Ask Dr. Drew - COVID-19 Answers: Politically Correct vs. Medically Correct - Episode 21

Episode Date: July 3, 2020

Many states are reporting an increase in COVID-19 cases. Is it safe to travel? Should we wear masks? Who is at risk? Dr. Drew is joined by experts Dr. Cate Shanahan and Dr. Lori Pennington-Gray to discuss Coronavirus data and the differences between being politically correct and medically correct.  • Dr. Cate Shanahan is a board certified family physician. Her expertise is diet-driven metabolic disease, specifically the twin roles of PUFAs and sugar in promoting weight gain, insulin resistance, prediabetes and other common conditions. Her passion is educational programs that improve productivity & reduce employer healthcare costs by cultivating healthy habits at the individual and organization-wide levels. More: http://drcate.com • Dr. Lori Pennington-Gray is the director of the Eric Friedheim Tourism Institute and a UF professor for the Department of Tourism, Hospitality, and Event Management. She is a member of The International Ecotourism Society, Travel and Tourism Research Association, World Travel and Tourism Council, DMAI, AH&LA, and USTA. Ask Dr. Drew is produced by Kaleb Nation (@KalebNation) and Susan Pinsky (@FirstLadyOfLove). 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. Hey, everybody. Welcome to Ask Dr. Drew. We are going to have some very interesting guests today. Kate Shanahan, of course, she's at the front line of of dietary recommendations particularly as it pertains to preventing the complications of covid and in just a moment i'm going to be introducing dr laurie pennington gray director of the tourism crisis management initiative at university of florida our laws as it pertain to substances are draconian

and bizarre a psychopath start this way he an alcoholic. Because of social media and pornography, PTSD, love addiction. Fentanyl and heroin, ridiculous. I'm a doctor for. Say, 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. You have trouble, you can't stop, and you might help stop it. I can help. I got a lot to say. I got a lot more to say. I want to get into some different aspects of COVID today, including travel. Speaking of travel, I just got these very very very cool um travel related uh uv lights you can scan over you know your your equipment your luggage your airline seat your uber whatever it might be if you guys are interested in this thing i'm going to be using it when i travel

you can get that at 8664 red hawk as well as a fancier one for people that have more sort of uh industrial type stuff and don't forget the uh everyone needs their thermometer as well so 866 red hawk that number is also let's see i wrote the number i broke it down at a certain point uh 866 hold on here buddy 4733429 uh and um i'm watching you all on the stream. Try it out. Yep, try it out, everybody. And hi, mommies. Hi, Jeans.

Hi, you all signing into the chat room here. We're going to have a chance for calls. That number is... Somebody want to help me with that? 9842-DR-DREW. 9842-DR-DREW. Thank you very much. It should be up on the screen there somewhere.

I'm going to get the calls up that we have. We already have calls on the line such as it is. So we will go look at that. Looking at the COVID data, everybody, I was just going over some stuff before we get into these sort of our interviews today and your questions as well. Best updates, T. Bailey from Dr. Fauci would be at the CDC website.

What's up, JH? Good afternoon, Terry. Can the thrometers cause brain tumors? No, trash dash, they cannot. So looking at the COVID data, I think everyone's aware that it's been an uptick. And had there not been an uptick, I would have been wondering, well, I would have been suggesting that the lockdown was a complete sham. Because if we could all congregate in the streets and begin to go to restaurants and bars and have no uptick, that would be ridiculous to have shut us down in that case. So good news is shutdown probably served some good purpose. We can argue about how long it should have gone. That's kind of a different issue.

But shutdown while we figured things out was probably a good thing, particularly now that we see that things are increasing out there. So looking at the data such as it is, San Bernardino out here in Southern California is a big concern. That has already started to trend downward. Orange County, big concern that has already started to trend downward Orange County also a concern to start to trend downward LA County is continuing up but none of the LA data that I can see is accelerating the way it is in other states like we're gonna talk to dr. Pennington gray in a second about Florida but Arizona for instance is accelerating so in other words each day you see two thousand

three thousand five thousand seven thousand ten thousand you see increasing exponential not necessarily exponential but at least a delta changing that it's accelerating and that's concern and most of those states where they're having acceleration are not doing a great job with the mask guys and i understand i am certainly sympathetic to people that don't want to wear masks. But look at the data. Just look at the data. I understand it's an imposition. I understand you're tired of the government telling you what to do.

But don't squander this opportunity. Susie, you want to get on mic and talk about our little experience this weekend? Lindsay's laughing. If you don't want to listen to the government. Well, people don't. Don't draw the government well people don't they they're they're don't draw the line at the mask that's not the place to draw the line there's a lot of things you can do to to push back that's not it well it's true though and it is kind of the man telling you what to do is it's never cool now don't make it the man make it your decision when

you look at the data i wear one everywhere except um this weekend we went out to dinner we we got into our seats at dinner time and we were separated and it was it was kind of nice because the the restaurant was open we had a window behind us felt really confident and then we went over to visit our friends who were having dinner at the place nearby and it there is sort of a bar area but they weren't it wasn't open as a bar you had to be eating dinner but we got to slide in and buy around the birthday girl a round of drinks and and it was funny because people still like to come up and shake drew's hands and say hello and they get right in your face people have been drinking it's really weird like

like right in your face and you're already sitting next to people kind of close but nobody was wearing the mask as they came across the room which i feel like when you're walking through a room full of people breathing it's probably a good idea to wear it and when i go to the ladies room nobody in the ladies room was wearing it except for the the person that was cleaning the ladies room and she looked terrified and i was just like i had a mask on because i feel like you're in an enclosed area and somebody's in the stall before you and they could have sneezed and you know whatever but um they did have hot water and soap so that was good but i but when i walked in with my mask this woman looked at me it's dimwit um and she goes oh oh i forgot my mask and i was like yeah go get it like what

the hell and i'm i'm an elderly woman i you know i'm not elderly i i have to do this for my the safety of my family and and also i want to be able to come here and and work but i'm going to get tested this week and and make sure so we're going to get tested this week and make sure. So we're going to talk about travel in just a second. But people do like to shake Drew's hands. So I immediately pulled out the hand sanitizer and squirted his hands. And pulled me away from somebody. And they thought that all the girls at the table thought that was very cute.

That I was protecting him. We thought it was important. So, King's Check, before I go to my guest. have any idea how, no, no, no, no. I'm sorry. It wasn't your question. Ah, Amy Aho. Aho. Aho, A-H-O.

How do masks work if the virus is small? So the virus travels on droplets and droplets happen when we speak and they go nose to nose. Droplets gets away from us. So the way we prevent the droplets is put something over our mouth and then something over yours. So there's going to be no transmission. Yes, there is a possible transmission by viral particles. But for the most part part the virus travels on droplets

they get caught by the cloth masks this has been shown over and over in research so let's not let's not continue you can look at alex berenson stuff he's he's always questioning currently prevailing wisdom and i say his stuff is good uh taylor uh let me taylor david let me repeat the h1n1 killed 500 000 people infected 1 billion people i'll check that make sure that data is correct uh and what i was saying was don't panic try to try to adjust your panic relative to a previous pandemic that killed 500 000 young people and infected 1 billion and you don't even know that happened so don't panic about this one not saying and then i would always say follow the cdc's recommendations follow dr fauci's recommendations all right let's see uh let's see look at the

fatality rate from h1n1 really quickly here and we'll get our guests in here in just a second here's from the cdc this is their website h1n1 2009 uh now we're vaccinated yes i'm aware of that uh let's see if we can figure out uh each one it's hard to get the actual data off this website unfortunately give me one second if i can see it nope can't uh correct me if i if i uh oh here's comparing h1n1 versus the 2020 pandemic. That's interesting. March 7, 2009. Shoot. Unfortunately, I can't do it in shorthand.

