Ask Dr. Drew - Alex Berenson: How Coronavirus Hysteria Took Over Our Government, Rights & Lives – Ask Dr. Drew – Episode 66

Episode Date: January 17, 2022

Alex Berenson covered the drug industry as a reporter for the New York Times. He is an Edgar Award–winning writer of bestselling thrillers and a freelance journalist. His newest title "Pandemia: How Coronavirus Hysteria Took Over Our Government, Rights, and Lives" is filled with a thorough investigation on COVID-19. [This episode originally aired on November 29, 2021] Follow Alex Berenson at http://www.alexberenson.com/ and https://alexberenson.substack.com/  Ask Dr. Drew is produced by Kaleb Nation ( https://kalebnation.com) and Susan Pinsky (https://twitter.com/FirstLadyOfLove). SPONSORS • BLUE MICS – After more than 30 years in broadcasting, Dr. Drew’s iconic voice has reached pristine clarity through Blue Microphones. But you don’t need a fancy studio to sound great with Blue’s lineup: ranging from high-quality USB mics like the Yeti, to studio-grade XLR mics like Dr. Drew’s Blueberry. Find your best sound at https://drdrew.com/blue  • HYDRALYTE – “In my opinion, the best oral rehydration product on the market.” Dr. Drew recommends Hydralyte’s easy-to-use packets of fast-absorbing electrolytes. Learn more about Hydralyte and use DRDREW25 at checkout for a special discount at https://drdrew.com/hydralyte  • ELGATO – Every week, Dr. Drew broadcasts live shows from his home studio under soft, clean lighting from Elgato’s Key Lights. From the control room, the producers manage Dr. Drew’s streams with a Stream Deck XL, and ingest HD video with a Camlink 4K. Add a professional touch to your streams or Zoom calls with Elgato. See how Elgato’s lights transformed Dr. Drew’s set: https://drdrew.com/sponsors/elgato/  THE SHOW: For over 30 years, Dr. Drew Pinsky has taken calls from all corners of the globe, answering thousands of questions from teens and young adults. To millions, he is a beacon of truth, integrity, fairness, and common sense. Now, after decades of hosting Loveline and multiple hit TV shows – including Celebrity Rehab, Teen Mom OG, Lifechangers, and more – Dr. Drew is opening his phone lines to the world by streaming LIVE from his home studio in California. On Ask Dr. Drew, no question is too extreme or embarrassing because the Dr. has heard it all. Don’t hold in your deepest, darkest questions any longer. Ask Dr. Drew and get real answers today. This show is not a substitute for medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. All information exchanged during participation in this program, including interactions with DrDrew.com and any affiliated websites, are intended for educational and/or entertainment purposes only. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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please contact Connex Ontario at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. Please welcome Alex Berenson. Unfortunately, you can't see him. You can hear him. So, Alex, welcome. Thanks. Thanks, Dr. Kuh.

Our laws as it pertained to substances are draconian and bizarre. The psychopath started this. He was an alcoholic because of social media and pornography, PTSD, love addiction, fentanyl and heroin. Ridiculous. I'm a doctor. Where the hell do you think I learned that? I'm just saying you go to treatment before you kill people. I am a clinician. I observe things about these chemicals. Let's just deal with what's real. We used to get these calls on Loveline all the time. Educate adolescents and to prevent and to treat.

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or as always, you can find it by visiting hydrolite.com slash drdrew. Again, that is h-y-d-r-a-l-y-t-e dot com slash d-r-d-r-e-w. Be sure to use the code drdrew25 for a special discount. The book, the new book is Pandemia, How Coronavirus Hysteria Took Over Our Government Rights and Lives. And I love the way you framed it as a hysteria. I've been saying this for about a year, that something happened in the collective personality of the Western world, really, where histrionic disorders seem to prevail. You know, people refer to it as a mass psychosis

from time to time. Yeah, yeah. um you know people refer to it as a mass psychosis from time to time yeah yeah and i i've started talking to people on this stream like i talked to uh art um i'm blank i have covet brain alex now so occasional things will block on me uh what's our what's arthur's last caplan our caplan the ethicist and he was advising you know he was there during some of the early decision-making. And I said, look, Art, what was that? Why did we do – if you look at our pandemic policy from 2018, you'll find none of the things we did. What was that? He goes, oh, it was panic.

It was panic. And then he said – and this is the thing I surmised from the beginning – was that, well, if China hadn't done what they did, we probably wouldn't have done it either. What do you think about that? I used to think that was true. I've actually come around to a somewhat different explanation. Okay. It's very clear that for close to 20 years, there was an infrastructure growing around, you know, what was called emerging infectious diseases. So, you know, during the Cold War, there was, you know, a fear of

biological warfare, right, smallpox and other, you know, biological diseases. And, and in the 70s, we in the Soviets reached an agreement not to, you know, not to study this stuff. Because it was too dangerous. And, and, you know, we basically stuck this stuff because it was too dangerous. And, you know, we basically stuck to that sort of. The Soviets didn't really stick to it at all. Okay, the Cold War ends. The 90s are great. You know, the biggest problem we have is the president and Monica Lewinsky.

And then there's the anthrax attacks. And suddenly everybody, or at least some people in the in the medical sort of biomedical warfare establishment are thinking about these diseases again um but the problem was there wasn't quite enough there so so they they decided that we needed to frighten people about the you know the idea of a super flu of an H1N1. I'm saying, you know, something that was going to be a real problem going forward. And you see these, and actually, R.K. Jr.'s book, and there's a lot in it I like. There's some things I don't like.

I mean, he's certainly more conspiratorial than I am, but he does go into great detail about these sort of tabletop exercises that were run. And there's books like the Cobra event written. There's a lot of time devoted to this is a real risk. We need to be afraid of this. We need to plan for this. We need a stockpile for this. And there was swine flu in 05, or bird flu in 05, H1N1 in 09, swine flu in 2012, MERS in 2014, Ebola in 2014 and 15. All this stuff gets a tremendous amount of attention. There's only one problem. None of it actually turns out to be that dangerous, right? It turns out that the biggest infectious disease epidemic in the last 75 years had nothing

to do with respiratory or easily transmitted illnesses. It was HIV and AIDS, which sort of came out of nowhere. There's been nothing, you know, remotely societally changing since the 1918 Spanish flu. Okay. So these people, but there's an infrastructure out there that's trying to tell you this is a threat. And at the center of that infrastructure, Fauci's in people, but there's an infrastructure out there that's trying to tell you this is a threat. And at the center of that infrastructure, Fauci's in it. But really, the center of it is a guy named Peter Daszak. OK, and but, you know, Johns Hopkins is there. And none of this is secret. This is not really a conspiracy in any meaningful way because they're doing this openly.

