Time to be born how science and Public Health gave children a future. She will be talking with Andrew Solomon so youre in for an excellent time. Before we start i just want to say a huge thanks to perri klass, Andrew Solomon, and the team at noon for making this happen, and to all of you for showing up. Though we are not able to host events in our store spaces, argument of authors and readers is still here. We are grateful for your support and for the chance to make the space for conversation and connection. Now just a couple of housekeeping things. In our resume webinar tonight you can see and hear the speakers but they cannot see or hear you. They can see you are here and you can see a count of your fellow jews at the top of your resume screen. Theres a a couple of functions will be using throughout the event you can find at the bottom of your zoom window. One icon labeled chat with one speech bubble. Youre welcome to post your comments and thoughts in the chat. Thats a great way to show your appreciation for the author and interact with your fellow attendees. If you have a specific question you would like to have answered by the author please post that in the q a module. You can find by clicking on the icon labeled q a that looks like two speech bubbles. We will be polling questions only from the q a to be answered in the later part of the program. We are recording two nights event so you can see video versions honor channel later on. Important to come tonight featured book, a good time to be born, is available for sale from greenlight bookstore. We are excited to be able to offer actual shopping at a bookstore location noon to 7 p. M. Every day of the week, and you can purchase this book and many others onsite, or order online debt greenlightbookstore. Com for a quick pick up at the store or for shipping anywhere in the u. S. You care about supporting the careers of authors in the ongoing existence of independent bookstores, find two nights featured book is a great way to show your support. And now to introduce tonight speakers. Our interview tonight is Andrew Solomon, he is a a writer and lecturer on politics, culture and psychology, a professor of Clinical Psychology at Columbia UniversityMedical Center and the former president of pen america. Most recently he made an audio series called new family values, an awardwinning film. His books received the National Books critics circle award for nonfiction, along with other 25 national and international awards. He is also the author of far and away, a National Book award winner and elusive prize finalist. The irony tower, and a novel. An activist and lgbtq rights mental health, education and arts, and as a fan of the Solid Research fellowship in lgbtq studies at Yale University and serves on the board of the national lgbtq task force, University Michigan depression center, metropolitan museum of arts, new york public library, in many others. Andrew will be speaking with our featured author, perri klass. She is a professor of journalism and pediatrics at new york university, codirector nyu florence, and National Medical director of reach out and read. She writes the weekly column, the checkup for the new york times. Her new book a good time to be born is about the fight against Child Mortality that transforms parenting, doctoring and the way we live. Into weaving her own experiences as a medical student and doctor, she pays tribute to groundbreaking women doctors like rebecca, mary putnam, and josephine baker, enter the nurses nurses, Public Health advocates and scientists who brought new approaches and scientific ideas about sanitation and vaccination to families. She is going to start off with a reading from the book and then shell be talking with andrew and with all of you. Perri, please take it away here. Thank you. Our grandparents and great grandparents and all the parents before throughout history expected that children would die. It was unknown and predictable risk that went along with being a parent. Now we expect children not to die. We are the lucky spirit in history we, who are part of this wave over the past 75 years or so, because we are the first parents ever been able to enter into parenthood is hopeful expectation of seeing all our children survive and thrive. And we are also the luckiest children in history, or into an era when we could expect to grow up along with all our sisters and brothers. Driving down Child Mortality in the late 19th and early 20th century was in no way a single project but they can be seen as a unified human accomplishment, maybe even our greatest human accomplishment, at least for pediatricians and parents. The entire world has relearned with some shock and great sorrow how vulnerable our precious human bodies are to the microorganisms that find ways to take advantage of how we live, what we eat come how we travel. Parents have taken some comfort in knowing that for the most part children have been less severely affected by covid19 but all through Human History babies and children have been a particularly vulnerable group, and parents have lived with the fear of contagion, infection, and death. Children used to die regularly and unsurprisingly. Babies died at birth or soon after because they were premature or just week, because they were born with congenital anomalies, because they got infections. Older infants and oneyearold died of summer diarrhea, often caused by microbes in the water or in the cows milk fed they sd drinking after they had been weaned. Three old and fouryearolds and five and six and seven and eight year olds died of scarlet fever and diphtheria and pneumonia in measles, Skin Infections that turn into sepsis for influenza that turned into pneumonia. As recently as a late 19th and early 20th centuries, almost every family in every ethnic group and every country, rich or poor, was touched in some way by the death of children. Childhood of