Susan, maybe you want to look that up for me while I introduce the guest. I want to know the death fatality rate and the infection rate of H1N1 in 2009. If we can just get that. And now we'll get your calls in a few minutes too. I'm looking at the restream again. All right, let's go to my guest. She is Dr. Lauren Pennington Gray, the Director of the Tourism Crisis Management Initiative

at the University of Florida. You can see more at tourismcrisis.org. She researches systems approach to demand side and supply side issues around tourism. We're looking at destinations response to this crisis since January 2020. The data on her website is collected weekly to help the travel industry understand where they're at. But Dr. Pennington- gray is hopefully can help us understand what we should be doing when we travel how are you thank you for joining us great great to be here thanks jim for inviting me you bet uh so you know my susan is i'm sure

she's told you as a travel agent travel agent and she has she spends what a couple hours a day on websites looking at travel and trying to figure out what's going on. She alerted me to the fact that United Airlines will resume flights to China on July 8th. That seems kind of remarkable given where we are. Let's just start with something simple. Do you have any concerns about the current uptick and how it's going to affect travel? Yeah, definitely. I think, you know, it's concerning. It's concerning for the industry itself, particularly those businesses that were able to start up and were starting to see occupancies increase. And now there's, in the last day, there's been some actual policy decisions based on the long weekend where they've decided to close the beaches and two major destinations in Florida. And so that's going to actually have some impact to the industry as well.

So I want to zero in on that a little bit. Like here in California, we've seen a spike, but we're sort of plateauing. We're not really accelerating. There's certain areas, Imperial County and stuff like that, we're sort of plateauing um we're not really accelerating there's certain areas imperial county and stuff like that and which is sort of the message right now is all everything is very localized county by county in terms of epidemiology people should be keeping their their their focus on but california is sort of i can feel that california is going to going to pick up and sort of stay on a plateau that's a little higher than they were at before just judging how people are behaving here but florida and arizona seem up and sort of stay on a plateau that's a little higher than they were at before, just judging how people are behaving here. But Florida and Arizona seem to be sort of accelerating.

Am I getting that right? And if so, what's going to happen to cruises and Disney World and all that good stuff in Florida? Right, exactly. So I think that's the concern is that as this continues daily that there's more cases than the day before that we're going to have more concerns uh with the cruise line industry that operates out of south florida and west florida um you know the amusement parks the theme parks in central florida as well that are in conversations about what it's going to look like when they open and that they already are in a phased approach but is that maybe going to be prolonged a little bit longer now because of this as well? Florida does not look as bad as Arizona. I'm looking at the daily data here so Florida went from 108 I'm just giving you the daily count 8 000 10 000 9 000 5 000 so it's actually coming back down a little bit in

florida the death rate has gone uh 50 40 60 40 30. so it's not really death rate's not changing uh the case rate is sort of slowing in flor. Are people behaving better? Are they wearing their masks? I would say that there are pockets of people wearing masks, but I think that's definitely the message that needs to get out, that people need to wear their masks. And I think there's, you know, some pent-up demand. Our research is suggesting that as well, is that people want to get back and they want to take their vacation. It is a long weekend that's coming up. So people have been quarantined and they're, you know, been isolated and they're ready to kind of move forward. I would argue that it's more than some pent up demand.

I think it's dramatic pent up demand. And that's why people are misbehaving. The Disney World, you're gonna have to be in the hotel to get into the theme park is that right yeah which is and so wearing masks and also having um just like in the um in the grocery stores where they've got areas um quartered off and they tell you exactly how how far apart people have to stand and saying exactly that um they're going to have that on the floors you know in the walkways inside any of the attractions etc so my kids wouldn't be able to kiss anyone else's nose

no they can't touch the character's not going to come out even that used to drive me crazy when my kids are like three and four they go mini mini mickey mickey i'm like don't kiss the nose and they always would and then they throw up for three days is there anything to this uh atmos air solutions air purification system that they're going to try to get the ship's air a little more purified is that for real is that something i know that they're working on that um and i think that's something that could bode well for the cruise industry definitely the waters you know all the other stuff they have to deal with there of course but um which are different pathogens not not the viruses so much not this virus so much um so uv lights uh do you have any feeling about that

this is this is the light that i think is pretty interesting. It's a light you can, I think in terms of taxis and Ubers and airplane seats, and to me, this seems like a giant leap forward. Is it real? Should I be using this one, which is a real portable unit that has seems like a pretty intense light there versus sort of a larger wand like this I mean we have arrested for that other one the big one or this one yeah the other looks like a hairbrush you might you might they may take that away from you the hairbrush no the long way long way yeah yeah I think this one is designed for travel and I and I would put it I would do it over the seats on the rides at

Disney where I do it over everything I on the rides at Disney World. I'd do it over everything. I mean, UV light really is a very effective way to kill virus and bacteria. Yeah. Right. I think, you know, the research would suggest the more that we can engage in personal protection behavior, then the more likely we are to keep ourselves safe. So, you know, things like that, where we can take some of the control into our own hands are good things whether one of those products works and the other doesn't i'm not an expert in that area but i would say is there people people in the chat are doubting whether it's strong enough to work are there places we can see the uh sort of efficacy data is there anything

anybody out there, consumer reports or something that are doing that? I'm not aware of that, unfortunately. Amy, I think there are consumer reports out there. I will try to get that for you, okay? Because obviously we don't want you wasting your time with UV lights, but this, her point is if it's not enough to blind you, it's not enough to kill the virus i don't believe that is true i believe that there is a duration of exposure issue it may be a slower process than we'd like it to be to uh you know hold the light over a surface that you're trying to um sterilize uh our in terms of some clorox wipes it does uh tony's tom cigars red hawk does not yet have a website they have a website for these devices the the sand mini the sand mini the you know needle destruction needle destruction device

dot com uh are there um issues as it pertains to european travel they they're closing us off right they're the other european countries are not allowing Americans to come in. Is that accurate? Currently, that's correct. The US is not on the approved list. And do you have any idea how long that's likely to last? Well, what the experts are saying is when they start to see that the virus has been controlled more in the US, that they will start to reevaluate that. But as of right now, that is not on the list. Whatever that means by controlled. If somebody were going to pick a place to try to get away to,

do you have any kind of favorite suggestions right now? Well, I think most of the research would suggest that people want to stay domestically. And I think we have to pretty much, right? I mean, there's very few places we can go.

I guess China next week. And, you know, close to home, I think, is the other piece of this, is that people would like to be within driving distance of their home, but further enough away to, you know, stay overnight. We have seen increase in Airbnb bookings. There have been more bookings and nights enlisting since May the 17th to June the 3rd than this time last year. So there's some indication that people are interested in staying in the peer-to-peer accommodations in the rental industry. You can see that here in Florida as

well. We've had tremendous bookings in Airbnbs along the coast especially. I think there's also some interest in traveling to parks and national parks as well as state parks, areas that they can explore outdoors and you can physically distance as well. Opportunities to go to the beach, as we've already mentioned. Anything that's outside where you can distance yourself from others. I think someone has a question about international travel and quarantine. Let me see if that's what Nathan is up to. Nathan, your question? Hey, Dr. Gene. Quick question on this. How come nobody's really talking about international quarantine? All of our pandemics that we've ever had have been due to lack of international quarantine. If a virus isn't on your soil, how can we get it? I'm just kind of curious what your thoughts were

on that you know we have a percentage of travelers of international versus the population of the world and how many people it's affecting is it really worth it and how come we're not talking about implementing a quarantine i'm not sure what you mean by quarantine meaning prevention from anyone traveling into the country both so it's traveling off of our you know internet all right i i would yeah i get you i i would argue i want to talk about quarantine what we have to do to quarantine to other countries because you're gonna that'll freak you out when you hear that data but um i think the bottom line is, Nathan, we lived in such an interconnected time that we all clearly signed up for interconnectivity and globalization above and beyond our concerns about potential infectious disease complications. Or even for that matter, as you know, the economics and the job replacement issue is massively complicated.

