Life is unpredictable & so is the stock market: Deepak Chopra

Author and Wellness Guru Deepak Chopra joins Yahoo Finance’s Zack Guzman to discuss how to find mental stability amid the coronavirus pandemic.

Video Transcript

ZACK GUZMAN: Today in the afternoon trade, we are seeing Abbott Laboratories shares spike about 8% off the news that the FDA granted emergency use authorization for its rapid COVID-19 test that costs just $5 and is about the size of a credit card. The test results are said to only take about 15 minutes and could be a game-changer for testing here in the US, if the company hits its own production targets. Abbott says it wants to ship about 50 million test kits by October. That would be roughly double the number of tests performed in the entire country during the month of July.

So joining us now for more on what that means in our efforts to get this pandemic under control is Dr. Darria Long, an ER physician in Georgia and Tennessee and Clinical Assistant Professor at the University of Tennessee School of Medicine as well. And Dr. Darria Long, appreciate you taking the time to chat.

DARRIA LONG: Yes.

ZACK GUZMAN: When talk about this, it's interesting because, you know, you have people mixed on the idea of rapid tests. Obviously, there's a plus side of not having to wait, but questions about accuracy. What's your take on what this means for our testing capabilities here in the US?

DARRIA LONG: Yeah, Zack, it's great to be here. Bottom line is, we need more testing. So anytime we have an option for more testing that's a good thing. And as you said, there's a trade-off for accuracy. There's no such thing as a free lunch.

So you can get the really accurate test, maybe longer-- and taking longer and maybe not so quickly, it costs more, or you can get this one, which is very rapid and maybe a slight trade-off in accuracy, but it's really cheap. So there's great benefits for that. Abbott is saying, though, that this is for people who have been-- are symptomatic, so in the first seven days of being symptomatic.

So that suggests that it may not be able to pick up people with really lower viral loads, which is why I'm telling people if you're symptomatic and you're negative on this test, you probably still should have another confirmatory PCR test. Data may tell us otherwise as we go forward, but that's what I'm recommending for now.

ZACK GUZMAN: And PCR tests being those-- those less rapid, more involved tests that we've seen, the more normal ones before. It's also interesting to see the Trump administration, according to Politico, is announcing that they've struck a deal with Abbott, $750 million deal to acquire 150 million tests, which will be deployed hopefully in nursing homes, schools, and other areas that we've seen with people at high risk during COVID-19. It would seem to be at odds with maybe some of the messaging that we've heard recently from the CDC in changing their testing guidelines. So what do you make of that and how, I guess, there's a little bit of some confusion here on whether more testing is good versus only testing those who may have been exposed?

DARRIA LONG: Yeah, absolutely, Zack. And so we'd all been saying we should have more testing. So when the CDC just changed their guidelines on their website to say that if you've been exposed you do not necessarily need to be tested, it was like brakes. Everybody said, what-- what just happened?

And if you unpack it a little bit, I think they've come back and they said a couple different things that one, they didn't want people thinking that if you have a negative test that, that is a license to have risky behavior, and also, they were reflecting the fact that there is a testing backlog. But then we should just say that. We shouldn't just say go ahead and avoid testing.

What I think they should be saying is that if you are exposed, then you should be tested around four to six days after you're exposed. If it's a rapid test and it's negative, you should get a PCR to confirm it. And to your earlier point, Zack, there are rapid PCR tests, so it's just that the rapid antigen is cheaper. But you should have a confirmatory PCR. But even if you test negative due to the testing accuracy and all, even if you test negative, you should still probably isolate for 10 to-- for 14 days after that exposure just to be on the safe side. We should come out and say that, as opposed to trying to cloak it underneath different motivations.

ZACK GUZMAN: Yeah, that's kind of the strange thing here is-- is cloaking things under different motivations. Just to read exactly what CDC Director Robert Redfield had said, he said "everyone who wants a test does not necessarily need a test," and then alluded to the idea being that the key is to engage public health community in the decision with appropriate follow-up action, is what he says there. But throughout all this, obviously, has been the question of political bias in, I guess, reinforcing these rules.

And it would seem to strike me as two opposite things there, saying that maybe if the CDC was pressured to say testing is not all that important, but then you have the Trump administration saying they're going to invest $750 million in supporting testing here with Abbott. I guess it's two different things. So what's your take on maybe how-- how politics has played an increasing role in trying to get best practices out there to the health community?

DARRIA LONG: You know, Zack, if you and I had an answer for that, then we could probably get this pandemic under control a lot more rapidly. I know there are politics in all directions, and I think that's why we're trying to look just at the science of this and say politics aside, we need more testing. Testing, again, is not always that license-- a negative test is not always a license to do risky behavior.

But more testing, whether it's negative or positive, gives us that really important information about our community spread, about positivity rates. So we need that. I absolutely agree that we should be having more testing and that we need to learn more of the data of the testing, as well, because testing is one component. So I think those are really the bottom lines when it-- when you come to it and remove politics from it.

ZACK GUZMAN: Absolutely. Very important reminders there. Dr. Darria Long, ER physician in Georgia and Tennessee and Clinical Assistant Professor at the University of Tennessee School of Medicine. Appreciate you taking the time to chat.

DARRIA LONG: Thanks, Zack. Have a good day.