death was always up there in the shadows at the edge of the family landscape, in prayers and religious ceremonies, in the memorial portraits hanging on the wall, and popular sentimental poems and stories and dramas in paintings. Because if he could so consistently in child and family life, child deaths also figured in art and literature and songs and stories of childhood and family life, a century ago, as they had all through Human History. I am a love of babies and yet i cant seem to have been, wrote mrs. W. D. From berkeley in 1917. I am married 11 years last july and would have six children and about to become a mother again which i almost fear. Two of them died several years ago but within your shed to babies and it up losing both of them. I gave birth to a beautiful batboy and it lived but three days. The doctor told her the baby had a leaking heart. Three months later she was pregnant again. His son live to be a yearold and then she awoke one morning and found him dead alongside me. Now pregnant again she would constantly both about the terrible loans labor she was likely to endure and about what would become of the baby. I try and do a good honest life and my home is my heaven and babies are my idols. I love them but im afraid something will happen to this one again. She was writing this letter to the United States government, to the Childrens Bureau established in 1912. This new federal office had published the pamphlets prenatal care and infant care in 1913 in 1914. Immediately enduringly popular favorite First District free of charge and provided by politicians to their constituents, later available for purchase. By 1929 the government estimated these writings had touched the parents of half the babies born in the United States. You can think how i feel, mrs. W. D. Wrote the author of the pamphlets. I cry night and day for my big fat baby taken from me like that. Mrs. W. D. Was not living in the middle ages or even in the Victorian Era pictures and 1917, when my grandmother lived, and in new york city when my grandmother lived, ten years before my own parents were born. At that time in 1917 when mrs. W. D. Wrote a letter, get a court of the children were not a life in the United States died the for the fifth birthday. Mothers with an early decades of the 20th century with a certain hope for medical solutions for advice that might protect the next baby, even with the desire to extend protection to all babies and children to join in a larger project the Childrens Bureau and its pamphlets represent only wish i could take up the work of promoting paid welfare, wrote a woman had lost her child in illinois. Some of the letters were from women who struggled with language and stomach and other some educated and privilege. There was no segment of society in which childrens lives were secure nor has there ever been. Though the statistical evidence is incomplete, infant mortality both american europe was extreme high with a third of all children were in some cases even 40 or more dying for the outcome of childhood. In the first decade of the 20th century when my grandmother was growing up, out of every 1000 live births in the tree become more than 100 babies did not live to the first birthday and mortality rates were even higher among the rural poor, immigrants and africanamericans. By comparison to the mortality rate for the United States in 2017 was 5. 8 deaths per thousand live births, the majority with the first birthday actually occurred in the first months of life and most are due either to congenital anomalies come serious birth defects or two prematurity. A good time to be born tells the story of one of our greatest human achievements, remarkable fusion of science and Public Health of medicine, that transform our families, our emotional landscape and even our souls. All through Human History many babies died at birth and many children died in infancy and childhood. This was true to the middle ages and the renaissance, true to ie america and in victorian england and is still true in the early 20th century. If you win direct any table pretty much anyone wouldve lost the silly in childhood, lost a friend to death. Infant and Child Mortality was a fact of life for almost every family, rich or poor. John d rockefeller, the richest man in the world that is a Rockefeller Institute when his grandson died of scarlet fever. The mortality was higher among 19th century disappears dissidee population include slave children and urban immigrant poor. I will stop there. Thank you f that lovely reading. Let me begin this conversation by saying that this is reall quite a remarkable book. It has a rave review in the times. It was written in an engaging and even enthralling style. Ticks alo which a juicer is how fluid areasnd bring together a nose amounts of relatively abstract information. Likewise it details anecdotes and stories like t story that of mrs. W. D. , but many other stories. Those ofhe people who lost children, ranging across the entire socia spectrum, and the people who figured out how to save chiren bit by b and over overtime. Its a very sobering study, and a parent might will as a parent as well i was struck over and over what mustve been likeo have two before the more conditional attack mode under chile. I thought it looked forward to many o the questions helicopte parenting and so on tt our current at theoment. I wanted to ask you, harry, what is your sense of how people responded psychogically and emotionally to these losses . Do you think because they were, people were bter protected against them or do you think the quality of the despair was the same as the quality of despair in someone loses a cld, for example, to sids which you write about in the book today . I think the quality of despair was the same, but in a strange way they were less isolated. Because it was so common because it was discussed because was an experience everyone had