Ask Dr. Drew - COVID-19 Vaccines For Kids, Lockdowns & Caller Questions – Ask Dr. Drew – Episode 52

Episode Date: October 30, 2021

A special episode of Ask Dr. Drew dedicated to YOUR questions! Dr. Drew answers caller questions about the COVID-19 vaccines for children, media misinformation, lockdowns, vaccine mandates, and speaks with author and actor Greg Ellis. Broadcast live on October 18, 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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please contact Connex Ontario at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. Hey, everybody. Here we are. We also are setting up a clubhouse at the same time. People want to check that out. Go on to clubhouse. Raise your hand.

And if i bring up to the podium you'll be streaming out on facebook twitter twitch rumble and youtube we had a great guest plan plan for today we had to reschedule him vene prasad but he's a doctor but i do want to bring up some of the stuff that i was going to bring up with him today we'll sort of pre we'll pre uh chew on some of this material but I do, I want to get some of you up here. You had questions. Your hands are up on the YouTube. Yeah, we always have a lot of people with their hands up.

Yes. Not enough time. All right, let's do it. 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... 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. 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. I want to give a shout out to our good friends at Blue Mics. If you've heard my voice on this show any time over the past year, including right now, you've been listening to Blue Microphones.

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Noelle, are you there? There she is. Oh, hold on. Wait, wait, Noelle. Hang on. Oh, no. So nobody heard the intro. Apparently not.

All right, Noelle, try that again. Here we go. They won't get my joke. You're on mute, but let's try it again. There you go. Is it working now? Then we got it.. They won't get my joke. You're you're you're on mute, but let's try it again. There you go. Is it working now? Then we got it. Thank you.

That was my fault. My my best. OK, go ahead. OK, I just had a question. I took my kids to their well child checks last month and we were talking about the covid vaccine for kids. And I asked him if once the FDA or CDC or whatnot approves something and makes it available, do doctors get to look at all the studies that went into making that decision? And he said that no, they don't always get access to that. And I just wanted to ask you, is that true?

So the way I would have answered that question was we have no way of knowing all the studies they looked at. Right. We don't really know what they were presented as the defense or the evidence for approval. Now, we are supposed to keep up on all the research that's published and peer reviewed and available. So many of us have seen lots of literature. They may be considering sort of preprints and things that haven't been published yet that we would not yet see. OK, but people have got to get a better understanding of what FDA approval means. It doesn't mean a doctor is going to do something. It means that the drug company can bring something to market with specific parameters set by the FDA. What each

physician does with each patient is up to that patient-doctor combination, period. Now, there may be mandates from outside in order to do certain things, like go to school, get a measles vaccine, things like that. But whether a treatment is given has almost nothing to do with the FDA. We use treatments all the time. Aspirin has not been FDA approved. We use treatments all the time that are FDA approved, and we do use medication that are FDA approved outside of their narrow band of FDA approval,

which is what the drug company must abide by. But we are under no obligation to abide. Now, if something goes wrong because of our decision, we can get in more trouble if we're using something so-called off-label outside of FDA approval. But if we can defend that decision reasonably, there is no problem using things off-label outside of FDA approval. But if we can defend that decision reasonably, there is no problem using things off-label. So what the FDA does or doesn't do should be a guide for us, but shouldn't necessarily determine what a doctor does for a patient. So you get that? Yes. And I guess more of my question was when a new drug does come to market or the

COVID vaccine is approved for children, do you get to see all the details of the studies that go into that? Because it just seems like- You don't. As I'm saying, a lot of it is pre-print, right? So we don't know what the drug company presents to the FDA. We know what's in print. We are supposed to keep up on all the published data. And that may or may not include everything that goes to the FDA, right? But let's talk about what we do know.

We do know that there's roughly a one in 7,000, 6,800, one in 6,800 risk of myocarditis in young males from the vaccine. Now, most of that data is on adolescents. We really don't have a lot of data on children yet, but the presumption is that there will be similar kinds of risks. And there is some data on children, so the risk looks about the same. So it's about 1 in 7,000 case of myocarditis. Now, of those cases thus far, of which there's not been a lot, mostly because there's not been a lot of children vaccinated, but at one in 7,000, most of it appears to be mild and reversible.

The concern is that as we start to get into the bigger numbers, you're going to see more moderate to severe myocarditis with potential for real complications. That's the concern. And that's what your doctor has to measure against your individual child's risk of COVID, which is approaching zero, right? There are what, 300 children die in the country

or something from COVID? I mean, the chance of having serious problems from COVID in a healthy child is remote. So as your doctor sat down and talked to you about this? No, he hasn't talked about specific risks to age groups or anything. He did mention that he was going to recommend that all of his patients get the vaccine though. So there is a, so there's a overriding motivation to get the vaccine, which is we need to stop this virus from replicating, right? So there's the individual risk. There's the

individual risk of side effect. There's the individual risk of COVID. And then there's the collective risk of which your child is a part of that if this virus continues to replicate, something bad could develop, something really nasty could develop. And so you have to kind of consider all three in what you decide to do for your child. Have you decided what you want to do yet? I guess, well, we were thinking of, yes, doing the vaccination, but really waiting to see what happened first. Okay. That's reasonable yeah that's that's a very good way to approach it that's what i did with my kids with the chicken pox vaccine uh you know i think i'm a vaccine enthusiast to say the least but i'm still you

know vaccines are not without the risk that's all and so i'd like to understand that risk before i do it and when my kids were little there had been a series of adverse reactions in Japan. And I thought, huh, I wonder if we're going to really see more of this or not. We didn't. It would have been fine to have gotten the kids vaccinated. They got chickenpox and so did Susan. And everybody's fine. But I had a similar approach with my own kids. You have triplets, okay? Three with chicken pox at the same time the the difficulty noel is that in los angeles they're being their mandates coming uh that you're being forced to take the vaccine and so the the decision making is being taken away from the parents and the doctor and because you know there are going to be some side effects that's going to be an interesting problem for the mandates, it seems to me.

