Plant Geneticist Kate Crosby on Economic Trophic Cascades and Class Blindness During COVID

Vance Crowe [00:00:02] As the crow flies on the Vance Crowe podcast.

Kate Crosby [00:00:08] Kate Crosby, welcome to the podcast.

Vance Crowe [00:00:12] Oh, thanks Vance.

Kate Crosby [00:00:13] So you are my out of work lesbian plant scientist friend from Sacramento, California. And I, I don't really, I apologize that that's how I have to introduce you because the world should understand that I hold you in the absolute highest of esteem. You are somebody that, as I have built the last year of my life, I have talked with you multiple times a week. Many times we ship each other articles and things that are going on. You push the boundaries of everything that I think about. And oftentimes I find that where I started from, I didn't realize how deep the field could be. And every time you bring me down to a deeper level, and you don't embarrass me for, for not understanding something, and you are always open to my perspective. So I wanted to show, start this by saying like, you and I could be completely opposite on many, many things because what the old way of describing people based on their sexuality, based on their nationality, all these things, I think those are up for debate what's gonna happen in the future and how people identify themselves. So we should be having conversations with interesting people. And that is you, Kate Crosby.

Vance Crowe [00:01:36] Alright, thanks fans. Yeah, thanks for the introduction. And likewise. I mean, I suppose I'm always interested in diversity of thought and you always push that, and that's something I really appreciate.

Kate Crosby [00:01:51] So let's start off by, it is April 9th, 2020. It is the late afternoon here in St. Louis, you're in Sacramento, California. Are you allowed to leave your house right now?

Vance Crowe [00:02:06] Yes. Yeah, for central activities. I can go for a run, which I do most days. I can go to a grocery store or whatever else is open. You're supposed to practice social distancing, but there's not been too much, I suppose bruhaha over it. Sacramento is the capital of California though, so it tends to have a culture of rule followers a little bit. Oh,

Kate Crosby [00:02:34] That's an interesting point. Yeah. At this point right now, if a friend called up and said, Hey, I'd like to stop by and we can hang out for a couple of hours, would you have them into your house?

Vance Crowe [00:02:45] The 10? So you're allowed to have gatherings of six people. That's, that's what I've heard. I have also heard that there's been some conflict between local churches in the area, and I think a couple of masses did get broken up, but

Kate Crosby [00:03:03] Masses. Masses. So they were actually Catholic churches.

Vance Crowe [00:03:06] I think one was, I believe, and there was a Slavic church as well that continued to meet even after, and they had gone online, but they continued to meet and that resulted in 71 cases of COVID-19 and the Sacramento area. Yeah,

Kate Crosby [00:03:25] I mean that's legit. That's, that's the choice that people are making. It's,

Vance Crowe [00:03:28] Yeah,

Kate Crosby [00:03:28] It's an interesting, how do you come off on that because you have, you're having to balance liberty people, the First Amendment people's right to gather and, and assemble and, and then you're also saying, Hey, no, we're gonna choose the healthcare of the workers. I mean we, that's the First amendment is coming in conflict as far as my reading of it.

Vance Crowe [00:03:48] Yeah. And I guess like healthcare workers are generally bound by the Hippocratic oath of their doctors, so they have to treat people they can't refuse. I don't know though. It's so tough. It's, it's really, really tough. Yeah, I don't know where I come down on it, to be honest. So I'm originally Canadian and that flavors a lot of my views I think. But the United States is a totally different country, culturally.

Kate Crosby [00:04:17] And you say this a lot and that's something that surprises me because I, I think until I started traveling there, I used to think of Canada as America Junior, you know, they were us, but just a little bit smaller. And that's not at all the way that you view the relationship between Canada and the us

Vance Crowe [00:04:34] No, Canada is very sparsely populated. It's a giant geographic area. California is larger in population than an entire country. So that's kind of weird. And I think density matters, right? Density is the market in some ways. And so when you have more people, you can have a larger market. When you have like places in places like Yukon Territory where there's only about 35, some people that live in a area that's like, I don't know, three times the size of Texas, you don't really have a market. You don't have much infrastructure. So the game is the government. So what you get are these kind of like rural communities that are pretty reliant on the government. 'cause the government is kind of the market. So that's very different than the states, which has I think 327 million people with huge concentrations. Like, and, and maybe, maybe that's a bad thing right now with COVID going around, right? We have like New York City and you have places like the Panhandle of Texas, which are very sparsely populated. They're totally different. But I think overall's,

Kate Crosby [00:05:52] A lot of people trying to make rules that go that blanket all the way over. And they say the way that people are, are operating where Jack Butcher is up in New York City or where Jared McDaniel is down in the panhandle of Oklahoma. You're like, those are two totally different people having totally different lives doing totally different work.

Vance Crowe [00:06:12] Yeah. Yeah. And I think there needs to be some sort of regulatory patchwork happening at that level. I mean, that's why Federated states model is supposed to be kind of good and kind of cool. You can do all of these sorts of experiments. That's one of the reasons I find the states fascinating. You've got 50 of them, they're all different.

Kate Crosby [00:06:32] Yeah. And you guys have many provinces. Are there seven?

Vance Crowe [00:06:35] There's 10.

