Ask Dr. Drew - COVID-19 & President Trump: Dr. Vladimir Zelenko & Dr. Ram Yogendra - Episode 25

Episode Date: October 13, 2020

President Donald Trump was treated for COVID-19 and discharged 3 days after being admitted to Walter Reed hospital. He reportedly received the antiviral remdesivir, the anti-inflammatory dexamethasone, and an experimental antibody treatment. How did Pres. Trump recover so quickly? What does this mean for the upcoming election? Experts Dr. Vladimir Zelenko and Dr. Ram Yogendra join Dr. Drew to discuss the current state of the COVID-19 pandemic. • Dr. Vladimir Zelenko has been practicing medicine for over 16 years. He was recently highlighted in the media for his COVID-19 treatment plan of hydroxychloroquine, azithromycin, and zinc sulfate. • Dr. Ram Yogendra M.D., M.P.H. is a board-certified anesthesiologist and public health specialist. Follow Dr. Yo at https://twitter.com/YoDoctorYo  Get an alert when Dr. Drew is taking calls: http://drdrew.tv/  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

BetMGM, authorized gaming partner of the NBA, has your back all season long. From tip-off to the final buzzer, you're always taken care of with the sportsbook born in Vegas. That's a feeling you can only get with BetMGM. And no matter your team, your favorite player, or your style, there's something every NBA fan will love about BetMGM. Download the app today and discover why BetMGM is your basketball home for the season. Raise your game to the next level this year with BetMGM. Download the app today and discover why BetMGM is your basketball home for the season. Raise your game to the next level this year with BetMGM. A sportsbook

worth a slam dunk. An authorized gaming partner of the NBA. BetMGM.com for terms and conditions. Must be 19 years of age or older to wager. Ontario only. Please play responsibly. If you have any questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you, 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. Welcome, everyone. And we are taking calls today. The calls are, of course, as usual, at 984-237-3739 3 9 9 8 4 2 dr drew uh and uh listen we have a very interesting show planned we're going to talk to dr vladimir zelenko he of course has become prominent for his advocacy for zinc and hydrochloric wind his recommendations ended up putting me on quercetin and susan on quercetin uh and zinc And then, of course, we're going to have our friend, Dr. Ram Yohendra in here, the gym guy. I'll explain that in a minute.

Before I bring them in, I want to get to a quick call because I think it'll frame the early part of our conversation. Our laws as it pertains to substances are draconian and bizarre. Psychopaths start this way. He was an alcoholic because of social media and pornography, PTSD, love addiction, fentanyl and heroin. Ridiculous. I'm a doctor for. 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 Love Line all the time. Educate adolescents and to prevent and to treat. If 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. Jennifer? Yes, I'm here. Go to it. Okay, cool. Well, awesome. I'm first. Yeah, I just,

I'm kind of like really like kind of livid and upset about the whole situation, but I wanted to talk to you and get your opinion on president Trump. We all know he's the president. We all know he's in charge. That's why he got preferential treatment. But I feel like, and correct me if I'm wrong, cause I'm probably wrong. It's intentional that they're keeping these medicines away from the average American. And if not, it's intentional that they're making it hard to get. Why can't people get the treatment that these people get? Why are they killing everybody? So get on Twitter right now and look at the testimonial that president

Trump put up literally a minute ago where he made a commitment to get all the, to increase the production of Regeneron, which is the drug that he got that probably made him well. I'm going to talk to Dr. Yo and Dr. Zelenko about whether or not that's accurate or not, but I think that's a reasonable thing. And he's going to distribute it through the military and make it available for free to everyone with mild to moderate COVID.

And the dexamethasone was the other thing he got, and that's pennies. So now everyone will be able to get exactly what he got, essentially. Okay. Yeah, because they've said stuff like that before, and it's still been hard to near not impossible for people to get certain drugs and treatments. So I'm just kind of like, I want everyone to. The difficulty is the medical system. We'll listen to what we're going to talk about.

I'm going to talk to Dr. Yeo and Dr. Zelenko about this. It's reaching a consensus. It's getting through the legal hassles. It's getting the phase three trials completed. It's getting approval by the FDA. It takes forever. And then who can get on the protocols before that and not. So your point is very well taken. And so I was actually happy to see President Trump stepping up and saying he was going to, because I think people should get something very similar to what he got. And so your question is quite relevant to what's going on today. And thank you for asking that. Let's bring in my guest, Dr. Ramya Hendra and Dr. Vladimir Zelenko.

There they are. Let's just start with that question. Dr. Zelenko, did you sort of feel as though President Trump got appropriate treatment? And what do you think about his new call to action? So the first thing that the president did, he got treated immediately, which is a deviation from the recommendations that the rest of the country are being told. For example, most patients are told to go home, bring fluids, take Tylenol. If you get respiratory distress, go to the hospital. That's not what the president did.

He got immediate treatment, which is something that I support. It's been part of my protocol as well. So I think that part is great. I believe he was taking zinc, vitamin C, vitamin D, melatonin. Yep. Pepsid, thiamine. Yeah. And then when he went to the hospital, we were told that he got, I think, one dose of remdesivir, and he got Regeneron, I think it's a polyclonal antibody. And he got dramatically better.

So I don't know much about, I don't think anyone knows much about Regeneron. It's not available for use yet. I don't know its safety profile and or um efficacy so i'd love to see that data the data i've seen is that it reduced hospitalization by 80 percent if i remember that dr yoda is that what you read in the in the data that they did put out yes it it reduced hospitalization and it decreased the viral load. And also, I believe the ER visits, the ER time, it cut down on that. What do you think about President Trump's care and his new call to action?

Dr. Yeo? Well, it's interesting because initially when I agree with Dr. Zo? Dr. Yeo Well, it's interesting because initially, and I agree with Dr. Zelenko, I think they were very aggressive with his treatment. Initially I thought that they would start him on this conservative management, or the standard management, zinc, fluids, Tylenol, and then later on, I think it was Friday afternoon, Regeneron's all over the news. And I was a little bit surprised. They went with an experimental medication. I was sort of thinking they would give remdesivir and plasma, which is what a lot of Americans

have been getting because of the emergency use. And let me hold you, but only in more moderate cases though, right? He was sort of mild to moderate, at least as far as we can tell. Would you have actually given plasma and Regeneron at that point? Again, here's the piece we don't know. We don't know what his CAT scan, his chest X-ray looked like. I'm guessing it did not look that good, which is why they went with all this. Do you agree with that?

I think so. I think that's probably why they went with the regeneron there's a small window giving remdesivir and plasma yeah i think there is if you give it early um it has some benefit but it's when you give it to these icu patients then there's not you know it's really more of the immunological um disease that's taken over so remdesivir acts as an antiviral same thing with the plasma where you're giving those antibodies um so i do agree that i think he was probably trending towards a moderate covid um probably with some chest uh some infiltrates on his x-rays and clinical symptoms

too right well while the press was speculation right now yeah that's all we got but while the press was spinning on did you put him on auction did you put him on auction i'm like i don't get everybody gets on auction at this stage what what did his chest x-ray look like i think they even did a cat scan did they not i i think so yes they did a cat skin and obviously a chest x-ray um and then there was the reports from uh dr conley his his doctor, the White House doctor, that suggested that he had some drops in his O2 sats, which kind of reading between the lines suggests that there obviously was some pulmonary infiltrates in those x-rays and the CAT scans. Sure. Dr. Zelenko, would hydroxychloroquine, based on your research, and I want to hear your new studies. Would that have been an appropriate management intervention for a case like this? I need to say,

and I have to say this in an indirect way, but not everything that was reported in the media is factual or 100% correct. Let's talk about Rudy Giuliani. factual or a hundred percent correct. And, um, well, let's, let's talk about Rudy Giuliani. Okay.