But that's a whole other matter. What do you feel about it generally? Just the vaccines in general? Yeah. You know, I have some mixed feelings because at the beginning we were told, you know, they're 90, 80 percent effective, whatever. And, you know know my husband just read something that says oh yeah now our vaccines are 43 effective and i am not personally aware of a vaccine with so many boosters and um this is also a question i've asked on clubhouse twice

before as i'm i'm confused as to we have this global pandemic. We needed to do something about it. Why did we not go with the tried and true, you know, conventional vaccine where you have, you know, a weakened or dead virus? And why did we decide to go with this brand new technology to tackle something? You know why? There was actually a reason. So, please tell me. Yeah. So first of all, we do have the traditional platform. That's the Johnson & Johnson vaccine.

And you see that one has got its own problems, right? Yes? Right. But was the Johnson & Johnson the actual COVID-19 in it? No, but it still was a more traditional platform. And then the Novavax is another traditional platform, which is exactly like the Pertussis vaccine in your tetanus shot.

So the Novavax is also a traditional platform. It doesn't look very good though. It doesn't look like it's having much success, but I thought it was going to be better than it was. It's not looking that great. So Novavax has problems. J&J, these are the more traditional style vaccines. The reason they went with the mRNA so quickly is that's the only thing that could be developed and scaled up on the speed at which they were doing it.

The mRNA vaccines, from a manufacturing standpoint, can be massively scaled up incredibly quickly. So that was the reason. It really was that they could do it with the mRNA vaccines. Okay, thank you. Thank you for answering that. All right, good question. Is your last name Portuguese? Yes. It really was that they could do it with the mRNA vaccines. Okay. Thank you. Thank you for answering that. All right. Good question. Is your last name Portuguese?

No, it's Italian. Italian. Because I have a friend of mine named Farina and he was with an H though, A-A-H-A, and he was a Portuguese. I'm just curious. Okay. Thank you, Noel. Good questions.

Thank you. Well, good questions. The audience and we are still going along here and asking more questions. This is not quite sure what your name is. Let me see if it comes up here. Greg Ellis. Is that you sitting there? Is that the Greg I'm seeing? It looks kind of like you. Okay.

This is a name that is not coming through that'd be cool come on early it is up is that you it is greg ellis hold on david hold on a second uh greg i'm gonna invite you to speak in just a second go ahead david so quickie question uh dr drew uh have you read this uh retraction by the New York Times of the grossly misrepresented number of children, around 900,000 who were hospitalized for COVID, when in reality, the number was closer to 63,000? And if you did indeed see that, how do you respond to that kind of alarm being created and then a retraction being done so much later. Would disgust be a strong enough feeling about it?

I see the panic porn wherever they can generate it. If I hear the word grim or staggering one more time, I'm going to put needles in my eyes. The rush to panic is just out of control and the fact that they uh issue i did not by the way i did not read i knew this happened i knew that there was a correction i didn't read the correction so i specifically haven't read it because i was disgusted by the whole thing i didn't want to know i didn't care but what makes me crazy is the vigor with which they present the retraction of course is orders of magnitude less vigorous than the original headline which they are so gratified by by putting out the the panic as i look back on this thing the the one thing that i was spot on about and has been

most disturbing to me is the panic uh and the and this Panic never makes things better. It has been on the level of disgust that we have been so panic-driven and panic. Well, not only have we been panic-prone, but we have been driven to panic by the press. And rather than keeping a positive attitude and looking to the experts to get this thing done and let's get through this, it's awful, but to the experts to get this thing done. Let's get through this. It's awful, but we're going to get through it. To whimper and shelter in place as though that's a virtue is deeply, deeply concerning to me.

This has been awful. It has been, but it's been made far, far, far more awful by examples like this. And you need go no further than the mental health data out there. I interviewed somebody yesterday, you can see it on our thread, who presented some of the data for women and children, and particularly children like five to 15. The depression, the anxiety, the suicide, the substance use, off the chart. I don't know if we'll, you know, fourth grade reading levels, pathetic. I mean, we really have damaged half a generation without an apology or without any plan

for what we're going to do about it. You learned that yesterday, right? I knew it was happening. I didn't have the specific numbers. I saw it. I see it happening myself, and it's beyond reproach. We had a good guest yesterday. Thanks, David. Thank you. Greg Ellis, to get you up here, man.

