time and I want to emphasize that the risk to the general public remains low in the event that that risk changes we will communicate with you we will make everyone aware but it's important to note that the risk the risk to the general public in California remains low from novel coronavirus the department of public health emergency operation operation center has been actively coordinating response efforts preparing for possible community transmission as always in emergencies we plan for both the worst situation but also the best situation so we're ready for anything we've been working with our state and local partners for situations like this for over a decade we've updated our plans based upon our lessons that we learned from h1n1 and from evola virus but we do realize that this case that we're discussing today marks a turning point and as such we're expanding our surveillance activities we're increasing our laboratory capacity is mentioned with more testing we're planning increased for increased demands on our medical system and we're using the latest science to model and forecast the needs of our community so that we are sure we can continue to respond as we have to date as we learn more about COVID-19 and how it evolves we will be sure that we adapt whatever we're doing to make sure that our responses are appropriate and as we continue to work in coordination with federal and local partners there are some simple steps that i want to remind all of you we'll all emphasize this that you can do today to make sure that you stay safe and to protect yourself and those include washing your hands with soap and water avoiding touching your eyes nose or mouth with unwashed hands staying at home from work or school if you become sick with respiratory system symptoms like a fever or cough and avoiding close contact with people who are sick it's natural to be concerned at times like this which is why california officials have been closely closely monitoring and working with partners around the situation now i'd like to turn this over to california office of emergencies services director mark gillarducci thanks dr angel good morning mark gillarducci director of the governor's office of emergency services first let me just say um as you've heard today uh this is a new and rapidly evolving situation and a challenge to us but um we are doing everything at the state level in support of our local partners to address it um this is not our first time as has been mentioned by uh previous speakers that we have addressed similar kinds of challenges currently my office the office of emergency services is primarily supporting the great team at the health and human services agency and california department of public health with all or any resources coordination activities um and we're actually leveraging all the very powerful and broad authorities of oes and uh of our great emergency response system to be able to meet whatever needs that hhs has to ensure that they have all the the items they need particularly like areas in commodities or um critical assets that uh that may be necessary uh we're also doing a lot of cross coordination and communications with jurisdictions around the state to ensure that our local operational areas um meet all the needs to invent that they're having trouble facing whatever challenges that they face again much like we do in the normal course of emergencies that we routinely face here in california and um like all emergencies it's critical to understand that there are risks um and uh as been mentioned we want to encourage everyone to have a family plan and review that with your family and really listen to state and local health authorities as they continue to provide critical information out to the public this is going to be a little bit of a marathon and so we're going to be continuing to support and as it evolves or changes will be prepared to do that in an effort of bringing all different state agencies and departments together where we're doing advanced planning for any potential scenario uh that may take place in the coming weeks or months so again i just want to close by emphasizing that while we face this new challenge uh we need to know that the state is taking every action and uh and we want to encourage you to just continue to listen to your state and local health officials thank you so happy to take any questions and again with the one criteria of respect and responsibility that we have to patient privacy i imagine many of you want to know who she is how many people she is in contact with where she works uh and those clearly uh are understandable questions and i hope you and anticipation of our responses understand our patient responsibility uh to protect uh and preserve confidentiality but know that we are uh intimately involved in answering those questions the kind of specificity that's required of the moment we can't give all of the details that uh reveal that we know that there were um a number of days that she was in her community uh and that she then did begin accessing care and um through the course of her care as uh her uh condition condition evolved uh she was then tested so there were days in between when she emerged with symptoms and when the test actually occurred but uh we we have been working closely with those health care delivery systems that took care of her as well as the cdc and others to make sure we're doing all the appropriate things to understand uh what community exposure existed and what we can do to make sure those who were exposed receive the right care and concern that we would want any of our family members to receive that were in that situation yeah i should just note it underscores the importance of the testing protocols being advanced and as we said uh the information we received for the cdc this morning advanced uh those protocols and so we are satisfied and we're now moving in the right direction accordingly we have a tracing protocol that's best in class meaning every single point of contact every point of contact of those that were in contact all of those will be resourced and reviewed accordingly uh cdc has uh committed to sending 10 of their personnel into the state of california to help assist in those efforts to broaden our capacity to track uh each one of those individuals and to make sure that they're contacted and to make sure that they're interviewed leave that to them again my medical team we have no evidence that there's any connection with those patients and this individual at this time okay and you're also tracking a lot of individuals how many potential contacts are you tracking right now i can't give you those specific numbers but i can