Cause he was on the radio show yesterday. Um, and he announced that he, um, he was with the president consecutively for four days in the debate prep and on the airline. And he had a very high exposure to hope pigs as well so um and he's been testing negative so he made a big announcement that he's taking hydroxychloroquine prophylaxis with zinc and the regimen that he's taking is 200 milligrams once a day for five days and then once a week and then uh zinc, around 25 milligrams of elemental zinc, which is exactly my printed prophylaxis protocol.

And he's been testing negative, and he's not the only one that is benefiting from it. Now, I want to tell you, we're a month away from an election. Hydroxychloroquine is radioactive politically. And the president needs, well, it's a very nice thing to give out potentially effective drugs for free right before an election. I mean, giving out hydroxychloroquine wouldn't work. So I really hope that Regeneron works. It would be great to have more than one

weapon. I don't know how sustainable it is to give it away for free long term, especially if you need to scale this globally. I'm sure the cost is prohibitive. So I'm still a very big advocate for the use of hydroxychloroquine or quercetin or EGCG. There are several zinc ionophores that have shown very good results. And you have some new publications, some new data out? Well, no, I forget when we spoke last. So when you say new, I'm not sure.

But I do have a study that was published in preprint form with two German researchers. And that study showed a reduction in hospitalization of 84% with a p-value of almost zero. And it is at the last stages of peer review. Hopefully by the next two weeks, I hope, it'll be published in an international journal. Did you say it's a pro is this prophylaxis or is this a mild disease? No, this was 141 patients, all diagnosed lab proven COVID-19 and they were all high risk patients because I risk stratify patients. And when I say high risk expected mortality rate in that group was around 5%. And Dr. Yo, I wonder if you have any questions for Dr. Zelenko.

This is all stuff you and I've been kind of watching from afar. Yeah, you know, it's interesting. You know, Dr. Zelenko has been sort of the forefront, I think him and Dr. Didier out in France about the hydroxychloroquine. And I agree with you, Dr. Zelenko. I mean, hydroxychloroquine, it's toxic. You say that, and it's, you know, depending on, I find that physicians, I can tell their political beliefs based on how they look at hydroxychloroquine, which is not the way medicine is supposed to be practiced. And we can debate the science behind it, but some of these things have gotten too politicized, but it's, it's interesting. I feel like hydroxychloroquine is going to play a role, um, in the long haulers. I feel like it's a,

it's a, you know, we can talk about this in a little bit, Dr. Drew, but, you know, every time I'm looking at the data we're getting from the long haulers, and I keep on going back to what Dr. Zelenko has been talking about with the hydroxychloroquine, just that in terms of the cytokines, what a lot of people don't realize is actually hydroxychloroquine is an immunomodulator. It changes the confirmation of cytokines. So, and that's kind of part of its mechanism of action in lupus and rheumatoid arthritis. It has its immunomodulating effects. And as Dr. Zelenko has been talking about, it's cheap, it's readily available, it's generic. So I'm starting to think that

hydroxychloroquine might be a potential drug for these long haulers. So I'm always a big fan of Dr. Zelenko and what he's doing. So let me reframe that. So we've been up to this point thinking about hydroxychloroquine as its ionophore effects and bringing the zinc in and its antiviral properties. You're saying, lo and behold, much like we discovered hydroxychloroquine works for lupus and rheumatoid arthritis, it works in the inflammatory phase of this illness as well, particularly the post-acute inflammatory phase. Actually, I think there's...

Go ahead, Dr. Zelenko. Hydroxychloroquine has four unique mechanisms of action. Not every mechanism is irrelevant at every stage. So, for example, the fact, well, if any of my patients have a cytokine storm, that means I didn't do my job. I try to prevent patients from having a cytokine storm. Reasonably so. Reasonably so. So I prefer the zinc ionifer effect in the very early stages where we can eliminate the

viral load and avoid all those complications. So there's four mechanisms and I'll define them. The way hydroxychloroquine is used against malaria is that it changes the pH in the lysosomes. And that seems to reduce the amount of virus as well that gets into the cytoplasm. Then there's an interesting mechanism where it turns out that hydroxychloroquine stabilizes red blood cells, which improves its oxygenation capacity, which is a big issue in COVID. And then you have the zinc-dianoforore effect and then you have the cytokine effect. So in general, I prefer to use hydroxychloroquine because of the multiple mechanisms.

But if I live in the real world, if I can't get it to someone, I will revert to plan B because I still need to get the zinc into the cell. And Dr. Yeo, you were about to say something and we interrupted you. Oh no, I agree with everything dog you know dr zelenko makes some really great points and another interesting thing dr zelenko just said was about he needs drugs that are readily available we're talking about you know sort of my focus has sort of been and cheap too absolutely

and my focus has been sort of on the long haulers. I know Dr. Zelenka is doing a lot of research and publication sort of on the front end. And I want to say I appreciate all the work he's done. But my sort of focus has sort of shifted towards these long haulers. And there's hundreds of patients I've spoken to and worked with. And again, we're trying to figure out what to do. So sure, Dr. Patterson and I, we're going to be testing. But the big conundrum and the big sort of thing we're trying to figure out is what do we do? It's great, we can test it. It's great, we can find your cytokine and immune profile. But what do we do? And I think what Dr. Zelenko, just to echo what he said, hydroxychloroquine, it's cheap, it's generic, it's readily available, and this could potentially be a drug we can treat. It's also very long acting. Do we know how we use it? Is it a daily

drug? Is it a once a week drug? Dr. Slenko, do you have an opinion about that? Right, so prophylaxis, I do give a loading dose, which is once a day for five days, and then once a week. I just use that, the malaria dose schedule. They do once a day for five days and then once a week. I just use the malaria schedule. They do once a week or every two weeks.

However, I've been experimenting with a new delivery system, and we work with a team that developed hydroxychloroquine in nebulized form. I've actually started deploying it for prophylaxis and for treatment. It's a little too early to tell the prophylaxis data, but I can tell you that the hydroxychloroquine in nebulized form, we're doing EKGs before and after and a spirometry before and after. The EKGs are the same, nothing changes, but the spirometry goes up by around 25% within 10

minutes of administration of the hydroxychloroquine nebulizer. So you still need the zinc, you still need the antibiotics, and I'll actually still give the oral hydroxychloroquine because I don't have yet enough experience and confidence yet in the nebulizer form. It's only been around for two weeks. So I'm discovering as we go along. Let's take a quick call here. It's for all of us.

Go ahead there, Dave. Yes, I have kind of a two-fold question I was wondering if and this is an impossible question to answer perhaps but if anyone care to speculate that if early on maybe the suggestion if not a

recommendation to say to the general public take a combination of maybe chloracetin or hydroxychloroquine, zinc, vitamin D and C, where would the caseload be now? Or more importantly, where would the deaths be now? And then to follow that up, I've read where Dr. Fauci is actually taking high loads of vitamin D, something like maybe 5,000 international units per day.

