Ask Dr. Drew - COVID-19 & Kids: Pediatrician Dr. Jessica Hochman Shares The Facts – Ask Dr. Drew – Episode 60

Episode Date: December 17, 2021

Board-certified pediatrician and Conejo Valley native Jessica Hochman, MD, has a passion for pediatric medicine. Dr. Hochman is a fellow of the American Academy of Pediatrics and has been recognized as a 2019 and 2020 Southern California Rising Star by “Southern California Super Doctors Magazine” for her commitment to providing the highest-quality health care. Follow Dr. Jessica Hochman at https://instagram.com/askdrjessica  [This episode originally aired on November 26, 2021] 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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She is a board-certified pediatrician and a Conejo Valley native. She is a leader in pediatrics where she is a fellow at the American Academy of Pediatrics, been recognized as of 2019 and 20 as a Southern California Rising Star by the Super Doctor Magazine. And indeed, I know her through Christina P. I've noticed also on the restream, there was a lot of your mom's house language flying around with you guys, Flora Mae and Tom's. I see you there. But Christina B hangs out with Jessica and that's how we got to know each other amongst other things, which we can discuss. 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 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 want help stopping, I can help. I got a lot to say. I got a lot more to say. I want to give a shout out to our good friends at Blue Mics.

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Blue has you covered. From the USB series that plugs right into your computer to XLR professional mics like the mouse or the blueberry we use in the studio right now. Bottom line, there's a Blue microphone to fit your budget and need. I can't say enough about Blue mics. And once you try one, you will never go back. Trust me. To take your audio to the next level, go to drdrew.com slash blue. That is drdrew.com slash B-L-U-E. Anyone who's watched me over the years knows that I'm obsessed with Hydrolyte. In my opinion, the best oral rehydration product on the market. I literally use it every

day. My family uses it. When I had COVID, I'm telling you, Hydrolyte contributed to my recovery, kept me hydrated. Now, with things finally reopening back around the country, the potential exposure to the common cold is always around. And like always, Hydrolyte has got your back. Hydrolyte Plus Immunity, my new favorite, starts with their fast-absorbing electrolytes and adds a host of great ingredients. Plus, each single-serving, easy-p pour drink mix contains 1,000 milligrams of vitamin C, 300 milligrams of elderberry extract. Hydrolyte Plus Immunity comes in convenient, easy to pour sticks that rapidly dissolve in water, make a great tasting drink, has 75% less sugar than your typical sports drink,

uses all natural flavors, gluten-free, dairy-free, caffeine-free, non-GMO, and even vegan. Hydrolyte Plus Immunity is also now available in ready-to-drink bottles at the Walmart next to the pharmacy. 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.com slash D-R-D-R-E-W. Be sure to use the code drdrew25 for a special discount. Jessica, welcome to the program. Thank you so much. I'm really excited to be here. And this Dr. Hockman is from her office in the Valley. Your Instagram, do we have that up? There it is. It's AskDrJessica, which you said was named by Christina P., in fact. Yes, it was. Yes? Yes. So let's kind of get into this um i feel a little copycat thing

going on here though as far as what as far as what ask dr drew oh jessica well it's okay though that's what i was thinking about that lab no it's actually christina admired what you had done susan and she was paying homage to it. And I appreciate that. Yeah, that's all. Great minds. So Susan gets the credit. Yeah, Susan gets the credit for all of what we do. No, I think it was actually Caleb. Caleb thought of the name.

Okay, Caleb. Yeah. So again, what is it? I've always wondered that because I like Dr. Pinsky also. I like the ring of Dr. Pinsky also. I like the ring of Dr. Pinsky. The reason that happened is I was, all right, in 1983, 1984, I had an opportunity to go on this rock radio station in Los Angeles because I lived essentially across the street. And they were trying to create a community service show. And at the time, one Anthony Fauci was telling us we were deep in the AIDS epidemic then. And I was seeing most of my training was on AIDS patients. And he was out

there saying, you know, you young guy, you got to get out there and educate about how this thing's transmitted. No one's talking about it. And we have to tell the narrative and get, you know, get people hooked into the, uh, the changing their behavior. There was no, never a hint of authoritarianism, never a sort of judge judgment in what we were saying. It was all just, let's look at some cases and see what happens. And let's talk about a narrative and let's make some fun with this and let's have some music at the same time. And guess what? We changed people's behavior. Fauci was, uh, was on the leading edge of that. And I followed suit. And guess what? We changed people's behavior. Fauci was on the leading edge of that and I followed suit. And when I went up there the first few times, I didn't want

people to think of me as promoting myself. So I hid who I was for years. I just used my first name instead of my last name. So that's where that came from. Wow. Do you ever regret it? Do you ever wish you were called Dr. Pinsky? No, I don't regret it because I was able to create kind of a set. I was called Dr. Pinsky in my, you know, 14 hours a day, right? And that was plenty, trust me. And this gave me an opportunity to sort of create something other that had a different name to it even. So it was, it is, there is a weird piece to it though. I noticed when we started doing celebrity rehab, I noticed every single person we admitted did not use their real name. There's some interesting thing that people do when they get out in the media. They,

they, they, they shift to some version of themselves, but not themselves and the names shift with it. So kind of interesting interesting also it was like back in the day when there was dr ruth dr laura dr you know everybody was like yeah phil like well that was later i gotta say i wasn't even thinking that way i just sounded better i just thought this kind of works i i don't want anybody to know i'm doing this i i feel like i need to do it as a community service so i'll just i'll just we'll just call call it this. It was really an impulsive thing. It was not like I thought it out for days. It was like that first night I thought, oh shit, what are they going to call me?

Okay. Just call me this. You know, that was it. I'm just thinking about how tired, how tired I must've been. You must've been to work 14 hour days by one name and then work in radio and media after that. That sounds like a long day. That was when it was two hours on Sunday nights only. So for 10 years, it was just on Sunday

nights. And so if I was on call or something, I wouldn't go in. And it was Sunday nights. And when it went to five nights a week, that forced me to shorten my days to like 10, 12 hours, that kind of thing. And yeah, I know. And then it also, well, hold on the week, the week they, the week they decided to put it on five nights a week was the week that Susan got pregnant with triplets. They offer me this five night a week thing. And she goes, that's not community service anymore. You have to get paid if you're late. Cause I wasn't being paid. You have 50 bucks a show, $ because I wasn't being paid. $50 a show. For $50 a show, hat in hand, I asked for $50

a show. And that's what I was paid at the beginning there. And that was 1992. So I started managing him at that point and said, if you don't bring a paycheck home, forget about it. Yeah, get out of there. If they won't pay you, you've got to be home doing diapers.

The woman behind the man. Yeah, oh yeah, yeah, trust me. Show me the money, honey. Yeah, she's been there. If they won't pay you, you got to be home doing diapers. And that was my crash. Yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah. Trust me. Yeah. She's been there, but, but that was my crash course in pediatrics. I thought I had some understanding of pediatrics until I had triplets. What I realized it really is a very different discipline. And let me, and let me start out with something that I found frustrating. And you tell me out with something that I found frustrating. And you tell me if it was just the pediatricians I was dealing with, or if there's something about how pediatricians are trained. But in internal medicine, everything has at least a provisional construct to it, a name, a diagnosis. The theory is you can't render a treatment because treatments

are studied in the context of a specific diagnosis. So no diagnosis, no treatment. Now it can be provisional, right? You can adjust your diagnostic construct with time, but you have to have some sort of diagnostic construct. I could not get my pediatricians to tell me what was going on with my kids. I would just go, what do you, a fever for four days has a name when you're an internist. There's a name for that. What's the name for this thing? And then my kids ended up with some very bizarre stuff that, Susan, in retrospect. Well, the one thing was, you know how they measure their heads when they're babies or infants and they go, you're in the 75 and they go you're in the 75 percentile you're in the 100 percentile you're in the you know 60 douglas was in the 100 percentile and we're like oh he has a big head and then like 12 months in he got an he had an arachnoid cyst

growing in his brain stem on his left cerebellum and you know it's like well you got triplets and two are in the 75 percentile why didn't you look at the one with the 100 percentile? Like they're all pretty much should be about the same. That was the one thing I was like, well, that kind of goes to look. Well, that kind of goes. Why are you measuring them in the first place? To me, it all kind of went in the same category, which kid looks fine. Kid looks fine.