had, i dont think i think we do read the accounts that parents right income you can see they love the children just as much in the same way street you can see they remembered then pick you can see the evil over and over the question of, could i have, if we had moved to the city, if i hadnt done this, if you hadnt done that. They did all of that but they did sort of in company. One of the things which struck me is that when i talked to people who have lost children in recent years because of course the world is not a perfectly safe place and tragedies happen, many of us parents talk about how isolated the field, that you cannot bring up casually or not some cash and conversation nowadays, we have three children but only two of them are living. That stops the conversation. Thats not something that is easily discuss. In the past there were ways because it was so common that you could at least acknowledge the child a acknowledge the grief. Talk a little of it in that context about some of the losses where the emotion clearly cuts a deep and with that part accusation cuts so deep. Im thinking particularly of Eugene Oneills mother and the store you tell about the death of what would eventually his older brother. You know, i was actually writing about people and i was looking for examples in art and literature of measles. Measles was a disease that every single child got before the was a vaccine because it was an incredibly infectious disease, and its a fairly miserable disease. Children have high fevers, they feel terrible most of them recover. But it is a disease which hits every single child when there are relatively rare complications, its a relatively rare complication times all the children in the world. So you lose a fair number of children. Even so, when it looked for measles references, many of them, you know, a disease we get big spots, and most children recover. And then i was watching the performance of long days journey with the genes on your plate which is so strongly autobiographical in which we think of as a play about addiction. The mother is addicted to opiates and the father and the sons drink too much. At the center of the play is this tragedy of the baby lost to measles. A mother who went away to be on the road with her actor husband, and she leaves with her own mother her sixyearold son and her baby. The sixyearold gets measles or, the older child gets measles and he goes into the ring with the baby is in the baby gets measles. The child recovers. The baby died in the mother never forget the self or having left the children, and she never forgives the sun to win into the room and infected his younger brother, she thinks he did it on purpose because he was jealous of the baby. That common childhood disease basically comes into this family and devastates the family. Right. Nd it was all true. It was Eugene Oneills mother was, the child would, he is the sort of reconciliation baby born later to more or less take the place of the boy who died. Talk a little bit, i think all of us know that there was enormous medical progress and that the development of vaccine has made an extraordinary difference in the lives of children. But the Public Health store is less well known. How was the information that only about getting vaccines but also of the measures that were helpful to children, how was it disseminated and two with the visionaries who really let that process . I feel a little guilty. Im going to be able to do Public Health that i feel there are probably heroic names in sanitation that i probably dont know because im looking at this from the medical side. You start by going back comfortably to the 19th century inking about building come sewer systems and cleaning up their water. Thats tremendously important. But then when you get one of the things happening in the 19th century is people are figuring out the importance of microbes, the importance of bacteria. You have experiment and later developing this technique pasteurization which can make milk safe, all that is to missing board, but just as you say, it has to get to the individual household. Parents have to understand the dangers of letting milk spoil, using water that you dont know whether it is pure. One of the recent that is important is because especially in summers especially in the citys around the turn of the century theres this understand than the summer comes something that they call call the root infanta. Its not really call the room. Its just diarrhea. It kills thousands of babies every month in the summer cholera. Theres not another stent either on the part of parent or medical people where that comes from. Is it feeding babies raw food . Is it the heat . Is it bad spells . Is a poor ventilation . What it is is its a whole range of microbes that causes children to get stomach upset and then its the fact that babies are so vulnerable to dehydration. Its still true. If you ever brought a sick baby with a stomach bug in, your pediatrician probably told you the infection is not going to do any harm, its a dehydration. You have to go out and buy rehydration solution, you have to buy popsicles, keep putting the fluids back in. Yes, absolutely. And then talk about a subject i think hasnt received wraps to the extent it should have, what was the relationship between the people who develop vaccines and help to control or at least address some of these problems, and the early sterling of Eugenics Movement and the notion that somehow were the children lived and it was unworthy children who were dying in such large numbers. So thats a really interesting question, because right around the beginning of the 19th century beginning of the 20th century, people start counting dead babies. The truth is if you go back much further than that, early infant mortality, children who dont make it out of the delivery room, stillborn babies, babies who dont breeze, are such a common fact life the