Just Equity For Health Founder and HIV Primary Care Physician Dr. Stella Safo joins Yahoo Finance Live to discuss the latest surge in COVID cases, the U.S. decision to test travelers from China, and masking policies.

Video Transcript

SEANA SMITH: Experts, they are split over whether or not the new restrictions requiring that negative COVID tests from travelers from China will be effective. Our next guest tweeted earlier this week, quote, "It doesn't make sense if we don't invest in widespread prevention effort." Joining us now, we want to bring in Dr. Stella Safo, HIV primary care physician and founder of Just Equity for Health. Dr. Safo, it's great to see you again. It's been a while. So let's talk about the fact that you don't think it's going to be effective, or you don't think it's necessary at this point. Why?

STELLA SAFO: So I don't think it's going to be effective if we're not matching the testing kind of requirements against prevention. And right now, the message that people are getting is that COVID is pretty mild. It's pretty harmless. Some folks who are immune compromised will die from it, but everyone else will be fine. So you don't really need to mask. That is the take home message.

So it's a bit strange if we're then saying, oh, we're a little concerned about COVID coming from this particular country, but we're not telling people it's probably worthwhile to consider taking some preventative measures, like masking. So that's my real kind of concern is that if we're worried enough to be testing folks because we don't want more burden of disease from China, we should also tell folks we're worried enough that we think that you should be masking more.

ANJALEE KHEMLANI: And I know, Dr. Safo, that you know there have been a lot of discussions, especially among experts like yourself, about why the concern should be there, but also what really the broader picture is. We are a largely-- we do have that immunity buildup from both vaccines, as well as infections here in the US. Like I said earlier, the variants that we are watching drive the cases up in China are already here in the US, have already had their time. And there are new variants already out there that we're looking at. So on the variants front, what are your thoughts there on whether or not this could result in another concerning one?

STELLA SAFO: I think the biggest concern is that the population in China is so high that with this kind of exponential spread of disease, it is very possible that we could see more variants. The second concern is that in China, it's not clear that we're getting all the sequencing data and the case counts that we need, just as you've mentioned. So if we know that it's a population where we could get new variants, and we know that we may not be getting the most data, it makes a lot of sense to me to go ahead and be cautious, which is what this move to test returning travelers says.

I think the thing that's really disturbing, though, is for a respiratory virus, and we've seen COVID rates before vaccinations, COVID rates were super high, and the kind of impact was deadly. We had thousands of people dying a day. And we've gotten it under control.

But if we're worried enough about new variants that we're testing people coming back from China, we should also tell the public, now may be a time that's worthwhile for us to think about masking. Think about masking indoors. It doesn't mean we're going to mask from now until infinity, but until we get more information, now may be the time to mask while you travel. Now may be the time to mask when you're indoor and large crowds, like public transportation, just until we know more.

And I think the challenge here is that people are so tired of hearing about COVID, they don't want to do anything. But again, it signals to me if the government is worried enough to be testing return travelers, then it's worried enough, I think, for us to kind of message it's worth masking.

ANJALEE KHEMLANI: Mm-hmm, yeah, I'm sure you're getting the same rolled eyes that I do when I talk about COVID still, but--

STELLA SAFO: Rolled.

ANJALEE KHEMLANI: [LAUGHS] Talk to me about that, though. But, you know, is the US prepared? I know there's been lobbying in Congress for more funds. And it seems like they did at least give the recent round of tests. But it seems like, broadly speaking, to your point of masking, we're not doing enough necessarily to really mitigate on the ground what could be another wave.

STELLA SAFO: Yeah, and I know that even this message that I'm sharing with you how I think, if we're testing folks coming from China, we should mask, it's going to earn me so much vitriol on social media because every time anyone posts about COVID and prevention methods that we can use, people are just full of hate at this point. They're so angry. They're so-- no one believes that masking works, et cetera, et cetera.

So it's-- I think that where the sentiment is coming from, where people are afraid to kind of say the measures that we should be implementing, is that they're just-- people are tired and the public doesn't want to hear it.

It doesn't, though, preclude the requirement that we have as scientists, clinicians, public health experts, to sound the alarm, to inform people, those who are not the hard liners-- I will never mask again-- but people who are moderate, who say-- and people say to me, my patients say to me all the time, doc, what should I do? What do you think I should do now? I'm not sure. Don't know what the public is telling me. What should I do? And they will do what we tell them because they want to be safe.

And so I think that that's kind of where I'm landing is, let's not sound one alarm that we're worried about what's coming from China without doing the work to really say, and here's how you can protect yourself. Not to mention that sounding it for China, in particular, increases anto-Asian hate, which has been a huge problem with COVID-19, to begin with. And so there's a lot of issues here that I think we really have to consider.

SEANA SMITH: Dr. Stella Safo, always great to have you back on Yahoo Finance. Thanks so much for joining us. And of course, our thanks to Anjalee Khemlani as well.