They're trying to convince policymakers you need to spend a lot of money on this. And DAZAC, but the problem is every time they say something terrible is going to happen, it doesn't happen. And you can see them starting to get a little bit desperate. And they start to say, you know what, we're going to find, we're going to go a step further than responding to pandemics or pandemic you know potential viruses as they happen we're going to go find the ones that are dangerous and my joke about this although it's not really a joke is so many bad assholes so they like they literally like go into these caves in china and start swabbing bat assholes for viruses and they like and they're going to find out which

one's the most i'm not joking this. This happened. Okay. I believe you. So many bad assholes. And so, so, so, so, but even then they don't get what they want. So what do they say? They say, we're going to figure out how this can become more dangerous. We're going to do gain of function research to see how these things might theoretically recombine and become more dangerous and and they also they sort of tied into climate change you know the we're we're

deforesting the amazon this is risky what's ironic is look china's been settled for thousands and thousands of years people have sort of lived in community with these bats for thousands of years and there's never been a problem the problem came when these idiot scientists started going to caves to look for the viruses well guess what like ultimately at the end of 2019 something happened okay and probably what happened is all these schmucks like playing around trying to make things worse actually came up with a dangerous virus and then walked out of the lab with it now i'm not again that's not saying like they did it on purpose exactly it's just saying they there was a group of people who kind of wanted this to happen not again not because

they wanted to depopulate the world or anything like that they they've just been predicting it for so long at some point it's embarrassing if it doesn't happen. Well, guess what? It happened. And what had they been saying? They'd been rewriting quietly the playbook of how we're going to deal with this. That's the other thing that happened. So starting in 2005, 2006, the CDC sits down and rewrites the playbook to make it easier and more likely that we're going to close schools, that we're going to shut down. And one of the guys who did that then went off to found something called the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness. And, you know, the others all sort of stayed in government. So guess what? When this happened at the beginning of 2020, they knew exactly what they wanted to do. They'd been talking about doing it for 20 years, and they finally had an epidemic worthy of doing it. And they went ahead and did it. And so,

I mean, one of the reasons I think that Fauci, you know, is so reluctant to have Wuhan, you know, sort of explored is that once you start to see, know the the scope it's again this isn't this isn't exactly the same thing it's not the same thing as saying you know a bunch of guys did this because they wanted to depopulate the world this is sort of natural human incentive and stupidity leading to a place right that we all like or that was predictably bad does that make sense it does make sense however it wasn't u.s pandemic response policy yet correct this was just a group of pandemic academics they were they were influential in driving the the people who were who were sort of panicking on the inside in january and february were the same people there's a guy named carter melcher. Again, this guy at CEPI named Richard, I think his last name is Hatchet. DASAC, they all,

they all were very aware of this risk. Why were they so aware of this risk? Because they've been, because they've been talking about it for 20 years. And DASAC had gone further than that. He'd gone to the extent of trying to prove that it was a real risk. And then, you know, again, when he couldn't find a virus in nature that looked risky enough, he and a few other people like a guy named Ralph Baric at UNC, they, you know, they worked to make these viruses riskier in the lab. So they weren't inside the White House, but they were close enough to be able to sort of push the panic button or help Donald Trump and help the people inside the White House push the panic button. And so were there stated policies amongst the coalition for epidemic preparedness in other words this idea of massive shutdown and school closures seemed so new so something no one had ever contemplated before wuhan did they have that as their stated in policy response or did they get spun into their own web

i think school closures yes but it was supposed to be for a limited time four to twelve weeks uh and then carter melcher said oh we got to close universities too you know uh look at the density you know you look at the density in workplaces um it i i would say i would say they had they they you know sort of in their fantasy, they thought this is what we need to do. But the United States, you know, won't go along with it. So the CDC, the big paper that was written in 06 and then updated in 2000, I believe, 17, never contemplated society wide lockdowns, did contemplate school closures, did contemplate some remote work. But then two things happen. So you sort of have this, you know, this infrastructure quietly being built to do this. And then two things happen. The virus jumps out in China and it does scare people, right? It looks really bad.

It looks like three or four percent of people are dying and people are dropping dead in the streets, all this stuff that was not true. And at the same time, not only does china shut down while china is an authoritarian nation italy shuts down and italy you know italy barely has a government half time so you know if the italians can do it well well then i you know i'm again i'm joking but i'm not really joking if the italians can do it well then the rest of western europe and the united states can do it and so they i you know i don't know what they thought the end game was i guess i i mean at some point actually very early on it should have been clear to everybody that this was a massive

overreaction and that i mean and that's really what pandemia is about but really by yes by by late april 2020 it should have been clear that this was a massive overreaction and yet they had sort of driven themselves into this ditch and they couldn't get out and then something else happened uh dr drew which is that they all basically started waiting for the vaccines and this is again this is where it gets weird it's like not exactly a conspiracy but pre-2020 there was a clear focus on mrna vaccines the you know, in these tabletop exercises, these games that they played, the solution was, we're going to have an effective vaccine. And so, you know, within days, literally days of the news coming out of China of this virus and

of it being sequenced, they were preparing to get an mRNA vaccine on the go. This was going to be their moment to demonstrate how good this technology was and how well it could work. And so, you know, as 2020 is progressing, there's this fight, there's politics, there's, you know, there's lockdowns, there's school closures, but in the background is this vaccine aircraft carrier moving forward. And, you know, you can see them start to get, they're starting to get more confident in, you know, in August and September. And then boom, you know, in November, you get these incredible top line results. And this is how the game had gone, right? This is how the scenario had gone. We are the heroes, you know, like we public health people figured this out for you. We shut down the world and now we have a solution and it's all going to be

behind us. No one has to be afraid anymore. There was only one problem, which was that after about four months after the second dose, these vaccines collapsed in effectiveness. Right. Right. And then do we, do you have any opinion? That was not part of the war. No, they did not. No. Right. And do we have any opinion about that? They did not count on that was not part of the war. No, they did not. No. Right. But but but here's the thing.

I get what you mean by this momentum that develops around things. I you know, as a clinician, you know, that viral outbreaks are solved with vaccines. That's how we solve them. And so to change that look at that view of reality would take a lot, you understand? Now I understand this is new technology and I understand all the controversies around it, but fundamentally those of us that are clinicians look at that and go,

well, that's how we solve this problem. Or we dig into our HIV playbook and we try to come up with some therapeutics. Do you have any concerns about how that's going? Well, it's very, very interesting. You mentioned that dichotomy because the smartest, one of the smartest doctors I know, and I really want to get him on the record and do a Q&A with him for my

sub stack said to me, go back. And this guy's an HIV guy guy like and you know from from from the beginning you know so from the 80s and all you know he knows fauci all those redfield and burks and and you know and then sort of like hiv community a lot of them are still around and uh you know they're they're all kind of at the top of the of the of the heap right now but so so what he said to me is you know Fauci, the people who are the conspiracy theorists say, oh, Tony Fauci killed people with AZT. He said, that's not true.

We were just desperate back then. HIV was terrible. It was killing everybody. We were just trying. He said the real... I was there. I was in the room when we opened the first boxes of AZT. And you cannot imagine the excitement

and the relief that we could do something for the patients that were dying like you can't believe how they were dying so yeah I mean these young men right they're healthy they're they're healthy one day and six months later they're dead right I mean people forget without exception with without exception without exception it was not like It was six months to live. Right. I mean, untreated HIV is the most dangerous virus in human history. It actually is.