nobody even necessarily really counts. At the beginning of the 20th century, 1906, six, a british doctor publishes a book called infant mortality, a social problem, in which he basically says we should not be losing all of these children under a year of age in the united kingdom. Were losing a regiment of small beings. But says, some children are just going to be born weak and theres nothing we can do about that. That is to say, he thinks that probably one out of every ten may just lose because theyre sort of the unfit. Whats interesting, one of the things that was interesting about the movement against infant mortality is that the people who are trying to bring down infant mortality especially newborn mortality are regularly if you save all of the weak babies, whats going to happen . Arent they meant to die . Are they really able to live . Theres quite a few who say the founder of american pediatrics, dr. Abraham jacobi, was a very weak and sickly baby himself when he was born in germany. He repeatedly references the fact that just because somebody is a weak and sickly baby doesnt predict to the person is going to grow up to be. But there are other people and theres overlap with Eugenics Movement in which you have people explaining very seriously that at the same time as your saving babies, you also have to discourage certain people from marrying or reproducing because they are very worried about people with epilepsy, for example, some of them. Or whatever people on the list. And it isnt to everybody who is involved in bringing down infant mortality but its a question which keeps being addressed. Will we actually weaken our population if we save these babies . On the other hand, its also very clear to everybody that even the people at the top of the social pyramid are losing babies. Andosing babies frequently. Talk a little bit about abraham and Mary Todd Lincolns lost other baby, and the very extraordinary way that they responded and t odd simultaneity of their losing a child at the same time as Jefferson Davis did. So you have, the lincolns have four our signs. They lose one as a child, probably to diphthea long before the was a white house. I the tim they get to the white house they had to back retively small boys were in the white house children. One of the things which is interesting is the press the source interest in white house children. They are always good Human Interest stories so tt tonight voice in the white house and an older boy robert was already i think in college. E two boys in the white house sick. This is during the civil war. They get typhoid and it probably get typhoid becauseashington is full of soldiers and their camps and the sanation systems of the time are overwhelmed and to be honest they probably get six because their sewage is in the potomac and theyre drinking the water in the white house. One of them dies and dies nd what are the reasons i like talking about ridential children is because its a shorthand way of saying with the best medical attention that anyone could provide a the time. So the child who died in the white house, both of his parents mourn h, but Mary Todd Lincoln is alway felt to mourn unquote excessively, to be unbalanced, inconsolle, and often when you say that about a woman in that era, what you mean is that she is not able to accept this, something which has been determined, something which has en sent by god. And although both parents are deeply, deey affected by losing their son, theres something about the way that she mourns which affects people. She doesnt cherish it she doesnt want to save his little garments. Overwhelming fashion. Yet, we find ourselves in a country where according to many, e people who are interviewed would not be back if a vaccine were developed. Tell me how they grew up in what was viewed as the great miracle, the larger part of the citizenship. To tell you the truth, i dont think pediatricians understand this very well. As a group, we love vaccines and believe in vaccines. In some ways, it is true we havent always collectively done the best job of responding to people who are weary of vaccines because we do believe in them. I think one of the things i was looking at in writing this book was the way you forget the diseases you dont have. A disease like diphtheria which was such a terrifying word or disease like polio. They quickly slipped from our memory so it helped me understand why they are more frightened of the diseases and therefore why they are sometimes susceptible of worrying about the vaccine. Theres certainly a long history of anxiety going back all to the no questions scientific miracle small pox vaccine. People worried about it vaccines turn on your immune system. I give you a dose of something thats not smallpox but close enough that it tricks your body to defending against smallpox. Its as if you had smallpox. I think from the very beginning for some people, that was clever. His in your body amazing . Is Science Smart . For some it translates as your giving me an infection, putting something into my body. I think the biological brilliance of the sometimes also feels frightening because your turning on this system in your body. Vaccines for children, when you look at the diseases, you think about diphtheria or polio or what tetanus was when it was around, you think about whooping cough, there is no question the terrors that my grandmother lived through not that long ago. My parents grew up in new york city and there were polio epidemics every summer. They grew up that form of social distancing which parents tried to keep their children away from other children because of a terrifying virus that could kill you. Its hard to remember that. I tnk it is very hard to remember it. One of the things that distinguishes this bk is its vivid portrait o the people who helped. I feel ouronversation so far has beenbout dying children which is a deep topic in the book is, in