tell you that investigation started yesterday they continue across the full spectrum from the individual's home all the way through the hospital system and all of them are being reviewed carefully by um by those people in the field at this time i can't give you the number at this time well no state was no state had the ability to access them i don't want to get into the uh but let's just establish this new protocols are now being advanced they can't happen soon enough uh testing protocols have been a point of frustration uh for many of us across the spectrum and i mean means cross not only spectrum within the health uh a system but across states uh we have as i said just 200 kits and that's for not just the traditional diagnostic but also surveillance it's simply inadequate but no longer uh will that be the case later this afternoon tomorrow the next few days we have been assured of our capacity to significantly exponentially increase the capacity to test and this is something that again is critical at this moment we've been i i don't look i'm not going to politicize this moment and i'm not going to point fingers and i'm going to speak honestly and forthrightly that we have had a very strong working relationship with the administration from the secretary level to the director level uh we have been in consistent contact not only as a team but individually i have as well from day one uh and to the extent that they are processing their own protocols and procedures uh we are grateful that in that iterative engagement they are moving forward as we demand in advancing our efforts to test the extent necessary you know emergencies often uh are to emphasize energy of focus often just for federal uh purposes of receiving additional resources and support right now i don't feel either are necessary the attention is understandably focused the money is not the issue at the moment but to the extent conditions changed we'll consider that i'm not concerned about them at all today i was very concerned about them a week or two ago i don't think the issue of money now is going to be an impediment i think there is a deep sense of urgency and recognition that we need to provide the kind of resources to meet this moment so no longer am i concerned i know his team is i know the folks the the folks that came up after him in the press conference we know each and every one of them not just by name and face but by constant contact i know each and every one of them are sincere and resolved and so i have absolute confidence that the folks he's assembled around him too we'll see what we what he's able to accomplish in the next few days and weeks and but i look um it's all about your team it's about the people you assemble and he's got long-term professionals that have transcended his administration that are there that have earned reputations that are solid uh and uh we have developed relationships of trust and those relationships predate his administration and mine so from that perspective not a lot of daylight again i i'm not here it's very easy for me we're involved 68 lawsuits with the trump administration to find daylight and politicize this uh but first and foremost i'm an american citizen uh i'm a father of four politics has no place at this moment we have to meet this moment with a sense of urgency and conviction that transcends politics and transcends pettiness and so i will not allow my administration to participate in that and i hope we collectively can elevate above that well that's uh that's a real time sure question we we spoke to the director of the cdc moments ago and he assured us without giving a specific number that our capacity would be substantially expanded we expect that those kits will be here any day now and we already have a number at the moment so this will just augment that capacity and scale very soon we we don't have that information we do not know if that that's actually the case but as the governor said we are in constant communication and the case from yesterday is obviously giving the cdc a lot to consider in terms of revising those protocols so that more uh more individuals will be tested with symptoms that might be identified as common pneumonia without a clear source and we are in conversation with the cdc about ensuring that that fits the need for california so that physicians or clinicians who ask for the test uh will more easily be able to send it so uh as both the governor and dr angel said we won't be speaking about the specifics but because we have we have a very robust and first class tracking system to ensure that we're reaching out to all of the potential contacts in many many different walks of this person's life so that we're doing as we have in many many other situations like this to ensure that those individuals who may have been at risk are contacted and that they receive the correct attention and care if needed we as we said we're engaging closely with that community and we in order to protect a number of things around the public health uh standards that we're all committed to that we are uh working hard to make sure that anyone who might have been in contact with this individual throughout the community is is knowledgeable and that we're reaching out to them let me just let me just amplify if i may just briefly imply absolutely people that have been in contact with this individual have the right to know and in real time they are being interviewed uh points of contact family members are being interviewed and others this is a very detailed protocol that is well established that predates this particular virus and it is a protocol that is multi-dimensional and i think affords a level of comfort that people understand we're meeting the moment and comprehensive and detailed like this is under the assumption that someone else in this community transmitted this disease to that individual we don't know who that person is so should people who didn't necessarily contact the sick person know that there are other people in their community who may have this disease yeah well look that's the reason the testing protocol is so important you don't know what you don't know unless you're testing and so this point uh is cannot be emphasized enough uh we should have caregivers doctors have the capacity in real time on demand uh to advance these testing protocols and that's i think one of that's why i began this conversation today with all of you that that's our top priority uh it was this morning and we've been given assurances that cdc recognizes that with the deep sense of urgency as you know it's one thing just to have the testing kits it's another have the capacity on the back end to adjudicate