So, what he said to me was, from 82 through 87, Fauci made a huge mistake. His mistake was, basically, I'm going to focus on vaccines, and I'm going to focus on bucking up the immune system. And the activists were saying

to him, hey, Tony, we weren't sick before we got this. The problem is not our immune systems. The problem is the virus. Go get some antiretrovirals and save us. And so finally, in 1987... Somebody else needs saving. Somebody else you got to save. That's right. That's right.

Sorry about that. In 1987, Fauci finally listened. And, you know, it took a few years and it took a lot of work. But by 1996, there were antiretrovirals that worked and they destroyed hiv and to this day there's not an effective vaccine for hiv there's anti-retrovirals so this guy said to me look at the pfizer drug not the not the vaccine look at the drug it

actually looks really good and it's what's going to end covid not the. And just like he did in the 80s, Fauci made a mistake. That's interesting. And I could see how he could make that mistake. I would argue, though, that we need everything we got. The question is, how much of a downside is there going to be from the vaccine? And with all this vaccine mania and the mandates around vaccine, how much trouble is the government going to get into with that? And how much are we going to taint get into with that? But that's the set.

And how much are we going to taint other vaccine therapies if we overreach here? That's my concern. But on the side of the Paxlovid, so molupiravir, we're supposed to know about any minute now, God willing,

we'll hear something about that. But that one's not nearly as effective as the Paxlovid. Why are they not rushing that out? What is the... It's a mutagen. Like that Merck drug is a little iffy. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe. But I mean, people bring that up and it's like, there's really no evidence of that. But okay. I personally, if I got exposed

to COVID, I would take Molnupiravir. Personally, I would. But be that as it may, Paxlovid is the thing that's going to make the difference. Why are they not rushing that out the way they rushed out the vaccines yes well i mean that's a great quote so i think the uh the the numbers came out or the the clinical trial stopped early was it four weeks ago i mean here's what i'd say if they don't get it out by the end of the year you can legitimately ask that question i would say i mean it's it's also very clear they rushed the vaccine here here's the thing the vaccines have you know at first i thought the

vaccine may the main problem of vaccines was political in other words you you really shouldn't be you know infringing on my right to choose whether or not to be vaccinated it's really not it's a you know it's a giant infringement over a disease that's relatively, you know, relatively not risky to most people. And and by the way, and you're saying you're seeing young people, you're seeing young people across Europe raise that issue with their government. I was in France a few weeks ago and it was unreal how the youth had raised, rised up. They really felt it was an, it was, and they brought up the 1790s every time I talked to them as how much the government overreached its foundation. Yeah.

They were overreaching their foundational principles from the revolution. That's really where they all went. Young people. But, but, but here's what I'll say. I mean, I, and I totally think that's a huge problem, you know, in Europe and the U S places with a, you know, traditions of individual liberty. I now am worried that there's a medical problem also. Okay. I mean, actually two medical problems, two broad medical problems. The first is that the vaccines clearly, um, you know, do not work after

a few months to prevent infection or transmission they may work for to prevent severe disease uh you know past those few months but it's not it's not entirely clear but but here's the second problem i that no one is talking about this dr drew there isn't been an increase a synchronized increase in all-cause mortality not including covid deaths in across many european countries across uh across many okay much of the united states and even across new zealand and by the way this doesn't mean i'm not talking about like people dropping dead in the streets i'm not talking about a doubling or tripling of deaths but i'm talking about there there's you know there's a substantial like above normal death count right now happening on a weekly

basis. And we don't know why. Yes, so let me put it on a graph. It's a graph. Well, Caleb, put the graph up. I actually sent it to Caleb to put up on the screen. I don't know if you can see it, but I'm sure it's what you're talking about. This is the data. Right? There it is. So I look at that data and I go,

well, that is only controlled for age. Right? That's the only thing they controlled for. That's right. And so in the group that's dying, here's what I, here's what we know. Here's what I can tell you. Anecdotally, people are dying because they didn't get their health screening. They're coming in with more advanced cancers. They're dying of heart disease because they're not coming in for symptomatology because they're

afraid of COVID. There's no doubt that people with medical problems are more likely to die now because of not COVID, but the hysteria and the lockdown. So, so, so by the way, that, that graph has been criticized. I don't want to go into the details of it. The data around this is, is much broader than that one graph, but, but that, that graph has gotten attention because it's a very easy way to visualize this sort of potential problem.

I'm not disagreeing with you that that is one explanation for this one possible explanation. Let me, let me add one other, let me add one other, which is, which is that people with medical problems more likely to get vaccinated. That's also been my experience. So, so it's, so it's more likely to have underlying stuff running for the vaccine, more likely to have not gotten proper care to deal with the underlying medical issues or the burgeoning medical issues. And we know, we know for sure that people are

dying at a higher rate right now because of delayed medical treatment. For sure that's happening. Yes. And now why that sorts out between vaccinated unvaccinated is not clear with that with that particular data but go ahead no i i i agree i agree that there are several potential explanations for this my point about this has only been we need to talk about this the health authorities need to look at this and and and we need to be sure that this is in no way related to the mRNA vaccine. Agreed. And certainly before we encourage people to get boosters, that's what we should be doing.

But we're not really doing it. Anybody who raises any questions, and forget about side effects, just about basic vaccine efficacy. I mean, I got banned from Twitter for that, Dr. Greer. I'm on my sub stack and I don't have my book coming out, but I've been censored. Let's be honest. Yes. And now, and now, right, these last two topics have been the Alex Berenson we've come to know and love.

And so this is, this is you getting my, my strike on YouTube. So it's good. So, but yeah, this is where you have created noise, which is you're just raising issues. And what I've always appreciated is that you don't mind being wrong. You just want some you just want to raise these things. Have you have you looked at Monica Gandhi's threads? Have you seen her stuff? You know, it's funny you mention her because in in pandemia i i refer i say there are covet leftists

there are covet rightists and there are covet centrist which sometimes consists of only one person monica gandhi because she obviously does try to try to walk a line yeah yeah i'm there with her just you know so you can put me back in that camp because i i spent half my day retweeting her stuff because i find her stuff just spot on most of the time. But there are people that are in academia that have substantial sort of position in the infectious disease world who are trying to raise these things in a sort of careful way. And so it's not being raised. I think the problem is, though, if you raise anything even slightly more provocative than what she's doing outside in the public space, meaning in media, in social media, you're screwed.

You're going to get crushed. Yes. And by the way, that's true in the academic journals, too. You can see it in how carefully the papers are written that, you know, you'll see a paper and it'll be about, you know, myocarditis in kids following vaccination and four sentences in there'll be this sort of stock line we know the mrna vaccines are safe and effective and you know should be used by everybody in their drinking water by the way here are our findings which are terrible yeah it's concerning.