Kate Crosby [00:06:36] 10

Vance Crowe [00:06:36] And 10 in three territories. Yeah. Yep.

Kate Crosby [00:06:40] And what's the difference between a province and a territory?

Vance Crowe [00:06:43] A territory is really sparsely populated. Like there are more animals than there are people. Yep.

Kate Crosby [00:06:49] Wow. And where did you grow up?

Vance Crowe [00:06:55] I grew up in a pretty small province called Nova Scotia. It's on the far east coast. It's a province of under a million people. We'll get there one day maybe. But that's where I grew up. Yeah.

Kate Crosby [00:07:07] And right now, if you wanted to go to Nova Scotia, what would, what would be required for you to get there? Right now?

Vance Crowe [00:07:14] I can go, it's, there are a few flights there, probably three connections. And then I would probably not be able to get back in the States. So the border is closed, I guess still if you're not a Canadian citizen. And I think vice versa, I think it's some sort of agreement that the two governments have to sort of limit the spread. So if I go it, it would be pretty tough. Yeah.

Kate Crosby [00:07:41] It's pretty much if you decide to cross over the border, you're not coming back.

Vance Crowe [00:07:45] Yep. That's it. Yep. Yeah. And my folks are in on a, at a place called Cape Breton Island, which is kind of the northern part of that province. It's an island. And they, they are elderly. They would be in an at-risk group. So kind of worried about them, but I'm also worried like they're not socializing, they're not going out as much to see folks. And I kind of

Kate Crosby [00:08:11] Consider, I think, consider the fact that you're, you're right. So the one elderly person that I look in on, I, you know, my dad's 78 years old, I guess he is elderly. I just don't think of him that way. But the, the, the guy I know, Pete Goatees is a hundred years old and he is getting constant interactions. People are calling him, he's writing letters, he's doing stuff. But for the people that didn't have relationships going into this home quarantine, they're completely isolated if they don't see a person bringing groceries or something by

Vance Crowe [00:08:43] Yeah. Yep. That's right. And I think it's, I think it's gonna be tough on a lot of people, and I'm extremely worried, like you had Julie Kelly on, and I kind of completely agree with her. Like, I'm really worried about the non-linear growth in UI claims and what it's doing to the economy as well. So

Kate Crosby [00:09:02] UI claims what it is, it's a really,

Vance Crowe [00:09:05] Oh, sorry. Unemployment insurance claims, right? It's, I think it's 16.6 million. Sorry, this is in the States and in Canada. I mean, it's a similar story. I think that that scares me. Like that scares me too. And I don't know how

Kate Crosby [00:09:23] I, I am fascinated. Yeah, the, the other day I was, I was having a socially distant conversation with the neighbor and they basically were saying, gosh, it's so hectic being on or off. I just kinda wish that they just laid us off for the year. And I was like, I think that that is one of those things that you don't really know what you're saying. In the olden days, if you had gotten laid off, you could go get another job because you wouldn't be competing with all these other people. But there is a very high likelihood that the number of jobs that come back online whenever we get back into society is way lower. And there just isn't something for people to do. And we've never seen that in society in this way.

Vance Crowe [00:10:04] Yeah, I've, I think we've talked about it and because I'm a biologist and, and gotten to ag afterward from that training, think a lot about ecology. There's a lot of things that are similar to economics. And so it's kind of like a trophic cascade, right? Where this, the whole system is sort of breaking, you're putting pressure on the smallest businesses, the smallest prey, and the biggest predator too. So it's just breaking down completely. And, and that's really worrying when

Kate Crosby [00:10:38] More about this trophic system. Yeah. What do you, what do you mean? So how does that relate to what we're talking about?

Vance Crowe [00:10:43] So I guess I'm talking about a food web. So you can think about, I don't know, you, you know, a wild food web or even one that's domesticated. So in the ocean we have top predators and you have kind of predators below them, and then maybe predator slash omnivore before under them, all the way down to something like eelgrass or, you know, tiny little invertebrates that get consumed. So what happens is you have a lot of the small stuff, and you, you don't have a lot of the big stuff. So like the s and p 500, let's just say, those are the big, big companies, right? And then you've got companies kind of below them. You've got companies, smaller businesses below them, and they all kind of feed off each other in terms of monetary exchange, interest rates, whatever. I don't think I've ever been more scared actually, economically about a situation just thinking about it. I mean, it's fascinating in one regard, but when a trophic cascade happens in a food web, it, it's absolutely devastating, right? It wipes out the entire ecosystem. Where do you go from there? I,

Kate Crosby [00:11:55] I don't know. But you skipped over a step. You just went to describing the system and then you saw where that was going if you explained the rest of it, but you didn't actually explain what the cascade is. So you've got this intertwined system, it's definitely in a pyramid shape, and the things at the bottom, while they seem so numerous that they could just never go away, that that system would always be there. Now something has happened. Yeah. What's the type of thing that triggers that reaction?