And they told me it was willful because he would he would like cry when he ate because he couldn't swallow because it was, you know, something to do with his swallowing reflex. And he was really grumpy. This is your personal. Well, I, that was the first real main like thing that, and you know, there were pediatric, I didn't think to go to a neurologist. That wasn't like my next move because his head was bigger than the other two. Right.

No one would have sent you. That's the fact. It's true. There's certain basic things. Oh, there's certain basic things we do at every well child check where we check weight and growth and head circumference. And they seem like really, you know, simple things to do, but they really matter. So I think a good pediatrician will, you know, we'll follow it and track it. And most of the time kids do grow and they do great, but it's for those moments where there is something wrong, you definitely want to be on top of it.

A hundred percentile. I wasn't mad at the guy, but I didn't know what that meant. You know, I didn't go. And so what, what about, especially if there's a change,

if there's a change in percentiles, he didn't change. He started high and stayed high. He started high, stayed high. That's the reality. Yeah. And so there's no way, it's asking too much for that to have been referred as far as I'm concerned. I didn't hold that on anyone. But there were many, yeah, there were many other situations where I was like, this should have a name, at least so I understand what we're dealing with.

Can I ask her a question? When I'm done, I got to make this one point. I insist on it. How many kids have a hundred percentile heads? I'm just. One out of a hundred. You know, out of, that's what the growth percentiles are that out of, out of a hundred, you know, one kid will be at the hundredth percentile.

One will be at the 75th. One will be at the one percentile. But what really matters, what, what I, what I find interesting is one family history, because large heads tend to run in families, and then the change in percentile. So I always, you know, perks my ears if a kid was 50th and then the next visit they're 75th. That's unusual. So rapid change in growth. But as far as the naming of the fevers, I agree with you. That didn't happen good. But is there something about the training? Because what I would always get back is, kid looks fine.

Kid looks fine. Kid looks fine. And if the kid looks fine, it's like, you guys stop thinking. It's like, I go, no, no, no. I don't want you to stop thinking a kid looks fine. I want to know what this is is even just to satisfy my own curiosity and and one of the times we had three kids going all at once one of the time it was pneumonia one of the time it was murine typhus and you know i mean it was like we could keep thinking please

yeah one of the times it was sepsis yeah oh my. Oh, my God. Wow. We had like a full. Douglas again. Oh, yeah. We had all kinds of crazy stuff. Oh, Douglas. Wow. And then we had the fenestrated arachnoid cyst. And we get traumatized. We have PTSD symptoms when we talk about our early childhood stuff, both of us.

That's why we're yelling at each other right now. Yeah, wondering if your kids are going to come out normal after brain surgery is pretty frightening, I've got to say. That sounds awful. And post-surgery, he had something, I thought I knew something about neurosurgery too. He had something I'd never seen before or heard of, posterior fossa syndrome. You ever heard of that? I have. I hadn't. I hadn't. And that was nasty.

Thank God for Decadron. That was terrible. That was nasty and awful. Yeah, it was scary. I like Decadron. You do? Good steroids? Yeah, I do. I had it a couple weeks ago. She's high on it right now, as a matter of fact. I had it a couple weeks ago when I had my stem cell infusion. Everybody goes, yeah, you and your stupid stem cells. But it did make me really agitated. And Douglas had to take it to shrink his brain, which I, you know, I'm not a doctor,

so this is all new to me, but I was really glad that it worked. So am I right that the training is a little bit of a gestalt on does the child look bad or not? And that's when you really start thinking is when, yeah. That's right. I mean, I think a lot of it is when to worry.

So a lot of kids get fevers, and the truth is it's usually from a virus, is most of the time, and there's hundreds and hundreds of viruses. So I think the big picture is we have to let parents know and give them instruction when to worry. So if they have a fever, but they're still eating well and acting well, less cause for concern. But now I'll tell you, we have better ability to check what we call viral panels. So I can actually swab in a child's nose and check for the 27 most common viruses. So sometimes we can't actually get more of an answer. The problem there is sometimes insurance doesn't cover it. And then I feel really bad if a parent gets a large bill when the truth is it

doesn't often change management doesn't usually change the advice i give um well which is what yeah which is what's interesting to me so so this to to your point invariably it really didn't make a difference it really didn't in the reality of how the how things unfolded for each child's particular situation except the one the arachnoid cyst which was essentially a moon rock you know an asteroid hitting in our backyard that was just weird um i've never seen the other ones i i bet uh and and believe me when we it's a long story but even when we were we were looking at the cat scan they called me back there and they went we think it's's an artifact. I go, artifacts don't move the fourth ventricle. Come on.

They didn't want to acknowledge what was going on. It was very strange. The reality is the kids did do fine. They were right that it was going to turn out fine, but personally, because of my training, I just need to know. That's just sort of how my training goes. So I'd be one of those parents. And this is an interesting point that we should be asking parents. Do you want to know? Do you want to maybe spend $800 to know even the insurance?

I would say yes, I would do it. Personally, I would do it. And maybe if I were, Susan, would you do it? Would you want to know what you were dealing with a good deal of uh certainty or would you be like okay they tell me the kid looks fine because you come from a family where you'll die of something else i like certainty but i the problem is i live with two doctors so like your dad would come in and go oh he's got typhus like and i'd be like oh why didn't the pediatrician you know right but i think i don't

know he was also a really good older doctor like i don't know well he he was i don't know he was the one that shit on my pediatrician i like them no they did a great job it's just it's just it's a curiosity i've always wanted to ask a pediatrician about that's why i wanted the neurologist i actually seem to i get into this with my husband a lot because he's an internist and he teases that pediatricians have such this you know blasé attitude and as an internist they really think about the differential or all the possibilities yes through yes so i hear that yes okay well good it's not just it's not just me because literally it would be like anathema for an internist to go. You look fine. I'll see you in two weeks or three weeks. It's just like,

no, we, we, we were, we will be wrong before we'll say whatever it, because we, you know, part of our training was just destroying each other around those issues, right? You stand at the bedside and go, what is this? What is it? Why defend it? Give me some literature. Tell me again, refine it tomorrow. And that's the training. And I remember in my pediatric rotations, it wasn't quite so much. And in fact, God, this is so interesting. I hadn't thought of this in years and years and years. One of the pediatric residents went, oh, I don't know how those internists remember all those differentials. And I thought, there aren't that many. And pediatricians are in a weird way kind of dealing with more because you're dealing with completely different differentials at different stages of development.