I think now people are pulling back in and we are quarantining from the standpoint of international travel it took a lot before people started doing that and it's going to take a lot i think to get us back to where we were if that's where we want to get so um but quarantining sick people is your point and that's something we've always done and why we didn't do more of that this time is hard to understand maybe we just we just didn't get on it quickly enough um dr um laurie pennington gray the issue of quarantining when we go to other countries i've had patients go to certain countries in southeast asia with negative tests in their hand, like from the day before, and they were quarantined in the airport for two weeks. Is that standard fair for other countries that are even

at all open to U.S. travelers? Well, I don't think there's any standard. That's the thing. There is a set of standards that have been put forward by the World Travel and Tourism Council that countries can adhere to, but each country is looking at the policies they implement individually. And so, you know, what you might find in one country may not be the same as what you find in another. And so that experience may not be replicated in another Asian country. You know, I know that they were talking about changing the policy in Hawaii from quarantining in place upon arrival to actually coming, as you just mentioned, with a negative test in hand prior to arrival. So that way that people can come in and show that

they've had the test, it's's negative and they can have their vacation somebody's so where it's it's not even vacation necessarily a lot of it is business travelers too well we were talking earlier about this she said most hotels you'd have to go for two weeks and stay in the room and have your food delivered in order to come to the country or the i don't know where maybe some of the open countries that are available at this point some people say there's a there's a comment here in the chat in the uk they can book luxury travel as well it's not just essential travel i'm so confused does that is that do they mean us to the uk we can go to the uk for vacation as well as or is uk closed to us um right now i i'm not sure what the exact policy is i know that at one time they were talking about you know going for essential business and then they had

discussed i'm not sure at this moment what the actual policy again this is so dynamic and it's changing deeply it's exactly that so that's what i just thought i was thinking when the the the listener is saying he's confused we're all confused because it's changing deeply. So that's what I was thinking when the listener is saying he's confused. We're all confused because it is changing rapidly. Will you keep that updated at the tourismcrisis.org website? Definitely. We've been around since 2007.

So the more recent data about COVID-19 is definitely at the forefront and we'll continue to look at anxiety and trust, preferences for certain types of travel, et cetera. So that's actually what I want to talk to you about next is the anxiety issue. And by the way, B-World, I see you on the thread there. Yes, pandemic just means widespread. It doesn't mean severe.

It just means widespread. People use the word pandemic in the press to try to scare you. Use the language as it's accurately. It's all I'm saying. So I saw in some of the data you published that anxiety amongst females and young females in particular is the highest. What would you say to them to encourage them to maybe get out and be in the world again? Dr. Agreed.

I mean, I think, you know, we're at the point where we mentioned pent-up demand. I think there's also, you know, some real concern that people aren't getting out and, you know, spending time outdoors and, you know, social distancing, but at least being around their friends. I would say that we can do these things if we do them safely. You mentioned earlier about wearing the mask and, you know, continuing to use hand sanitizer and staying six feet apart. All of these things are important. If we do these things and we are all doing them, then it's important that, you know, some of these young females with high anxiety have the opportunity to go out and actually still live their life and do the things that are important.

Let me go back around again and talk about the 2009 H1N1 epidemic, just so you can contextualize it. I got it within the context of the current epidemic. In the 2009 epidemic there was roughly 60.8 million cases 274 000 hospitalizations 12 500 deaths okay that's h1n1 worldwide 500 000 deaths uh and then it doesn't say the total number somewhere i'd read it was around close to a billion so when people say there are 10 million infected 10 million a billion infected in the 2000s just just just use the history to calibrate your emotions calibrate your emotions you did not know there was a pandemic in 2009 and yet in the united states states uh again 12 000 people were killed 274 000 people hospitalized in 60 million cases 60 million cases all right just calibrate your emotions everybody this one was a little scarier because of its fatality rate in the elderly population and because of its r not or infectivity so uh and and again it's something that could get uh really

badly out of control if we did not pay some attention to this but the reason i knew it would not be like uh the imperial college of london suggested it was going to be is because we would do something about this including quarantining, wearing masks, setting down travel. And now we're trying to get back to it a little bit. So in doing, and I would urge everyone to do it safely. And tourismcrisis.org is where to do so. How do you feel about cruising? Is it safe? I think they're doing everything they can do to keep it safe and make it a safe experience. We were thinking about, we were thinking about going on a cruise as a family were we not yes yes but our daughter's a young white female who's nervous about real has anxiety about it again i think what's important

is that you know what we're finding is that just like your daughter, if she's anxious, some of that is because of what she's hearing and some of it what she's not hearing. And so, you know, the industry has a responsibility also to ensure that they're putting forward information that says what they're doing to keep you safe. Right. And as well, making sure that everybody is aware that they have personal things that they have to participate in to keep themselves safe so it's a two-way street that's right where are the masks earlier i saw on the feed somebody said norwegian is putting hepa filters in and also they've they've removed like 23 ships the older ships norwegian norwegian cruise ship well no like

carnival so i think the newer ships are going to have better technology and then also obviously more be able to fill the ships they probably don't need the hundred ships they're getting rid of but um hundred ships i don't know i think there's gonna be more but i think i don't think people are gonna want to go on a cruise but there are some new ones coming out like virgin has a new one and they're gonna give everybody a covet test when they get on board so you know when you check in and they like take your passport they'll probably swab your nose too yeah they should do it a week later too yeah and then i would say as a travel agent i would say if you're gonna go on the ship you if you're with an elderly person you know and you get quarantined for a couple of weeks because they find out there's COVID on the ship, you know, make sure you have your medication for two weeks

and also make sure that you have the time to be in quarantine after the cruise. And somebody's asking on the thread, do you think it's safe to fly? What do we say? Yeah, I think, again, it's important to know which airline you're going with and what practices that they've adopted. Everyone is different. It's not the same. Some are removing the middle seat, some are removing the exterior seat. Some of them have, you know, used new sanitation products. Others are using, you know, another type of fogger that they're sending through the airline. So I think all of the industry knows that the consumer is looking for this information and it should be available on their website. And if it's not, then that would be cause for concern.

I think that's part of the responsibility of the industry to be able to share that information. My understanding is the incidence in pilots and flight attendants is very low. My understanding is that they circulate the air every eight minutes, and then you wear a mask and you don't do much interaction. You should be in pretty, pretty okay shape. Not perfect, but it seems pretty safe to me. Do you agree? Yeah, I think, you know, again, it comes

down to doing what you need to do and, you know, making sure that they're doing what they're doing, they're supposed to do. So if both those things are happening, then I would feel safe getting on an airplane. Where are you in Florida now? In Gainesville, Florida. I'm looking as people keep bringing up Miami as though there's some sort of issue going onida i i'm looking as people keep bringing up miami as though there's some sort of uh issue going on there i'm looking at the miami-dade county website um is are there concerns right now down there yeah miami is um i think where they're concerned with the largest number of cases and continuous why are they saying that the hospitals are being overwhelmed i see no evidence of that is there some evidence somewhere that i mean is that just the press again fear

mongering or is there actually something going on i mean i think the cases are continuing to rise and i did hear also on the news today that they said that the hospitals were being overwhelmed i have not seen the hospitals are being overwhelmed you got to be very careful when the news reports stuff like that because they will staggering numbers yeah they will say staggering surges grim they're going to be alzheimer's patients yeah and i just don't see the data i just don't see it and so i i somebody can help me with that but she's getting local news too no i understand but if people on the thread have some issues some some website that can show me that hospitals are actually being overwhelmed, that would be very interesting. There's a large elderly population in Miami, though, and South Beach.

I understand. But the increase has been across all age groups. The primary increase has been in young people because of the moving about and the demonstrations. But, of course, that can then get into the elderly population i know about a week ago they were shutting off flights in from miami because of it and you know into newark so if you were flying from florida you had to maybe have i just don't see it i i don't see the data so maybe somebody can find that for me i uh one second let me look up one other website well california nobody was wearing a mask at the beach where we were yesterday or the day before

yeah but they're down yeah they are they are they're and but we have higher cases in santa anna and anaheim and people are coming to work from there and you know it could spread let me read the two articles miami-dade county rise in hospitalization rate fall in death rate miami is surging surging uh so let's see what this one says uh county has 25 of its icu ads available which is baseline pretty much maybe 50 is baseline yeah um so uh i know i feel like the governors in each state are trying they are not surging they are increasing but they are not surging they want you to wear the mask just wear the damn mask please i'm telling you i'm a mom okay my kids haven't left the house in three months.