Why isn't that out as a recommendation to the general public at large? I think it is. I think there is a general recommendation to supplement D, and that's true COVID or non-COVID, frankly. I've been fighting for that for a long time. And some vitamin C. I think both are why not take right now? And 5,000

units is pretty standard for anybody that has lower-ish vitamin D levels and then 1,000 of C. Those are pretty standard recommendations right now. You guys agree? Absolutely. It's part of my routine care for patients. I don't wait for them to have covid i believe in the importance of vitamin d and i scream for it with every well example yeah so

dave i think i think we're we're not only advocates i think we think we our sense is that's just a general recommendation now what's interesting to me is the public health messaging by counties, state, and federal government has been so messed up that you're not getting that message, which is what I hear when you say... Well, we're not getting that message. Huh? We're not getting that message from the media either. I mean, I would think that would be something important for the media to have.

Well, you would hope that people who are responsible for public health messaging would use the media to have. Well, you would hope that people who are responsible for public health messaging would use the media to deliver it. Instead, they've been worrying about whether or not hydroxychloroquine, you know, they've just been they've been arguing about things that make no sense. And then they are interested in the panic porn of talking about deaths. And I don't understand any. None of none of it is public health messaging. It's a complete abortion when it it is public health messaging. It's a complete abortion when it comes to public health messaging. I've done this my whole career and you need a narrative,

you need relatable cases. I mean, in a way, Trump is becoming a health message right now in a weird way. You need humor. You need to help people sort of connect to the stories about how to get through this, what to do, what's the proper way to prepare, not the panic porn of, oh my God, here's a horrible, tragic story. Yes, they're out there. We know it's tragedy. But the messaging they should be giving is about how to get people through this. And as you see, the simple stuff like vitamin C and vitamin D, you're not even hearing it.

Incredible, right? Right. And Dr. Drew, and Dave, just to kind of echo what Dr. Drew was saying, there's a lot of studies now that are suggesting that vitamin D plays a role in what is called balancing the immune system. I think there's always this misnomer calling it boosting. You don't want to boost the immune system. It's balancing. And so anytime there's a deficiency in vitamin D on your T cells, there's specialized cells in your immune system. There are vitamin D receptors. And there's tons of literature now, especially with COVID, that has really suggested that vitamin D plays a role. The other interesting thing about vitamin C, since we were talking about it, is vitamin C, so in the early part of the infection, we see a depletion of neutrophils. And neutrophils are

another type of immune cells that help with the defense and fighting the virus. And we're seeing a depletion of it. And what we know from the studies is that vitamin C replenishes neutrophils. It's in the data. Now, whether that helps or not, there's a lot of speculation and anecdotal evidence, but quite a lot of physicians believe in, especially overseas, in high-dose vitamin C. I know in China, there's a publication suggesting very high-dose vitamin C, some in liposomal ascorbic acid. Ascorbic acid is another name for vitamin C that increases the absorption of vitamin C in the body. So as Dr. Drew has been saying, and I know Dr. Zelenko is talking about zinc and many other vitamins, these have not been talked a lot about in the media.

And we kind of have this little community in social media where the doctors like Dr. Drew, Dr. Zelenko and quite um many other physicians so we're talking about this amongst ourselves and we're trying to get this message out there and it's actually standardized there's something called the math plus protocol you're looking up it's look it up from Eastern Virginia University Medical School the math plus protocol Dave and take a good look at that okay I will and. And by the way, thanks to the three of you gentlemen, I've been on basically the protocol that you've recommended for the past, you know, 90 days or 60 days or so.

And so I appreciate that because really it's not out in the general media. And I think that you guys are doing a great thing for the general public. Well, thanks, Dave. And we'll talk more about how to prevent transmission. Be careful. Be cautious. Take care of yourself. There's still a lot of risk out there. Let's quickly talk to Mason if you guys don't mind. Mason, let's hear your story.

Yes, is this Dr. Drew? Yes, sir. I'm a 65-year-old Navy veteran, and I got COVID in early July. I went to the VA. It was a lot of joint pain and also migraines. When I went in there, they did the testing. They said they'd tell me in about a day or so. But I said to them, I'd like to have something to start right now.

And I took amoxicillin. That day later on, after two of the pills of amoxicillin, the joint pain started to go away. The migraine started to go away. Within three days, I had no more symptoms. But I still had the COVID, which I had testing. It lasted another month. I went back and asked him if I could have the hydroxychloroquine with a zinc. And they denied me that I was wondering, my question is, and thank you doctors for all you're doing with this education is, um, why they're denying that.

And it seems to be coming political more than medical instead of helping out the patient. All right, hold on. Mason, we'll talk about you and put you back on hold and go ahead. Who would like to tackle that? Let's get Dr. Zlenko since he's been at the eye of the storm of all this. Well, first of all, it's early intervention in high risk patients that has been reproduced on

several different continents. Both do they both in Brazil, many other studies that show that if you initiate early treatment in high-risk patients, you reduce hospitalization fivefold. So it seems, and that's what happened with the president, so it seems that it's the intervention within the first two or three days that is key to having a good outcome. Regarding why hydroxychloroquine has been demonized, that's multifactorial, but let's put it this way. The president supports it, supported it. And if it turns out, which it is a useful and important element in managing COVID-19,

then that's a political win for the president. And obviously, those that don't want him to be president, will try to minimize its effectiveness. That's number one. Number two, big pharma, if we reduce hospitalization by 80%, we reduce the market share, remdesivir, or convalescent plasma, by 84%. There's that component. And then I also have seen that, I don't know if the anarchists or the Marxists planned this, but they jumped along and hijacked this pandemic as a way to destabilize our society. So what you see, the 20 cities or so that are burning, the economy that's, you know, shut down, all these measures are designed to weaken and undermine our way of life.

And so there's a lot of, you know, enemy of my enemies, my friend, there's very interesting partners here. China, for example, will do anything possible to get rid of Trump, because Trump started the economic war with them. So he's the first person to stand up to China. So, you know, there's a lot of vested interests here that want Trump gone. And I think that plays a very important element of why it's been demonized. I have a question. It goes in a similar direct. Well, it's actually another medicine. It's talked to Bernardo here. Bernardo, go ahead. Yeah, just real quickly. And like with everyone else thank you guys for doing this

and taking the time to be able to answer some questions but it's on a different road hey bernard thank you for saying so but it is literally our pleasure to do this so you don't we don't it's like thanking us for i don't know it feels funny to be thanked for something that we are so privileged to be able to do so it's's literally our pleasure. Sure. Sure. Well, again, just really quickly, it's a different drug that you guys have been discussing, but it's just your thoughts on the drug Bucelamine. It's with a company called Revive Therapeutics. Currently, they're in phase three testing and everything, and their history shows that they've been around for roughly 30 years. I was just wanting to get your thoughts on maybe the use of that with COVID. Is,

is Bucillamine like penicillamine? Is it, is it a drug like that? Something to use for like a scleroderma, things like that, you know? Uh, yes,

I believe so. And I believe Dr. Yo has a, has an interview with, uh, with, uh, Michael Frank,

the CEO coming next week. So I was just wanting to get some potential insight. All right, Dr the CEO, coming next week. So I was just wanting to get some potential insight. All right. Dr. Yeo, have at it. Yeah, bacillamine has actually been used, as you correctly said, for about 30 years in South Korea and Japan. It's a drug used for rheumatoid arthritis. Very interesting mechanism of action. It regenerates the glutathione. Apparently, I forget what the number, I think it's like 10 or 15 times

better than N-acetylcysteine in regenerating the glutathione levels in the body, which is a naturally producing antioxidant. Bucillamine, as you correctly said, is in phase three. I'm actually interviewing Michael Frank and the chief science officer next week on my YouTube show to discuss sort of the science behind it. But it looks very promising. So my understanding is that it's an oral formulation. It's a pill. I think that they're testing, I think, twice a day and three times a day different dosages in their clinical trials. But it seems to be promising for their mild to moderate COVID-19 patients. And again, looking at it's a drug that's already been used for 30 years in South Korea and Japan. It's a drug that is PO form.