Right. You know, when you're dealing with infants versus babies versus children versus adults. These are like entirely different systems you're operating with. That's the part I found challenging about pediatrics. But they don't get as sick and as often as adults. Oh, sorry. Which is why. No, I think adults are a lot more cavalier about it that's true yeah well especially older adults older adults shit goes down i mean just shit goes down i can't imagine though being a pediatrician during this covid experience all right so that's what i want to get into i mean

that i just add a little oil onto the flame for you okay so that's what i want to get into. I mean, I just add a little oil onto the flame for you. Okay. So that's what I want to get into, which is how has the, first of all, how has this been for you? COVID? It's been, it's been okay. It's been interesting. I think I've gone through waves in the very beginning. It was really difficult in all honesty, because I have three little kids. They're in elementary school and their schools were closed. They're in LAUSD. And to layer on top of that, I work with my father who's 70. And so in the very beginning, you know, a lot of, there's a lot of concern, should he be working still? And he was working. And so I felt a little bit of guilt to be, you know, carrying the burden of, I was trying to see more of the sicker patients in our office um but he you

know he didn't complain he was happy to be here but it was more of my own personal guilt trying to figure out how scary covet you know was how to protect ourselves from getting it and then managing uh my kids at home but but overall i think it's been a good experience in some ways i've learned a lot um it makes me it reaffirms how much I like what I do just the role of you know being there for families and growing relationships with my patients um and and and being here when I'm needed so you know I wouldn't uh and so I wouldn't go looking back I wouldn't change my profession oh yeah I understand that. The extent to which you witnessed COVID, what were the cases like? What kind of gestalt, what kind of impression did you come away with about COVID in pediatric

populations? That's a great question. Honestly, in the very beginning, I was really nervous to see my first positive COVID cases. And as time went on, I kept seeing more and more COVID cases. I was really pleasantly surprised at how well kids were doing. I think of all the kids I've seen, really, I've been lucky, they've all done well. I haven't had to hospitalize any patients who have had COVID.

You know, I'll see kids, I had a six week old that had a fever for a couple of days. I think some of the teenagers tend to get more of the flu-like symptoms. But overall, kids have done very well. I haven't seen any cases of MIS-C. I haven't had to hospitalize any patients. To be honest, the hardest part is that there's so much anxiety around COVID. I've had a number of parents hyperventilate on the phone when I give them the news that their child has COVID. Dealing with the quarantine procedures, I think, has been really stressful on

families figuring how to stay home from school and parents work situations. But I really do think the blessing of COVID, if there is a blessing, has really just been how well kids have been doing. Right. And so if you were to describe the average child COVID case, do they even seem sick? Do they just have a little cough or a throat? What's the sort of average presentation? In my experience as an outpatient pediatrician, so this is I work as the front line, not kids that have been in the hospital, so that pediatrician may have a different perspective, but for myself, most cases were picked up asymptomatically. So the child had no symptoms and they were picked up from screens, going to school screens, playing in sports. And then I get the phone call from the families about

their positive case. So most kids I've seen have had no symptoms. And then I would say after that, more like cold-like symptoms, stuffy nose for a couple of days, maybe fever, but overall mild or asymptomatic. Nothing. And so did they, on average, did they transmit to other family members? Do you have that sort of data in your head? So this is a great question. Yeah, so very often, you know, parents brace themselves, they separate the children, they're expecting there to be, you know, cases spread within the family. Most of the time when there's a case that that I found a child where they were symptomatic, they generally get it from an adult, they generally got it from a parent or from another adult. A lot of times I did not see sibling to sibling spread,

but sometimes I did. But again, most of those cases were asymptomatic. Now, as I say this, I do recognize that there are sick kids out there that have had COVID and have been sick. But in my experience, luckily, they've been very mild. yeah well but i mean you look the obviously the people in the hospital are seeing the funnel of kids that aren't doing well you're seeing the broad landscape and if you were a hospitalist in a pediatric unit you would have a skewed view of pediatric covet it wouldn't look like the average covet case it would look like the average complicated covet case which is unusual or rare. And, you know, there's data that only 15% of spouses will contract COVID from their spouse. That it's a relatively small number. There's usually some household transmission,

but it's unusual for the whole household to get it. It usually goes like in my house, I was sick. I brought it in. We, there were, it was Christmas Eve. There were 10 people here. I gave it to one of my sons. That was it. That was it. That was the transmission. And Susan, Susan slept next to me the entire night. I thought I was, um, sick from the, the scotch that Adam Carolla was laying down my throat. Yeah. And, and in the morning she kisses my forehead and goes, Oh, and she jumped out of bed and ran. I never didn't see her again for two weeks. I never touched him. I don't know why I touched him. It was, it was, I was having a dream that I was singing the 12 days of COVID. We made up this song and it, I was singing it at

my sleep and it was, I thought it was a gift from God telling me that my husband had COVID. So I don't know. I woke up, fell his head and I didn't see him for 10 days. Yeah. And yeah, yeah. I did. I think it was my mom singing it to me.

Oh my God. That has become an elaborate. This is all right. She's going to think memory is a repeatedly reconstructed phenomenon. And trust me, the version of the memory as it exists today is never near the one that happened uh let's say immediately following events we're discussing but anyway i i have i have hyperthymesia a little bit which is sort of i have ridiculous autobiographical memory so and one of our sons has even more so that. I know. And so, so for he and I, when we see everybody else's memories, we're like, okay.

I did. I had the dream, the 12 days of COVID, the same night. For us, we just, we play the tape back. We literally can play a tape back. You don't remember that? You had that around that time. No, I had it on Christmas Eve. Yes.

There was, that was flying around a couple of times, but that particular night I was fitful all night. Cause I thought I was having something. Yeah. You were probably waking me up. Yeah. And, and you woke up and I said, I wasn't feeling so great. Didn't you say I was singing it in my sleep? Not that night. Oh, not that night. Wow. That's how, that's how memory works. But anyway works but anyway so so anyway it's all good i don't believe you uh you you can pretty much you had covet now just give me a break okay so um so let's go go back to the uh what what does this dx mean that everyone's putting up here on our i don't know what that means guys on YouTube. There's a whole stream

of people on the restream. Yeah, that's what I would think, but it isn't a response to anything that I can see. Let me see. Hold on. Let me see where it starts. Yeah, I don't know what that was all about. Anyway, so yeah, we have been talking about diagnoses. That's our sort of thing. And Jessica's husband's an oncologist. And so he thinks in terms of diagnostic spectra. Those are the guys that have to think about in extraordinary detail, extraordinary detail when they think about what they're dealing with. I mean, as oncologists progress, you know, we're now down to what's your genetic, you know, what's your code? And then how do you address that person's code? So it's

getting wilder and wilder in his field um he's well he's actually an internist he but i thought he was an oncologist is he not an oncologist no he he likes oncology but he's an internist oh that's well good he's one of the he's the guy like me who just does general medicine, which is rare these days. So it's true. So back to the kids and COVID. So kids and COVID, they don't transmit that much. They're often asymptomatic. They're contracting it from adults and they have natural immunity subsequently.

Have you been looking at the natural immunity data in kids? How does that look? Yeah, it actually looks, I mean, I think what's tricky with kids is it's clear that natural immunity works, but I think where the nuance is, is that it's unclear if the asymptomatic cases, if those kids make a lot of natural immunity, but it's very clear that there is a benefit to, you know, I would never wish a kid to get COVID, but there is a real benefit in terms of natural immunity. Reinfection rates are very low. In fact, the study that the trial for Pfizer, where they looked at children to get approval for

emergency use authorization approval for the age five to 11, 20% of the kids in both the placebo and the vaccine group had evidence of prior infection of COVID and none of those kids got reinfected yeah not in either group so so you know so this is the category of go ahead and it also looks that you know it's possible to get reinfected but most kids by far when they do get reinfected, it's not symptomatic illness. So they may get a positive screen in their nose or test positive, but they're not actually showing symptoms. So for what you're describing, which is this natural immunity plus vaccine

is something we're characterizing now as hybrid immunity. And there's a lot of people who are starting to talk quietly, somewhat in public, but sort of quietly, about the possibility of hybrid immunity being the future for all of us, you know, sort of ideally, really, in that the hybrid immunity, in a sense, one of the models would be, well, you get the vaccine. Then soon after that, you get the infection. So you have a mild infection. And now you have spike protein and natural immunity. So you have broad immunity and high immunity on the spike protein, which is, that's what I did. I had natural immunity and then I took the vaccine also.