I mean, I'm surprised. They're 27 years old. Miami has 24% of its hospital beds, 26% of its ICU beds available Tuesday afternoon. So stop it with the overwhelm. Stop it. Stop it. We're going to talk about medically correct versus politically correct in the next segment. Yeah, that's what I want to get at. Because the ability of the medical providers just to speak the truth has been completely obviated.

And it's getting ridiculous. And the press is on a campaign to panic the country all the time. It's too much. It's terrible. No wonder young people are anxious. Because all you get uh yeah well jh uh the data is the data uh okay somebody asked earlier on the restream on youtube if what about trains because i imagine they're doing the same thing as airplanes right

they don't look good they're quite the same thing as airplanes, right? They don't look quite the same way, but go ahead. I was just going to say, we do ask in our survey about whether people will travel by trains and people are apprehensive about traveling by train as well. So what the industry is doing to sanitize and to ensure the public that it's safe to do that, that's going to have to increase so that people realize that it's that they're being taken care of i i worry about trains a little bit i gotta say that that particularly before i got the uv light if indeed it works as well as i think it might um that had concerned me uh somebody is asking about

the death rate in california let me get you that right now one second my my sense was it had not changed much at all uh death rate in california oops here we go it goes uh 80 60 30 30 so it's going down if anything. So don't worry about that so much. Well, okay. Thank you. We appreciate, Laurie, you coming and joining us. Again, the website is tourismcrisis.org. Dr. Laurie Pennington Gray, Director of the Tourism Crisis Managed Initiative at University of Florida in Gainesville. If you have questions about travel, thinking about travel. Oh, one last question. Susan, you brought up Virgin Voyages, thinking about testing for everybody. Is that what you were talking about? So that's the only thing you wanted to bring up about the Virgin, new Virgin cruise line, right? Well, I mean, would Paulina go on a cruise if she knew everybody was

tested? I mean, it's reassuring, but still, if there's a a breakout you're going to be stuck on a cruise it i mean it we've every time we've been on a cruise we've gotten some major illness you know because it exists you get off the ship you catch something and i i mean i want these companies to come back and i want people to feel safe but you know what are what's going to have to be done to get us back on the ships? Well, I think that, you know, the investment that's going into, you know, sanitation and making sure that, you know, the protocols are going to be followed and the investment in infrastructure that's going to need to happen is staggering. so for the cruise industry and the tourism industry at large the hotel industry you know this is a huge um influx of dollars that are going into making sure that people will be safe and this is going to change the way people travel and it's going to

change the travel industry um and you know there there is no going back you know we have to move forward with the assumption that this is going to be the new normal. Hey, I'm glad to see that on cruises. Susan mentioned that we got something. I got H1N1 on a Windstar. Both Windstar cruises. I got H1N1. My son got endotoxigenic E. coli and nearly died.

I got H1N1 and nearly died. And these were both contracted on a cruise ship. It was like happy graduation. Yeah. No, but we reported both of them and they never really got back to us. They didn't do anything. They will now. I think that'll change.

I have a feeling. That makes me feel even more confident to go on a cruise. And I'm sort of a germaphobe anyways. I did not get either of those bugs when to go on a cruise. And I'm sort of a germaphobe anyways. I did not get either of those bugs when I was on the cruise with them. So you're better than us. I am. Okay, Lori, thank you so much for joining us.

And we'll look for you at tourismcrisis.org. Thanks, Dr. Drew. All right, thank you so much. Are we going to have Kate call in? Yeah, she's going to call in. Okay, so shall I take some calls while we're waiting for her? Yeah, sure. All right. Thank you so much. Are we going to have Kate call in? Yeah, she's going to call in. Okay. So shall I take some calls while we're waiting for her? Yeah, sure. All right.

Let's do that. Let me make sure she's got the... This is Dawn. She's on the guest line. Whoop. Hi, Dawn. Go ahead. You'll find Kate on the guest line.

Hey, buddy. Let me see if she's up there. I see her. Hey, can you hear me okay? I hear you. What's going on? Oh, hi. Hi, Mommy. Hey, Mommy. Hey, can you hear me okay? I hear you. What's going on? Oh, hi. Hi, Mommy.

Hey, Mommy. Hey, man. Big fan. Thanks, buddy. Dr. Jeans. All right. So, you know, I spent a lot of hours. I haven't lived the healthiest life.

I've toured. I'm a musician. Been doing that for the last 24 years. Spent a lot of hours in the van listening to a podcast and whatnot. But anyway, alcoholic. Lots of beers from the time I wake up to the time I go to sleep. Diet not so good. About seven years ago, I started noticing blood in the stool.

And I did have a colonoscopy. And that was probably like five years ago. And, um, they were saying that because it was like a brighter blood, uh, to make a weird analogy is what the doctor said. Uh, um, like it was like, uh, like syrup on top of the ice cream. Like it comes out after the Brown comes down. Yeah. We call that bright red blood

per rectum. Yep. They were saying that's a good thing, I guess. I've just been noticing lately it's all the time. All right.

Hang on a second. How old are you? 38. Okay. And the colonoscopy was how long ago? Like seven years ago. Okay. So you need to repeat that, right?

You can still get polyps and cancers. Oh, man. Yep. Absolutely. That's the case. And so that needs to be repeated, and that's good times. But the fact that you're alcoholic does put you at risk for GI bleeding of all type, whether it's from the stomach or the esophagus or the rectal bleeding.

People with liver disease get hemorrhoids. They bleed. But it all needs to be checked out before you continue. You need to be sure that this is not cancer before you do anything else and then maybe go about treating that alcoholism is it time yet uh well i mean if you're ready i don't know you gotta be you gotta be ready for that time right gotta be ready for that and uh when you're ready there's lots of good people out there ready to help you you can just go to a meeting they're free and if you want help there's camp brawl and there's naltrexone there's all kinds of pharmaceutical assistance you can get if you want or medication assisted treatment is the new term

and uh yeah you're gonna need to deal with it eventually so sooner or later you have to deal with that but the short-term problem is to go ahead and get the colonoscopy done dr kate shanahan k do you agree with my recommendations there? I absolutely do. And the frequency increasing made me think of a possible plumbing problem brought on by increased liver pressure. Like if his liver is getting worse. I think I remember. Right. Cirrhosis.

Some liver cirrhosis. You know, there's more pressure upstream. They get more tendency to bleed. the cirrhosis some liver cirrhosis you know there's more pressure upstream they get yeah they get a tendency to bleed they get portal hypertension and then they get hemorrhoids that bleed that that's what happens to them and they even can get rectal varices and things so okay so before we get into the next topic we're gonna have to take a little break all right kate hold on one second we're gonna go to a whole new topic here in just a second including you know what's pc and not in medicine before we go there uh before we go to our break um i saw some

bunch of twitter action with you in it today it's what happened did you see that um i posted something yesterday so it must still be about the thing that I did showing that soy oil consumption per capita by country correlates somewhat loosely. a lot of interesting evidence that we could be looking at to try to figure out what it is that's causing such a disparity in immune system response and disparity in the ability of one person versus another person to get over coronavirus, you know, quickly and efficiently. And so, you know, people who know me know that I'm all about trying to warn people that the cells are pro-inflammatory and they're slowing down your immune system and making your immune system actually dangerous. And so what I did was I put up a post that was just a tiny little piece of, you know, some interesting evidence about how the countries that have a

very high rate of soy oil consumption also tend to have a higher rate of coronavirus deaths. And so like, for example, if we have a really high rate of soy oil consumption, and so does Brazil, out of all the countries in South America, it has the highest rate of soy oil consumption. And it also has the highest death rate. And then what I didn't post, but I was hoping that would be an overture to starting to look at, for people to look at some of the data themselves. But instead, what happened was people just started attacking the concept of looking at this data because correlation doesn't imply causation, as if that's what i was saying right but

i always find it strange when people jump to the fence of um the status quo you know especially especially when the status quo involves eating ungodly amounts of industrial oil i i would argue most of it is uh non-scientific uh posturing because of course we know that causation and correlation are distinct phenomena of course we know that and please uh it's perfectly always valid to go to question are you are you making the leap to causation is this just a correlation study to bring that up but then to demand it's correlative and not causational, that's non-scientific as insisting that a correlation study is causational. Right. And, you know, the correlation is, for there to be a causation, there really ought to be a correlation, right? So that's kind of the starting starting point and no one's saying that it's the

the end point right but you can't ignore these relations have you seen this and claim to be scientific have you seen this new england journal study genome-wide association study of severe covid with respiratory failure showing the six genetic clusters and the chromosomal piece associated with the bad outcomes. That's very interesting. I would bet that those chromosomal clusters have something to do with, you know, controlling inflammation or inability to control inflammation. Yep.