So it's a great for potentially patients that are the outpatient or ones that are going to the ER and getting discharged within a couple of hours. So it's a very promising drug. I'll have a little bit more information next Tuesday after getting an opportunity

to speak with the company. There you go. And Dr. Joe, I'll give you a chance to respond to what Dr zlenko was saying about the uh politicization of everything which just makes me sad I just get sad and bothered by it it's just too much for me but go ahead it it's a it's unfortunate um you know I think we we've also lost respect in the medical community for each other. We're so quick to call each other quacks when we disagree with management. We stopped having conversations. If I suggest hydroxychloroquine, someone's going to call me a right winger. If I am against hydroxychloroquine, then I'm the you know, I'm a Trump supporter.

It should be when we approach medicine and science covid-19 this is what i always say covid-19 doesn't care about your politics so why should we care of like what why should our medical management um be concerned about politics it should be pure and uh um and and unadulterated yeah from all this nonsense and and we should be having these conversations without any repercussions or any fear. I've seen some of the things being leveled at Dr. Zelenko. It's just unfair.

I mean, we can disagree. We can respectfully disagree. But to muddy and dirty someone's name and to call them all sorts of things, it's just been really horrible. Yeah, to me me it's the opposite of how clinical science is done which is normally we get together we argue we show each other the current science we interpret it and then we reach a consensus as opposed to going into our respective

camps and just calling each other names that's that is so far from the medicine i've been involved with my whole career i can't believe it speaking of, have you heard about Dr. Zelenko, the Great Barrington Declaration? Yeah, I just got it in my email. I have to read through it. It's kind of interesting. It's kind of interesting. It's three epidemiologists and public health professionals

who are essentially saying, let me see if I can get to the they're essentially saying that lockdown is having untoward effects it's something I've been saying all along which is that the mental health and the delay for treatment and the real consequence of lockdown and the economic effects

particularly on underprivileged, underserved economically distressed is going to be just profound more people are economically distressed is going to be just profound. It's more people are, you know, more people are dying from the response to COVID than from COVID. You know, I learned that politics is a blood sport. I didn't even realize how literally that should be interpreted in this particular case. And genuine science,

legitimate science, has been, by world-renowned positions, has been marginalized because it doesn't fit the narrative of the people in power. This is propaganda. This is nothing more than... I'll give you an example. We heard for the first

three months or four months, hydroxychloroquine is going to kill you. And it causes a long QT problems and so on. So there's 3000 electrophysiologists in America. They have a WhatsApp group. And I'm friends with a few electrophysiologists. I asked them, do me a favor, ask a question. Has anyone ever seen any negative outcomes using hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin, namely Torsad's? The answer was zero in the country. Caveat, outside of the ICU. And I never advocated its use in the ICU. Now, if you look at the package insert of remdesivir, 6% of people that start remdesivir develop AFib.

Six out of 100 patients develop a cardiac arrhythmia, which can cause stroke. So Goebbels, that means it may his name be erased, said, accuse the other of what you are guilty. Even to this day, I have to fight with patients and basically expose them to the fact that they're victims of propaganda. Wow. And Dr. Yeo, and not just cardiac side effect, but renal side effects too

with remdesivir, yes? It was mostly, it's the liver takes, I think that's rectal bleeding, and I believe there's liver toxicity, which I've always found remdesivir to be the cruel irony because it's an approved medication for COVID-19. But the problem is that from the studies that have come out, it's really showing it cuts infectious time from 15 to 11 days if given within the first five days. And afterwards, it doesn't really have nothing to do with the mortality. And here's the cruel part about this drug. It causes liver toxicity. And those severe and critical COVID-19 patients, their livers and kidneys take a major hit. So you can't get this drug there. They're excluded from the study. Did our friend who had the liver transplant get remdesivir?

Samantha Mote, no. Samantha didn't get uh remdesivir because of because my friend doctor i i'm not sure why i'm not sure the reason why but i i would suspect i mean that makes a logical sense yeah yeah and i learned about that because my friend tom um a purcell dr purcell who i who was on your show a couple weeks ago um he had elevated sky-high liver enzymes. And I remember talking to the ICU doctors and they said, no, we can't give Remdesivir or Tocizolab. Dr. Justin Marchegiani Because the liver, and yet Remdesivir is used for hepatitis C, right? Interesting. Dr. Peter Salgo It was developed for as a broad spectrum

antiviral. I believe it was initially for Ebola, and then they started looking into other viruses. Yeah, that's right. I want to change topics a little bit, just take a little bit of a breather, and just ask Dr. Yo. Gym guy, where'd that come from? Well, it's a joke you know i've got these people in social media that that like to say that i'm not really an anesthesiologist or a doctor i i run a side business where i work with professional athletes that do a lot of exercise physiology right so there are some people you know i talk about different drugs and i don't know maybe for some reason they hate this drug

you know i've been talking a lot about loranlamab and rlf 100 and i don't know the reasons why but some people hate this drug so they try to discredit me and so weird the idea that somebody hates a drug is weird it's just so weird it's it it is such a weird thing right you can say i i don't think you know the science is not there but you know dr patterson has explained loron lamab and i said wow this is a great drug and they're groups of people and i don't know who they are but they're coming after me and they say oh you're just a gym guy and you should just be making youtube videos and working out at a gym okay well and in a in a tweet today our information is you need a tweet that he called me the tv guy you the gym guy what was dr zlenko he's the hydroxychloroquine guy of course it's pretty funny it's pretty weird right we're all

just three physicians out there just trying to do our job it's very bizarre i'd like to share something with you guys um so my the community that i did all my work with is now having a second wave. And hundreds of patients are sick. Yeah. And many of them are high risk. I would say even like 100 patients so far have been high risk and treated. I think one went to the hospital for IV antibiotics and now they're home. No deaths. I mean, do you understand the change? think one month in the hospital and or IV antibiotics and now they're home no deaths

I mean do you understand the change because we've educated the it's a it's a controlled environment so we've educated the community that if you have symptoms call right away don't wait yeah 10 days and people are scared they We intervene early. And we see tremendous results. Everyone gets better. Do you think that was congregations around the high holidays? Yeah, you know, it's a high-density living. the way religious Jews are, their religious life is very much connected to community, very much connected with doing things as a unit. So it's psychologically very difficult

for people to uproot their entire way of living, I would say, especially when it comes to matters of spirit. And I know de Blasio is trying to shut some of that down and there's a, quite a pushback in the suburbs of New York. Yeah. It's a little tyrant, you know, you know, I don't start with God. Don't start with God. Fair enough.