And I think I might have been re-exposed. I've got a big antibody profile I do that I'm part of a research protocol and everything went up for me since three months ago. Like my neutralizing antibodies went up. I thought, the only way that happens is if I'm reinfected. So I may have been exposed, which is interesting. And it's another interesting model

for how natural immunity works. But the question though becomes, is hybrid immunity something that's being talked about in pediatric circles? Have you heard people talk about that? I haven't. I did read that study from Israel where they, I think it was, it's still in preprint, but they had one group that got the vaccine, one group that got the vaccine and natural immunity, and then the other group that just got natural immunity. And it was clear that the group that had the illness and one dose of the mRNA vaccine had the best immunity of all. So I do think there's something to say for hybrid, I never heard that term, but hybrid

immunity. Yeah. Yeah. It's called hybrid immunity. I talked to an infectious disease guy academic up in san francisco and he was sort of he raised the issue is like why are we wearing masks after being vaccinated we kind of maybe we should be he wasn't ready to say it yet but he's saying when one model would be we encourage people to get infected in the first six months after they get the vaccine so

what what's with the masks and speaking of man masks, what is with the masks? Well, when they say endemic, hang on a second, I'll talk about the masks in a second, but when they say endemic, that's what they're talking about. They're talking about a pool of virus that repeatedly reinfects everybody. That's what endemic means. And so they're kind of under their breath saying the same thing. So masks, how do you perceive the mask wearing in kids and its efficacy and its potential adverse effects on kids? So masks are a great question. They've become a very divided issue. So I'll just tell you how I feel about it. I think there's definitely a role for masks, I think, especially when transmission rates are high, especially when, you know, I think when kids are in indoors, closed settings, I think there's a role for masks.

But the data actually looks, you know, it's interesting because I always like to back up the advice with good data. And it's really unclear i mean i think i would love for america to compare ourselves to what other countries are doing that don't have such strict masking protocols so for example in the uk they don't uh they don't recommend masking or they don't enforce masking under 12 years old so i'm very curious you know what how are how our rates compare to their rates um so i don't really mind masking so much indoors my my concern is that there's no doesn't seem that there's an end in sight you know no one's explaining at what point will the mask come off i would love to hear you know public officials say for example well you know when we get down to 10 cases per every hundred thousand we can safely

remove the mass or my other issue is that outdoors, that, you know, in schools, they're encouraging masking outdoors at my child's elementary school. Yeah, and I, there's no data to back that up. No, no, there is a ton of data to back up the, the opposition, opposite opinion, which is there's no outdoor transmission. There's just no, I mean, it's extremely unusual. Right. So I would love to hear where the end is. And the data on masks that we do have,

Walensky, the head of the CDC just the other day, said that it's 80% effective. I don't know where she got that data. The only data I've seen is out of Bangladesh and Denmark, which puts it around 15, 20 at best. It's not zero. I get it's not zero, but it's not, it's not even 50%. And people treat it as though not wearing it is being a murderer. You know, it's like, it's not the way it works. And, and, and I was talking to a group of teachers. I gave a lecture to a group of teachers and that we were talking about the mental health issues that have

come out of COVID, which are profound. And the data is terrible. Yeah, and they asked a simple question, what do we do? I said, well, you know, what normally I do is, first of all, I get down to the kids level, look them in the eye, reflect on your face exactly what you feel they're feeling. This reflective function reaches the midbrain in a way that words don't.

And I was explaining all this stuff and they went, but the mask. And I thought, oh this stuff and they went, but the mask. And I thought, oh, you can't even help these kids. You can't even do what you need to do to help reduce the stress, improve emotional regulation. It's so disturbing to me. Yeah. There's a lot to it. I think people are really attached to the idea

that masking will absolutely prevent COVID transmission. And I just don't think that's the reality. I think kids wear them imperfectly. You know, I'll see kids, I don't know if they're dirty, they're touching them. And actually the Bangladesh study, I don't believe showed a benefit in children. I think it was more, you know, the 50 year olds and older that's right um that's right but i think that's true yep yeah i mean i you know i do think and most kids are very resilient so i do think that most kids that wear masks are doing very well and they're compliant and they don't complain but i see with my my kids friends some of them wear glasses they get foggy they're irritating um you know a lot of kids that have, they're learning to read like my daughter's in kindergarten, it's

I think it's really stressful on the teacher to teach how to how to blend and how to pronounce. You know, and I think I think ultimately, it'd be nice to have an endpoint to see the mask come off at some point, especially as rates come down. And honestly, and especially as kids do so well from covid, I think there's this in my mind, there's a big exaggeration, there's an exaggerated response to cases for kids. So, you know, my question always is, OK, there is a case in the class. But what happened with that case?

Did it lead to any hospitalization? Did it lead to a child really getting sick? Because most of the time, by far and away, the answer is they did not get really sick. It just resulted in, you know, a case, the kid went home, which to me is not a public health emergency in any way. Yeah. Right. Right. Of course. Even in my age group, I'm right. Even in my age group, the risk is 1%, 5% at worst, even if I have moderate to severe. And I've always said that when I had my prostate cancer treated, they told me you have a 90% probability of cure.

And I thought, well, that's cure. That's it. That's when doctors talk like that. 90% is, that's it. Now, when we say 99%, we're saying, don't even think about it. Cause when I got COVID, one of the strangest questions I got was, were you afraid? You had COVID too, right? Jessica?

I did. I did. We had it around the same time, actually. Yeah. Were you afraid? Were you afraid? I was like, was I afraid? Did you get people asking you, were you scared?

Were you afraid? Yeah. A lot of people are still shocked when I tell them I had COVID. And honestly, I was never truly worried for myself, just knowing the risk factors and my age group. I was more worried that I passed it to a patient, which thankfully I didn't. Of course. Of course. Of course. I mean, were you scared? It's like 99% good outcome. How could I be scared? I wanted to stay out of the hospital. I didn't want to take a hospital bed. I wanted to get better as fast as I could.

I took monoclonal antibodies. I tried to preach about that back when people didn't seem to know about it. Are they giving monoclonal antibodies to kids? That was when it was political. If they get sick? No, not for kids. Not that I know of. I don't think it's approved under 18. I haven't read i know but i don't think it's under 18. yeah i

haven't i haven't read that i don't i don't believe so not under 18. but i do think there's an issue i think i've noticed the big divide is that is is the personal tolerance to risk you know like you're saying 90 to you is cure but there's a lot of people that you know they it's it's really hard to hear of any kid having about outcome and so i think you know and then, it's, it's really hard to hear of any kid having a bad outcome. And so I think, you know, and then we have these really, um, I don't, I don't know if the word draconian is too strong, but very strong measures at the, you know, just to prevent any problem. And I think, I think there's a place where it's gone too far with children. That place is, yes, we're in that place. And then that, of course, dovetails into vaccine therapies.