They do. Right. They do. And they're also strangely, they have, yeah, they're, they're associated with certain there.

Well, it's a little, as always with biology, it associated with certain they're well it's a little as always with biology it's it's not it's not a narrative it's not just so it's a little complicated uh but the two two of the six genes are associated with the cytokine system and several genes have a relationship with blood type and so it shows shows that type O is a little more resistant and type A is a little more associated with infection and complication. I'm going to take a break. Kate, I just sent you the article by email. Take a look at it and see what you think. And we'll take a little break and be right back. About a year ago, I was introduced to TruNiagen, a supplement specifically designed to boost a key source called NAD. That's short for nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide. I was really impressed with

the research that showed that increased NAD levels can promote cellular repair, maintain healthy mitochondria, and increase energy throughout the trillions of cells in our body. I've been taking TruNiagen ever since, and I am truly persuaded, which is why I'm so excited to welcome them back to the program. Let's get into how truniogen works. From age 40 to 60, humans can experience a 50% decline in NAD, leaving our cells with a shortage of that incredibly valuable energy resource. Additionally, things like immune stress, poor diet, even alcohol consumption can all deplete our cell NAD levels. Research suggests that increased NAD can support

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Every needle, every time. Go online right now and use our special promo code DREW2020 for our best offer ever on the Sand Mini. That's nomoresharps.com. And remember, use my promo code DREW2020 for our special offer. I'm really very excited to be a part of that product that could change needle sticks. And of course, as I've said repeatedly, a true nitrogen is something I and Susan and Carolla all take. We've got Dr. Kate Shanahan with us. We're talking about ways to protect yourself from a dietary standpoint, amongst other things. Kate, let's talk about your book to begin with.

Can people get it as a Kindle or something? Well, tell them what happened. After I was on Bill Maher about a month ago, talking about this topic, what people can do to protect themselves from coronavirus, within hours, all of the books on amazon sold out all of them like uh even the ones i wrote several years ago um and uh the the most recent book is the fat burn fix and that book has yet to come back um it's it's now the end of june and it's not going to be back until july 5th it says

so in the meantime though i guess at other because there's audible and because there's single editions and other locations that can sell it um it actually shot up to the new york times bestseller list which was a surprise to uh everyone including me uh because normally, you know, two or three months after release, that doesn't happen. So anyway, they were like, well, no one saw that coming. And so that was for a while, that was the excuse as to why the books were not in stock at Amazon. But now the publisher says they've done everything

to push them over to Amazon, and for some reason, they are still not available in Amazon. I think you can get, I'm looking at the website now, the Amazon site think you can get you can get i'm looking at the website now the amazon site you can get the kindle so people should download the kindle right now if they want to read about it and and you can get it from non-amazon uh resellers too but for whatever reason amazon is refusing to put it back on and i uh it dawned on me that while I was on the show with Bill Maher, Bill Maher had said,

you know, he said something about in order to avoid these seed oils, you know, you have to spend more money on food, but not everyone can afford to shop at Whole Foods. And I had to jump in and say, you know, you're not safe there. Just because you're shopping at Whole Foods doesn't mean they're not selling you the cheapest possible soy and canola garbage right and um I forgot and that Amazon uh is owned by Whole Foods so I don't know if it's just a coincidence or if it's uh I'm sorry did I say Whole Foods Amazon owns Whole Foods. Yes. Not the other way around. Yes. But yeah, so anyway, it could be just your basic coronavirus-induced difficulties, or there could be some bigger picture thing going on.

But I mean, this is a month now, and the books are not available. And I don't think that's ever happened for any other New York Times bestselling book. Interesting. And let's quickly, before we go on to the sort of topic i want to drill into a little bit tell them the issue your theory around the oils and what they should avoid and what they should include in their diet very quickly so there's uh the seed. I call them the hateful eight. And I have the list as an infographic on my website. So there's soy, sunflower, safflower, cotton seed, corn, canola, rice, bran, and grape seed oil. You don't need to know my name. We got it up.

We got it up there. They are highly unstable. Thank you. They're highly unstable. They build up in our body fat. And then when we get sick and we are not eating, they are released into the circulation in a high concentration. And when we are trying to fight off an infection, our bodies need to use a little bit of inflammation to actually kill the virus and help stimulate the immune system. But because we have these highly unstable fatty acids in our body fat, the inflammation cannot be controlled. It's like, you know, starting shooting a flamethrower in a tender, dry forest. It's just it can't get back under control the way

it's supposed to. And we cannot effectively kill the virus. And so some people actually end up dying more from their body's own immune system overreaction than the virus itself. And that's kind of what has made this virus in the epidemic so scary is that it's seemingly unpredictable who's going to get hit so hard. But I think this is a huge part of the equation. And, you know, I said on Bill Maher that if anybody has been avoiding these oils and is under the age of 65 and had a severe case of coronavirus, I want them to contact me because barring like an underlying serious immune deficiency, like having an HIV infection

or a chronic lyme infection that there would be nobody under the age of 65 in the intensive care unit or dying from where should they where should they no one where should where should they contact you through my website drkate.com with a c okay um let's talk about the politically correct landscape as it pertains to medicine. I feel like science and medicine has been under an assault from the beginning of this whole thing, where physicians are not allowed to have opinions that talk show hosts and journalists are somehow now suddenly massively skilled in infectious diseases to me the bottom in this epidemic

was where the new york times editorial board demanded a national lockdown what do they they're in no position to have an opinion about it let alone be demanding any non-pharmacological interventions that physicians advocate i what what's your sense of this whole situation well i kind of feel like that new york times is uh the capital of the the new gotcha culture that we're all living in now this is a new situation that's changed in the past couple years where uh there's there's folks who just take pride in shaming people and they're putting folks like you and myself and doctors who are speaking out about what we think is going on in a very difficult position because we've sworn an oath to protect people's lives but you know and that's that impulse that we have to help when someone is hurting and say what we think is now pitted against this culture of don't do or say anything that displeases people, even when the people being offended are completelyatives, to heal and to never offend.

And so it's just shutting down the conversation in a very dangerous way, I think, because it's opened the door for all kinds of conspiracy theorists and all kinds of people to join the conversation. And, you know, when doctors can't really say what we think or we're afraid to say what we think and what we believe to be the best advice here's a uh a journal uh travel medicine and infectious disease it's a highly thought of peer-reviewed journal this is from last weekcomes of 3,737 COVID-19 patients treated with hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin, a retrospective analysis showed marked improvement with the early use in almost 4,000 cases of hydroxychloroquine and azithromy there it is there's a good study decent got some weaknesses associated with it but reason a a at least a literature-based um justification for physicians

prescribing hydroxychloroquine and yet now talk show hosts are are the ones adjudicating what physicians do with this chemical that i've been prescribing for decades i don't know about you but i've prescribed it hundreds of times never seen any problems with it yeah it's a commonly used medication and i prescribed it dozens and dozens of times at least and and also never seen a problem with it but i think it's now it's like been painted by basically a bad tweet right like you know so we had uh some perhaps not brilliant advice being sold out by our commander-in-chief about uh you know getting any kind of similar chemical and uh and now suddenly we can't talk about

hydroxychloroquine or anything that the president has mentioned because uh he was because he was wrong about it that doesn't mean the medicine might not be beneficial to still it's even it's even more it's even more than it's even more significant than it might not be that medicine is not beneficial. They have no goddamn business even discussing it. How to practice medicine is something, even the FDA stood up and said, hey, we're making recommendations. We are not telling doctors how to practice medicine. They have no freaking business even having an opinion.