many ways, about t lives ofhildren and the survival of childn made possible. Lets switch to a upbeat theme, give a description of lif and activities, your josephine baker, not to be confused with the entertainer. Quitestonishingly masculine and what yourovide but tell us what s did and was involved for a woman of her era in becoming a doctor and what she was able to accomplish in part because of being a woman. I found myself identifying or at least aspiring to identify with some of these remarkable women and with their stories. Josephine baker wrote a wonderful autobiography called fighting for life and you hear her voice so clearly as she describes what it was like. She is a doctor from a middleclass family. These things happen, she got a job and went to a Medical College and went out and practiced medicine and was very determined and very smart but she fell in love with the idea of Public Health and started working for the City Department of health and she was interested in working in the schools and she became interested in the question of preventing diseases because he couldnt treat when the children got diarrhea or diphtheria, there wasnt anything you could do and i was looking for an example of the way she wrote about it. She said she realized the way to present being sick was to keep them well, prevent them from getting illnesses and if you could teach parents, thats what we were talking about before, how to provide clean milk, keep the milk safe, boil water, breastfeed babies and keep them from getting sick. She wrote about an experiment one summer proving she said, he did not necessarily kill them. She helped get nurses into the public scenes because they were in this situation on the Lower East Side children were sent home if they had any infection including Skin Infections or head lice or any of the very common things in the classrooms because they inspected the children and she writes about how strange it was and youve got one City Department sending Children Home with an infection and then youve got them coming around and yelling that the children are not in school he got one City Department sending Children Home and then another department blaming them for the children being home. The answer, she said, was to put nurses in the schools to deal with the infection to help the parents learn how to handle it. One of the things she wrote about was, she said wasnt that they, they cried like mothers and their children died, babies always died in summer and there was no reason to do anything about it. It depressed me so. Then when she found ways to send nurses in, going into the homes, then people are thrilled and excited, the messages go on and around and babies live in the summer and things start doing better and this is before antibiotics, before most vaccines. Hygiene, education, what we now call empowering parents and nurses going house to house and weighing babies and encouraging pants. Milk stations were pure milk is made available to families milk stations become clinics with the children can be examined. Its this handson public heal health, you can take care of your baby and keep your baby safe which goes back before antibiotics and before most vaccines. Do you think its the message of empowerment that ultimately caused the changes to come about its interesting to look at sources and go back a long way that our advocating for breastfeeding. I think of a poem. There was a lot of attention on the, theres a great deal of fatalism. Was significantly disappeared from our contemporary experience as we more and more, believe not only that our children will survive but our children deserve to survive and we deserve to have surviving children. What has that shift been le . One of t reasons i wrote this book was by the time i was traine in the 1980s, talking about my grandmother, having h children in the 1920s, halfcentury later, theres no such thing as predictable routines, acceptable deaths. Pretty muchvery death represents either a failure the world has not been safe enough, figuring out about the position and other risk factors, having made the world safe enough, we are seats and better protection for children in cars, we need to event the accident or other medical conundrum we havent solved yet becse they are going down one area into another. Its largelyrue not onl with genetic diseases so yes, sometimes you com across one of the ones not solved y but no sense of fatalism. Theres like okay, this is one of the one we still have to solve. How that translates to the parent this is a great thing, a certn promise. I talk about a promise of safety and you go into parenthood nowadays, with never had arantees, its all these putting your heart on the line in so many ways but theres this underlying assumption that unless one of the terrible tragedies happen, your child will live to grow up. I do thinknk what that does to parents his place a tremendous responsibility on the parents. If i say to you, if you make the right decisions take the right precautions starting with taking the baby homerom the hospital in a car seat and putting that by down in the safest possible sleep position, you do all of these this right, you can keep your baby safe b theres a certain emphasis on the you. An emphasis at every moment, you doing the right and safe think. I would say to you that i dont think my grandmother laywake at night worrying she had perhaps made the wrong positn. I think she knew the world was a dangerous place and she probably tried to do the right thing and certainly did whatever the door said but i think she knew on a profound level that there was no guarantee. I mentioned john rockefeller, the first billionaire in history partly because they might be what my grandmother would have said. John b rockefeller himself. Theres not any real safety. I think one of the things it does nowadays as parents and baby pediatricians, not that we would trade it for