Vance Crowe [00:12:21] So we talk about it in terms of top down versus bottom up. I think in economics we often call it trickle down versus bottom up. So if you lose a top predator, then suddenly you've got a flourishing of a lot of the bottom right. But then the bottom eats itself outta house and home because you've suddenly got a ton of numbers. In this case, what it seems to be, what seems to be happening is you're, you're culling the bottom off. And then so, so you don't have customers maybe for those larger entities above. And so they begin to starve and they die. And so that's, that's kind of what happens. It's an interlinked system, right? I

Kate Crosby [00:13:03] Mean, I think that people don't really have, at least around, when I look at Facebook right now, it is me dipping my cup into, you know, a primordial stew of ideas. And when I see people talking about the, the time that they have off, or what they're doing with their time or what they're buying, I don't think they realize the sheer scope of the number of people getting laid off. Like in the city of, in the St. Louis area, it's 80,000 people that were doing restaurant jobs and scrubbing dishes and wa picking up trash inside of the hotels and in, in all kinds of areas. And those people didn't have a lot of money. They didn't want to do those jobs because they were fun. They were doing them because they were getting the work done to get paid. And that stuff is done.

Vance Crowe [00:13:55] Yeah, yeah. Yeah. 80,000.

Kate Crosby [00:14:03] Yeah. Sorry. Well,

Vance Crowe [00:14:04] I'm just, and

Kate Crosby [00:14:05] I think the thing that's interesting about this is my belief is what we should be doing now is talking about what are the conditions under which you can create an environment where people can flourish. Like what is it that we wanna do if, if the Overton window is breaking open and cities are gonna have to make the choice on whether they come out of quarantine or not. When you open up that quarantine zone, what do you hope is the cultivated area that you've put there? So the best things can grow?

Vance Crowe [00:14:37] Well, I mean, so you're talking about outside of quarantine zones, I guess I would, I mean, this virus also kills people, right? It kills customers, it kills the market too. So first of all, you'd want, you'd absolutely want kind of antibody or serological testing to be available so that you can kind of somewhat guarantee safety. But that's gonna take some time. Maybe you just allow states to kind of experiment differently and see how it goes and release their data to each other just to see how it's going. Similar density, you know, across.

Kate Crosby [00:15:16] 'cause one of the things Yeah, that I think we aren't talking about is let's imagine that the government said, Hey, you know what? It's cool, everybody can go back. And people are like, Hmm, I don't want to go back.

Vance Crowe [00:15:25] Exactly.

Kate Crosby [00:15:26] And, and because you've scared them so badly. Yeah, I mean, in a lot of ways I think that coronavirus may be a baptism that people have to go through a sort of metanoia. And I'm not saying that's a good thing. Yeah. I don't want to go get it. It's a nasty disease and most people that get it maybe don't have some terrible experience with it, but you can, you're throwing the dice. But at the same time, we've gotta get to the other side of the chasm because we have to start working again. Yeah. We,

Vance Crowe [00:15:54] I know. And so there's risk involved. So maybe you supplement it a little bit with, with, with money, like financial incentives to go back to work. You sweeten the pot a little bit if you have any of that available, which there, I don't know, what is it? 2 trillion was the first stimulus. I mean, I've heard rumors that there's gonna be another four to $5 trillion stimulus package. Maybe some of that can go into small businesses in terms of, Hey, take the risk, come on back to work.

Kate Crosby [00:16:24] I mean, you, there's gonna have to be something done. And the Yeah. The, but the other problem that we have right now is that most of society does not understand supply and demand and how that, those cross together to create price. I've already seen people complaining about price gouging because their fancy coffee that they were getting shipped from Amazon once a month doubled in price. And the reason it doubled in price may be because these are the first people that, they're the only people they get that from. But if you knock it out, if you start saying, Hey, you're not allowed to raise your prices, we're gonna have shortages again, because people will hoard based on money as opposed to how valuable is that thing. Do you know what I mean?

Vance Crowe [00:17:07] Yeah, yeah. I think I know what you mean. So we were talking about this a little bit yesterday. It is interesting. I mean, it, it, it actually makes me quite nervous. I, and I think we were discussing this earlier, like if there's not enough supply of certain necessities, what kind of happens to the whole system? But people do kind of have to get back to work. And so, and, and kind of up the supply to keep prices down. 'cause there isn't an endless supply of money. People don't have jobs right now, so how would they pay for something?

Kate Crosby [00:17:44] Yeah. In the first week or so, you're locked up because you stocked up on food and you got to eat good fun food. But then you realize, wait a second, this isn't like the snow days where after the tracks come and, and plow stuff away and we got a day off, the truck's not coming. It could be beautiful outside or it could be hot as hell. And you get this all the way to summer in the city of St. Louis. Yeah. And you make it so people can't leave their houses now. It's not, you're not making a joke anymore about how essential it is that HVAC guys can keep air conditionings going, right? Like, yeah,

Vance Crowe [00:18:14] Getting

Kate Crosby [00:18:14] People to be able to be at the point where they can leave their homes gives us resiliency. But you don't want to go too early.