That's the part that drives me crazy well we also live in a culture in addition to this whole you know cancel culture and gotcha culture we live in a culture of armchair experts where everyone who's read a few blogs about something and can regurgitate a little bit about what they said, feels like they have every right to tell experts, true experts, what to do. And we see this happening more and more with our culture because somebody much smarter than me speaks about this very well. I think it's Sam Harris who talks about the flattening of hierarchies where there's among certain political parties, the left, there is a flattening of hierarchies.

In other words, if you're an expert, your opinion doesn't have any more value than anyone else's opinion because there's no such thing as an expert there's no such thing as hierarchy and uh you know this is a strange thing that has happened in our culture and it's affecting now it's affecting medicine and and yes that is extremely dangerous and not only that there is a misunderstanding of the difference between knowledge and experience. Like it's literally people read about riding a bike and feel they're an expert in riding a bike. Medicine, you have to have done these things thousands of times before you have expertise. I mean, you can't read about surgery. It's funny, surgery gets exempt from this because people can't do it, literally physically can't do it. But general

medicine and our practice somehow falls under the rubric of information rather than an applied knowledge, which is what it is. Look, you learn off the internet what we knew at the end of the second year of medical school. Then Kate and I each spent at least six or eight years after that training, and then another 10 years honing our expertise that's what it takes to be an expert now unfortunately the recent uh pandemic and the models around the pandemic did nothing to increase the case for experts because people didn't understand what models were so now they're now they have further undermine expertise because the models turned out to be so wrong even though the rest of us looking at those models knew they would be wrong because we understand how they're to be used

did uh did you say this uh live before Teresa don't confuse your media platform with my medical expertise no there's a there's a there's a no no close i've said it before repeatedly which is that friends of mine have begun to put up a a framed plaque up in their waiting room that says please do not confuse your google search with my medical training that's the statement and that's that sort of gets right at it. That gets right to it. And it can't be emphasized strongly enough because it's people, you know, they've run amok. And yet the strange thing is people want to use experts to buttress their opinions. And again, models are notoriously inaccurate just think about

models that predict the market or the weather don't put models are just sort of guidelines for us to begin to have conversations they are not predictions of the of the future leslie thomas said yes the drunning dunning-krruger effect has run wild do you feel it with Dunning-Kruger Kate oh yeah the less that you are an expert the more you think you are correct that's essentially it's essentially the thing that lets you stand up on American Idol and sound like hell and then say I did a great job it was not great that would be me yeah Yeah. So it's, it's, you know, this is just the nature of how our mind works. I was talking to Christina P about this this morning that we have an over-reliance on our thinking. Our thinking is distorted by many different

cognitive processes, many different ones. We're under, we have motivated reasoning we reason from conclusion we have cognitive dissonance all of us do you know i see i'm sure you've you know treated your share of addicts too k because you can't avoid it in medicine today and their thinking is completely disturbed and that's where you see it the most is stinking thinking but it's it's everywhere our cognitive processes are not pure unless you're a scientist and then you do the best you can to fight back those cognitive distortions with the scientific process and that scientific process means that you might be wrong sometimes and it doesn't make you evil it just means that you

didn't have all the data that you have right now it doesn't make you a flip-flopper it's not it's not like politics science is not like politics and i think people during this pandemic have mixed the two because in the beginning some experts were were saying, you know, this is going to be very mild. And then we were hearing conflicting information. And the fact is that we are watching something new unfold. And for anyone to be able to stand up and say, I can predict the future, I don't think anyone did that. I think people were saying, here's what I think is going on. And if I'm right, it means this will happen.

And it doesn't mean that if they're wrong, they're the devil or they need to be called out. It means that, no, now probably we got some new information that helps refine the situation better help us understand the situation so we can make our next prediction better but if we shut down people who say anything and ever turn out to be wrong then the only people who are going to be talking are going to be the media yeah right now in the united states, we have 3,800,000 cases of COVID-19. In 2009, we had 60 million cases of H1N1. 60 million! And no one knew that was happening.

That was what I kept emphasizing. 13,000 dead, 275,000 hospitalized, a billion worldwide, 500,000 dead worldwide. You didn't experience that because no one informed you when it was happening. So I was trying to get people to calibrate their emotions to the present moment. But that's considered anathema. I mean, the lifeblood of science is humility and for someone in the media to stand up and say well you know dr drew said or dr kate said and it turned out not to be true as if they would have done a better job is this a blatant disregard for actual science.

They totally don't understand what science is. And I wanted to mention something that's kind of crazy what's happening now in the companies that are allowed to be open. So I work for a wine company. They sell wine in a retail situation. And this is really booming because the restaurants are closed and, you know, people are stuck inside and everybody needs more booths. So we are navigating all these rules and contact tracing. And it's insane. If we were to actually follow what the CDC recommended, there'd be nobody working because they want if anybody had a contact with coronavirus, the original you know, so we have to kind of, we're sort of making our own rules based on the

best evidence that we have. But the point I'm making is that we wouldn't have done this in a flu season, a regular flu season. Most of our employees who have been out with the coronavirus have, like, had such mild cases, they didn't suspect it was the coronavirus, so they kept working. Like, one person was kind of tired for two weeks, and one day she was busy.

And that's it. But during those two weeks, she ended up getting tested because someone else in her family had got tested and she was supposed to get tested. So during those two weeks, there were so many people in the store that she had been working with that now have to get tested and if we were supposed to keep them out we wouldn't have any stores open like the grocery stores would all be shut down we wouldn't there would be nothing happening if we were following the rules so

you know if there's just like who at the top here is thinking any of this through especially given now that's the evidence yeah that most are mild that's the other part uh that really bugged me which is that the people making these decisions do not know how to make risk reward they're not accustomed to making risk reward decisions which you and i do five times a day. And I knew there would be tons of untoward consequences. And now we're having this massive increase in deaths of despair. We're having just people being forced into poverty. They're going to have all kinds of health consequences from that. I mean, it really, no medical decision is made in a vacuum. And governors are not used to making those decisions and what when are we going to

admit that we're wrong we were wrong and we should maybe be careful about the old folks and the vulnerable people maybe keep them you know in isolation but let's let others let's let our economy well let's let's talk about let's talk about the elderly for a second you were the first to bring up on this thread a couple months ago uh the idea of uh discussing end-of-life issues before somebody gets covet or before they're on a ventilator which um back in you know know, when I was doing a lot of ICU medicine, that was a routine conversation. I don't know what has happened, but putting an 80-year-old on a ventilator was considered unethical, let alone cruel. And now all of a sudden, we're throwing a bunch of 85-year-olds on ventilators. What happened and what do we need to do?

Well, half of the statistics are showing that, at least in the state of Florida, almost half of the people that enter the hospital with coronavirus when they're over 85 don't come out alive. Right. And that's all overall hospitalizations. It's got to be even higher in the intensive care unit. Right. And why isn't that part of the conversation yet, right?