I worry, again, it's not concerning. I'm not worried about somebody who elects to have their kid vaccinated. I'm worried about mandates. I'm worried about what that's going to mean when you take three healthy nine-year-olds and they get serious myocarditis or pericarditis, how that's going to be perceived. That's going to be a thing. That's going to be perceived that's going to be a thing that's going to be something to reckon with i think and so i would answer to the way to avoid that to prevent people from talking about it i mean that's what they've done it well

talking yeah i i know and and we know we're part of that and it's really a hard thing to to deal with it's never i've never seen anything like it, forget in medicine, in science. I mean, it's such a weird thing not to be, you know, dialoguing all the time and trying to get closer to the truth as best we can. Well, you're fearful of losing your license. You have, you know, you can. Well, now they're encumbering people's licenses. They're encumbering everything. But it's hard.

Listen, we've been all vaccinated and boosted and i'm all for it i i am in that camp but i still wouldn't tell if when somebody sits down with me to make a decision about getting vaccinated it's not perfunctory it's a it's a risk reward analysis that i make with the patient that depends on their age their medical status their motivation a lot of things it's not i don't i don't ever any medical treatment just go just do it we don, any medical treatment, just go, just do it. We don't have to talk to you about it. Just do it. There's no such thing in medicine.

And to me, this is what's so disturbing that people have, the most disturbing thing of all for me, Alex, is that people feel that they should be involved in the decision-making between a patient and a doctor. That is the most bizarre thing I've ever seen. Imagine it was between an attorney and a client. Can you imagine that he would cry? That's a great point. That's a great way to look at it.

But I think there's so many problems. Yet another problem with this is now that they have, you know, they've, they've, they have encouraged so many people quasi forced in some cases, people that get vaccinated, discourage doctors from having the kind of conversations talking about now they're all in. If there is some problem with these vaccines that, you know, even if it's relatively minor, it looks terrible for them. And so their response has been, we're not going to discuss it. And so, you know, and

God forbid there, there's a, you know, there's a significant problem with them that only comes out over time. And here, you know, Dr. Drew, here's what, you know, and I, and I think I mentioned, yeah, I think I do explicitly say this in pandemia is that the belief was in the FDA and the NIH, and, you know, and I think in the companies too. Well, it's, you know, it's two doses of this vaccine. And there's never been a vaccine in history that didn't, that if there were no side effects after 42 days after the second dose, there were no side effects. So in other words, we don't have to worry about some downstream thing

that we weren't counting on to happen. And so we can move this through pretty fast. I think what they didn't think about was the fact they're using a completely different technology than all other vaccines. And, and they should have respected that and spent more time, you know, making sure that there wasn't some tail risk. and and again like i i know you're not overly concerned i know you you know you say obviously you've been vaccinated many many many people in this country and worldwide have been vaccinated people are you know most people you know have not had severe side effects but that doesn't mean that there's not some tail risk that we that's right should have known about and don't know about.

That's right. And should be respectful of that every time we make a decision on behalf of a patient. Maybe I don't understand public health decision making, but their decision making has been just mystifying to me this whole time. And one of them, you mentioned the HIV community. One of them, as you say, I cut my teeth on AIDS. That's where I was in training during that pandemic. I mean, it was unbelievable. As a third-year medical student, I was sitting patients down routinely and telling them they had six months to live, and I was never wrong.

Third-year medical student. And then as time went on, I was treating all the terrible infections and tumors. I mean, these lymphomas would literally cut my patients in half. They'd have these burkets that would tear through. It was just, you can't even imagine how horrible this was. And we got it. We figured it out. We pushed it forward and we figured therapeutics.

And I knew we would do that with this one too. I knew we would come up that this medical system would be the one you know we never measure that in our assessments of the medical system united states it's always infant mortality and blah blah blah no when it comes to improvising and response respond with therapeutics no nobody comes close to what we do and so i I knew we were not Italy. And so for us to behave like Italy was just, again, so weird to me. So I want to go back to the so-called non-pharmacological interventions. First of all, you mentioned the HIV community. Now, one of the things that came out of the HIV community, of which I was sort of a part of early on, was the way to message the population at large in order to change their

behavior it's we we learned categorically it is not by shaming or bullying or calling stupid or sitting in a box and you know mandating from on high we We learned it was story, relatable sources, cases where you could see the consequences of bad choices, and then humor and music. We learned that. There was no doubt. It was like categorically, that's how we did it. That's how we changed the behavior is by going out and showing them stories about people, movies, television shows, all kinds of things about what happens if you don't make some better choices we abandoned that completely and went the other direction in this pandemic and i it feels like that's connected to the coalition for epidemic preparedness somehow because it's so what they recommended and what they did were so far from really what we knew to be good policy um no i i agree with that and you

know and this i do go into in pandemia um uh you know in some length i mean one of the things about the book is the book's you know 400 pages long and has 800 footnotes but it could be twice as long uh honestly and um and you know and i wish i had more time to talk about this sort of clear psychological campaign that the, you know, that governments ran in this coordinated fashion. And some of this, you know, some of this has come out, there's been documents that have come out of Germany, documents that have come out of the UK, where it's clear that they, that these government agencies, these public health agencies, were afraid that people who were young were not going to listen. And because people who are young are not at very high risk from COVID most of the time. Now, again, there can always be exceptions, but for the most part, they're not at very high risk from COVID.

And so there's a document from Britain in March 2020, a government document where they say we need to make we need to basically need to frighten people who are at low risk from this. And, you know, we need to we and we even need to consider shaming them. And I mean, I think where did that come from? What what where did that come from? Who was that? Where did that come from? To give them the benefit of the doubt, which at this point I don't believe they deserve, but to give them the benefit of the doubt, what you'd say is, well, society, you know, this is a really dangerous, you know, pathogen overall. Even if it isn't dangerous to some young people, we just have to lock down for a while.

And to do that, we need societal buy-in. And to do that, we need to scare people. And, I mean, look, that was a hard, as you say, it's a horrible strategy. It's the wrong strategy. And it's had terrible effects, you know, for the last 18 months. And they're only getting worse, in my opinion, because the health authorities refused to acknowledge the mistake they made and so you have this population that just doesn't like uh you know doesn't like being told what to do anymore um and isn't going to listen but uh but right but i i guess that was their strategy i mean i guess that was their reason we know it was their strategy

but it but it was so so hysterical and and so disproportionate to the circumstance. Did they believe that something much, much worse was going to happen? That's on one hand, I'm imagining that's what they thought on some level, that something much more serious was afoot here. The only thing that explains it to me, why the hysterics otherwise? So number one, they're in a panic because they misjudged the seriousness. Now, we all misjudge it, to be fair. I thought it was less serious. They thought it was more serious. Okay. But it became super clear that the lockdown was a temporizing measure. It was never meant to be a treatment or a way of preventing or these ideas of zero COVID and locking down every time things start breaking out? How do we get into that cycle? You know, did it become almost a competition? I mean,

you can see evidence for that in some countries when you see, you know, in New Zealand that the, you know, that the government, you know, rides to victory last year on a zero COVID plan. And, you know, we've kept COVID out of the country. And, you know, I have my wife's relatives, they live in Newfoundland. And, you know, Canada has had relatively low cases compared to the United States. And they're so proud of their lack of, you know, relative lack of COVID deaths. It's like nothing else matters. And, you know, I don't, I mean, it's a bizarre way to look at the world, but, you know, people have adopted this in Western countries. And, you know, I honestly thank God in the United States for a little bit more surly.