the facts and have a full diagnostic test that's provided that's limited today but over the course of the next few days we've been given assurances there'll be exponentially more sites for testing also made available including the prospects of doing them within the state of california so we get the test results back more quickly look everybody in this country is rightfully anxious about this moment but i think they should know that we are meeting this moment with the kind of urgency that is necessary and i don't want to over you know overextend the anxiety that people naturally face that's common sense this is uh this is something that we are we're organizing around something we've been organizing around for months nothing so far has surprised us nothing what happened in slano county did not surprise anybody i think the only thing respectfully that surprised folks was that it didn't happen sooner but we had anticipated this moment it's a natural thing uh and invariably we will meet it and so i i think people should go on their day-to-day lives with with some common sense um and i think dr angel was right to advance what common sense it's nothing more complicated than what your grandma taught you your mom taught you uh and others but uh i don't want to instill any sense of new anxiety that already is naturally filtering through our community we are in litigation as you know in real time on that i think both parties are meeting representatives lawyers from both sides so i don't want to speak to the specifics of the site in and around costa mesa community but we clearly have protocols and we have identified pre-identified locations and that's among the more favored location in the state but there are other other sites in addition to that site all across the state all across the state it's a a number that's very dynamic uh we estimated it candidly forthrightly to be higher than it turned out to be meaning the test came back more favorably and this is something that's encouraging less people testing positive than we had anticipated so we had some initial estimates of what we needed that actually are substantially more modest that said this is dynamic and things could change the next days and weeks and so big part of why uh the director of office of emergency services here is we have protocols that are well established as it relates to emergency planning and uh and how we address people that not only could shelter in place in some respects and be quarantined at home but also those that need stepped up uh support be it hospitals but also in non-hospital settings so that we don't clog our hospital system and not provide access to those that are desperate need of emergency care and other acute care yeah no look as i said i can't repeat it enough we need to substantially increase access and availability of testing uh and we need to do that today and the guidelines as it relates to the testing i'll leave to the doctors and the experts but uh i can assure you i think we all share that sense of urgency that the testing protocols need to be improved so so in in conversations with the cdc today we are assured through our feedback and feedback from a number of other states and jurisdictions that those requirements for testing will be changed based on the new information from yesterday here in california and we are working hard with the cdc to ensure that once those are prepared we are ready for it uh we know that it will shift from the posture of border and significant containment to one where we acknowledge that community spread is possible and that it meets that uh condition so that patients where the provider believes there are symptoms suspicious of uh coronavirus that we have the capability and permission to be able to send that test so the contact tracing itself and the way we communicate depends upon the individual and how we can best reach them so that can vary in different methods so that's the the first answer to your question with respect to schools and other locations that really depends upon where we understand there might be a particular risk and so that again will be evolving over time the way the the way contact tracing works is that we start from the individual that we know has been affected we have interviews with all of those individuals that are around them and step by step we look at where they've had where they've been and who they might have been in direct communication with we also know because this person was admitted to the hospital that we also look at all of those individuals in the hospital who might have been in contact with the with the patient there no no no these are personal and direct to the individuals and very intentional because we're really want to make sure that we communicate to those individuals the potential risk that they have when we identify it so these are not black statements they're very specific but do you plan to release a timeline of where this all i again having having had the privilege over decades now not just in this instance these protocols are well established this is not this is not our first great challenge as it relates to public health quite the contrary these protocols have been perfected in so many ways shapes or form not only in the united states around the rest of the world so all of those things are being considered i can assure you and and we have not only existing teams and protocols in place they are now as i suggested being expanded by the cdc themselves that are helped amplify those efforts and as information becomes appropriate to make available in a way that doesn't overly create anxiety and okay i mean guys let's put this in perspective i know there's deep anxiety but let's put it in perspective as it we feel it's appropriate for public health purposes we'll make all of that available i i'm deeply committed to transparency and i'm deeply committed to building trust and so we're not going to hold things back inappropriately or politically there's no happy talk here i'm not trying to talk something up or situationally worry about the politics of this we are dealing with this as a public health issue above all else that's our frame and focus and people again should know we're on top of this i think you're saying but there's to be a resistance up there among you guys to say where this individual has been and and when why is that for all of the reasons i just stated correct and we are aggressively working with those caregivers we've identified the vast majority of them to the extent they had contacts they are being identified in real time these are the pros and professionals and most of them are self-identifying and we have procedures in place and