Exactly. Because that's kind of important. You're sick enough that you need to go into the hospital. So there's a low chance that you're going to come out, right? And you are potentially taking a bed from somebody else. Are you okay with that? Just realize that everybody who goes in the hospital, no matter their age, if we are ever going to get out of the point and we are not there yet anywhere near

there and we probably won't get there even in miami-dade county i listed up when you guys were talking about that earlier yeah plenty of ic beds left so we're nowhere near this idea the hospital is overwhelmed in miami-dade com wrong do not listen to the press. Stop it. Now, they could get overwhelmed, not that they can't, but they are not overwhelmed. Stop it, for God's sakes. The emergency rooms might be really crowded, but there's plenty of beds, there's plenty of ICU beds, and that's what really matters. So let me ask you a question, because I used to work in nursing homes a lot, and this data did not surprise me uh even though i could keep people alive sort of indefinitely if that's what the family demanded which i always thought was cruel what is the average life expectancy after somebody

is admitted to a nursing home how long does the average person survive after being severe so so sufficiently debilitated neurologically and physically and medically that they need a round-the-clock institutional care, what's the average life expectancy, Kate? What would your guess be? That's a very important question, and I would say it's very short, a matter of months. Six months. Six months. So in terms of us directing the total resources of the country to extending life in people whose life expectancy is six months on average what are we doing and don't forget that just because you survive the hospital and disappear unit doesn't mean you're going to be back to the way you were whatever it was before the problem if you're 85 if you're if you're 85 and you've been on a ventilator your

probability of surviving a year is zero and even then uh the kind of year you will live through is cruel unconscionable hey by the way i want to thank the viewers that are supporting the show with the YouTube super chats. We really appreciate that. And Susan, you were going to throw their questions out as they come through. So can't hear you. Just found out I'm on where your mom's at, I'm trying to help Christina promote it. Okay. Susan is on where your mom's at with Christina P and that's what has preoccupied her as opposed to our important conversation, Kate. So we appreciate it. Hey, I produced this.

I know what you're talking about. Yeah, okay. Throw in the Alzheimer's thing, too. Remember that headline we saw yesterday? Yeah, there was a headline that said, COVID is killing Alzheimer's patients. Yeah, it's killing nursing home patients. Most nursing home patients have dementia.

Yeah, that's killing nursing home patients. Most nursing home patients have dementia. Yeah, that's saying the same thing. And again, their life expectancy, six months. Now, I've kept people alive a lot longer than that, and I can do that in sort of suspended animation. Personally, I don't know about you, Kate, but personally, I'm making it. Susan and I had a conversation about this at dinner last night.

Let me go. Call hosp night. Let me go. Call hospice. Let me go at home or the neighbor's house if you want, if you can't handle it. I do not want to go in a nursing home ever. What do you think? That's such an important conversation to have because when it comes down to it, if you ask people this question ahead of time, most people, the vast majority will say, I don't want to go in a nursing home. Or at the very

least, if you ask them about the intensive care unit issue, like if you are in a nursing home, should we transport you to an intensive care unit if you need it? They say, no way. I mean, when I was in Hawaii, there was this, I think, a very healthy fear of having a machine breathe for you. And this is true at every age. But the religion in Hawaii that I noticed, there was a correlation between whether they were Buddhist or not. And the folks who were Buddhist, they were so okay with death. They were dying and talking about it.

They were mature about it. They would say, I'm going to take care of Mama in my house because I'm not afraid of seeing somebody die. It's part of life. It's part of the cycle of life, right? I don't mind people dying, though. The Buddhists are so into the cycle, right? Watching Drew die would be sweet watching it'd be sweet it wasn't or being there for you know like these houses yeah but i don't want anybody to die in my house too bad that may be where i want to die oh well we better get that

in writing right because she going to send me out. Oh, my God. I may go before you. You see what I'm dealing with? It's harder to sell the house. Oh, please. Hospice is such a common thing now. Hospice happens everywhere. Now, listen, there's so many reasons why.

You have a daughter, right? Yeah. She'll take care of me? Oh, no. I don't know. Well, your mother was in her house until she pretty much died but you went she went to the hospital when it was time and she didn't you know that was that house in the house she passed in the house yeah that was not we're talking about nursing homes that she had an acute illness that went bad right that's different than

when you deteriorate to the point that you need people to turn you and wipe your ass and feed you i don't want that i don't want that yeah but how do you stop that you just stop feeding and stop food and liquids and you get hospice involved in the house wherever okay we can figure out a place i'm gonna go to Kate's house so do you have anything Susan there for us to dress for I got a call I'm trying to I'm trying to get on here I don't know okay let's go to some calls here these are kind of interesting called this is izzy uh izzy go ahead and ask question oh um for dr the dr drew hello hey buddy do i speak now i don't know yes yes speak now? I don't know. Yes, yes. Speak now, please.

Okay. I would like to ask, I had a condition where I'm 66 years old. I have COPD. And about six weeks ago, my left leg towards the ankle within 35 minutes swelled to three times the size of my right leg leg towards the ankle within 30 minutes, five minutes. Well, three times the size of my right leg at the right angle, it was almost elephant in proportion.

I had no pain. Do me a favor, do me a favor. I want you to do something for me. Touch your right leg and then your left leg. Is there a temperature difference? No, not now. right leg and then your left leg is there a temperature difference um no okay and i want you to stick your thumb i want you to stick your thumb firmly into your right shin your right shin and tell me if the thumb leaves a dent yeah no no no dent on the right side? No.

Okay. So Izzy, I'm going to put you on hold and Kate and I are going to talk about you. So Kate, obviously deep venous thrombosis is the big concern there. You know, cellulitis can also look like DVT, but, and by deep venous thrombosis, we mean a clot has formed in the large vein in the middle of the thigh and calf. And that can be very, very dangerous. You need an ultrasound of that leg because then it'll lead to pulmonary embolus. I will tell you, I'm going to keep talking just a second, but I will say that three times out of five when people tell me this, they actually have

swelling in both legs and one is just more than the other. And one of the things you can get with your COPD is pulmonary hypertension, and that is associated with leg swelling of both legs, but one can be more than the other. And if you have COPD, you can get heart disease and heart failure on top of that. And separate from pulmonary hypertension, that can cause leg swelling and all that should be evaluated. And I think in their comment, they were saying the doctor is telling them not to go to the hospital because of fear of covid do you agree with all that do you add any what do you want to add anything to that wow uh yes you did a great job of summarizing the the reason that the deep venous thrombosis could be really bad is that pieces of it can break off and travel to the lungs.

And then you get a clot in the lungs and that can cause a sudden pulmonary collapse. So, you know, the fact that it's been, if it is, let's say, you know, that's what it is and that's kind of the worst case scenario that i can think of um then the fact that it's been stable for um a month a week is is good news but still that's much more likely to uh be a problem than catching a coronavirus from going to the hospital with all the ppe and everything all the protocols that they're following more likely to get from a grocery store right so we don't we don't want to tell your you know we don't want to override your doctor but if you would call either of us us we would say hey go to the emergency room or at least get that ultrasound done

um and it's funny that that question when i was teaching medical students and in med i've taught in many different departments and when i would teach in medicine that the third years and sometimes the fourth years that's always the case i would give them a leg is swollen what do you do to me that's like medicine 101 uh okay that's izzy um and uh let me look at the thread here just a second uh uh uh oh thanks to uh randy holt for the super chat thank you so much my friend for that we appreciate it very very very much um is there anything else kate you you can think of from the standpoint of the sort of politically correct world that medicine is entangled with i i mean there are things that that we like i i've got some topics i want to bring up but but that that it just it's bizarre to me that things get labeled as biological

essentialism if you are talking about the practice of medicine and the presence of biology somehow that's essentialism well i think to the the point about like politically correct and should we worry about that i i think you know it's uh uh not a good road to go down because it's almost never been the case that in difficult times in history that the the you know the the people who have who need to be heard are saying what's popular you know it's always taken some bravery to say what needs to be heard and this goes for politicians and scientists and community organizers and certainly goes for doctors so you know i'm actually i'm proud to stand with you to be saying what i think needs to be said and we don't go to medical school for the like no well thankfully there was nothing like that thankfully there

was nothing like that when we went to medical school yeah uh yeah i i um was telling talking to someone the other day about my concern about uh people with who announce a sexual orientation of asexual without first getting a medical evaluation when somebody loses their libido at any age especially young that is a medical condition until proven otherwise. Then announce your sexual orientation. But somehow it's biological essentialism or shaming to even say that. Let me be clear. It's murder not to say that.