And, you know, we have some people who don't like to be told what to do. And, you know, we have a sort of like pretty rivalrous political system. And so we, you know, it hasn't gone down as easy here. I mean, my, my joke, and it's not really a joke, is we have 10 amendments, and all of them matter in the United States. I mean, obviously, we have more than 10 amendments, but we have 10 amendments in the Bill of Rights, and all of them matter. And so, and so, you know, but in other, in other advanced democracies, there's been, and I don't know if it's because it's a personal misunderstanding of fear, you know, a personal misunderstanding of the risk. I don't know. I mean, you know, you could be really cynical and say it's a lot of people who liked getting unemployment checks and not having to leave their house.

You know, I don't know what it is, but this has been embraced by people in a way that's really frankly disappointing to me uh you know as a as if someone who thinks of himself as a free citizen it is weird isn't that that's part that you're sort of zeroing in on something that i thought was so weird about the pandemic is the people that wanted to tell you what to do and were advocating you do very strange things and then the people that wanted to be told what to do and then to comply as carefully as possible with it, when it was so clearly concerning what they were, I,

to me, it's just mystifying to want to be told what to do and then to want to tell other people how to live their lives. I mean, it particularly when it, again, it's just no evidence for it. I'm I that's the part that I'm still struggling with.

So, so you could look at the omicron outbreak right so we have a virus you could pick any of the variants up until omicron and have the exact same level of panic about it if you wanted to but they chose this one to have a panic about because it had more mutations so they could go ahead and have their panic you you sort of see the how this everything works because the media loves it they go crazy with it the government declares emergencies it's it's sort of weird well or or or dr they picked this one to panic about because the booster uh campaign is falling flat and because the 5 to 11 vaccination

campaign is falling flat and because uh you know the cms mandate got you know got uh an injunction issued against it today and the osha mandate got essentially struck down even before it took effect a couple weeks ago and joe biden doesn't know what to do. And so he's happy as anything to have Omicron to, you know, to to. And by the way, the vaccines are failing. So now they can blame this variant. By the way, the South Africans who, you know, who are seeing Omicron more than anybody, you know, who saw more than anybody else last month or, you know, for the last two to three weeks say it's very mild.

They say it's very transmissible and very mild, which is sort of exactly, you know, the way vaccines or viruses are supposed to evolve. And so there's no evidence at this point that this thing's actually dangerous. It may be dangerous. We may find out in a month. But as you just said, the panic has far outrun anything we know about this. And it is hard and and again i've gotten so cynical about public health and about these governments it's hard to see it as anything but an effort to try to scare people who you know who are done with this to to you know to agree to a booster shot that you know so it's funny i i look at it as well one good thing may come out of this the

vaccine and the booster resistant may go get their shots so to me it's a positive and you see it as a reason for for concern that they're doing it in order to which almost is justified in my head although i don't like anybody using fear and intimidation for anything. See, you're falling into the trap again. Well, no, it's interesting. We're just, it's interesting how when you change perspective, you have a different way of looking at it. Because again, I try to sit in the middle here and I am. I don't know which is the right perspective.

I'm not saying you're wrong. I'm not saying that. I'm just saying I am definitely a vaccine advocate. And as such, something that moves people in that direction, I can i am definitely a vaccine advocate and as such something that moves people in that direction i can look at as a net positive even though i'm very unhappy with how this thing is progressing and you know and so that's really kind of the fear of it is that there's so much change in the spike protein that and the uh binding domain that they're concerned that it could you know uh get around the vaccines and it it could, but it's not likely. And if it's mild. So then why are they telling people to get vaccinated?

I know, I know, I know. I'm with you. And if it's mild, it could be its own vaccination, right? I mean, it could be you get a cold and now you've got natural immunity against COVID. It could be a net positive thing. Yes. Look, unfortunately, I don't want to go.

I have to go. I know we're supposed to do it six to seven. And like, unfortunately it's technical difficulties. I will gladly come back with you either later in the week or next week. Cause I know there's a lot of people have a lot of questions, but, but,

you know, I feel like we've just scratched the surface right now yeah i agree and i want to read your book i can't wait i think a lot of people need to read it because i because it sounds like it's a very dispassionate look and it's it's bringing up the kinds of forces that brought these extraordinary circumstances into into into in our lives i still think that china doing what it did let me just one last point before that you go my when i saw china do what it did it looked to me like a rehearsed procedure that they had in place should something get out of their local lab like this they roll they roll the trucks down the street it looked rehearsed where did those trucks come from where do they get those ideas from it

looked to me like a policy that the local communist leader had to actualize to prevent getting in trouble with the leadership further upstream. It looked rehearsed, and it was a response to a laboratory outbreak, it seemed to me. Yeah, it took us a while to clean up the subway. And an attempt to save face and to hide the outbreak. And the fact that we adopted that as a pandemic policy to me was the part that was so ill, ill-fated because it's not what it was designed for. But again, we have a lot more to talk about in terms of how we should design a pandemic policy. I imagine you get into that in pandemia as well. You know, a little bit. It's really, I mean, my policy on this would have been essentially, you know, stand up the hospitals and not do much else and, you know, not try to scare people.

You know, if there's regionalized or localized outbreaks that are really bad, maybe you shut the, you know, you shut the bars and you shut arenas for a few days. But basically, once we saw, you know, that this that this really wasn't, you know, the, you know, the death rate was more on the level of three or two or three per thousand. Yeah. Then, you know, three or four per hundred. We should have we should have changed course immediately. You know, but it's it's an interesting point you make about China. Why did they respond? You know, I will say this China, you know, they, they're very, they're very good at putting people in internment camps. They've done that with the, you know, with the Uyghurs for, uh, for, for a decade or more.

So, you know, they, they're not afraid to clamp down and that may have been why their response was so quick, but, but you make a good point. They certainly were in a hurry to do it. And it certainly did look um you know i rehearsed i don't know if that's the word i'd use but it but it was but it was very aggressive that's for sure it was a media where to me the image that will i'll never get over were the trucks rolling down the street squirting chlorine all over the place where did that come from within 24 hours unless they were sitting in a garage waiting for

a problem you know what i'm saying where did that come those kinds of things yes no let me let me throw uh you know one last thing i i can't get off the phone because it's so interesting i but um you know go back and look at contagion okay people they people the people on twitter who hate me they love to compare me to the Judith Locke character and contagion, which is, which is really funny because I'm not selling any false hope at all. Right. It's I'm actually the opposite of that. I'm just, I'm saying like we basically have to sort of weather our way through this,

but if you look at contagion even, so that's 2009, there were many of the same sort of people who were, who were, you know, helping design the pandemic response actually consulted with Soderbergh on that movie. You know, it's, it's the flu that comes out of China. I mean, this has been, there's been an effort to get people thinking about this slash scared about this for, you know, for 20 years and uh and again it's so interesting that like everything that they wanted to do they got the chance to do and and and by the way you know the the kicker the you know the twist of the story is that none of it works and that you know we're gonna get to where we would have been if we hadn't have done any of it anyway i i want to just before

let you go put shine a bright light on that statement, because that is the point is that it, it changed the time course. It didn't change the outcome. It didn't, it doesn't work. It doesn't work. And that's what you need to protect hospital beds.