uncertainty or danger but there is that responsibility and anxiousness. One thing i wondered about is, why are we as anxious as we are as parents went by any objective standards, there is enough food, i could give you a long list o all the things you dont have to be anxious about and at the end, i could say t you, are you anxious . Yo would still be just as anxious or more. Rights. Well, let me move on to the questions coming in from participants in this conversation. We have very good questions but there is a q a function. Feel free to type in a question and we will get to them all. In connection with what you do address in the book, although the book aims to be about contagious diseases and significant decrease from infections, the death in children that continues today is from gun violence. Gun violence has been identified for Public Health problems, not just Public Safety matter. In some communities, it is not a good time to be born. Many familiesealing with the loss of one or more children om gun violence, whats the thinking abo how to elevate this issue . I do try to talkbout that in the the issue of gun violence but also the issue of the kinds of trauma and death, those have been really important pediaic issues in the 20th century. I think most pediatricians believe that the way to think about gun vionce is to tnk of it as a problem on what other risk factors the person asking questions probably knows the research that w block funding so the research was blocked by the gun lobby as something that could not be studied and mapping study better. The question is how you elevate the risk, can you when you think about trying to debate that, when you think about the risk of say die in car accides, you can think about technological fis. Other things that canut children . Whether laws aspects of educations you can do . The answer is usually yes. All of the different ways but the person writes one of the things you see especially when these Infectious Diseases is you start see what else is hurting or killing children, maybe not in the numbers of the smallpox epidemic but in great numbers and aga, unnecessary deaths yes. In the book, you write about it parents, it ties in with questions of rockefeller and Abraham Lincoln but it disadvantages people even more. Here is another question, the excerpt you read profound advances in reduced infant mortality over time. Can you talk about how your research addresses the infant mortality rate in the u. S. Versus other wealthy countries and how and why women of color are at particular risk in the u. S. Of both death and child and infant mortality . Ablutely. Let me try to te those kind of an order. First of all i cited the infant rtality risks, we measure infant mortality is t number of children from every 1000 live you dont make it to the firsbirthday. That is something which w have only been doing beginning of the 20th century. Part of the reason its so hard, people wont necessarily the same denominator, people wont necessary counting things in the same way but so now we are trying to down bel 5. 8 effort 1000 liv first. 5. 8 is a very low number compared to the numbers i cited earlier. One hundred, 2 out of every 1000 lives of 5. 83 times as hig as countriesith the lowest infant mortality rates. Countries like singapore, finland and japan iceland, they are closer down to two deaths for every 1000 lives. The u. S. Does not fund the world in this way. As repeatedly pointed out, numbers are not the best and people, he may have noticed a National Health system and the preventive universal primary care thats probably trying to make sure all women gethe care not only during their pregnancies. The second part of t question which i come back to againnd again is this issue of disparities. Infant mortality rate is twice as high and africanamerican children in this country as white children and Maternal Mortality rate is also much higher in africanamerican wom women. The thing thats interesting and tragic ishe mortality rate among africanamerican children has come down over the same period of time since the beginning of the 19th century. It was astronomically high at the end of the 19th century. It is a tremendous amount of, s saved hundreds of thousands of lives but even as i comes down and it looks like a dramatic improvement, the dispities have remained so when you lose 100 extra for every 1000 it comes down, now you only lose fe extra but you still have disparities and it does not reflect poverty because Maternal Mortality rate among ricanamerican women even in womewere educated, welltodo good access to medical care and there is a lot of thought and conversation and research right now about what goes into those disparities and why they are so persistent but its a tremendous subject of concern a research. I have one other question from the audience. Martha says you think adults take precautions like mask wearing or seriously if the virus more dangerous for Young Children . I thi the question of covid in childhood is an interesting question. The way we have responded to covid and how much they are tied to the midst of it doesnt affect children at all the information that the doesnt seem to affect childrens severely. I dont know, i think and i think everyone takes car of children things about what it would mean if this virus were more severe in children. As the little obvious pediatric lesson, children are more vulnerable to respiratory diseases because they have tin airways just as they are more vulnerable to a diarrhea and dehydration because they have smaller blood volumes and me surface area in relation to their bodies. Influenzaas often been hard on babies and Young Children. How difrent would this pandemic look to us disease was actually more dangerous to our children . I dont know is easier to imagine people being vigilant, furiou and public, as there are worries of hting your child . I dont know. I think it is