You're a better guest now. I you. Okay. Thank you. Greg Ellis to get you up here, man. So better guests now. I know Greg, aren't you coming on this show soon? Or am I going on your show? Something, something we're doing something together. Hey, Drew, we're doing both. You're coming on mine. I'm coming on yours. How great. And by the way, can I just say that segue from the panic? It was, it was about 14, 15 months ago. I talked about the panic-demic. I was more concerned about the panic-demic than the pandemic. Me too. You know, it's literally, I mean, look, close to 800,000 people die by suicide every year. That's one every 40 seconds.

And this social isolation and the messaging that we've been told, social distancing rather than physical distancing and social connectedness. It's so important. It's so, so important. The well-being of people, particularly psychologically and not just physically, which we talk about a lot, and I listen to you and thank you for all your information. It's so vital. And your rooms, I have to say, I've been in a couple and listened to a lot. Do you know what it is? It's well moderated with moderation. You provide information to people, not from a bias, not from one side or the other. And just thank you for that, Drew. Well, thanks, Greg.

I'm accused of constantly being on one side or the other. And so I try to check myself. I try to make sure I'm just given the facts. And then I have an emotional reaction that maybe that's my mistake to share the reaction. In other words, by being disgusted over the york times being so illegitimate in their reporting does that make me one side or another if it does i i guess it does uh it's just that i i cannot stand what has happened to the press i can't stand it it's just it's just just i'm just disgusted and i i'm worried because i've been a part of it you know i was on on CNN for six years and I created lots of programming

that has been morphed into things that they are now that has gone into outer space. And there just is, I don't like a world where there's no respect for the truth. That is deeply, deeply worrying to me. And the other thing, Greg, I want to ask you this because you have roots in other countries. This happened worldwide.

It's one thing if I, if it just happened here, I could, I could really take aim at what I saw happen, but it's weird to me that the entire world adopted a similar attitude. Why do you think that is? Are they just following the United States so diligently that here we go, what we do in the world does as, as goes the U S so goes the world, or is there something, and I'm, again, I'm leading the witness a little bit here. Is there something going on in our personalities, our emotional landscapes, in our relationships that set us up for this? That's a great question. Gosh. I mean, look, you know, being from the UK,

I've seen what's happened with the UK and the lockdowns and the veracity by which there's been these emergency paths. I've seen what's happened in Australia, particularly New South Wales. My God. It's been it's been shocking to see the videos of that. This morning, there was a woman in her local park with a mask who went to exercise, sat down on the bench for a cup of tea, and seven police officers grabbed her, turned her over violently, threw her to the ground. I mean, this is a level of police state, the likes of which I haven't seen in my lifetime. And I think it's more accessible because of social media. But I do think the panic theming, when I look at the masquerade, if you will, the mask charade of it's one, it's two, it's none, it's inside, it's out.

Someone's going to do a parody song about it. It's so difficult for people. And I think, you know, I had Stephen Fry on my show back in May last year, and he made a very good point. He talked about epidemiologists and virologists. And he said that anyone who is sure of themselves, particularly who's a virologist and epidemiologist, do not listen to them because they don't know what they're talking about. It's ever changing, right? Like you talk about the replication of the virus. These are like science's emergent truths. We're getting new information daily. So how do we get access to that information, I think is key. Oh, you packed a lot into that. So if you want to know, see or hear a really good discussion, I was going to have Vinay Prasad on here. He has a podcast called

Plenary Sessions, which I was listening to before COVID. He's just a brilliant physician researcher. And he has his podcast that's up right now. It's a bunch of mini podcasts, and he really digs into these issues. I strongly recommend you guys listen to it, even as a primer for when I do get him next week. But the idea here that- Everybody pray. Yeah. The idea that people can be sure of themselves in biological sciences, anyone who's a clinician knows you never say never, you never say always. We're deeply trained and entrenched in that thinking because biology is a probability equation.

It's like trying to predict cloud formation. We're trying to do the best we can, but we know there's going to be lots of error, lots of distribution, lots of scatter, lots of things we're uncertain about. And if you are certain about anything in a biological realm, you are certain to be wrong. That's number one. Number two, the mask charade, which I love the framing of that. How come we're not having a massive outbreak right now? Because Dr. Fauci predicted on MSNBC a massive outbreak with people going to football games. Why didn't the football games cause massive outbreaks? Now, a sensible and somewhat information-based point of view would have been, hmm, we only have like four cases of documented transmission of the virus outside in the world. Out of the tens of

millions of cases, four cases. I bet if the stadiums are outdoor and well-ventilated, it's going to be a low probability of transmission. So people outdoors can gather, probably. Maybe not. We'll see. But probably. Now, we've had a massive experiment, particularly down in the south during college football games. 90,000 people came to the stadiums. No uptake. In fact, continued downturn.

So I think we can at least determine that the virus is going to do what the virus does, particularly when it comes to outdoor gatherings, number one. Number two, on Dr. Prasad's plenary sessions, he reviews the mask data. And he really talks about whether the data is good or bad. The problem is there's good data that has been called bad data, based on my understanding of what he analyzes. And the data, at best, shows about a 15% effect of masks in best data. And that's not nothing, that's not zero, but that's not stopping transmission. It's not you're a killer if you don't wear a mask. It's about 15, 20%. Check out the Bangladesh study, check out the Danish study published in the Annals of Internal Medicine. These were good studies. They were highly criticized because people didn't like the outcome. And so that's been one of the horrible things about this pandemic is people have started

reasoning from conclusion. So rather than say, huh, masks aren't quite as effective as we thought they'd be, but they do something. Let's keep doing it. Let's do something. Because if there are going to be 800,000 deaths, 10% of 800,000, still that's 80,000 lives. Come on now, let's go do something. But don't treat people that have their mask over their nose like a murderer or not over their nose.