again remember quarantining people isolating people happens all the time from measles to tv these protocols are well established as i said h1n1 all these other challenges we've had and pandemics in the past these protocols have been advanced and these are similar strategies for engagement that we've had and protocols that have served us well both from public confidence perspective and from a public health perspective you better believe it every point of contact has now been uh we are we are uh well i i believe they are accepting patients hospitalization not fall i wouldn't categorize them as faulty tests just inaccessible testing protocols and so we are getting we we have just received as i said a few hours ago insurances that tests will be forthcoming additional test kits again 200 seems remarkably inadequate of course the real inadequacy is not just the lack of test kits it was lack of ability utilize those test kits now we'll be able to utilize them and we will be the recipient of an exponential increase in new test kits and then more testing locations will be made available so we don't have to send everything back to cdc headquarters in one testing location we'll see multiples of locations over the course of the next few days i'm not worried about money what about the state i'm not worried about i'm not worried about resourcing this response that's it's just not even concerned we will meet this moment we are well resourced as a state california for those of you not familiar with the state is running record reserves and running surpluses we are uniquely resourced in california and i have great confidence that the administration particularly in partnership with speaker polosi and leadership in the senate will provide more than adequate resources to the state of california and other states yeah and and i'll end on this because we can we can spend the day together you've got a lot of work to do as do we as it relates to the masks we have we have millions of masks some have expiration dates and we're making a case some of these masks are have been well stored in secure cool facilities and those expiration dates that do not exist in other parts of the world should not necessarily apply here we have orders for masks this shouldn't alarm anybody the masks of course are produced disproportionately in china and so there's backlogs on those masks but we have millions of masks in storage locally and we are requesting some capacity to distribute those and we feel confident that we'll be successful so we'll have adequate supplies and i think anything you're hearing in that space is accurate and inaccurate because of the totality and the magnitude of what we have prepared for in the past that we feel confident we can resource going into the future no i i leave that to the doctors but i'm not walking in here with any masks today uh dr galley isn't either but perhaps you can end on that sorry can you repeat that uh we we do not believe so and as soon as uh that that decision would change we would share with the public widely thank you so free to reach out our respective communication


Whenever I go dancing, my motions are more or less at random. You might say that I tripped the light stochastic. Ah, the origin of species. Everyone knows the story. Charles Darwin, a brilliant scientist bravely voyaging on the SMS Beagle and exploring the Galapagos Islands, where his careful observations of finches led him to an epiphany about evolution, and the world was forever changed. That's generally how we're taught the history of science. We learn the names of those giants whose shoulders we now stand atop, those geniuses whose blazing intellects allowed them to see further than anyone had ever seen before, and beat a path for the rest of us humble mortals. But there's a bit of a problem with that story. You probably haven't heard of Alfred Russell Wallace, another British scientist and contemporary of Darwin's, who also voyaged in faraway lands to research and catalog exotic species. One year before Darwin published On the Origin of Species, Wallace submitted a paper to the Linnaean Society of London titled, On the Tendency of Varieties to Depart Indefinitely from the Original Type. Hmm, the exact sequence of events is up for debate, and it's possible that some internal politics at the society were involved, but by almost any account, Wallace developed the idea of evolution and speciation through the process of natural selection independently, and was fully aware of all the implications of that idea. Now, Darwin had been editing his book for nearly 20 years by that point, but wouldn't you know it, the great scientific hero and visionary whose name we still use to describe this very important idea ended up publishing it immediately after Wallace's paper. If this were a singular event, you might think to yourself, oh, haha, what a coincidence, but mutual independent discovery of the same revolutionary idea happens all the time, often nearly simultaneously. Evolution, calculus, oxygen, the telegraph, a staggering number of Nobel Prize winning discoveries in physics. Lightning definitely seems to strike multiple places at once. The narrative that large scientific advances are solely due to singularly brilliant individuals doing something that no one else could is called the heroic or great man model, and it's what we learn in school, but it seems that historically it's very rarely the case that only one hero could have possibly figured these things out. Maybe we can look at this history in a different way. Maybe the people involved aren't really that important at all. In the multiple discovery model, it's suggested that the thing that drives large scientific advances isn't the genius of any particular individual, but some underlying mechanism of civilization itself. From this point of view, there's a gradual accumulation of knowledge which is intrinsic to society that makes important discoveries more or less inevitable once it reaches a certain level. The Jeopardy Board slowly fills in with letters, and at some point, anyone with half a brain knows exactly what the answer is. Very smart people can get us there a little bit earlier than we would otherwise. That's all. It's not like they should be revered as timeless heroes because they can guess the word Jabberwocky with one fewer vowel. That model would explain all the times that we see independent discovery at the same idea. Darwin and Wallace were both smart guys, but maybe the conceptual groundwork for evolution had already been laid and was just waiting for someone smart enough to put the pieces together. But there's an issue here too. Independent discoveries at the same