Vance Crowe [00:18:22] You don't wanna go too early and take out the market or take out a large portion of the market either. I'm sure there'll be a ton of papers and economic research on this afterwards and game theory matrices that come out. I, it'll be interesting to see, and I don't know what the cost is of keeping someone at home sort of isolated, not spending money for a certain period of time, but I'm sure there'll be estimates at some point. And it's tough to weigh against what could take out a lot of people. Well, I mean, I don't know what the,

Kate Crosby [00:18:55] You know what I was thinking about

Vance Crowe [00:18:56] This

Kate Crosby [00:18:57] Morning? Yeah. I was thinking about I wonder if I shouldn't buy another Teflon skillet, you know, like, because Teflon skillets are probably not that valuable. And if you start having to fill the demand that we've shut off for a while, so the market comes back on, only the most valuable cargo is getting on those boats. Whoever's willing to pay the most to, to get their stuff shipped. And it might be a while before Teflon skillets get to that point. Maybe I should buy one. Is this Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:19:26] Like

Kate Crosby [00:19:27] Weird prepper thinking, or is this smart thinking at what? Like how would you evaluate my, my like, oh, should I get another skillet?

Vance Crowe [00:19:38] Well, first of all, I would never get a Teflon skillet. I'd get an iron skillet.

Kate Crosby [00:19:42] Okay. Fair enough. They,

Vance Crowe [00:19:44] They last a lot longer. Fair, fair enough. But yeah,

Kate Crosby [00:19:46] Good point. You're right.

Vance Crowe [00:19:48] We'll, we'll use that. I don't know. I I don't think it's silly. I mean, if it's a necessity for you and you know you're gonna get a lot of utility out of it, buy it now. Buy it now. 'cause your your money is, is gonna be worth less tomorrow. I mean, buy it and, and supplies going down. Buy it now. Yeah. If you, if you think you're gonna use it, buy it. Yep.

Kate Crosby [00:20:13] You know, that's, that's an interesting point here, right? Like, because you have to balance between like the, the rushing to go do things and to be like, Hey, we don't, we don't know. You know, you know, everybody go out and panic and, and, and on the other hand, the people that do react first are the ones that get the biggest benefit from reacting that way.

Vance Crowe [00:20:37] Yeah.

Kate Crosby [00:20:38] And yeah. And so that's an interesting, it's, it's, at this point, real news or real information about what's going on is probably more valuable than the news has ever been.

Vance Crowe [00:20:51] Yeah. Yeah. Yep.

Kate Crosby [00:20:55] Where do you get your news? Well said,

Vance Crowe [00:20:57] Where do I get my news? So I, I think we've had this discussion before Canada still has a fair standards act. So I typically read CBC, but for the most part, I think we've talked about the concept of a whale pod, which is a group of friends, sort of like-minded and different places, and we discuss different things. I shouldn't say like-minded or diverse thinkers, but also within the locality. Like I definitely have a bunch of friends and family that I can turn to and rely on for certain things. So I get my news from Twitter also. I think it's quicker. I think it's a lot more local to the area. And I find it really tough with us news to be quite honest. Like, I have to read the New York Times, I have to read the Wall Street Journal, I have to read the National Review and Fox News to get even a remote idea of what's going on. And they're just like, forgive the term, but it's bullshit theater.

Kate Crosby [00:22:02] Oh yeah. It's

Vance Crowe [00:22:03] Like, I,

Kate Crosby [00:22:04] I mean it's just bullshit. I, that's, that's the craziest thing. My wife never has been interested in the news at all, does not care about it at all. Coronavirus. She was watching it to be like, how is this gonna impact my business? What's the right decision now she has taken to being like, when Donald Trump gets on stage, no matter how you feel about him, he's doing things that are so unbelievable that you can't believe it. And I realized this morning that he's ww f wrestling and all the reporters are playing the same game because everybody's got free attention, not everybody. Yeah. There's a group of, there's a class of people that have attention and what they're paying attention to is the equivalent to WWE and they're sitting laughing at how dumb the other guys are.

Vance Crowe [00:22:52] Yeah. I mean, yeah, it, it does feel, it does feel like WE which can be kind of fun, right? Like it's, it's kind of, whoa. Like this is a, this is a trip, this is a total like dark comedy or like, I don't know, it's almost like opera or, or theater. But at a certain point it kind of gets I guess a little tired maybe.

Kate Crosby [00:23:16] And I think that's why your whale pod idea actually. So I've always been a person that loves making connections. I love meeting people, finding out what's going on with them. And I've always been kind of like, Hey, you should meet this other person over here. But now that desire has become supercharged because once you taught me the idea of like, hey, you can get a lot more safety if your whales can communicate across vast distances and you're saying, Hey, what are you seeing? How are you thinking about this? Because you get to move past the, whatever the Overton window is that the ma Mass media is paying attention to, you get to get outside there and start looking at

Vance Crowe [00:23:57] New

Kate Crosby [00:23:57] Things. Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:23:59] And I like the idea of the Overton window be, but one thing I think I dislike about it is it's only along one axis. Right? And we talked a little bit about this, where if you picture like a bell curve, right? Where you have like the 90th percentile and the zero percentile, well, like with the Overton window, you've got so-called left and so-called. Right? And I don't fit that. Sorry, I don't, so I kind of, I would see it more as like two normal distributions crossing each other or two Overton windows crossing each other along different axes. And it's, sorry, I'm

Kate Crosby [00:24:34] Oh, that's really interesting that yeah. That, that the Overton window is three dimensional, right? Because you and I worked on making it two dimensional at least, right? Like adding in another feature to how ideas spread into society or how far they, they stretch out. But by adding another dimension, you're saying it's not just left, right, authoritarian and, you know, anarchic, like it's something different.