You're going to have people with serious medical illnesses that go undiagnosed until it's too late. So let's be clear about this. Stop it with the telling doctors how to practice medicine or what our opinions have to be. I think that what they're doing is they're trying to control language. And once you control language, that is the first and necessary step to a cultural takeover, a political takeover. So, you know, if that sounds extreme, you know, political takeover, it's a takeover of fascist type thinking, right? You have to agree with me. There's no room for thought.

There's no room for thought. There's no room for discussion. You have to agree with me, or I will bring whatever power I have to bear against you. And to be fair, if you look at Alex Berenson, the new burning of books is not allowing the books to be sold on Amazon. That's burning the books. So when you talk about the bonfire of the vanities, everybody, there don't have to be sold on Amazon. That's burning the books. So when you talk about the bonfire of the vanities, everybody, there don't have to be flames. It's the same thing. Kate can't get her book sold.

Alex Berenson couldn't get his book sold. Oh, by the way. That's insane. That's insane. Your book's back in stock, but it's not available until the 2nd of July. But it looks like you can buy it. You can get the Kindle. No, you can get the hardcover, too. It's coming back. We, we,

somebody called in to tell us Kate, maybe it was someone from Amazon. Cause they just called and hung up. No, you couldn't buy it. Like there was no buy button when I looked a couple hours ago. Yeah, there was a buy button when I looked. But think about it. You are part of the bonfire of the vanities. Think about it, Kate. I mean, that's really what this is. Yeah, you can buy it. Somebody just bought it.

Well, this is, you know, I did thank you, Drew. You actually did not come up with a better advertisement for the book. The idea that the information in the book is really important. If it's that important that people are willing to censor us to violate our basic civil liberties, then it must be some pretty important information in there. They also call it the Streisand effect. If something is, yeah, it's a little bit different. But people get intrigued when there's something that's being withheld from them.

Okay, well, we got to kind of wrap things up. Kate, as always, it's good to talk to you. We've gotten some different territory this time. Bottom line on Kate's book is it's how to stay healthy, how to lose weight, how to prevent metabolic syndrome, how to prevent the complications of COVID. I've been trying to stick by her recommendations since I first met you like four or five years ago.

I've only been sort of good about it since last maybe two or three years. But I stick with butter tallow and olive oil. And now we have avocado oil mayonnaise, Kate. You'll be happy to know. Oh, excellent. I love it. Excellent. Thanks so much for having me on again uh christine what the hell is there to censor about fat burning well the censorship is she she took off against

whole foods she didn't she didn't sign on to the universal uh church of whole foods isn't that about right yeah and i was saying that the product that they sell because most of the ready to eat stuff and salad dressings has got some one of the hateful eight oils in there that's really not worth the price you really have to look they don't protect you they're not looking out i mean you really have to look at the label of everything you buy in the market i since i saw this chart i've been doing it it takes a lot of a lot of investigation same thing with carbohydrates if you're going to try to go no starch no grain it's you got to pay attention but once you find the things that are good for you you just eat those just that easy so alright Kate

what else coming up for you anything else you want to talk about before we sign off well I'm just happy to be on your show again I think this is a really important topic that we're talking about because we're you know there's there's this is a crazy time

that we're living in. And I think that the wrong people are driving the conversation because they don't have their hearts in the right place. I think they are all about the life. And to be fair, to be fair, you and I are not talking about politics. I don't know what your political views are. I haven't expressed any of my political views or I'll tell you, there's just super moderate. That's why I don't know what your political views are I haven't expressed any of my political views or I'll tell you it's just super moderate that's why I don't express them

too much but we're just talking about the the cultural uh uh overtaking of the practice of medicine in the name of uh very spurious sorts of concerns by people who are not should not be in a position to do that is that about accurate yes it's like suddenly um diagnosis can be politically incorrect to tell them to give somebody what you think is an accurate diagnosis. Very much like that. I mean, imagine if, you know, there was a censorship happening as you are going to a doctor trying to find out what's wrong with you

and there's somebody else in the room saying, well, don't say this because that might be offensive to somebody else. And not saying it could have deadly consequences from our perspective absolutely all right kate thank you so much as always i always enjoy your stuff um uh the what was the first book again that i like so much the uh nutrition deep nutrition deep nutrition uh also thank you to stephanie lutz for supporting the show by the youtube super chat we appreciate it the fat burn fix is the new book according to my producer you can get it now at

amazon you can certainly get the kindle at amazon and you can also get the audiobook correct kate definitely okay go get it all right my dear we will talk to you soon no doubt keep fighting the good fight and we'll just keep talking about what we know to be true based on lots and lots of experience. Stephanie Lutz had a question. Our super chatter. Oh, did she? I'm going to let Kate go first.

See you, Kate. Okay. Love you, Kate. Bye. There she goes. Okay, what does Stephanie want to ask? Is someone with fatty liver from alcohol considered high risk? Yeah, for a couple reasons.

It takes a long time to get fatty liver disease. And fatty liver disease, whether it's due to alcohol or non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, is associated with some immune dysfunction. And particularly, the non-alcoholic fatty liver disease is associated with metabolic syndrome, which is the main risk factor for COVID. And alcoholics with fatty liver disease, their immune system is not functioning very well. So if you have fatty liver disease, particularly a female, Stephanie, if this is you, you have a very high probability of going on to cirrhosis. Women have about a seven times higher risk of cirrhosis than men. uh you gotta you gotta pay attention you gotta

pay attention to that it may be time to get some treatment for the alcoholism anything else susan any other questions in there no all right randy said we another great show thank you randy appreciate it appreciate all you guys on the chat i'm watching you um i paid him to say that thank you uh let me see if there's anything else from anybody else thank you maureen for the the shout out um fox 11 reports that covid virus grows that's just a joke uh what was it better for your mom there's a lot of jokes flying by right now so let me kind of uh should opioid users quit turkey cold turkey immediately

if physically dependent or will withdraws make the covet worse um yeah i suppose it could it doesn't that's not identified as a specific risk factor but people don't tend to get through opiate withdrawal on their own. So you're going to want to talk to them about either some kind of medication-assisted treatment and there's various options for that. You might want to mention our upcoming shows. We have Dr. Zelenko tomorrow. Dr. Zelenko, Andrew, you'll be happy to know we've got Dr. Zelenko in here finally.

I'm at 3 p.m. tomorrow, Tuesday. And then we have Tyrus coming back on Wednesday with John Schneider. Oh, that's fine. Of the Dukes of Hazzard. Great. And then Thursday is a wild card at this point. Thursday's got to be early. I've got stuff booked all through there if you look at the schedule.

So we'll have to do Thursday early in the day. We don't have to do it. And then I'll be here Friday, too. All right. So Friday we'll do something as well. Well, wait. No, I'm leaving Thursday. But I forgot what week it was.

Oh. It's okay. It's Fourth of July weekend. That's correct. Yay. All right. Let me just look one more time at your chat here. Are casino a big risk place to go?

Well, I mean, they're riskier than just staying home. I worry about the bars. People drink a little excessively and get in each other's face. But if you wear a mask and wash your hands and keep your distance,

everywhere is a pretty safe place to be. That's the reality. That distancing and masks work as well as quarantine. I repeat this all the time. That's the reality that distancing and masks work as well as quarantine. I repeat this all the time. There's no evidence that staying at home and sheltering in place is superior to wearing a mask and distancing and washing your hands. So there you go. I will leave it at that. We thank you all for being here. Thank you to the callers. Thank you for the super chats. We appreciate it very, very much. Thank you to Caleb. Thank you to Lindsay.

You've been sort of sitting quietly. And we will see you tomorrow at the same time, like about 3 o'clock. We'll see you then. Ask Dr. Drew is produced by Caleb Nation and Susan Pinsky. This is just a reminder that the discussions here are not a substitute for medical care or medical evaluation. This is purely for educational and entertainment purposes. I'm a licensed physician with over 35 years of experience, but this is not a replacement for your personal physician, nor is it medical care.

If you or someone you know is in immediate danger, don't call me, call 911. If you're feeling hopeless or suicidal, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 800-273-8255, anytime, 24-7, for free support and guidance. You can find more of my recommended organizations and helpful resources at drdrew.com slash help.