Michael Mina: Rapid Testing, Viruses, and the Engineering Mindset | Lex Fridman Podcast #146

The following is a conversation with Michael Mina. He's a professor at Harvard doing research on infectious disease and immunology. The most defining characteristic of his approach to science and biology is that of a first principles thinker and engineer, focused not just on defining the problem but finding the solution. In that spirit, we talk about cheap rapid at-home testing, which is a solution to COVID-19 that, to me, has become one of the most obvious powerful and doable solutions that, frankly, should have been done months ago and still should be done now. As we talk about, its accuracy is high for detecting actual contagiousness, and hundreds of millions can be manufactured quickly and relatively cheaply. In general, I love engineering solutions like these, even if government bureaucracies often don't. It respects science and data. It respects our freedom. It respects our intelligence and basic common sense. Quick mention of each sponsor followed by some thoughts related to the episode. Thank you to Brave, a fast browser that feels like Chrome but has more privacy-preserving features. Athletic Greens, the all-in-one drink that I start every day with to cover all my nutritional bases. ExpressVPN, the VPN I've used for many years to protect my privacy on the internet. And Cash App, the app I use to send money to friends. Please check out these sponsors in the description to get a discount and to support this podcast. As a side note, let me say that I've always been solution-oriented, not problem-oriented. It saddens me to see that public discourse disproportionately focuses on the mistakes of those who dare to build solutions rather than applaud their attempt to do so. Teddy Roosevelt said it well in his The Man in the Arena speech over 100 years ago, "I should say that both the critic and the creator are important, but in my humble estimation, there are too many now of the former and not enough of the latter." So while we spread the derisive words of the critic on social media, making it viral, let's not forget that this world is built on the blood, sweat, and tears of those who dare to create. If you enjoy this thing, subscribe on YouTube, review it with five stars on Apple Podcasts, follow on Spotify, support on Patreon, or connect with me on Twitter, @lexfridman. And now, here's my conversation with Michael Mina. What is the most beautiful, mysterious, or surprising idea in the biology of humans or viruses that you've ever come across in your work? Sorry for the overly philosophical question. (laughs)

(laughs) Wow. Well, that's a great question. You know, I love the pathogenesis of viruses and, uh, one of the things that I've worked on, uh, a lot is trying to understand how viruses interact with each other. And, uh, so pre-, you know, all this COVID stuff (laughs) , I was, uh, I was really, really dedicated to understanding, uh, how, uh, how viruses impact, uh, other pathogens, so how if somebody gets an infection with one thing or a vaccine, does it either benefit or harm you from other things that appear to be unrelated to, in the, uh, to most people. And so one, one system which is highly detrimental to humans but what I think is just immensely fascinating is measles. And, uh, measles gets into a kid's body. The immune system picks it up and, uh, essentially, uh, grabs the virus and, uh, does exactly what it's supposed to do, which is to take this virus and bring it into the immune system so that the immune system can learn from it, can develop an immune response to it, but instead measles plays a trick. It gets into the immune system, serves almost as a Trojan horse, and instead of getting eaten by these g- by these cells, it just takes them over and it ends up proliferating in the very cells that were supposed to kill it. Uh, and, uh, it just distributes throughout the entire body, gets into the bone marrow, kills off children's, uh, immune memories, and so it essentially, uh, what I've found and what my research has found is that this one virus was responsible for as much as half of all the infectious disease deaths in kids before we started vaccinating against it 'cause it was just wiping out children's immune memories to all different pathogens which is, you know, I think, um, just astounding. It's just amazing to watch it spread throughout bodies. We've done the studies in monkeys and, and you can watch it just destroy and obliterate people's immune memories in the same way that, you know, some parasite might destroy somebody's brain when... you know, it's...