And my final point, and then I'm going to get back to you, Greg, is the NHS at the UK came out with some data, I think it was two days ago, where they concluded, and I want to get your opinion on, did you see this data and what do you think about it? Because it kind of surprised me. They were looking back, they were doing some of the initial retrospective analysis of how we did during the pandemic, which I thought was a great idea. But they concluded that the most serious error of the pandemic was during the era when Boris Johnson wasn't locking things down and there should have been an earlier, more severe lockdown. Now, they didn't specify, could they have done a shorter period of time? Might it have been a shorter lockdown?

What the goal would have been at the early lockdown necessarily? But their conclusion was that they did just about everything pretty well, except this delay in lockdown. What say you, Greg? Gosh, I don't know too much about it. Who did that study? The NHS. It was an NHS publication.

Wow. Well, it's surprising for me to hear that the NHS has gone against the government. Interesting. Well, they're going against Boris Johnson, to be fair. I don't think Boris Johnson is particularly popular with the NHS. Yeah, I'm just checking out now. It's a serious, serious early era and a fatalistic approach. Yeah. Yeah. I want to go back to what you said about that, that reductive reasoning from conclusion backwards. Like that, to me, that reminds me of, you know, we've talked a little bit about

cancel culture, that guilty till proven innocent. And it seemed to me, and it seems to me, I'm not going to call it COVID woke, but the new diseased until proven healthy mentality. It's that perfect storm, you know, and to a degree, I think, to a degree, I think the unvaccinated aren't prolonging the pandemic. I think governments are prolonging the pandemic. And I read today someone who said that it was more endemic than pandemic now. We have to learn how to live with it. And I think there's truth in that. Would you agree?

Oh, 100%. Listen, as soon as there's a weird battle forming right now, it is around the antiviral medication. So Merck is trying to get approval among the purivir Pfizer as a product. These are expensive drugs. It's been expensive for them to do the research. So the drugs are going to be expensive, but they are on the order of efficacy of antibiotics. So if you get a strep throat, you take an antibiotic, you can expect to get better. If you get a urinary tract infection and you take an antibiotic, you can expect to get better. If you get a urinary tract infection and you take an antibiotic, you can expect to get better.

It wasn't that way until 1970s. In the past, you would die of urosepsis. You would get rheumatic fever. You'd get rheumatic heart disease. If you had a strep infection in your throat, it would change the world. Let's move forward to HIV. They developed antiviral drugs that were vilified at first. If you remember, the Dallas Buyers Clubs insisted that no one take it because the AZT was causing AIDS.

It was portrayed a little bit in the movie, but it was a really serious problem. And we had something we could really do for people to help them, and they were being told not to take it. When we figured out another antiviral and we put these antivirals together, AIDS was overnight turned from a death sentence to a chronic illness. We're going to see something like that with the antivirals therapeutics that come up on board soon for coronavirus. The war that's brewing is people are saying it is just a pharma scam it is uh just trying to put i the i i can't even say the drug the iver drug i can't even say

it on this stream or i'll be canceled it's trying to put that drug on on this a cheap available drug uh away so it you know so we can make our money. And somebody came on this stream yesterday, who I'm going to speak to, and said this was what she called it, pharmacoworld, she called it like a world war of pharmacology, something. Pharma was waging war on humanity, essentially. I'm here to tell you, the antivirals are going to turn this thing into an endemic disease that doctors treat easily. That's what's going to happen. So you're going to have a vaccine.

So the illness is mild and less likely to transmit. You're going to have monoclonal antibodies if somebody breaks through. And you're going to have antivirals, which you just take as soon as you get sick. Once we understand that this is a safe drug. And the FDA is working on that right now. So we're nearly fully, it is becoming more endemic for sure. We do, and I think I would say

it's the vaccines and the monoclonal antibodies that have made it endemic now, but it's going to become truly endemic once we have therapeutics. Now, this idea that you've seen flying around that the vaccines are going to cause accelerated mutations by putting evolutionary stressors on the virus. Vaccines don't tend to do that.

Therapeutics do do that. So there will be a need for putting viral medicine. That's why we have to put viral medicines together. That's why you have to have two or three of them together because it does put evolutionary pressure on the virus and they do figure out ways to get around the therapeutics. So that's going to be where that problem kicks in so yes greg endemic it's getting there it's close and um we have treatments and that's what really makes something endemic

yeah great points when you when you ask me about the uk as well what what comes to mind is the in the consent for 12 to 15 year olds that i think is the Milgram consent, it's called, which usurps the parents' rights to decide for their children whether they get vaccinated. That concerns me. Well, now let me stop you. Is it called the Milgram consent

as an homage to the Milgram experiment? Oh no, it's not Milgram. It's something else. I got that wrong. It's not the Milgram experiment. But I have heard people use, I have heard Milgram's name applied to some of the draconian stuff that's going on for the very reason those of you don't know the milgram experience was a famous yale stanford stanford