We have, we have a bunch of questions I want to get to in sort of rapid fire. They're mostly for Dr. Zelenko, so I'm going to address them to him. This is Lainey or Lonnie for Dr. Zelenko. Go ahead. Yes. Thank you for taking my call, Dr. Zelenko. My questions are all related to quercetin. I'd like to know what the dosage and frequency you would recommend

for taking that for prophylactic use and also for someone that has maybe contracted COVID. And also... Go ahead. What if it works as well as hydroxychloroquine? And what would be the long-term effects of taking quercetin? Are there any concerns? Okay.

Let's let go. All very good questions. So quercetin for prophylaxis, I just use 500 milligrams once a day together with zinc. And actually, there are papers that show that quercetin needs vitamin C to actually work well. So it would be like quercetin and vitamin C together with zinc. That's what prophylaxis. There's nothing wrong with taking two if you're high risk or you have high viral load exposures. Now, if someone gets sick, again, depending on who they are, I would use up to 2,000 milligrams of quercetin for a short period of time, five to seven days, with vitamin C and zinc. And lately, I've been using other drugs.

I've been adding ivermectin. I've been using dexamethasone or inhaled budesamide. I've even used drugs like Lobanox or Heliquis if I'm concerned about clots. So it's an art. There's no cookie-cutter response for every patient. I would just say that quercetin is a natural derivative, a plant derivative. It seems to be very well tolerated. It's available over the counter.

And I have a very interesting piece of information. So I've been ripping the Israeli government apart due to their response. And I've gone over their heads in a sense and directed to the people. And I've been advocating for corset in use. You cannot get corset in anymore in the entire country of Israel. It's been all bought up, both online and in the stores. I think that's a good sign that people really took it seriously. And Dr. Yo, I don't think I ever gave you the chance to finish the initial question

of the treatment that President Trump got. Did you feel that the treatment overall was good? You know, obviously he's doing much better from the Twitter video that was posted about an hour ago, which I'm glad. No matter what your political beliefs are, he's still the president, he's a father, grandfather, husband. We should all be wishing everyone well and a fast, speedy recovery. The thing that I'm concerned about with President Trump's treatment is we don't necessarily know. I think in the video that he put out, he said Regeneron, he thinks

gave him all the benefit. But was it Regeneron? Was it Remdesivir? Was it steroids? Was it zinc? Was it a combination of all of that? He said he felt sick on day one, marvelous on day two after the Regeneron. That's why he was putting a temporal association there, and that's why he's

saying that. Yeah, absolutely. It makes sense, but from... Finish Dr. Yeo. Sorry, go ahead, Dr. Zelenko. Dr. Zelenko, finish. I would reserve judgment until we get the full picture of what is going on, which I know for a fact we're not getting. Is he going the other direction, do you think?

I think he used everything. And I think that certain things are just best not spoken about. Okay. Due to political reasons. We're a month away from the most important election in the history of this country, in my opinion. So he has to do everything right to win politically. So that would be true for any candidate. So, you know, giving out Regeneron for free and giving people hope, that's a useful tactic.

I may even support it because if it actually works, then great. It wouldn't work if he gave out hydrophilic chloroquine to everyone. People would say that he's trying to kill half the country. Lovinox for some of the cases that are at high risk. That was the one thing I would have definitely done differently for President Trump. And we don't know for sure this didn't happen, but I would have put him on Lovinox. Would you guys have done that? You know, we have to be careful not to get sidetracked by VIP-itis. Yep. you know what i mean um he had symptoms for a day you know um the hypercoagulation the clotting uh doesn't really kick in until a week day seven eight nine yeah so i wasn't concerned and i don't know his full history and obviously a patient who has a history of clotting i'll do i'll start them right away but i i think i've been uh biased a little bit by a recent case i was exposed to of a 21 year old female whose presentation was a large pulmonary embolus uh day one is you know day one

of illness and it it affected me deeply she did not make it through. And so I've been more interested in the prophylactic doses of Lovenox that some centers are using. Dr. Yeo, what do you say? dose of lovinox if there's a contraindication then they get they get heparin so it's possible he could have gotten president trump because he was hospitalized as a prophylaxis maybe not for covid directly but maybe as a for a dvt because he's going to be immobilized and sitting on a bed and especially with his age and some of his risk factors i I wouldn't be surprised. But as Dr. Zelenko said, we are getting bits and pieces from the press releases and trying to piece together something, come up with a narrative. So we don't really know the full story. Right. That's right.

Guys, I have to take a little break here. You guys, we good so far with both of you? Yeah. All right. We'll take a little break and we will be right back. With so much focus on keeping ourselves and our loved ones safe and healthy, it's easy Yeah. All right. We'll take a little of us need that anxiety right now. That's for sure. That's where Hydrolyte comes in. Long-time fans will remember my obsession with Hydrolyte, which is simply the best oral rehydration product I've tried.

I'm even more excited to introduce their brand new single-serve powder sticks. Simply pour one powder stick into a glass of water. They recommend seven ounces. The powder dissolves almost instantly, creating the perfect balance of sodium, glucose, and water. Itivers up to four times the electrolytes of your typical sports drink. The other great news about Hydrolyte's new powder sticks, they're 100% all natural, no artificial flavors, colors, or sweeteners. They're available in flavors like orange and lemonade, and they taste great.

Hydration is crucial, and Hydrolyte is fastest and easiest way to stay ahead of it. Get your supply of Hydrolyte powder sticks now at Hydrolyte.com slash D-R-D-R-E-W. Again, that's H-Y-D-R-A-L-Y-T-E dot com slash D-R-D-R-E-W. And then use that code DRDREW25 at checkout. The World Health Organization estimates that each year approximately 1 million people take their own life. That's one death every 40 seconds. Experts predicted numbers would peak in 2020, but no one could have imagined the devastation brought on by COVID-19.

During the coronavirus pandemic, you may experience anxiety, sadness, and loneliness. Existing mental health conditions, including severe anxiety and major depression, may worsen. If you're feeling hopeless, contemplating self-harm, or you're concerned about someone else, I'm here to tell you there is hope. A Mission for Michael is dedicated to helping clients achieve complete inner and outer transformation. Mission for Michael is the premier

resource for intensive mental health treatment in Southern California. With an astonishing two-to-one client-to-staff ratio, each client in their facility receives individual care 24 hours a day, overseen by a team of all doctorate or master's level clinicians. With a focus on evidence-based treatment, along with personalized and compassionate care, they offer mental health treatment that can change lives. If you're suffering from mental illness or you're concerned about a loved one, go to amfmtreatment.com.

Again, that's a mission for Michael, AMFM. amfmtreatment.com or call 866-581-4401. Again, that is 866-581-4401. There we are. We're all back. Now let's get my colleagues in here, Dr. Johendra and Dr. Zelenko, and get right to some calls that bring up some interesting issues. This is Ron.

Ron, go ahead. Uh-oh, now I don't hear Ron. The phone, is the phone okay with that? Ron, try again. All right, I have some, oh, I just put him back in the lineup here. One second. Ron, how about now? You got us?