Vance Crowe [00:25:01] It is. And the, I think the frustrating part about, and I'm not a US citizen, so I cannot vote, but there are only two parties here. So basically you have to choose your poison. You kind of have to take all that multivariate thinking into account and choose one. And I found it interesting as well, because the US generally votes against things, doesn't really vote for things like for a candidate. I, I think they vote against a lot. I I, I really think that.

Kate Crosby [00:25:30] Wow. You know, and it's, it's because there's too much political liability to champion something. I wonder if that's not true of all bureaucratic things, right? Like, because here there are people that think they're being for something, they think they're being for the environment, so let's shut those other guys down. Or the, the other side, the farmers being like, I think that I'm on the right side of this is how you should grow crops, make a law that says they can't change the laws, right? Like, we have that so people do believe that they're fighting for things.

Vance Crowe [00:26:05] Yeah. But you should maybe just choose your battles on a case by case basis, I don't know. And then sum them together and see where you fall. I, I move a lot and I've moved around a lot. So that's definitely changed my perspective as well as to where I fall. Yeah. I was very different in Canada than I am here. And I think if I wait, well

Kate Crosby [00:26:29] What, what is Canada doing to solve the coronavirus problem? Right now?

Vance Crowe [00:26:35] It's similar to the us it's social distancing and in some cases it's more extreme. So in the province where I grew up, Nova Scotia, the premier has basically come up with the premier is like a governor. So state's governor has basically said stay the blazes home. And that's the actual quote. And people are largely, so Nova Scotia has a large elderly population, but it's also issuing tickets for violations, which has not happened at all in California that I know of as of yet. Somebody can correct me if that's the case. But no, they're very much cracking down on even having, seeing three people on a sidewalk together, which I still see here. Nope, not. Okay. They issue a ticket for that.

Kate Crosby [00:27:24] Wow. What do you think, what do you think?

Vance Crowe [00:27:26] I mean, they're trying to preserve the market. They only got 965,000 people. They gotta keep, gotta keep people alive or there won't be any taxpayers to sort of fund everything. Yeah. I mean it's tough margins, right? People are a resource in Canada, I guess is how I would treat it, because there's so few of them.

Kate Crosby [00:27:46] So what, what is your picture for the length of time before you're able to convince people to come out of their homes?

Vance Crowe [00:27:57] Oh, I, I, that depends on your, your risk perception. I would think if you're pretty risky, you'd go out right now. But the timeline, I mean, I think if you're in, I like the concept of what Rae was telling you the other day. So Zeeb Khan talking about red zones, green zones, yellow zones. I think you could probably have a certain level of testing in an area where there hasn't been a lot of cases and just say, Hey, this looks okay, go on out. But yeah, like how do you

Kate Crosby [00:28:36] Restrict much? You don't even know. Like you don't even, I like regular people right now are not, they're saying there is no way that we are going to be looking at the CBS nightly news and having them show where the different, you know, yeah. Ratings are of, of red or green zone. But that's what you're proposing. That's where you think we will get to.

Vance Crowe [00:28:58] I think that, I mean, Hmm. Yeah. No, the states won't get there. No, no way. They'll, they'll, they'll be civil unrest. I think if you restrict movement, it's, it's really tough.

Kate Crosby [00:29:14] I mean, this is where you come into the conflict in, in the United States, if you go out and talk to the people in the countryside, they're like, we'll, follow your rules 'cause we have to, we'll follow your rules. But they also say, you know, if, if the shit hits the fan, that's what they always talks about. Yeah. If the shit hits the fan, how are they gonna stop me from doing X, Y, or Z? Because you would have to cover, you know, huge amounts of terrain. And it's something that farmers or people in the ag world think about, how will they protect themselves? And if the, if it gets to the point where we really genuinely need places where you can work and places where people don't want the people from that area, we are gonna have borders in some regard.

Vance Crowe [00:29:54] Yeah. I don't really want to think about that. You're scaring me, man. But yeah, it is a scary time, eh? Yeah, yeah. I, I mean, I think not only, so I think I've said this too, when non-linear growth is involved and, and I get really scared because it's so unpredictable. I mean, and, and, and I think I've heard people take the nonlinear growth models of this virus not very seriously and treat it arithmetically. So what I mean is, oh, well the model said this yesterday, so it must be this. But what they don't understand is it's similar to like a stock price or growth or decay. Like if we knew where a stock was gonna go the next day, we'd all be rich. Like we would be. So I, I have difficulty kind of ascribing predictions to anything non-linear and, and most of our fields do too. Even AI and artificial intelligence, like non-linear is extremely hard to predict. And unless it's regular, like sinusoidal or, or like, like a logistic function. But this isn't, I mean, eventually it could, it will hit, you know, like the upper limit. It could kill everyone. But I, I just really don't want to think about that. Well, it's interesting. Does that make sense?