Vaccine, one thing, I'm glad to see vaccines for every age group, but mandated vaccine, then I'm a little, hmm. Now, there are plenty of mandated vaccines out there. How do you think about the mandated vaccines as compared to these vaccines? No, it's a really good question. I am very, as you said, I'm very for the vaccine. I'm excited to offer it to families. I've had a number of, you know, we're offering in our office. I've been giving them myself and it's actually been exciting for a lot of families. There's an, you know, there's a, there's a sense of joy in the air, especially parents where their kids have, you know, higher risk conditions. They've been waiting for it, and I'm thrilled to offer it.

However, I do think there's a big jump to go from encouraging, educating, providing to mandating. I find that when I talk to parents with an more, with an open mind, hearing them, listening to their concerns and questions, to me that seems like a much better way to approach it. And I also think in the end, it builds more trust, more confidence. But yeah, I worry that in psychology, there's a phenomenon called control then resist. And I worry that not for everybody, but for a lot of people when they feel controlled,

their response is to dig their heels and more. And I see that happening with some of my patients. They're really unhappy that they feel like the choice is taken from them. So on one hand, I understand the idea behind a mandate. I think people are so tired of COVID and they view this as a way just to end it once and for all, to stamp out the virus. But I look at it like it's not a perfect vaccine. We're still going to get breakthrough cases. We don't know how long the immunity is going to last for, even though we know it is effective at preventing symptomatic illness. But I think the benefit to making it a mandate, I don't see it. And to be honest, especially where I worry is with children,

to take away school from them, I think is a really big deal. Yeah, no kidding. I also think that this is a vaccine that has side effects. It just is. And if you consciously make that decision to vaccinate your kid and have an unfortunate side effect, that's different than the government forcing you to do something to a healthy kid and the healthy kids get sick. That's where vaccines get destroyed. That's where vaccine hesitancy goes crazy. And so I am so fearful that what's going to happen is you're going to get three or four bad myocarditis cases and that's it. The whole world will explode because they were mandated to get sick. And I really worry about that. I think that's pretty crazy. It takes out the feeling that questioning and improving can happen. So for example, there's really good data that for many kids, that one dose may be sufficient.

In Israel, they showed 100% effectiveness in kids in the 12 and up age range, I think 12 to 15-year-old age range with just one shot. Or what about teenage boys? Because we know that the myocarditis risk really happens with the second dose in the teenage boys. What if for those children, you know, maybe the Johnson and Johnson's a better vaccine for them or maybe. Or we wait three months or something in between vaccines or something,

you know, who knows? We don't know. It's not been studied. Right. Yeah. There's good data that waiting in the UK that waiting three months may provoke a higher antibody response, it's true. So I worry that mandates remove the ability or encouraging discussion and nuance.

Well, let's take a little break. We're here with Jessica Hochman, you can, what's that? And what? A couple other things. Kids that have had COVID in the past, maybe one vaccine would be sufficient. For sure. For sure. For sure. And we're not seeing the myocarditis with J&J, right? No, there's that one in a million clotting risk with women in particular, but not myocarditis. And me, I woke up after my Johnson & Johnson vaccine with raccoon eye.

And that's the presenting manifestation of a transverse sinus thrombosis. So I'd look in the mirror like, no, come on. But it turned out nothing. Oh, do you really? That's too funny, show me. We tried to find a better one, that oh do you really that's too funny show me we tried to find a better one but this is the one yeah you can't really see it anymore we took that a better one shot off your show yeah look at his look you've had everything right eye like it was on the outside

it was like kind of blue and it kind of popped his eyeball it looks like i know it's pretty funny yeah but it was it was i thought wow, is this really what's going to happen? I had to put makeup on it. Yeah. So, so let's take a little break. We're talking to Jessica Hockman. You can follow her at. Is it Hockman or Hotchman?

Hockman. And you can follow her at Instagram.com slash ask. See, I was wrong. Ask DR Jessica. And we'll take a little break. Be right back with more. And we might get some of your questions over on Clubhouse. We'll check that out as well. I see some of you sitting over there. We might get a couple of questions in. And we'll be right back after this.

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. And let me tell you, after more than 30 years in broadcasting, I don't think I have ever sounded better. But you don't need to be a pro or have a fancy studio to benefit from a quality mic. You may not realize it, but if you've been working from home or using Zoom to chat with friends, you probably spend a lot of time in front of a microphone.

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hawkman pediatrician let's bring jessica back up a lot of strange stuff on restream today so those of you who are our frequent flyers there we apologize but it's kind of entertaining to have a new group in there uh whatever they're doing i i somebody named uh ganval has to contact caleb he already gave me his information but okay now it's fine if you guys want to be dicks and do this he's gonna clip that one part where you just said his name and he's gonna it's gonna be on his account in two minutes surely so this is good i made somebody do. He should enjoy. I made somebody happy.

That's good. Maybe somebody would want to learn more about their children. I'm interested in people that have YouTube armies. They should be on our side. But I love batting trolls, so don't piss me off. All right. Well, there you go. I hope I'm pronouncing his name right.

My favorite thing. Yeah. I hope I'm calling his name properly. And people want to pitch him for the show. So please give me the pitches right here. So Jessica, before the break, we were talking about some of the side effects of vaccine therapy and our enthusiasm for vaccines, but our concerns about mandates and much like you, my concern is that the physician-patient interaction has been ceded to authorities, and that's never good. It's a nuanced process. As you said, we should always have humility as we make our decisions and adjust course constantly and be able to recalibrate our risk rewards as we move forward on behalf of patients. Authorities cannot do that.

They don't know how to do that. They're not in a position cannot do that. They don't know how to do that. They're not positioned to do that. They can't adjust course ever. And it's disrupting the practice of medicine in a way that I never imagined would happen ever. It's just unreal. But here we are. I feel that, I don't know how your husband feels,

but I feel like general medicine and primary care has been affected more than anything. Does he agree with that? He does agree with that, definitely. I mean, I think I have some friends that are physicians that are happy with the mandate, some that I really respect. You know, they think it just takes the decision away where maybe there shouldn't be a decision. You know, instead of having families deliberate over it, just make the decision easier for them. But to me, I just worry that there's potential negative outcomes from making a mandate, some unintended consequences. Right. So let's talk about that. So myocarditis in adolescent

males is somewhere around one per four to one per 6,000, maybe let's say one per 5,500, just to round it all out. That's going to be a large number of kids. Now, in terms of the individual risk, it's much like my 99% thing I was talking about a little while ago. It's not going to happen to you. 99% probability, not going to happen to you. But when you vaccinate millions of kids, when you vaccinate millions of kids, you're going to see hundreds,

maybe thousands of cases. And some of those, when you get up into the thousands of cases are not going to be fun. They're going to be bad as people are. When you have an inflamed heart, you can get sudden cardiac death. That's what happens. And so you'll say,

go ahead. Well, I will say that most of these cases, you know, there's the one, some studies have shown one in 5,000 rates of myocarditis with the second vaccine for teenage boys. Some have shown, you know, one in 20,000. I do think it's an important point to know that they do recover by and large of these cases. Kids do, you know, seem to recover, but you're right. We don't know long-term what this means. And also, I wouldn't want that to be my child, to have an infection of the heart, I think is a,

you know, if we can mitigate or lessen that risk, I think it's important to think about how to do so. So let's put even a brighter light on the myocarditis that we have seen thus far, it all appears mild, It all appears reversible. Although we don't know the long-term consequence, there could be myocardopathy, cardiomyopathy down the road. We don't know, but we think not. But that's on the small scale of delivery we're using now. When you start the large-scale delivery of vaccine to adolescents, like huge scale, there's going to be mild and there's going to be severe. That's the way medicine works. And I figure if we see three severe cases of myocarditis that are publicized in a healthy kid, people are going to go crazy if there's a mandate.