Hello. Hey, Ron. up here one second uh ron how about now you got us hello hey ron he's not hearing us exactly ron do you hear us okay it's got to be something on his end ron i've got somebody else has a similar question so i'm going to go to this caller and it is Rye or R-Y. Can you hear me? I gotcha. What's your name? I'm sorry. It can't be what it says here. Hi. Rye, R-Y. Okay. Fair enough. That's what your name is. So go ahead. I was just asking for my mom, who's a she's asking can we uh we can we address the reality of reinfection and is this a concerning consider is this a concern considering uh potential residual effects don't you start

possibly um i don't think the numbers um you know, there was a case report from South Korea and another case in Nevada where there were the reinfection in these patients. Now, here's the difficult thing about proving that it's reinfection. One is you might have asymptomatic uh people that didn't get tested two even if you did get tested if you got it a second time um the question is was it uh is it really two different strains because and you have to measure the genomic uh of the the genome of the first time you got the virus and then the second time and compare it which no one ever does really you never get that data no one ever does yeah yeah exactly so it's it's very difficult to see there's anecdotal evidence there's some reports suggesting there's that people are saying look i'm getting i'm getting infected again it's it's very difficult right now because it's a

question of did they get tested the first time or did they have symptoms, get exposed and assume? And I'm dealing with a lot of long haulers who are saying, I never got tested. I have the symptoms and I'm a COVID-19 patient. So it's very confusing right now. And I don't think we have a complete understanding. The other important thing I want to say is the paradigm is that you get infected, you build antibodies, and then you have immunity. And then the concern is that the antibodies that you're building or that you develop from the initial infection may not confer long-lasting immunity. Or if you get exposed a second time, those antibodies may not be, I guess, strong enough, to put it in simple terms. And let me add another layer on that. We don't know the full story of cellular immunity and how it works in the immunity, conferring immunity to this infection.

Yes, it's the T cell immunity and the role of t-cells right there's some uh publications that are suggesting that a group of people make antibodies another group make t-cells uh a t-cell memory t-cell response so there's no way of measuring they don't make antibodies they make t-cells uh memory t-cells so how how do you measure in those patients? It's difficult. We don't have this testing. I'm working with a company called Aditix that's trying to develop the technology to do that. And I think they're close. So that would be pretty interesting. Dr. Zelenko, what do you say? I can just tell you my empirical experience. I have not seen one patient who I know for sure had COVID.

For sure meaning I have IgG antibodies present, that got it a second time. And everyone that I'm seeing now are those that quarantined themselves during the first wave, and now they kind of reintegrated, and they're getting it. I'm not concerned about about at least this season. You know, it may very well turn out to be like the seasonal flu where every year it's a different strain and you need a different approach. I'm just talking about this round, let's say this year.

I don't think it's a new strain. It seems to behave the same, respond the same. We're just much better at treating it. Yeah. And I would say that it's a very minor concern. And even if the person did have it and they got it a second time, we have to always remember there may be immune deficiencies by certain people. There may be other factors that need to be as a person on the immunosuppressive drug.

You know, there is a lot of factors that need to be considered. Overall, I would say it's not a major worry. Got it, Rye? Yes. All right. Thanks for your question. It's an interesting topic. Got it, right? Yes. All right. Thanks for your question. It's an interesting topic. And again, you know, Dr.

Yo, I imagine with your interest in the long haulers, some of those may look like reinfections. You know, I was fine. Then all of a sudden I started feeling terrible again. Right. Yeah. Well, what what Dr. Patterson's looking through and for some of you viewers who don't know dr patterson is the ceo of incel dx he's running all this virology and immunology

and we're not really seeing uh this being a viral at least in the long haulers it's not virally induced he's not seeing any uh the the the fat the causative factor being the virus it's a transient hyper inflammation caused by these residual cytokines. But the good thing about long haulers that we're seeing in the data is that, just one more point, is there's no immune suppression. The T cell exhaustion that we see

in the active COVID infections have resolved. This is just purely a hyperinflammatory problem. Dr. Yeo, you mentioned the drug ivermectin. Josh has a question about that. Hi, guys. Yeah, I just wanted to ask about ivermectin because I've been reading about it and heard that it's being used in quite a few countries,

in South America, in Asia, in the Middle East. And apparently it has very good results, but it's not getting any attention by the Western world. I was wondering if the doctors have any experience with that. Gio, I think this is your drug. Yeah, so I've been following ivermectin now for a couple of months now. Ivermectin, I've been talking to doctors in Bangladesh, and they're actually, one of the doctors there, and I have an interview with him. He suggested that ivermectin and doxycycline was maybe a little bit better than hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin.

He's not saying it doesn't work. He's saying he found it to be a little bit better than hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin. He's not saying it doesn't work. He's saying he found it to be a little bit better. There's Dr. Barodi, Thomas Barodi in Australia, who's a big advocate of ivermectin. He's come out and said that he's treating patients with ivermectin. There's another clinical, there was a study done in the ICU down in South Florida in Broward County by two pulmonary critical care doctors, and this publication is online, where I forget the exact number of patients, but they had several intubated patients. So now you're dealing with the severe critical COVID-19 patients, and they gave ivermectin, and they responded, and they were

able to get these patients off the ventilators. I think there's a lot of confusion. Ivermectin is a drug we use quite commonly in a lot of the developing nations. So I feel like some of the physicians in South America and Asia, even in Africa, might be more comfortable using it than here in the United States. Well, listen, I don't know about you. I'm going to stop you. I have not used ivermectin since I worked in a county hospital 30 years ago. It was actually during the Civil War in El Salvador. And a lot of stuff was coming up. We're talking about worms, intestinal worms. And we had to use not just ivermectin,

a whole range of different things, and then it's not something you see day in, day out, practice medicine up here generally. Yeah, and the FDA came out with an advisory in April suggesting that, oh, we're not advocating for the use of ivermectin, but we typically use ivermectin in veterinary medicine at very high doses. And of course, you can see toxicity at those doses, but the doctors in Bangladesh and in Australia and even in Latin America are using

150 to 200 mics per kilogram at such a low dose. And they're actually seeing very little side effects and positive results. Interesting. Dr. Zelenko? Yes, I use ivermectin. I would say 10% of my patients get it. Interesting. And I'll tell you why. Because not every patient presents the same.