possible but we be more vigilant t vigilance the police more strictly if we thought it was a questn of keeping children safe but i dont know. It feelsike something which pairs are already so frightened for their children and worried for their children and soany ways but notow to calculate the risk given tha this is a virus harder on the old. I think that is a powerful statement. The book feels particularly urgent coming at a time when there is what seems to me and others, a bizarre divide between the people who believe in taking safety precautions because that the pandemic is ravaging the world. The people who argue that the precautions are merely a political move and have nothing to do with the illness and not so severe or dangerous. Given the death rate from covid, in some ways, it is parallel to diseases you write about and talk about the approach to it, i think people believe that somehow People Like Us in this time in history in these circumstances are not subject to that. We saw a version of drink hiv and you write about sars and ebola and other illnesses that have popped up and hiv one was mostly affecting gay people and the general population but it was terribly sad but didnt feel motivated necessarily to address it earlier. Were coming to the close but the story you told me earlier about the early days of hiv, i think its a good object lesson for all of us to bear in mind in these days of covid and the days which i hope many will be reading more books. Thank you, i hope they will because its a book about ung scnce and Public Health but also t defeat the invisible microbes which bring tragedy is not necessarily a simple campaignr process but science and Public Health and advocacy and parents workingith nurses and doctors and scientists can make life better. The stories hes talking about is when i started harvard medical schooln 1982, we heard a somewhat infamous truthhich was, we were told that basically Infectious Diseases were over, our j and generation of doctors, the diseases of civilized living, heart disease, diseases of the think long and eating well in an over civilized world, we see infections essentially defeated and that was 1982 when hiv was not yet identified or understood but it would be the disease which shaped medical education during our years and i a member some of these dreams of foureople undersod how the disease was transmitted what it was, the fear or rush to judgment of okay, it is too dangerous for this child to be in this school, the self which when you loo back on, it makes no sense at all but came out of that fear and anxiety. I was remembering was the arrogance ofur idea that we outsmarted the invisible world of viruses and bacteria aroun us which we dont have but we have to keep thiing about and working on the science and Public Health. Right. There have been a couple of other questions within our audience but i believe people need to go at 730. Lets do one and then we will go. What fraction in Life Expectancy gains the last century has been viewed with infant mortality . I cant give you a single number but i think most of the life extend the improvement to see in the first half of the 20th century comes from decrease in infant mortality because you have such a dramatic decrease in infant mortality. One reason, this is a little geeky but one of the reasons it is hard to figure out is before the 20th century, you dont have that denominator of 1000. Instead what you get is people counting numbers like this of all deaths in new york city are infants. It is shameful. We have to bring down the percentage what does that really reflect . How many people are dying . I think the answer is that an overwhelmingly increase in Life Expectancy, the first half of the 20th century from bringing down infant mortality because its not so much what youre doing for the adults, the babies aren dying. The average keeps on getting better. Once aga, itsn extraordinary book. They can send them on. Thank you so much and sharing your book with eryone. Thank you so much. Thank you for tonigs vital conversation and thank you who came o and madepace for this conversation tonight. A reminder, if you dont already have you hands on the book, you can buy a good time to be born online. If your local to brooklyn, you can stop by the store any day of the week, noon to 70 00 p. M. Or shop online, find the link directly to the pe and chat. You can arrange Curbside Pickup or have it shipped to you if youre anywhere within the u. S. Officer also,f you want to indulge in every watch or share with friends and family who missed out, its been recorded and will be onur youtube channel. Thank you so much again, everyone and have a wonderful rest of your evening. Tonight on the communicators, we take a look at issues and video providers face. Patricia. Our members have done such a great job serving their communities and meeting the needs and keeping americans connected with so many of our members stepping up to adopt the ftc and pledged to keep americans elected. By the same token, weve recognized that there are continuing needs, needs to serve students, work with schools, i need to work with hospitals and medical facilities so we can improve telehealth, ways we can increase the broadband network, serve unserved areas. Watch tonight 8 00 p. M. Eastern on cspan2. Tonight, barack obama assume no more of Promised Land reflecting on his life and political career interviewed by Washington Post columnist michelle. Barack obama tonight at 8 30 p. M. Eastern on cspan2. You are watching the tv on cspan2. Every weekend with latest nonfiction books and authors. Cspan2, created by americas Cable Television company as a Public Service and brought to you by your television provider. Joe biden president elect, stay with cspan for the live coverage, information coverage. Unfiltered view of politics. Used mobile device and go t cspan. Org for the latest video li and ondemand