yale stanford was the the prison guard one a famous yale uh biology the stanford one was the stanford experiment wasn't it right and that's the one that's been shown to be maybe a sham by the way the milgram not the milgram was for. And it was showing how people respond to authority, essentially. It's that experiment where they take unknowing subjects, they put them at a counter. They say you're going to give electric. It's a learning paradigm. You're going to give electric shocks to this poor subject who's in another room. You can't see them, but you can hear them. And the shocks get more and more severe to the point that the, the, what they start hearing, the subject starts hearing from that room is I have a heart problem. I can't breathe. I'm, I'm, I'm chest pain. And the, and the experimenter goes, go on, keep going, give more, give more stimulation, give more electricity. And most people do it, which is pretty crazy. Uh, and that's very similar to some of the things that are going on today. There is sort of a Milgram phenomenon today. That's for sure. pretty crazy uh and that's very similar to some of the things that are going on today there is sort of a milgram phenomenon today that's for sure yes so my faux pas my word seller faux pas i don't

remember the name but basically they've given consent the government has decided that 12 to 15 year olds can can can have their own autonomy of their medical consent yeah that concerns me and i was concerned as well drew with you know i'm pro vaccines you know but president biden mandating medical procedures on the citizenry is i think somewhat orwellian i know that's that's you know it's it's a little extreme to say but i think we should encourage people to get vaccinated recommend vaccination implore them even incentivize them if you like and and and inform people and educate people and give people as much data and information and documents and reports and studies as possible. of a two-tiered society where those people because i think there was a small uh but vocal uh section of people who who like to be the best at following the rules and telling everyone what the rules are

and i think when it comes down to individual choice like i think it was um noelle who was just on and she said you know she she isn't sure about whether to for a kid she's gonna wait i think this this the way we the way we um use words as well into the pro-vax anti-vax people are curious people are hesitant and people are information hungry and i think that's good and we should encourage that but as you well know we don't live in a society with a lot of nuance and doubt we live in this this world where you're one or the other you're either or you're for or against and I think the more we can have people like you speak, as long as you can find a non-sensorious platform that you won't get burned by saying the I word. We're worried about YouTube,

but you know. So far, so good. But we're in Rumble now, so. Yeah, our friends over at Rumble, by the way, we appreciate you guys. But I totally agree with him. Didn't I say this to you last week? That? That I said, you know, maybe once a week we need to like give out really good information about COVID. Yes, you did. Yes, you did. And because there's just nothing out there and people are totally ignorant of what's

going on. They have so many questions. Well, they're not ignorant. They're just fearful and they don't know what information is for us to rely upon. Well, not everybody. There's a lot of people who just put their heads in the sand, don't want the vaccine, just want to move forward. But then they're being told they have to do something.

They're getting arrested. They're getting knocked out. You know, it's... Well, let me, Greg, as always, lays up these comments that make me want to say more. Drew's really looking forward to interviewing you. I know. Well, here we are.

We're well into it. This is the pre-interview interview. I'm going to make you go away because we're going to... Yeah, we don't want to leave it in the hall. Yeah, we're going to leave it all in the hall today. But mandates harden resistance. This stream, people on this stream probably know that I got into radio because in 1983, I was dealing with AIDS patients like crazy. We just started calling it AIDS. In 1982, we called it GRIDS. In 1983, we called it AIDS.

We didn't have a causative agent yet, but we were getting a handle on the behavior that led to the transmission. And it was a powerful behavior that they couldn't figure out how to change. They couldn't figure out how to get people not to have sex. And one Anthony Fauci was advocating for young physicians like me to get into the media and start educating. I took that very seriously. And that's how I got involved in radio in 1983. That's what started me down that path. So I've been around Fauci for four decades. Yeah, but you worked very hard to give good information out to people and

you did it for free for what? For 10 years. I did it for free for 10 years because that was important. It was interesting. It was fun. It was different. And then you did it for free after that too, but you had a pretty good run there. That's true. I did it for free towards the end there too. But point being that that's what got me into all this. And across the landscape of AIDS, we learned how to change behavior. We'd study cases. We'd create narratives. We'd use humor and music. You don't tell me, and you notice me in a box on high telling people what to do, zero probability of working. It's actually why I got involved with Teen Mom, because I knew that 16 and Pregnant and Teen Mom, by showing the cases, the consequences of those kids' lives, would decrease teen pregnancy.

And you can now document two things, that the teen pregnancy in this country started falling, the quarter that 16 and Pregnant started airing, and they have two academic studies that show the higher the viewership of teen mom the lower the incidence of teen pregnancy so it worked we know how to do this it's not by saying don't get pregnant use birth control it's like let me show you what happens when when you don't and uh that brings me to two other points which is this follow the science acronym, which is out now, that really is essentially just a placeholder for do what I say. Follow the science has no meaning in science. There's no world where scientists sit down and say, follow the science.

That's authoritarian. We say, here's the numbers. Tell me what you think. Do you agree with my reasoning? Follow the science. That term has become so, so distorted that I, again, Vinay Prasad has a lot of feelings about this. He's written some articles on it. I will get into it with him next week. Now, Greg, do you have any feeling as it pertains to helping people get vaccinated or unvaccinated with the way Colin Powell's death has been reported which is a tragedy that man was a national treasure and he died do you have any did what was your takeaway from how that was reported

yeah I agree with you um about Colin Powell and what what saddened me was that rather than and I nearly I nearly tweeted about this, I don't tweet that often. I nearly put something out there, but my thought was this, when I read some of the comments and the politicization of the vaccine and him and his death, was to just say, look, let's look at this man's life and celebrate the great public service, whether you, whether you align with him politically or not, what an amazing individual and what an amazing life and how sad for him and his family. And let's celebrate his life and mourn his death.