I just had a patient who has been sick for 14 days, and they reached out to me, and their pulse ox is 86, and they don't look good. So I don't believe in sending people to the hospital. I like to try to turn the situation around. I'll use ivermectin. In addition, hydroxychloroquine, zinc, dexamethasone. I'll throw everything I can, lovanox, HOMO2, IV fluids, and it really works. There are other times I use ivermectin is when I can't get hydroxychloroquine. I have to use a less powerful quercetin or EGCG. So because of that I'll throw in an ivermectin for the flavor you know just to make sure that the patient gets better. I've had no complications with it. I use 12 milligrams divided 6 milligrams in the morning, six milligrams 12 hours later, and that's it. president to realize why he got better. Is that because

he got treated right away? And the key is early intervention, early intervention. That's how you prevent long haulers. I mean, you don't, it won't help the existing long haulers, but. It's okay. My dog is bugging the hell out of me while we're, you're allowed to have a phone call. That's one of my kids. They don't like the worm medication. Your kids. You all back I actually turned off my phone

I have zero how they called me maybe whatsapp on my computer maybe that's what was I saying you were talking about you wish Dr. or you hoped

President Trump knows why he got well early use ivermectin no I just feel that you know every physician

in this country needs to be encouraged to intervene as early as possible and look at the CDC website for influenza it says you have to start

treatment within the first antiviral treatment within 48 hours why? and look at the CDC website for influenza. It says you have to start treatment within the first antiviral treatment within 48 hours. Why? Because that's when it works. So it's a very standard thing that we do in medicine. We intervene. We treat cancer before it becomes metastatic. Right. We treat a UTI before it becomes aastatic. Right. Right. We treat, we treat, uh, a UTI before

it becomes a pyelonephritis. So I don't understand why the Fauci types, I do understand, but it's really disgusting. Um, why did degenerates are advising against early intervention when that's the recommendation for every other illness. Yeah, it is kind of... Dr. Joe, do you have an opinion about that? About specifically ivermectin? No, why people would be discouraging early intervention with anything i i'm uh to be honest with you i'm not sure it makes a lot of sense um you know what i've been advising um patients and and friends of mine that have had come down with covid19 is go to cvs i

know i make a joke about it is here in the United States, you know, because of hydroxychloroquine not being available, ivermectin not being available. It's take your vitamin D, vitamin C, zinc, N-acetylcysteine, melatonin, which is part of the MATH plus protocol Dr. Merrick at Eastern Virginia has developed. Because the only time, if you go to the hospital, the only thing they're going to do different is probably put you on a nasal cannula, give you some fluids, and maybe consider remdesivir. But that's what most of the patients, they sit in the hospital for a day or two and get this big bill at the end for getting fluids and nasal cannula. So I agree with Dr. Zelenko. It's about

prevention and really that early intervention to prevent the cytokine storm developing and the long-term hospitalization. Let's talk to... But do you know, Dr. Drew... Go ahead, finish up. I was just going to say, and so this is why some of those medications that Dr., I mean, that President Trump got is promising, like the Regeneron's and Eli Lilly today announced that they've got some positive results.

They also have a monoclonal antibody cocktail. So these are medications for that mild to moderate that could potentially give more tools for the physicians to really get aggressive with the treatment. Yeah, I think because, I mean, so many people start mild to moderate. Why not intervene there? It's like if somebody had a cellulitis in their arm, we say, let's wait until they get septic. Let's just

wait until septicemia sets in. Then we'll give them the antibiotics. Right? Yeah, and not everyone is going to respond to, okay, so let's say we have these first-line treatments like the Regeneron, these other monoclonal antibodies, not everyone is going to respond. The one thing I'm starting to realize looking at the long haulers is I think we're going to learn so much about the entire disease and that, you know, we talked about it's not one-size-fits-all. Dr. Zelenko touched upon, you know, some patients are going to respond to ivermectin and other

medications he's using. And we're seeing this in the long haulers. There's not one cytokine. It's a heterogeneous pattern. And could the same thing happen even in COVID patients where everyone's bodies responded differently, different cytokines are being elevated, different responses in the body. So why not have these different medications? Okay, if the Regeneron's and your Eli Lilly's and your monoclonal antibodies don't work, then you've got your second line drugs like your

loranlumab, your RLF100, your lenzulamab that can then really quell the cytokine storm for those patients that didn't respond to that initial treatment. Carol, you have a question. Yes, I do. My son is a long hauler. He's been to like four hospitals, six doctors. No one's given him anything. This has been going on. He had, he thinks he had COVID the end of December, beginning of January. They had no tests then. And, um, I was looking to see, he still has severe headaches, uh, and severe fatigue. And, uh, he has been following the, uh, math plus, um, you know, the course of treatment, but, um, he's not getting anywhere. He, I mean, he feels a little better, but he really needs someone to treat him or give him something, either the steroids or the, the other drugs that you're talking about, the ivermectin or, but every doctor he's seen has told him that he might be having a reaction,

some kind of immune reaction after a virus, but they can't say whether it's COVID or not because he wasn't tested and nobody treats him. Nobody gives him anything. What do you recommend? It's interesting, Dr.'s interesting dr to think about not only what we recommend but someone who did not have proven covet and and may not have antibodies what do you do with that population well you and and and that's that's the the big the puzzle and and what we we got to figure out because early on in the in the pandemic uh getting tested was not getting the testing were not available it's very difficult uh for a lot of americans to get the the testing so those people in that march to probably may period that

definitely you know when you're looking at the symptomatology you can say yes they got they were exposed they they had covet 19 but they never had a test. I think we have to treat them, and our clinical approach has to be like they had the infection. Because you can go back and test the antibodies, but again, not everyone is developing antibodies. So what's happening is primary care doctors are looking at these patients going, no, this is all in your head. You're making this up. This is PTSD. You have anxiety and depression. And I'm in these Facebook groups and these social media groups and patients are, all they want is just an acknowledgement. Yes, you have a problem. You're not making this up. And when we're looking at the immunology of

these patients, the cytokines, TNF-alpha implicated in depression, interleukin-8 is implicated in fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue syndrome. A lot of these symptoms, a lot of these conditions that patients have, we're seeing the cytokines elevated. So is there a correlation? That's what we don't know. But Carol, for your son, if you can contact me, Dr. Patterson and I, we're starting a long haul project. We're about a week away. So in about a week, MD Biosciences, who's partnered up with Dr. Patterson's company, is going to have a website set up, an online portal where I know your doctor can put in requisition orders. And right now they're just building out the infrastructure. We were hoping to have this up within within the next week the goal is then you would get a cytokine

profile and then according to that we would give you recommendations uh not only therapeutic but we're partnering up with a lot of um with another um social workers and different health psychiatrists and therapists because when you look at fibromyalgia, you look at CFS, a lot of it is not, you know, we're so quick to jump to a medication, got to get this pill, got to get the shot. But there's also that cognitive, that therapy and the support. So we're looking at this on a holistic, taking a holistic approach. And you can contact me, I think, you know, we'll put my Twitter and you can send me an email. I'll send you all the information on how your son can be involved in our project and the research we're doing. Okay, Carol.

Okay, which doctor was that that I was talking to? Dr. Yohendra, and the Twitter handle is YoDrYo? YoDrYo, if you send me a message, I i'll send you my email and we can have a conversation i've been talking literally to hundreds of patients uh they all have you know i'll give you my cell phone we can we can have a we can have a discussion i'll tell you how to coordinate i'm getting a little bit better in understanding how to get these blood work in because a lot of the doctors don't understand about what these requests are. So something I just want to mention to everyone is I just found this out. Some hospitals are doing courtesy blood draws.

So you can go and ask the hospital and they will actually do some of the lab work that we're requesting. Dr. Patterson's doing all of this for free. Just get the labs over to his lab in San Francisco, in Silicon Valley, and he will do it all for free. Within a couple of days, we'll have a full cytokine and immune profile. Dr. Y-O-Doctor. Okay, Carol, we good with that? Yeah.