important idea sometimes happen centuries apart, like with fine-cut brass gears or universally programmable computers, and there doesn't seem to be any real reason that their potential wasn't realized the first time. I mean, if the next step is obvious to anyone with half a brain... In 2003, Dean Keith Simonton advanced a third model for how scientific discovery might work, something which he felt accounted for both the irregularity of scientific progress and the multiple discovery phenomenon, as well as a bunch of other data which he amassed for his paper. You probably remember the term stochastic from your high school chemistry class. It's a term used to describe chemical reactions which occur at random. It's really absurdly unlikely that two hydrogens and one oxygen will happen to collide at precisely the correct angle and speed to fuse together into a water molecule. But if you stuff a million of them into an enclosed space together, then sooner or later you get that exact reaction. Simonton suggests that we imagine ideas as particles bouncing around in people's brains and epiphanies as those chance occurrences where two concepts happen to line up perfectly and fuse into something new. In his model, scientists iteratively combine existing concepts more or less at random and check the results for viability, rejecting combinations that don't make any sense and investing in the ones that might.  How could we know if this stochastic model was right or wrong? What testable predictions would it imply? Those are great questions. Let's get into it. First, let's do a sanity check to make sure that it agrees with what we already know. A scientist can only try to combine ideas that they're aware of. So, no matter how smart they are, they aren't going to develop any key insights about, say, quantum physics if they don't know anything about it. Check. The more ideas which are being tried at once and the more reactive the reagents added to the mix, the more frequently we'd expect to see useful new combinations. Scientific discovery is accelerating as the field expands and communication increases. Check. Two people trying combinations from the same set of ideas could very well happen upon the same reaction, especially if they're communicating with each other. Check. Okay, so far so meh. But there are also some riskier predictions which can be made with this theory for which we need to look at some data. For example, let's think about it in the context of publication rates and impact. Some labs and researchers release dozens of papers every year, while others only release one every few years. Presumably, everyone's working hard and angling for a paper which will get thousands of citations and advance the field in significant ways. So what could account for that discrepancy in output? Well, if we assume that scientists can't iterate combinations of ideas significantly faster or slower than each other, it seems likely that the answer is just about signal to noise and editing. Maybe some scientists are keen to share every little tidbit that they come up with, while others will only publish if they know they found something important. If that were true and both styles share the same base rate of discovering something awesome, then the number of high impact papers shouldn't depend on how many papers that someone publishes. And that's exactly what we see, so much so that there's a name for the phenomenon, the equal odds rule. Whether you publish 10 papers a year or one every five years, you're equally likely to happen upon something truly awesome in a given period of time. Speaking of time, what about the distribution of high impact papers over a scientist's career? Well, this curve is called a Poisson distribution, and it's what we use to model things which have a very small chance of occurring, but a large number of opportunities to occur. It's the same curve that we use to model stuff like radioactive decay, or the number of mutations in a given length of DNA, statistically driven phenomena, where it doesn't really matter how many times something has happened already, it always has the same odds of happening in a given time frame. And it happens to match the distribution of high impact papers over a career perfectly. There aren't really any significant trends of runs or lulls. You might occasionally see two important discoveries happen close together, or far apart, but not with any sort of predictability. It appears that publishing a really high impact study is an independent and random phenomenon compared to other publications, just like the stochastic model predicts. These are just some of the examples of the kind of data that Simonton pulls from for his thesis. I encourage you to read the whole paper. It's relatively approachable, and it does explain a whole lot of stuff. The way that we usually learn the history of science, the heroic model, suggests that important discoveries, like gravity or evolution, are solely due to a unique sort of brilliance, that geniuses come up with genius ideas, and the rest of us not geniuses should just sort of wait around and make things comfortable for them in the meantime. Not only is that demonstrably untrue, but the stochastic model suggests that the most important part of this whole discovery process is the number of combinations tried, how much thinking someone is willing to do, and the kinds of ideas they're putting together. In order to get those landmark papers, it's necessary to try novel combinations that nobody's thought of before. It's obviously important to learn as much as possible about the field in question, to see what's already been tried and what concepts are available for combination. But every researcher has a unique set of experiences that they can grab and mash against those existing concepts to produce novel combinations, even things like their personal experiences, Newton and his apple, Wallace and Darwin and their voyages, maybe you and that weird hobby that you have. And the data supports that idea. Multidisciplinary groups produce more novel output. Researchers who are involved in multiple disparate fields and who are widely read, tend to be the ones who mix things up. Just spend a lot of time learning about the field you want to affect, spend a lot of time learning about random other stuff, and combine concepts as quickly as you can. In other words, don't stop thinking. Now, where have I heard that before? Do you think that the stochastic model adequately explains scientific discovery? Please leave a comment below and let me know what you think. Thank you very much for watching. Don't forget to blah blah subscribe, blah share, and don't stop thunking.