Kate Crosby [00:31:18] Yes, a hundred percent. And and one of the things that I don't hear people asking the president during the opera theater, which is when you level off, when you get that r to be one, right? Or round one, meaning when the number of people that I infect is down to one right now it's like four, or some people think it's two, but when it gets down below one, then the, the odds that you'll get it go down pretty dramatically, right? We have not been talking about that point. We've been talking about just slowing the growth. Are you certain we will slow the growth? Is the curve going to be blunted?

Vance Crowe [00:31:59] I don't think it is gonna be blunted in certain areas, and I think it's gonna stick around until there's a vaccine. And I do think it'll become endemic. You know, it's gonna become like a regular occurrence in certain areas and it will continue to have mortality in certain seasons. And we don't even know if it will go away in the summer. I sure hope it does. I mean, I'm optimistic about that, but I'm, does

Kate Crosby [00:32:25] That mean there's also not, will be the equivalent of being like radioactive then? Like, you know, that, that if you go down to Louisiana, they have such a high population of it that you know you're definitely gonna get it.

Vance Crowe [00:32:38] Yeah, and I mean New York is the same way. So I think in terms of behavior in cities and, and I think this permanently changes how close we are to strangers. I mean, forget hugs, forget handshakes. It's sad to say 'cause I like hugs and handshakes. Now

Kate Crosby [00:32:57] No one is saying that everyone has had the assumption that eventually this thing will go away just like Spanish flu or smallpox. Like, I think that's basically everyone's assumption.

Vance Crowe [00:33:08] Oh, I think it, so, so forgive me for saying, I think it will eventually become somewhat endemic, like the flu and I think there will be enough. I'm hoping there will be enough immunity, although some research just got released where it looks like you can be reinfected with it. So it's tough right now, right? Like it's tough to make predictions. I'm I'm trying not to, to make them, you're forcing kind of a data scientist to make predictions and I'm like, no.

Kate Crosby [00:33:39] Okay, so so beyond just your emotion about it, sorry. And your No, no, I mean I think your emotion is, is it's uncharacteristic, right? So normally when I talk to you, you are very, very, very level and it's, it's actually kind of fun to see you get excited. Although I have to say, the excitement seems like, you know, are you my friend pulling me over to the, to the, oh God, everything's going terrible a this and my family

Vance Crowe [00:34:06] When,

Kate Crosby [00:34:07] And I'm, I'm telling you this because it's important because my family, not my wife, my wife and my in-laws, they were very on board with me saying, Hey, this is serious. And my brother, 'cause we talk regularly and, and one of my other siblings was like, Hey, when when I started bringing up that coronavirus was serious and you warned me over two weeks before I, I started paying attention to it, but everybody else was like, it's not gonna be that big of a deal. Like, don't worry about it. Yeah. And, and have been reacting a step behind every time. And I think that this is different because they may be right and everything will go back to normal and I will have done all these efforts and spent all this time thinking about it. But the problem is, if you're wrong, you could get hit in a really bad way.

Vance Crowe [00:34:55] Yeah, yeah. So it's really gonna, I I suppose it tests our risk tolerance. Yeah. It is one of those things where risk we're reward kind of features so heavily in the front of your mind. And right now a lot of people are losing a great deal of, I would say social connections, livelihood. It's probably their housing in other ways as well. So that's, that's sort of the downside by sort of staying inside and, and protecting oneself. You're protecting others, but you're also maybe not,

Kate Crosby [00:35:40] You're not thriving,

Vance Crowe [00:35:42] You're, you're not, you're not thriving. Yeah.

Kate Crosby [00:35:44] I mean, I will say you, I don't, my whale pod is what keeps me working out, right? Like I send a video to different friends when I'm done working out to be like, Hey, what's up? I got mine done and I wanna see somebody else's. And you see your whale pod getting stuff done, running hills, lifting weights, because if it is a corona baptism that you gotta go through, you wanna be as strong as possible for it.

Vance Crowe [00:36:08] Yeah. I mean you do. And I think you do want your kind of immune system at peak function if you can manipulate that at all. I mean, somewhat you're some, you're somewhat genetically predisposed and as you get older, your immune system gets weaker anyway.

Kate Crosby [00:36:26] Immune system. Let's talk about the genetic predispositions. What, who's, who's looking to get it lighter now and who's looking harder? Do you, do we have that level of granularity?

Vance Crowe [00:36:35] I mean, there's some preprints out there. So preprints are journal articles that haven't been peer reviewed yet. There's some that suggest that certain blood types with certain antigens are more susceptible. So I believe it's, I believe it's a, don't quote me on that, I'd have to go back and look. But if you're o positive or negative, you're less susceptible. I think that needs to be probably validated.

Kate Crosby [00:37:01] All right. Good news.

Vance Crowe [00:37:03] Yeah. Yeah. I, I think it's more the age demographic and the, the sex demographic that, that is particularly striking, right? So if you're male, you're more likely to die anyway, but you're more likely to die of this too. Well,

Kate Crosby [00:37:19] And that's because it hijacks your immune system and it, they're, they're starting to come up with the hypothesis that men's immune systems are much more trigger happy and when they get pulled, they, they go in further. And so therefore some of the diseases that work like this specific coronavirus is causing that. That's just what I heard.