That was where I came from. These people who were trying to argue either, either or side was just, it just made me a bit sad. And let's, let's be clear. He had, he was 84 with multiple myeloma. The, the, the Kaplan-Meier curve on that is about five years. And let's be clear. He was 84 with multiple myeloma. The Kaplan-Meier curve on that is about five years. You get about five years at that age with myeloma.

They're not telling us what age. I found it interesting that they wouldn't tell us what age he was diagnosed. I'm betting it was not last month. I'm betting it was three to five years ago. So his clock was running out COVID or no COVID, vaccine or no vaccine. And that biological reality is not what's being discussed. This is a real serious problem. People at the end of life are fragile and a little thing can steal them of six months

one way or another. That's for sure, COVID does that. And now we're learning, even if you're vaccinated, that might happen. Would I have given Colin Powell another booster vaccine in the face of myeloma therapy if he had a tough time with the vaccine, which I don't know, maybe he did? No, I probably wouldn't. I probably wouldn't. Mostly because making him sick from the vaccine, if he's fragile enough, could be a serious problem. I'll take my risk because he only got a few months to go anyway

if he's been sick with myeloma for five years. So this kind of sort of reasoning isn't shared with anybody. That's the part that drives me crazy. That's a good long life, 83. 84, oh my God. Yeah, your dad was 83, right? And five years of myeloma. This is the point is that you don't live forever with myeloma.

He was beating cancer. Yeah it's like doing great. And so I don't know. Did he? And what was the treatment? Why do you have to die of COVID when you've had cancer for five years? I don't get it. Because you're fragile. It could have been flu could have killed.

Why do they have to call it? You died of COVID when you've had cancer. This is my point. It's me. You can't put it in a box. You don't get to put clinical biological events in a box like that and both in terms of vaccine not vaccine uh covid not covid death so greg help me with this and then i'm gonna let you go yeah yeah before i move to the audience um look yeah it what it brings up

for me is i had a conversation with uh brett we 18, well, 16, 15 months ago about the lab leak hypothesis. We were both concerned about that. That got quashed in the press because the president at the time wasn't the right president and there wasn't the right conversation. And all these months later, we – and I'm reminded at that time, I think one of the things Brett and I talked about was the incentives, the hospital administrators in certain hospitals encouraging the cause of death if there was anything symptomatic of COVID. Yeah, but to be fair, but that was a convention. I'm going to push back in there where I can say that was a convention that everybody agreed upon so hospitals could survive in the pandemic and continue to operate. So they were not just incentivized.

They were, it was, it was, they had to, that was the way they stayed open. And did that end at any point? Was that ended? Well, I don't know. I, yes, I think it did. Yes. Yes. It just did. I believe it did. I think it ended and the, and the insurance companies and how they're looking at a lot of that stuff is sort of unraveled now. Yes. I think it has. Well, maybe I just haven't read too much about it. I heard too much about it. But you're right. But the point is the difference between an incentive and a survival technique. You know what I mean? Yeah. We needed the hospital to survive.

Everyone agreed they would take this convention. The problem is what people did with the data then. Then they took the data and said, ah, this is, look what we have here, as opposed to trying to interpret the data. This is the part that gets me crazy. Before I go to you, I just want to say a couple of last things so so i i thought about why we have this panicdemic and why people are hesitant and curious because i you know for all my life i've taken vaccines i go why are people so hesitant and i think that perhaps the first time in our history the collective consciousness has been raised by this particular vaccine and the strain. And the citizenry are questioning what are they injecting into their bodies rather than blindly allowing, some might say, big pharma or some might say what they're being told to inject them en masse.

And I think that's a good thing that people are curious. I agree. Go ahead. Well, if we give the information to make good judgment that's the thing well that's why it's so important we have people like you and you know to put out information that doesn't come from a place look i'm going to say i when this pandemic started i bought i bought into two stocks zoom and novavax i'm probably going to sell novavax tomorrow because of what you just said about 15 minutes ago about it i'm still i still

think i still think it's going to come out I still think it's going to come out. I still think it's going to come out. And I think it's going to be useful. Don't get me wrong. It's just not quite what I thought it was going to be. It's not as encouraging. At least the trickle of information that I'm getting. Now, maybe that's distorted.

You know, I haven't seen a lot of good peer published review yet, but I'm hearing that it's like from people I trust that it may not be what we hope for. So, yes, it might not be. Well, let's hope that expectations have been lowered and they continue to impress. And the last thing I just very quickly want to say. Don't take investment advice from me right now. That's not what we're doing. So go ahead.