If there's not a mandate, it's just an unfortunate outcome. Yeah. But go ahead. Right. No, I agree. Trust. I worry about trust. You want to make sure that the public trust the recommendations, especially when we go as far as making a mandate, because in the future, if we were to make a mandate again, we would get a lot more pushback. especially with children where the risk-benefit ratio isn't that clear. So, for example, if children 5 to 11, if the hospitalization rate is one per every 250,000 kids, but then the hospitalization rate for myocarditis is somewhere around there, I think to make something a mandate, you really want to be clear that the benefit to risk is obvious, not wishy-washy. Right. And why do you figure they're not, it looks like they're not thinking that way, and I don't understand that. I worry that politics, I try to think with science and data, and I do feel like politics is playing too large a role, or it seems to be. I also think people are really fearful. I think we haven't done a good job delivering the message to

parents that children really are at low risk. I mean, when I tell parents that good data shows that a vaccinated adult is still at higher risk of COVID complications than an unvaccinated child, they're all very surprised. You know, because I'll talk to a lot of parents. I'm imagining, let's talk, let's talk about that for a second. I'm imagining that is true by a couple orders of magnitude. Yes. And in England, they showed that people that are in their 30s and 40s and vaccinated have harder outcomes from COVID than unvaccinated kids under 18. By a factor of what, though? It's not 10. I bet it's 100 times. Yeah, I don't know.

I mean, it's just because kids do so well. Yes, because kids almost always do well. That's right. Right. Almost always. That's right. It's.001 versus.01 risks, and there it is. Right.

And again, there's this... Go ahead. And I do think, I mean, I think that people are better at self, at risk assessing their own life better than we give people credit for. So for example, when I talk to families where their kids have health conditions, they know that their kids are at higher risk and they can't wait to get the vaccine. And then I'll talk to families that will say to me,

I don't know if I should be in a rush because my kids already had COVID. And I think those are valid questions. So I... Yeah, yeah. And that's the risk reward analysis And I think those are valid questions. Yeah, and that's the risk-reward analysis that you would do with your patients. That's right. And that has always been the practice of medicine. How do you help people understand the difference between these vaccines and other mandated vaccines like measles? Okay. So first I would say that, you know, when a child gets the measles vaccine, it dead ends measles. You know, we don't see measles mutates very slowly

and a child really will not get measles again. For the COVID vaccine or for COVID, I relate it more to a virus like the flu where we don't know how long the benefit's going to last for. So it's hard for me to, you know, how do we know we're not going to need a booster in six months for children or that we'll see mutations yearly? And I think for a mandate, it would make more sense, number one, if it was a perfect vaccine, so we didn't see breakthrough cases, which we will and we do. We did see some in the Pfizer trial. And on the other side, I think it would make sense if kids had really poor outcomes from COVID.

So because we don't see really, you know, of course there have been kids that have died. There's kids that have been hospitalized, but because the relative rates are, are looking so good, it's hard to, um, it's hard to feel good about forcing people to do it. Right. The forcing is a problem we're worried about. Right. So, so I, I, you know, I'll say it again. I'm very pro vaccine. I'm very excited to be giving the vaccine, but the part that feels funny is for, you're right, is to make people do it, is to force it upon themselves. I also, I really worry, honestly, about kids in the inner city because there's a lot of kids that don't have access to doctors or trustworthy, you know, or medical care that they trust and um for example in san francisco um the black population their percent of vaccine is

over 20 percent uh less than the than you know than all races considered and so you know that would be awful to have kids not go to school um for for lack of getting the COVID vaccine. You know, I just, I think that would be a much worse outcome for our future children than to... Right. This is what they, you're doing a risk reward analysis. You're saying, you know, what's worse, us being engaged in a racist policy that keeps kids at risk out of school or the risk of COVID, which is nominal. It's like, give me a break. All right. Let me take a couple of calls from,

from our world over here in Clubhouse. I do agree with you. I'm trying to get on law animal trainer, law animal trainer. You know, in French, you can't put two vowels together if the first word is an article or a preposition. Sorry about that. All right. As usual, that person does not seem to be coming up. Oh, there we are. Kristen. How are you? Hey, good. What's happening? Okay. Just a question for you. So I was trying to, what is, how many healthy children without comorbidities have died in the U S and then just how many kids total? I'm just wondering why the mandate, like if the numbers are wild, then you know what I mean? Yes. Yes. I get it. That's what we're struggling with. Go ahead, Jessica.

So, okay. It's a great question. So in the United States, there's been a total death count somewhere between mid, mid five to mid-600s. However, and this is where I get frustrated with the data in the United States, it's really hard to have been healthy kids, kids that didn't have comorbidities. So that's not to say at all, every death of course matters. You know, every death of course matters. But you're going to save 20 healthy kids. You may give 10,000 kids myocarditis. So, huh. So, so to answer your question, Kristen, of the 700,000 deaths in this country, 20 were healthy children. Is that right, Jessica? 20? That's from Dr. Marty McCary said that, yes. 20 were healthy children. Kristen, how does that make you feel?

Well, yes, a mother of three young kids. And, you know, I live in California, which is like a pretty heavy state to deal with. And I pulled my kids out of preschool because they were mandating the masks, of three young kids and you know i live in california which is like a pretty heavy studio with and i pulled my kids out of preschool because they were mandating the mess including it's interesting to hear you guys talk about it um at recess you know outside for an hour and a half i just i couldn't stomach it my twins are two my son was four and i just was mortified you know what i mean because i i work production so i work long hours so they'd be there a minimum of eight hour you know about eight to nine hours and i just i was like i don't you know at the end of the 15 hour day on set my teeth are covered in like

gross stuff i have to change my mask i'm sorry i'm getting graphic it's all good oh i know i love gum i should try that but yeah so it just, it feels really confusing. And then you have these people that are angrily vaccinating their children. Because if you just have like a question about it, like I work in an industry where we're all vaccinated, but if you have a question about it for your kid, you're...

Did your phone just ring? Yes, it did. It's just wild and a racist PS ps you know what i mean like it just yeah you know what i personally i don't know if drew would just say okay we need to get the kids vaccinated i would do it because he he would it would be his decision but if i had triplets in preschool and i the vaccine was only a couple years old i'd want to wait another year and see what the outcome was and make sure that I wanted to see the downside.

We have a fair bit of data on it now. And again, you're just saying to save 20 children. I'm not, how many, how many healthy kids are we going to make sick? But I mean, like the question,

like what Dr. Jessica said, when kids get it, they get it and they get over it. But part of the problem is there's viral replication going on in these children and we're trying to suppress viral replication. So we reduce the risk of these variants developing. But the viral replication occurs even in the vaccinated population.

But how does the viral replication happen if you keep them in your house and they get over it? It's happening in the child. It's happening in the child. It's happening in the child. Okay. See, I don't know anything about medicine, but I'm just telling you from a mother's perspective, I would just say I'd rather my kids just get the virus. Well, but you are making a point within that that is well taken, which is-

And wait for the vaccine in six months or a year. Even if the child develops a variant, if he or she doesn't transmit it to anyone who cares, right. It has to, it has to move off that child. I don't know. I completely feel for mothers. I would be freaking out if this was happening to my kids. Yeah, I get it. Well, I think honestly, what's also stressful at getting COVID is the, is the quarantine. I mean, I, it's hard for families. I think a lot of families would, would, that I talked to, they're not that scared of their child getting COVID, but they don't wanna deal with staying home for 10 days. It's definitely better to not get the virus

if you don't have to. Sure. But I do think, yeah, but I do think though that there's a lot of, my general feeling on this is there's the fear of kids getting COVID. And I would say the fear over the vaccine has way outpaced the reality. Yeah. You know, I think both are actually very low risk situations.