Vance Crowe [00:37:40] Yeah. I mean, women's immune system is, I thought were, were typically kind of more act overactive. So that's why you get a lot of autoimmune diseases in females, right? Like MS

Kate Crosby [00:37:51] Oh,

Vance Crowe [00:37:52] In general because they're the sex that gets pregnant and also because they have a, a second copy of genes on the second act.

Kate Crosby [00:37:59] So, so maybe it's that the males, when it finally does get going, it really kicks into high gear. Or maybe not, I don't know. Maybe I'm just trying to come up with a conclusion I already want,

Vance Crowe [00:38:10] I, maybe, maybe I think there's a lot to learn about coronaviruses and I'm sure this isn't the last one. We'll see. Yeah, I I think they'll be, I think we'll be seeing them again.

Kate Crosby [00:38:27] And so what are you doing with your time as coronavirus has been going on?

Vance Crowe [00:38:36] I've mostly been working, so I was originally a, a while back, I suppose a plant geneticist. And I've been mostly fascinated by manipulations of light. So both supplemental, so that would be things like LEDs or HPS lights, full spectrum or just the sun itself and manipulating that to get different floral architecture in a variety of crops.

Kate Crosby [00:39:06] So what does that mean? That's a very cryptic way to say that. That's like, you can only understand this if you know my riddle.

Vance Crowe [00:39:14] Basically, I, I really enjoy the, the idea of trying to make plants grow faster. So as a geneticist, we look at how can we make the highest yielding plants and, and we typically operate in a harvest window. So for corn, it'll, it'll vary five days to relative maturity. That's in the kernel, right? And it's ready for harvest. So that's up north in Canada and then all the way down to like Texas. And then even further down in like Brazil, that time goes way out. So it'll be like one 20 rm, one 20 RM relative maturity days to when it's ready to be harvested. So we got 65 1 20 down to the tropics. It's about 1 35, 1 45 for those

Kate Crosby [00:40:04] Genetics. That's how many growing days they have in a given year.

Vance Crowe [00:40:08] Oh, that's to reach black layer. So then there's a phase called dry down, which is where the corn kind of stands there and dries down. And then you go out and harvest it. And so that, that window also adds some days, and it depends where you are, it depends on what you spray on it, but typically the more north you are, because winter's coming, that's gotta be shorter. Like if you're Canadian Yeah, in October, yeah, there's ice rinks in Saskatchewan, so it's, you gotta be done, right? So those plants have to grow faster and that's where you get longer days in the summer as well. So you can trick a plant into thinking a day is shorter. Certain plants like soy respond to light cues. So that shortens up their window. They'll be like, oh, I can't put out leaves anymore. Winter's coming to quote Game of Thrones. And then they just, they start putting out pods if you shorten the day artificially by shading them or by blocking them out.

Kate Crosby [00:41:11] Wow. Yeah. Who is doing this right now?

Vance Crowe [00:41:15] Well, I mean it's, it's well known. It's well known in soy, very well known in soy as an effect. That's why we have different soy maturity groups. I mean, we've known for the longest time that as you move north you have to have a different timing window. My idea and what I like thinking about is how fast can we make that window? Can we make it super, super fast by tricking certain plants with certain types of light regimes? And it turns out in California, 'cause we get a lot of good sun, you can do a lot of fun stuff with a lot of different crops. So let's just leave it there.

Kate Crosby [00:41:52] Okay. So you are working on fun and exciting things with light. How else are you spending your time? What are you doing as far as keeping in shape? What are you doing as far as your measures to protect yourself? So if you've got your scientific mind, what, what else are you doing?

Vance Crowe [00:42:11] So I mean, I'm, I'm out for runs most days 'cause we can still do that. I'm training for a marathon, which will probably be canceled. It's in Berlin. I I don't think we'll be going to Berlin in September, but maybe. And so I keep doing that and that's helpful also just, just kinda working on some fermentation things, which has been kind of fun. So CVAs, which is like alop rye bread and some sourdough starter and raisins. It kind of tastes multi, it's, it's low alcohol, but that's kind of fun. I mean, fans, I, I guess I'm a big hippie too. I like free markets, but I also like fermentation.

Kate Crosby [00:42:59] Yeah, you are a total weirdo. I, I mean like, and I know this world and it, there's such a strong pull for like, for me because last year I grew tomatoes. I, i, I sent off for some clea tomatoes. They're from this special lab in, at the University of Florida. And they were great. I loved them. But then this year I started being like, Hey, I like that planting. It was pretty good. Didn't take that much work and I was really proud of it. Now might be a good year to do a raised bed garden. So I've got wood here and I'm, I've got a backyard where I can protect it from the deer. I'm excited about it. But I gotta say I'm actually pretty intimidated. And the intimidation comes from knowing that it's complicated and I won't do it right the first time. And then two, it's work, right? You gotta get your ass outta your chair and go out there and do it. And it's one thing to have the energy to do it in the beginning, but what happens in the middle of July? And so I'm, I'm thinking through this stuff and I'm saying I'm gonna do it, but you are a plant extraordinaire. What should I be thinking about? How can I tackle this without taking off more than I can chew?