When it suddenly just skyrockets in a year's time, I'm like, why did you? Yeah, right. It could happen. I just want to quickly say, you put me in touch. I know this is unrelated, but you put me in touch with eric kramer former ex-nfl quarterback yes i did his story is is going to be out on sunday on my show the respondent and you know he hit some of the quotes and some of the things he says i'm just grateful that you put me in touch with him he placed a gun under his jaw and pulled the trigger the bullet went

through his chin up through his tongue nasal, narrowly missed his optic nerve, through his brain, exited his skull. And the story after that gets even more dark and interesting and harrowing. But it's also a story of triumph over adversity. So I want to thank you for connecting with me. Wonderful fellow. When he, I knew Eric before the gunshot wound and I knew what some of his struggles were and he called me and told me that story. And I was like, Oh my God, Eric, I had no idea. I was floored. And you and I had just met and, and I thought, Oh, this is, this would be an interesting pairing. And so thank you. And everybody, please go, where do they get the pod? So it's a, it's the respondent at the

respondent.com and it's going to be live on youtube premiering on sunday at 1 p.m pacific time and and it basically you you make a great point 18 is his 18 year old son overdosed on heroin and died his mother died of cancer his father soon after and then and then he attempted suicide and then it gets even more, we get into conservatorship and he was coerced into marriage and then family law. And he was accused of domestic violence and faced domestic violence, felony domestic violence charges. So yeah, he's a wonderful guy. It's an amazing story. And it highlights so many of the ills, the systemic ills of our institutions, particularly the legal system.

So yeah, 1 p.m. Sunday, Eric Kramer, the respondent. And as a prep for that interview, you might want to Wikipedia Phileas Gage, the case of Phileas Gage, which was the guy in 1870 or so had a rod go through, a railroad tamponing rod go through his eye and skull and injure a similar part of the brain. And you're going to see the spectrum of what happens when people get those sorts of brain injuries. It's also- Yeah, astonishing. He was one of the most famous patients in neuroscience, I think. Yes. Maybe the most famous. Well, and it's come under scrutiny lately, but I'm telling you, it fits the biology. You can also look at the description in uh anthony dimasio's

book uh descartes error that was also a great book about the brain descartes error i recommend it strongly and he talks about phileas gage's case there in great detail um greg thank you thank you for talking to my friend eric uh this story is worthy of of everybody listening to it it is a story of the spirit i think uh. Uh, and it's just, it just, it'll, it'll blow your mind. It will just blow your mind. I agree. And he, you know, he's, he's just a wonderful guy and how he's come back. So thank you for that. Thank you for having me up for this pre-interview interview. And I look forward to seeing you very soon. Take care. Keep up the great work. Thank you, buddy. Bye. Great, Greg Ellis. Why don't I take a break right now?

And what we'll do is I've got lots of hands up here. I will get as many of you guys as I can. Those of you that are new in the clubhouse, anyone that does come up to the podium to talk, we'll be streaming out on Rumble, YouTube, Twitch, Twitter, and Facebook. And so just know that you're consenting to that by coming up and speaking on the mic. I've got about six, seven people with hands up here. I'll try to get as many of you. And by the way, Greg's going to be on our podcast next Friday at 3 p.m. This, this, this Friday, this stream, he'll be on

Ask Dr. Drew. We're doing all Ask Dr. Drew this week. 4 p.m. Friday the 22nd. Yes. I'm seeing that on my schedule. I'm looking at it. Yep, Greg will be back on Friday. You'll get to see him. Oh, shoot. Greg, I'm going to put Greg up because I want to tell him one more thing, Greg. I want you to think about something. I meant to say it before we started talking about Eric Kramer. All right, Greg, there? Yeah.

Unmute yourself. You're muted. Yeah, I'm here. Okay. We started asking about how the world got so taken by panic. I want you to think about histrionic personality characteristics, narcissism and histrionic. The only period of history that I can find that compares to this is essentially 1780s France, both from the standpoint of the kinds of childhood injuries that result in narcissism and the mob actions that followed.

Now, there's something going on where people with large groups of people with narcissism and the mob actions that followed. Now, if there's something going on where people with large groups of people with narcissism and childhood injuries get together, they become hysterical in mobs and they start having delusional thinking. And the reason I've said this on the stream before, the reason I started thinking about this, I thought, my God, everyone is telling me that there's Nazis down the street and the president's a Russian operative. And if somebody come in my office and said, talk to me about Nazis and Russian sort of operatives that they knew were sort of, that leaders were Russian bots, I would put that person in a psychiatric hospital. Five years ago, that person would be admitted for delusional thinking. Now, it's a collective delusion that is sort of passed off as, oh, well. So think about that for

next writing. I will. I've actually thought a little bit about this, the collective Munchausen's by proxy, and just that, well, the 1780s France is a good one. I think that moving towards that panic-demic that we are raging against the machine. And also the narcissism of the individual and how victimhood has become somewhat of a new social currency. And its economy is booming. It's all interconnected. That's all interconnected. That's what I want to talk to you about on Friday. Great. I look forward to it. Talk to you then.

Thanks, Drew. All right, we'll take a little break, and I'll come back to you with more of your calls right after this. Here with my daughter, Paulina, to share an exciting new project. Over the years, we've talked to a ton of young people about what they really want to know about relationships. It's difficult to know who you are and what you want, especially as a teenager. And not everyone has access to an expert in their house like I did.