Let's say all 600 kids that died of COVID were healthy. Even then, the argument for vaccination is kind of, it's intense. It's hard to make it. It's a certain kind of argument about saving. Yeah, for mandates. It's certainly not an argument about preventing deaths. That would not be the argument because you're not really preventing deaths. You may be causing more deaths. We'll see. We don't know.

So hopefully not. Hopefully. One argument I hear a lot from families is they feel like it's the right thing to do, that if they want to vaccinate their child to prevent spread to the elderly. And I understand that perspective. But the counter to that is that we know that most people by and far that are by far in a way that are dying of COVID are the unvaccinated. That if you've been, if you're worried for your grandparent, just, I think the number one thing to do is make sure that they're vaccinated and have a booster. Amen.

100%. Diane. Diane's up at the podium here. Go ahead, Diane. Hi there. Thanks, everyone. This is very interesting. If either of you could say more about the Israel study that you mentioned about the first dose effectiveness in teens and how that may be enough. I have a 13-year-old niece who was vaccinated with Pfizer and also got the second dose and doesn't seem to show any complications four months later. Good. So I'm curious, you know, should she get the booster at six months?

Or could we possibly do it? So let's ask the question specifically, because that's a good question. Should adolescents be getting a booster? And by the way, the decision to vaccinate a 13 to 17-year-old is an easier putt, I think, than a 4 to 10 year old, 5 to 10 year old. So that's a harder decision. But go ahead. So particularly for the females. But go ahead.

Should they be boosted? Adolescents? I don't think so. Yeah, I don't. First of all, the FDA or the CDC is not recommending boosters yet for under 18. Right. But I, you know, I do believe that the first round of vaccines are holding up very well, that there are breakthrough cases that happen, but they generally tend to be mild.

But the first round of the vaccine does an incredible job of keeping people out of the hospital and from dying. So especially in an adolescent group, I would not recommend a booster at this time so and you think there's a probability that they will approve it the boosters i have a feeling they will just because it seems to be the path because that's the way things are going i i think they're not going to i just have a feeling that that's it for they they've sort of gone as far as they're going to go with uh the adolescents because they really think about it i mean if the risk of macroditis is after the second shot who knows what we'll see after the third right that's a good point yeah i mean yeah i don't think about it yeah and in in hong kong in the uk they're just recommending

one dose for the teenagers i'd saw that yeah Yeah. If I, after what Douglas went through, I would never have wanted to give him a vaccine. Cause I know he would probably get something bad. Jordan had a horrible reaction to it when he, he had the vaccine. He's 29. Bad, bad vaccine reactions.

Yeah. They were sick. Really sick. But his kids like, sick enough that it kind of made me worry. They're like, Oh crap. You know,

we're going to have a myocarditis here. We're going to have a. I think Colleen would have been fine. She's made of steel. Yeah, yeah. I agree. Well, this is all important information. Do you recommend, what do you recommend to the average patient that they discuss this

with their pediatrician? Do you think they'll find an audience for this conversation? Okay. Because our profession has gotten weird in the last year. Yeah. I do. I mean, I think I'll say, you know, in my mind, the big picture here is I just hope that kids get back to normal really soon. I think there's so much fear around COVID. There's so much fear around their vaccine. And I do think, you know, we're overthinking a lot that we should be, you know, I'm seeing a lot of collateral damage because I think we're overthinking a lot that we should be you know i'm seeing a lot of collateral damage

because i think we're just tunnel vision thinking about covid and i'm seeing kids gain weight they're lonely they're anxious they're depressed um and they're not seeing their friends they're not playing in sports and i really think um you know i implore parents just to think about getting our kids back to normal, however that may be. Yeah, I did a presentation with this group called Gaggle, who has a lot of data on what's going on with adolescents and older childhood. And when you see what's happening as a result of the time they're spending on the screens with the advent of these home screens and what they're doing with each other with that and what they're getting exposed to by the age of nine and the depression. The only thing that's not going, the only thing that has not gone up is suicide. Although there's been a lot of increase in

suicidal thinking, particularly in younger females. But my position is the reason the suicide itself hasn't gone up is because they are home with people on top of them all the time. They don't have an opportunity to sneak off and do something. And so they may have suicidal thinking, but they're around their family all the time, which is a good thing. But it's making it more difficult to actually attempt. And so I think that may be the reason, because the ideation is up. The ideation is up. And I've seen this from the beginning.

I've been in a I saw the panic porn they were creating and people now are starting to speak more openly about by people. I mean, leaders and and thought leaders are talking a little more freely now about what was happening during the early stages of the pandemic. And I talked to some academic leaders who when I say, well, what was happening during the early stages of the pandemic. And I talked to some, you know, academic leaders who, when I, they, I say, well, what, what, what was that? What were you doing? And the answer I'm getting now is a panic. We were in a panic, which was obvious. And the panic was caused by the press. You weren't in a panic because of COVID. You were in a panic because of what the press was doing to you.

I kept telling people, don't listen to the press. They have no business even commenting on this. And the other thing that they say is when we'd start talking about pandemic policy, that if you look at pandemic policy from five years ago, doesn't mention any of the things we did. We literally, the federal policy did not have the policies that we ended up creating. And the reason we created the crazy policies we created, they will tell you now. People have said it to me out loud because China did it. And my eye on what they did, I know, it's really striking, isn't it, when you hear that out loud and they and to my eye this is my own little interpretation of this what i saw going on with wuhan was some sort of rehearsed procedure they had that was clearly

already in place in case they had a catastrophe from the lab i mean the idea of chlorine containing trucks rolling down the street where did they they come from? They were already on hand somewhere to roll out if the virus got out of the lab, right? To wash it down the drain. They locked down the way they had rehearsed locking down, also to look good in the eyes of the leaders, you know, back in Beijing. So there was a wholly different set of circumstances than what the rest of the world was contending with. And yet we all modeled what we did

after what they did which didn't work by the way there or anywhere else so it's all very very very strange for me i hope we take a really good look at what we did here because and i agree with you about the media i think been for not yeah i think i think the media you know it makes sense like we're there's an addiction just to pay attention to be informed to know what's going on. But I absolutely see a negative effect from it. I feel like I can't tell you how many patients I talked to that don't speak to a family member. They have strained relationships with friends, because you know, they

follow something on on Instagram, or they follow something on social media and they disagree with their friend and their friend's comment. And I think it's doing a lot of harm that, you know, I don't know what to do about it, but it's very clear that the media is negative. Well, I kind of feel like what I've seen

is it's driven us into a histrionic posture where sort of histrionic disorders seem to be, they were very rare when I was working in the psychiatric hospital. Now they're rather common and histrionic tends to the delusional. And the way to break through delusion is with reality to come crashing in. So something's got to bring reality on reality's terms to bear. And that's, that's what will start things turning. I don't know what that is, but I know that's what happens with a narcissist cluster B histrionic type stuff. So, well, Jessica, it's been a privilege and a pleasure. Thank you for taking time to spend some

time with us. It's been clarifying a lot of things I've been thinking and things I've been worrying about with pediatrics for a long time and finally got my questions answered. It's as I suspected, but with good reason. And thank you for your careful thought about your patients and about vaccine therapies. And it's just, you know, really, if I stand back from what you're saying is humility and careful, you know, be humble with your decision-making, don't be certain about anything and be careful in your, in your risk reward analysis. What could be right about that? Why could take you anybody take issue with that? Well, my heart, thank you so much to all the parents who have lost somebody, you know, in this, in this experience, it's just, it's terrifying. Absolutely. Pandemics are defined pandemics means the word pandemic means excess

death per year, year on year, excess death. And that's awful. Pandemics are awful. H1N1 cleared 400,000 people. It's nasty. When you're making decisions for your children and something like that happens, you can't live with yourself. I mean, you just, you want to die first. If they have a horrible outcome from the vaccine or something, you know, anything you do for your kids, like you, you make a decision and it doesn't work. So this is making you anxious. So what would you have done? What would your, I already told you what I would do. No, no, no, no. So the risk of myocarditis for your boys would be one for 5,000 risk of death, 20 per 700,000.