Vance Crowe [00:44:04] Well, I mean, I would say like, get started early and monitor daily. I mean, it's kind of boring to do it, but if you can hook up an irrigation system that helps a lot. They're pretty easy to install. And you can have, you can put it on your phone, like as a, a Bluetooth kind of command and just see like water now really if you need. Yeah.

Kate Crosby [00:44:29] Where would I order that from? Tell me about that.

Vance Crowe [00:44:33] Amazon.

Kate Crosby [00:44:34] Well now I gotta find it before they quit. Before they quit sending, right. Sending those kinds of things.

Vance Crowe [00:44:39] Right. Well

Kate Crosby [00:44:40] Put the, send me a link to one of those and I'll throw it up in the show notes

Vance Crowe [00:44:44] For sure. For sure. And you just order, get the parts from Lowe's or Home Depot. But yeah, you can definitely hook that up pretty easily. Yeah, that makes it a lot easier. And if you're really into fertigation, which is attaching fertilizer, you can do that too.

Kate Crosby [00:45:00] And what do you think about like, getting out and testing my soil pH and all of that stuff? Do I need to be so worried about that level of granularity?

Vance Crowe [00:45:09] I mean, for me, I, if you're just like, if you don't wanna spend money, just watch the leaves. So I typically watch the leaves to see if they turn yellowish or if they're purple. And if they stay nice and green, I'm normally pretty happy. You can get something called an EC meter. So that's electric electrical conductivity. And so you can kind of look and see if the soil is really charged that correlates.

Kate Crosby [00:45:34] And what does that mean? Tell me about that.

Vance Crowe [00:45:37] If it's low, lower pH, that's generally good for most plants. Most plants like to be slightly in slightly acidic soil. It's also when the ions are free to kind of get into the, get into the plant. If it's neutral, you're probably overwatering a ton. So don't over water. I like to grow stuff.

Kate Crosby [00:45:56] Watering is a real thing. 'cause I've been going in there every day. I spray 'em down and, okay, all right. Yeah,

Vance Crowe [00:46:02] It's just lift the pot. I mean, if you wanna be low tech about it, if you, if you've got them in pots, just lift the pot. If the pot is heavy, you're watering it too much, probably.

Kate Crosby [00:46:10] Oh, okay.

Vance Crowe [00:46:12] Okay. Yeah. Sounds like you got 'em in pots now.

Kate Crosby [00:46:15] Yeah, so I mean, I, I started, they're we're going from seeds and if I, if I'm gonna probably go buy some seedlings. There's a, there's a pickup, no contact pickup at the local nursery. And, but I'm gonna try and get the ones going from seeds because I think there's value in learning that, although they're all F1 hybrids, so it's not like I can save the seeds and grow 'em next year.

Vance Crowe [00:46:38] You could try, but I mean, sometimes you'll find one that's just really good.

Kate Crosby [00:46:43] That's true. Just never know. That's

Vance Crowe [00:46:44] True. Yeah.

Kate Crosby [00:46:45] Yeah. You never know.

Vance Crowe [00:46:45] Yeah.

Kate Crosby [00:46:46] So, Kate, what does the world look like in two weeks?

Vance Crowe [00:46:51] Oh my God, I just told you I'm not making predictions. I think, I think you'll see a return to work in some areas, because I think potentially there's, there is gonna be some level of civil states know the state.

Kate Crosby [00:47:15] You just broke up, you just broke up civil. Say, if

Vance Crowe [00:47:18] You continue to keep people at home,

Kate Crosby [00:47:19] You, you just broke up there. Oh, so say that again. So from two weeks from today,

Vance Crowe [00:47:24] Yeah. I think there will be some, some lifting. As soon as you see leveling off in the curve, I think there will be some lifting of restrictions. I think otherwise you get civil unrest. The risk is of course, if, if people go back to work and there's a resurgence, you get civil unrest too. But I think Americans are risky. That's kind of why I like 'em. So they're probably gonna, they're probably gonna lift restrictions in at least some states and areas. Yeah.

Kate Crosby [00:47:53] Okay.

Vance Crowe [00:47:53] That's my, that's my prediction. Yeah.

Kate Crosby [00:47:56] Well, this has been an absolutely fascinating conversation. I, I'm so glad you agreed to do this. Just for full disclosure, I just hit Kate like, I don't know, a couple hours ago and was like, Hey, let's just, let's do an interview. Let's, let's finally do this. Because you and I were planning to have a conversation when I came out. The California Farm Bureau had invited me to come out to give a talk. That's right. And you and I were gonna meet up and do a podcast in person. We've been talking about it for months because up until Coronavirus I didn't really do it digitally. And now I'm starting to realize like I, this is a great medium and I'm glad that my, I've been able to keep up my friendships by going digital. And you've been, we've actually gotten closer, I think because of, of Coronavirus, just like I am with Lyle Benjamin and Ben Anderson. Right. Like,

Vance Crowe [00:48:47] Yeah,

Kate Crosby [00:48:48] You see these people and you get to get on a video call and it makes a real difference for how well you connect with them. So thanks for not only doing this, but being on the podcast.

Vance Crowe [00:48:57] Oh, thanks. I really appreciate it. Yeah, it's been great.

Kate Crosby [00:49:01] All right. Thanks. Ah.