I'm sorry to say again, I'm going to read it. I'm going to read it. Everyone should read it. I'll let you go as i promised i would and we'll talk soon okay and make sure you call mr kohl on thursday okay maybe thursday we'll see all right alex barron thanks guys the book is called pan you got it my friend pandemia is the uh book take a look at it read for yourself decide what you think um again it's

interesting to me to talk to people have differing points of view i i'm obviously have a kind of a it's it's funny i see it from a different perspective a different angle that he does and yet we i agree on a lot of the the facts but now it's more historical i mean it's not historical because it is we're alive no you're right though because we are giving our own interpretation but it's in it's through the it's not susan has a point that everyone has to die for everything to be historical you have to be not alive so we can never be historical well that's what my history teacher told me I understand but we can see things through the rear view mirror

a little bit more clearly it's not going to be kind the history is not going to be kind it shouldn't be it really shouldn't be look we all got taken with this virus it's fine and let's acknowledge yeah, we called some things wrong. I have sort of some ideas.

Okay. Can you hold them until after the break? Yeah. Okay. We're going to hear your calls, Susan's ideas after the break. Be right back. I want to give a shout out to our good friends at Blue Mics. If you've heard my voice on this show any time over the past year, including right now, you've been listening to Blue Microphones.

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We might be able to get him back on Thursday or maybe next Tuesday or something. I was like, can you come Thursday? We need to figure out next week too, which is a little bit choppy. It's up in the air because of your travel. I will be going to New York this week. Susan, you were going to bring your topics up. I'm a problem solver. In times of pandemics and disasters.

We just call those moms. I've always been like this. I get it after my dad. He was always good at fixing stuff yeah but you know what i've seen the government not do and what we didn't do collectively is build a better medical system for people for everybody now that we realize that if you get sick you need to call somebody on the phone and you know i'm trying to get a vet for my dogs i can't get a vet i there's no such thing anymore after the pandemic i am you have to wait eight hours at an er and and you have to you know it's sort of the same thing i feel like i think like america's been let down with this

horrible horrible medical system that we've built we scared the doctors we didn't let them work together we didn't let the collective consciousness of science come together and solve problems. Instead, we muted everybody and made them feel like a robot in there. But I would argue that the reason we were so crippled was the direction we are moving this healthcare system in the name of making a better, more integrated overall system. Cheaper or whatever. So what would you do? Well, I'd make medicine more lucrative for people who are doctors, first of all. It's sort of like they're screwing them over. You mean the general doctor, the people that are doing medical care.

It's like teachers, you know, they don't make enough money to really want to be a doctor anymore. We're not going to have good doctors. Nobody's going to want to because, you know- It's painful. It's miserable. You're in a to have good doctors. Nobody's going to want to because, you know, it's painful. You're just you're in a system, you know, you're not practicing medicine and helping people. But I think also maybe with telemedicine and stuff like that, you know, that'll help. We're all reaching out to each other.

You know, we're learning about doctors that are out there via the internet. So that's the good news. But I just feel like the government should get behind that and help promote it. And I get phone calls. People are like, I'm sick. And I'm like, well, call your doctor. Well, it's Sunday. I go, well, there's always doctors on call.

You can still call them if you're really sick. No, I have to go to the ER. No, don't go to the ER. One is free. So once a doctor prescribes, people don't, maybe the problem is an educational system. People don't have doctors. But maybe there's an educational system. Once a doctor picks up his or her prescription pad and opens it and gives you the prescription,

that person is responsible from then on for your medical care until you either don't follow up after an extended period of time or you fire that person. 24-7, that person is responsible for you. If you call him, her, or the coverage, the cost to you is zero. If you go to an emergency room, the cost to you is somewhere between $1,200 and $2,400. But there really doesn't seem to be enough doctors to go around you know well but they're using they're using nurse practitioners and physicians extenders and that's the same thing i mean it's just and i and i feel i think i really

realize this when i rex got sick on thanksgiving and i went to my normal place but they said i couldn't come in because some dog got hit by a car and it's more like an emergency room now so you have to sit in line and wait depending on how how bad your your animal is i guess you get in line and they made me they were going to make me sit for six hours because he was throwing up for 24 hours and i was like okay this is my regular vet but they're not even a vet anymore. They're now like socialized medicine. They're just get in line. Yeah. And so, so I was even thinking about, but I think it's applying to the human rights

too. That's what I'm thinking. That we're becoming corporatized or sort of. People don't have primary caregivers. They don't have relationships with their providers. Or they don't have insurance too, but. Well, you know so but something this is it's unfortunate but this is the truth is i remember whenever i was

very sick and i was going through my surgeries and all of that stuff the absolute best medical care i've ever gotten in my life is because i was desperate and i paid for a concierge medicine doctor i don't know you're probably familiar with that it was on top of my insurance on top of my other fees i had to pay an annual fee to have access just to see this doctor for the reason of he would reduce the amount of patients down to maybe like a tenth of what doctors normally see right and i had amazing care but i think but hang on i think most people would be surprised what that yearly amount is like two grand how much grand. How much is it? $2,000. I think it was, I think it was 2,400 for the full year. And it was,

it was great for when I needed it. It seemed very fair to me because I could get same day appointments, but I was desperate. And I, I was worth it. Right. You know, people go,

women go and get their nails done. They spend more money than that. They go get their eyelashes glued on. They get, you know, people spend money on a lot of things and they think oh well this is you know because i love this and i need this but two thousand dollars a year is not that much for everybody like so it's it is a lot but but having that but you get also a general practitioner you get what you pay for that doctor was amazing when i when i had my after the surgery, I fell and hit my head. It was at 2 in the morning and my wife was calling 911. You probably remember this. Calling 911 in Los Angeles, they put her on hold and I'm passed out. I think I'm blind. I can't see anything. She calls my doctor. It immediately goes to his cell phone. He wakes up at 2 a.m. and walks her through what to do. And that's what's happening is it's, it's, I don't,

people are expecting a certain level of, of, of care when the best doctors, they're still out there, but you have to find them. You have to find them and you have to pay them, pay them for their time. I'm glad that they have concierge service now though, because like Drew used to have patients that couldn't pay him and they'd bring him really nice Christmas gifts and stuff. But it's a nice, it's a, it's a nice alternative for people that alternative for people that have health problems and need to have a doctor on call. And I wish it wasn't that way. I wish that it was possible to not have to be that way because most people can't afford it. And I know that I could barely afford it at that time, but it was worth it. But how about the government gets behind helping people have personal doctors, promoting doctors,

giving doctors more money to make a living so that there are more doctors, giving them the opportunity to- Well, right now, nobody's going to the primary care that you're talking about. Just no one's doing it. And so it's being designed to be taken over by nurse practitioners and physician assistants, and they're very good. And that is how you're going to – But you have to be able to call in an emergency and not go to the ER.