What are you going to do? I would wait until I knew more. That's your, your thing. You're waiting, waiting. I'd rather they get COVID. I think the sad truth is that tooth.

I was going to say that. I think the sad truth is that no, there's no option ever that's zero risk. Right? So if when I take my kids in the car and go to school, there's a little bit of inherent risk when I do that. Right. Um, just by nature of, of living.

And so I agree, I think, you know, it's important for families to consider their own risks, make a good decision. And I think, I do think that kids by and large are very low risk. So I encourage parents to send their kids to school and allow them to participate in after school activities, things like that. But of course, talk to your doctor. Dr. Justin Marchegiani Yeah. Dr. Anneke Vandenbroek i would just want to wait as long as possible that's all well chris your friend christina and i wouldn't want to bow down to

the rules like you have to do this because you know the government says you have to do that control yeah i wouldn't i'm not good with that stuff i i don't it's like i want to make the own my decision for my children because they came out of me and this is my decision you know well here's what i like uh i don't know who would be like he'd have to put up with me and i don't know he might actually let me have my way because i'm when when i decide stuff like that he has to listen yeah yeah i get these are hard to see you would have to really persuade me but But I will say, though, that the vaccine looks, I will say, though, that the vaccine for anybody out there, you know, that's thinking about getting it, it does look

very safe. I mean, we've been giving in our office and I haven't seen any reactions. And the 5 to 11 year old group is getting a third of the dose that 12 and older is getting. So hopefully we'll see even fewer side effects because of the lower dose. Um, but I think you're, you're in the right to want to ask questions. I think that is completely reasonable and, and smart. I would just want to wait like six more months for a year. Well, what I, what I like is that, uh, Christina and I, we first started talking, develop the rational revolution and this conversation has been quite rational and that's what I like. So you can, you can tell your,

tell your friend Christina that the rational revolution is underway. That's the sign. It's, it's, it's your left hand up towards your face. Okay. Okay. I would be proud to be part of the rational,

rational thinking. Rational revolution. And you've got to get the, we got to get you a mug because the mugs, put the mug up there so Jessica can see it. Do we still have the mug? Is the mug still available? Yeah, I'm sure it's still available. Those have been iconic. Can you put it up, Caleb?

Do we have it available? No, he probably doesn't have it. I don't think I have it. She will love it because it's so funny. Oh, it's too bad because it's she and I both with this sort of early 20th century Soviet iconography. Yeah. You know, having our, yeah. Send us your address and I'll get you one for Christmas.

Telling Lennon, Lennon-esque poses, both of us. I need to order some of those for Christmas. Both of us in Lennon-esque poses. Oh, and also show everybody your bobblehead really quick while we're talking about tchotchkes. This is something Susan invented. So everyone enjoy. Yeah, they're coming soon. Enjoy, enjoy.

They're, they're out, they're off the coast of Long Beach now, apparently. Gotta get those. That's too funny. How did they get that? They'll be available soon at via drdrew.com. Okay. Let's let Jessica go. She has work to do.

Jessica, we've exceeded the time limit. Yes. Bye Jessica. I think you should go like this. Thank you so much. I had a lot of fun. All right, buddy. Thank you so much. We had a lot of fun. All right, buddy. Thank you so much.

We'll see you soon down in Laguna. Take care. And bye to Jessica. And not bye to me yet. So all you guys, let me do say goodbye, though, to. I am a nervous wreck right now. I know. I could tell.

By giving my opinion. Well, not just your opinion, but you also. I feel it. It's like, I mean, I told you the analogy yesterday, right? No, it's like when fake boobs came out in the seventies. Yes.

I said, I wanted to wait and see what it was like 10 years before I would make that. I was flat chested, but I thought, you know, I want to wait 10 years and I saw some bad outcomes. So I don't know. I like to see a little time.

So I'm going to end the room in clubhouse. We thank you guys for having joined us there. We've got a few calls in thank you and uh those of you out on the restream um i i couldn't pay enough attention to you guys to understand exactly what was going on there but it was kind of interesting dx means what it sounds like if you diagnosis no if you sounded out doxing yeah no dicks oh the so what does that mean they were calling us dicks did they i don't know i don't know i don't know what i don't know they have not quite yet defined it to me so i'm not saying it but they told me it would not get in the way of me running for president later so i choose to trust the trolls, I guess. These aren't trolls though.

These are not trolls. These are not haters. They seem like they're Ganba Army. Nation2040.com. They're saying Dr. X. I don't know. Dr. Dix. Yeah. You guys aren't being bad. I mean, you're welcome here. It's fine. I like to see the comments in between and it's like, you have to keep scrolling and. Yeah, that makes it hard for people that want to chat. I mean, it's okay to do it once each, but 12 times each is just a little excessive. I know this is late, but here's the month. I didn't, I didn't, I didn't block anybody.

You've got to email it to, uh, get an email to Jessica. So email it to me and I'll send it to me i'll send it to her so she can uh know what that is well you know i've been called worse all right so we're gonna wrap things up we don't want caleb to miss the baby bath time tonight there'll be two in a row that are uh we caused we don't want that hmm oh no what was that he's good he's all good okay all right so we are in here the next couple of days around the same time we're in tomorrow at 3 30 because you got that thing i'm seeing 3 15 3 15 uh and then four o'clock no 2 30 on uh thursday uh and then next week i believe we have some interesting guests

isn't next week we have uh yeah you have uh dr badacharia right is that next week yeah uh and then we also have the following week is when we finally have uh venae prasad we have good gals baronson just for the end of the now we gotta now we gotta start start planning. We have actually somebody named Dr. Lucy McBride. I'm not sure who she is. You probably sought her out. But we have to start booking for December. So you have to submit your ideas to Michelle. Also, yeah, and then we got to know start planning that okay oh because this is an

episode about babies here's the the today's photo of bride there's we did this at a pumpkin patch look at that halloween t-shirt next time i'll have his christmas photos when you do that I've had an eye full of vomit that's his new thing is he's spitting because he's trying to go but all he knows to do is spit he gets so frustrated you get a mouth eyeball full of spit

it's all over it's good stuff juicy alright you guys thank you so much for joining us we will see you tomorrow around the same time. See you then. 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. Always remember that our understanding of medicine and science is constantly evolving.

Though my opinion is based on the information that is available to me today, some of the contents of this show could be outdated in the future. Be sure to check with trusted resources in case any of the information has been updated since this was published. 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. You can find more of my recommended organizations and helpful resources at drdrew.com slash help.