All right. Sounds good. Excellent. Let's kind of move towards the wrapping things up. Dr. Zelenko, I guess the only topic we did not really go over is sort of the epidemiology of all this and how to contain it and what we think the right things are to do. Where are you with strategies for keeping this as much under control as possible until we get a vaccine? Right. So again, it's custom tailored to every individual. So my 10-year-old child should be going to school. And I actually prefer that they get COVID-19 over influenza because COVID-19 doesn't touch

most children whereas influenza kills children. I wouldn't prophylax or immunize the children or the very low risk patients. Now, those patients that are very high risk and did not have it. So these are the patients we need to be very careful with. I would advise prophylaxis. And I think social distancing is appropriate. Now, someone who's had the infection, I actually think they could reintegrate into society. And I'm not concerned that they would, you know, be a vector for spreading of COVID. So in reality, Dr. Scott Atlas actually said this, even though herd immunity usually means two-thirds, I think in this particular case, because of the T cell component, we may be able to get away with less.

We may be able to get the concept of herd immunity by like 50, 40 to 50%. So I would advocate that the more people develop antibodies, the better it is for society as a whole. And by the way, the better it is for society as a whole. And by the way, the psychological trauma of being isolated, especially in the kids, we don't yet know the collateral damage. And I think that in a disease that spares 99% of the people,

and then is only dangerous for a small sliver of patients, shut down the world, it's counterproductive. And the immune system, by the way, needs to be challenged. You know, the way we develop immunity is by living. If you stay at home, you actually get, not everything in life is COVID. You become weaker, you actually get, not everything in life is COVID. You become weaker immunologically speaking to a whole myriad of infection. Yeah. It's the, the sewer rat idea. Also the reason we have peanut allergies now we're treating them by exposure, pretty much everything that improves

the regulation of our emotional system, our neurological system, and our immune system is related to exposure. Correct. And again, there has to be another component is if people get sick, we need to have the logistics in place to be able to effectively treat them in the right timeframe. Because that's contributing to all the morbidity and mortality. So again, this is a very manageable situation, but it's like a runaway train.

It's very hard to stop. And especially when there's so many forces that have vested interests that the economy should be shut down and that panic should still reign dr yo i'll echo what dr zelenko said about about the children um you know part of my my gym being the gym guys again it's a sports performance lab but uh i work uh i had a grant from the from the state of rhode island working with uh some of the from the state of rhode island working with uh some of the public school kids in rhode island and it was probably about 15 of them and

what was really uh shocking was the psychological just how these kids were you know the parents are telling me that they're they're these these kids were showing signs of depression they are not interacting with the with their friends they're so they're so down and we we got this grant we had this program where i was teaching them exercise physiology and basis basics of medicine and get to get to play around in the in the lab but you know it and these kids just they brightened you know they were so it was so rewarding for them and also for me just seeing they walked in all just down and just interacting with human beings it's you know so i agree with dr zelenko you know the the children we got to

think about the kids and and the psychological impact the kids are missing their graduations the college kids are missing that experience is gone we are we are altering the trajectory of the neurocognitive and social and emotional development of an entire generation. And it seems as though the people who are responsible for our, quote, health, the public health, give it no regard. Like, no regard. They seem interested in controlling the population, having things go the way they insist it must go come what may uh and it is man i i always told my my residents when i was training residents make your decision but uh and if you make a mistake or call it wrong i i won't i won't quarrel but if you don't have a backup plan and you don't adjust course, I'll kill you. And that's being a physician.

Public health officials seem to either have not practiced medicine or aren't trained that way or have lost track of it. That would be a little harsher. What's that? Crimes of humanity. Wow. Genocide on the weak on the vulnerable

well it's because you don't mince words that makes you a very popular guest Dr. Zelenko would you like to wrap up with any last comments I'll give each of you a couple minutes Dr. Zelenko first I think that we are wrap up with any last comments i'll give each of you a couple minutes dr zelenko first yeah i think

that we are it's a much bigger problem than covet 19 the question is where is humanity going how do we look at life what is life we have two options i don know. Did you ever hear my monkey joke? No. No. So a child goes to his mother and asks, where do we come from? The mother says, well, we're made in the image of God. Then he goes to the father and he says, where do we come from? So he goes, we evolved from monkeys. He's all confused. He goes back to his mother and says, what does this mean? She goes, oh, it's no problem that's my side

of the family it's his side of the family but in reality i don't know those are the two options now if you view life as uh precious that there's sanctity there that it's a gift and that the and that's the basis of human rights or natural law is the fact that we're made in the image of God. Then it's not in our it's not our job to decide who lives or dies. Now, if you look at people as a animal. That you can buy and sell and trade and, you know, let's get rid of the old people, let's get rid of the blacks. Let's get rid of the Jews. Or let's get people who have blue eyes. Let's get rid of them.

It's highly relative. So that's what we see happening here. And I think that if this country would move to, the world would move to a more moral stance, then all these other issues would resolve themselves over time. Dr. Yeo? Yeah, I'm going to, you know, I sort of look at always the positives and the silver lining, and these, obviously, the last couple of months have been very, very grim and very depressing,

and, you know, for the nation and the world and humanity. But I think one of the things I'm taking from this and I'm learning from is, first of all, thank you for doing this, Dr. Drew, inviting Dr. Zelenko and myself, many other doctors. Our discussions we've had offline, on Twitter. First of all, we're creating this community that I feel like there was a void. Maybe I probably say I'm complicit in that. I let the CDC, WHO, other health organizations, all right, they're doing their job. I'll just be a drone and follow what they say. But then I think now I've come to realize, no, we need to be physicians and clinicians and critically think and not just take everything for face value, discuss amongst ourselves. one of the biggest things

i've learned is there is a major void in the world of social media and just getting the news out there where physicians clinicians we're not out there in the front we're all in our labs and in the hospital a lot of people ask me oh you're a social media doctor and i'm like no i i've never dreamt about i still don't have any plans of having it. For me, it was about getting information out there. There was such a lack of information, helping physicians get some of these experimental drugs. So, I think we're learning. We're going to be better about that, getting that information.

We're also going to learn so much about the immune system and the body from this horrific pandemic. Dargeot, keep doing what you're doing. You sound like a young me. I got involved in radio with the exact same thinking. No one's talking to these kids. Radio has such a powerful influence. Physicians aren't on TV.

They aren't on the radio. We need to get out there and you need to hear what we have to say. And this is just the new medium for that. And so thank you for being a major figure in that. And Dr. Zelenko, thank you for your courage and the spiritual conversation is rarely had. So I hope you'll pick up that crucible and continue it long after COVID.

Thank you for the opportunity to come on your show. And I really respect what you do. Thank you. And I think we collaborate together and really advocate for the welfare of humanity. I don't see how that could be a bad thing. Dr. Yeo, thank you as well. And thank you to our callers and our participants. I've been watching you on the thread here on the chat room.

I appreciate a very lively conversation there. Thank you, Caleb Nation, for producing today's show and making the technical aspects of this work so well. Susan Pinsky, as always, thank you. And thank you for the dogs for running in here and disturbing me. And we appreciate you all being a part of this and share this one. I think people who have questions might enjoy sort of hearing the thinking. And again, you'll notice we weren't dogmatic. We weren't saying this is categorically the way it goes.

We're saying this is our experience, what we think it is, this we are collaborating. I'm not sure we agreed on everything, but we tried to present the ideas for you to decide and think about things with a little more clarity rather than all the spin and nonsense that's out there, all the panic porn. Tell your friend. Yeah, tell your friend about the pod and about the stream

and DrDrew.com, YouTube slash DrDrew, and we'll see you all next time. 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.