Right. That is true. We went to an urgent care the other day because we had to get a COVID test. And, you know, it was like we're probably mixed in there with people who have COVID. Like we shouldn't be in there. It's not helping. All right. Let me take some calls off Clubhouse.

Raise your hand if you'd like to come up and give a chat. I will try to get to some of you here. We are going to get, again, I can't see the names. It's their goal long travels. If you want to come up to the podium and you'll be streaming out on Facebook, Twitter, Twitch, YouTube, and everywhere. Goal long travels. Okay.

Not coming up. I'm going to try Sandeep Kaur. Sandeep. There we are. Hi, Sandeep. There we are. Hey, Dr. Drew. How are you? Good. Excellent.

How are you? Man, I have to say, back in the early 90s, I used to listen to you and Adam Carroll on Loveline. It was the best. Thank you. That was fun. He still has a podcast with adam carlos yeah i still i still i'm three days a week with adam if you can get it at doctor.com but you muted yourself there you go go ahead sandy yeah i did

but yeah i mean i i just loved it i just want to say i mean this is a very interesting sort of discussion uh sorry that's my dog barking in the background but uh this is a very interesting sort of discussion. Sorry, that's my dog barking in the background. But yeah, I apologize. I'm sorry. But they rule the house. Of course. But Dr. Drew, what I was, you know,

I was very interested. I didn't know you were part of the whole HIV stuff. Yeah, I was very involved with all that at the beginning. In fact, I mean, any of us in training at the time, we were seeing those patients by the thousands. It was terrible. It was unbelievable. Yeah, it was awful. So I came of age during that time as well. I'm younger than you are.

But yeah, I've heard stories about how awful it was. But, you know, I mean, when you think about the pandemic and stuff, you know, one of the things I'm thinking about, one of my buddies actually told me this. He said when the Spanish flu came over, you know, it ran through for two years, right? Knocked off a whole bunch of folks. They didn't have a vaccine.

They actually didn't even know that it was a virus. Right? Because they didn't have electron microscopes at that time. Right? So they didn't know what the hell it was. But, you know, it went through and then two years later it was okay. Now, here we are, right? This is the second pandemic since then.

We have all of the technology at our fingertips. We have, you know, vaccines. We can look at the virus. They freaking decoded the genome of the virus, you know, January 30th, 2020. Why are we still so messed up? Why are we so afraid? Is that what you're asking? Or why do we not have it under control yet?

Yeah, exactly. We're close. We really are so close. And it, you know, that 1918 flu, the other thing is it killed young people, routinely killed young people. And that made it more of a horror. The fact that we sacrificed young people to old people this time was really kind of another choice I would get into Alex about is why they did that. You know, why they consciously sacrificed the schooling and well-being of young people to protect people whose life expectancy sometimes measured in months. It was a really weird decision making. And I think it took us many years to get the HIV epidemic under control. Remember, the epidemic hit when I started medical school,

and we didn't have treatments, effective treatment, until 8, 10 years later. And that was the fastest in the history of medicine by orders of magnitude. It took us 1,000 years to figure out what syphilis was. In two years, we had characterized a new syndrome, figured out the causative agent. Two years later, understood the physiology and all the complications of the medical manifestations and had treatments within five years, six years. Had five years. We had really good, some treatments within five years. And that was nothing like that had ever happened in the history of medicine.

And so the fact that we have come up with some pretty good stuff in two years here, that's pretty good. That's pretty good. The weird part I think you're bringing up is that we reacted so aggressively to it before we came up with these treatments that we were so affected by it. That's the part that's a little bit uncanny.

Brandy, I'm gonna try to get her up to the podium here. Hi, Brandy. Hi, thank you. I wanted to comment on two things. I'll start with this one since you just referenced it again, how you were talking about this whole scare tactic with the campaigns. I'm embarrassed to admit, you know, my whole life I never had to worry about my vaccination status. I knew that I had all of my vaccines. My parents made sure of that going to school and things of that nature. But this whole scare tactic has now made me question vaccines moving forward.

Well, it's interesting. Steve Kirsch, who is a brilliant dude that looked at the numbers and he was saying the same thing, that he was somebody who just assumed everything know, assumed everything was, you know, okay. But when he started looking under the hood, he, he's become a bit resistant. So I don't think he's right, but I can understand why people would get that way. I do.

Yeah. And it's something that I'm, you know, I'm struck. I'm not, I don't want to accept it, you know, so I am working on that, but I, I do want to believe that, you know, vaccines have their purpose. I know that they do. But like you said, if they kept transparency and just communicated and allowed people to say their thoughts. That's exactly it. If they would tell you, like, that's what I was asking Alex. What was this?

Why did they do this? If they would come forward and go, you know what? Here's what was happening to us when we made these decisions. Here's why we made those decisions. I would feel very differently about this whole thing, I suspect, because then A, your sort of rigidity and paranoia goes down. So you sort of start trusting people more. But secondly, then you can sort of discuss the reasoning that went into it. Like, well, why'd you think that? And how'd you conclude that? And maybe I could see why you might've concluded that at the time, even though

it turned out to be wrong. So why aren't you changing directions now? I mean, a million questions we can have as opposed to this weird, you're just going to be silenced, which is un-American for lack of a better way of saying it. I don't know that we've ever been like that. And it's not just in this country, to be fair, it's in the Western world, people are behaving like this. Yeah. Wild. Well, be careful, but don't get too world people are behaving like this. Yeah. Wild. Well, be careful, but don't get too resistant. I mean, get a good relationship with a doctor.

Get that doctor to work with you. Have he or she make those decisions with you. That's how you do this. Somebody who really has clinical judgment and has been working in the system for a long time and understands how to interpret some of these excesses and really where it looks like something that's in your best interest given your particular clinical circumstance. I'm worried that there aren't many and it's hard to find. Good doctors? Yeah.

Like the vet. Now it's just a revolving door of doctors. You can't get your own personal doctor. We got lucky because we got in under the radar, you know? Hey, Joe.

Hey, Dr. Drew. How are you feeling? Susan had a very happy Thanksgiving as well as Caleb. Thank you. Thank you. And I'm doing okay. You know, things have been, you know, things have been better. I mean, you know, I'm working on. Things have been better. I mean, I'm working on cognitive behavioral therapy.

Oh, good. Because if there's anyone living under a rock, and by now I've said it enough on Twitter, it's me. Because of, of course, let me bring it up again because of chronic ITP. And, you know, the fact that there are now nearly three dozen papers showing those with thrombocytopenia having bad results with vaccination, much less COVID itself. So it's like, you know, I feel like I'm in purgatory. I get it. Are your doctors helping you? No.

Are they sitting down? No, they're gaslighting me. They're gaslighting you. What's that? The excuse of 99% of hospitalizations and deaths are from COVID, which sounds just like the CDC and the FDA remarks, whereas we know that's not true now because of the efficacy of the vaccinations. So because we know that, that's a problem. Now, of course, I have told you on numerous occasions that I would very, very seriously consider Novavax. But Novavax seems to be five years away at this point. Yeah, they keep delaying it.

Why do they keep delaying it? I don't know. I don't know. I've not seen the data on that. Now, I will share something with you. I did get some more blood work done and I was really happy with some of it. I was really happy with a good chunk of it. My, my vitamin D count was around 65 now. Good. And, and my vitamin B was north of a thousand. Um, B12? You mean B12? Yeah, B12. Yeah. um b12 you mean b12 you b12 yeah and so i was really happy about that that that the supplements

because there there are studies showing you know respiratory infections yeah um you know and and again i haven't been sick since the pandemic but to be fair i've been also living under a rock i'm a little confused about the gaslighting what What were they gaslighting you about exactly? No, they were gaslighting me about why am I not vaccinated already? And I flat out told, and this was with, and I'll go further. I originally was thinking about going for Johnson & Johnson before the issues with blood clots and thrombocytopenia. Because I did not really, I see'm i'm a person and again even with computers i i don't trust the newest brands of anything i understand that's fine but what do

you know india's got a vaccine that uh might fit your needs right yeah but i don't live in india but that one might get some distribution here Would your doctors help you with that kind of thing? Maybe. I mean, I could, well, I have an appointment in a couple of weeks. I think, Joe, maybe change your perspective a little bit and get focused on how can I get safely vaccinated? Because that's how you're going to move around in the world again. And that's what we need to do. We need to get you out from under the rock and safely vaccinated.

So how can we mitigate risk? And really, you know, you can bring the papers in or the citations in on all the problems because they should be, if not aware of it, they should at least be able to address it. And, you know, and if they're confident that you don't have a problem, how can they be so confident? And what else might we do?

Have them help you solve the problem. How can I get safely vaccinated? Because it's not the easiest thing to do with people with blood disorders. I understand. But we got to get you out. We have to change. I would urge you. You know, decision-making comes from a perspective.

And you got to change your perspective. The perspective is how do I get out from under the rock? Not just how do I say safe? How do I say as safe as possible? Get out from under the rock. That's what needs to happen now. Can I ask you one more quick question? That's not related to you or I, um, how's Rex feeling?

He had some vomiting across Thanksgiving with with susan okay so i took him to this emergency room and they said they just said it could be up to six hours dog by the way yeah he the day before thanksgiving he had been vomiting for 24 hours a little bit of blood and and i he'd go online it's like see a vet immediately so i i threw all my thanksgiving dish groceries to the side and i i ran over and we sat in the car for two hours or an hour outside of an ER in Pasadena. And they said it would be up. People had been waiting six hours with their dog. And then they saw Rex. He looked okay. So I, you know what I did?

Wait, wait, wait. You know what I did? Remember when we did the show with the guys from air vet yes so i got on the phone and i got the guy from air vet and he thought i was a complete lunatic and he was like he said give your dog some pepto-bismol and it cost me 35 bucks yep if i had walked into that er they would have given an x-ray it would have been 500 i would have sat there for six hours and i gave him Pepto-Bismol and people stopped feeding him people food for a day or so. He vomited again, but he's fine now. He's totally fine. He, Joe, I think was eating pine cones. He likes to eat pine cones. And I was cleaning the grass off on Thanksgiving day and found that the squirrels have dismantled about a hundred pine cones in the back and he can't resist yeah probably and by the way i want to say hello to all the locals gang

the i see tom and i see casey and gang i want to say hello to them so drew thank you very much i'm all for telemedicine and i'm gonna have tom and tom's in case you get on your case but we're gonna get you off my other rock that's our new goal okay vaccine all right all right drew come hold your hand afterwards. I will. I'm going to be in the city next week. Let's do it on Sunday. I'll happily come out. He's in Long Island, right?

He's up north. We'll find him. Email Susan. You want to have a sleepover with Dr. Drew? Come to the city and I'll vaccinate you. Thank you. Thanks, Alec Berenson. Thank you I'll vax you. So anyway, thank you. Thanks, Alec Berenson. Thank you to Caleb.

Thank you guys on Clubhouse. We're going to have to wrap this thing up. We'll be back maybe on Thursday. Susan, is that a maybe? Maybe. It depends on when you go. If something... Maybe Thursday. If you get an appointment on Friday, then we'll just keep it open. We can just take calls. We don't have to have our guests. We'll try to be back on Thursday around the same time.

That's a better way to go than you don't have to. And we thank you on Clubhouse. We're going to end the room. And those of you, the rest of you. I love Alex Berenson. He's a hard one to get on. So if he comes back again, if he can come on Thursday, I'll bring him back. He's always very interesting.

He's very interesting. Oh, I know. He does great sound bites. I love him. Okay. Yeah, put it out on social media. He's just like, he's so well-read. He does great soundbites. I love him. Okay. Yeah. Put it out on social media. He's so well-read. He knows everything about everything. Yeah. He's a New York Times reporter. He's been a science reporter for years. He sort of

understands the thinking and understands how to approach looking at what is happening in the moment and what scientific establishments look like, how science is done, that kind of thing. He's familiar with that. And he's not worried about what people think about him. No, he's not. So get the book. We're going to be reading it, Pandemia. And we'll see you guys hopefully Thursday around the same time, 3 o'clock.

We appreciate you being here. We'll see you then. Oh, oh, oh. We also have Dave Navarro coming on Wednesday. Oh, no. I beg your pardon. Thursday. What am I talking about?

Tomorrow is Vinay Prasad. I have Vinay Prasad tomorrow. It's another. You're going to love him. Don't leave. We have Vinay tomorrow. Vinay is a brilliant Prasad. I have Vinay Prasad tomorrow. It's another. You're going to love him. Don't leave. Right. We have Vinay tomorrow. Vinay is a brilliant, brilliant physician.

I just booked Dave Navarro while we were doing the show. Okay. Vinay is an amazingly brilliant thinker. We're going to get into vaccines a little more with him because he's got some really important ideas about that. And we're going to talk about rock and roll on Wednesday and hallucinogens. On Wednesday? Yeah, with Dave Navarro.

I'm not sure I can do that, but okay. What do you mean? Thursday is when I was planning on. You can't do Wednesday? Okay, we'll talk about it. All right, so Wednesday, hopefully I'll be here. If we can do that at 2.30, then I can do it. Yeah.

Okay, we'll see you tomorrow at 3 Pacific. Yes, boss. Ask Dr. Drew is produced by Caleb Nation and Susan Pinsky. As a reminder, the discussions here are not a substitute for medical care, diagnosis, or treatment. This show is intended for educational and informational purposes only. I am a licensed physician, but I am not a replacement for your personal doctor, and I am not practicing medicine here.

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