Of course, it wasn't like I was always that receptive to that advice. Right, no kidding. But now we have written the book on consent. It is called It Doesn't Have to be Awkward, and it explores relationships, romantic relationships, and sex. It's a great guide for teens, parents, and educators to go beyond the talk and have honest and meaningful conversations. It doesn't have to be awkward. We'll be on sale September

21st. You can order your book anywhere books are sold. Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Target, and of course, your independent local bookstore. Links are available on drdrew.com. So pre-ordering the book will help people, will raise awareness, obviously, and it'll get that conversation going early so more people can notice this and spread the word of positivity about healthy relationships. So if you can, we would love your support by pre-ordering now. Totally. And as we said before, this is a book that both teenagers and their parents should read. Read the book. Have the conversation.

It doesn't have to be awkward. On sale September 21st. We are back. Let's get right off to the phone lines again susan everything good from your standpoint yeah everything's good i my plumbers at the house and the lock box was open and the keys weren't inside that's all i'm good i really like that conversation i really appreciate him joining us yeah every time i talk to greg it sort of it elevates my thinking i'm dual tasking i know you know i'm not very good at that but i that's really what i want to know if you thought that was no i love it i can't wait to hear more on friday yeah he's a he's a good thinker he's written a book um about family courts and yes yes uh maybe put that book up there for him i don't

know what i don't know he's ready for that what's that i don't know if he can right now but for you you just look it up on no i know it's the um yeah maybe it's on family law and and yeah it's going to be a good conversation about that okay i'm glad you remembered that the book is called the respondent the respondent and uh caleb maybe you have a little screenshot for that but uh let me go ahead and get it okay let me go ahead and get it. Okay. Let me go ahead and get some callers up here. I can't, I can't see. This is Joe. Easy for you to say.

Yeah. Help me with that. Just call me Narwhal. Narwhal. Okay. Excellent. Narwhal is easier. Hey, thanks for having me up.

So I'm one of the lucky people that got vaccinated and then two months later got a breakthrough case of good times yeah it's awesome and uh anointed one yeah now now i'm also in the very rare club of being a long hauler three months later i guess technically i i guess i'm a long hauler am Am I at three months? No, you're, you're people, the long haul target has moved. It was originally three weeks. So I think if you're sick for three months, you're good for a long haul, uh, uh, uh, label. Why not? Yeah. So my, so I would say basically what I have is post viral fatigue syndrome is what I'm

thinking. Have you tried anything? Um, well, so that's, you know, I've talked to my GP, you know, he's referred me to the long haul clinic at Kaiser. Um, I'm just taking supplements. Um, I gotta tell you, I had a, I had a, I had the same thing. I had terrific. I had two things. I had long haul fatigue and long haul fogginess. And the fatigue was rapidly reversed with fluvoxamine. It was Steve Kirsch, who's an enthusiast for that drug, finally convinced me to try it.

I had zero side effects. And in 30 minutes, the ringing in my ears improved, and I just had a steady improvement in the resolution of that fatigue. And it was awful. I mean, it was really bad. so it's something to look into also have you looked at the website covidlonghaulers.com um i will i will check it out it's a group dr joe dr patterson and they're actually having a good deal of results uh you can look at what they're what they're saying there on the website but they've been using uh believe it or not, an ACE inhibitor, Pravacol, to help some people.

Are we allowed to say all these medicines on YouTube? Yes, I'm allowed to talk about medicines. I'm a physician. I can talk about medicines. Okay, I hope so. This is insane. Are you sure about that? I don't know.

Oh, my God. I'm not kidding. I'm not telling about that, no. I don't know. Oh, my God. I'm not kidding. I am not telling him what to do. I'm saying to look into it and to discuss it with his physician. Yeah. And one of the theories is that classical monocytes are still manifesting spike protein particles as they enter the central nervous system and having some effect there of inflammation. And the thinking is the sigma-1 receptor, which is highly affected by fluvoxamine, may be the mechanism of reducing the inflammation in the brain. So you can look up the sigma-1 receptor in the brain. It gets a little complicated as you sort of read into that stuff. But I can just tell you anecdotally, I had a marked positive

response. Many people have. I'm not sure what the incidence is. It's not everybody that has a good response to it, but it's something to talk about with your doctor. I feel terrible when people get that. The long haul? Oh, it's awful. I know. I see. So how would I get him to go about agreeing to do this?

Well, because he's in the Kaiser system, I don't know. He may have administrative resistances that are different. He may have to apply to his pharmaceutical committee and things like that. Pharmacy, so-called PT&D, Pharmacy Therapeutic Committee. But something maybe you go in armed with some data and look at it and talk to them. The publications are out there. There was a nice study on fluvoxamine and JAMA from eight months ago, 10 months ago. So there's good, decent research and almost zero downside.

Again, this is the thing that so many of these medications that can be repurposed that don't have specific FDA guidelines attached to them. We as physicians use them, i.e. aspirin, which is not an FDA approved drug. Seriously? It's not an FDA approved drug. Seriously? It's not an FDA approved drug. Oh. These are things we use to try to help patients when the risks are low. Do you have other... I just went off on a diatribe. Did something else motivate

your call? No, I mean, that was primarily it. I was just wondering if you knew, putting COVID aside with post-viral fatigue syndrome generally, um, in your practice, is this something that subsides gradually? How long am I like stuck with this? I just talked to somebody today that's had it for close to eight, nine months. And I've seen people have it for a year and I've seen people fail lots of treatments too. Um, so it's not, it's a really treacherous, weird, I would say this though.

Um, we, in my profession, uh, I think minimized the reality of post-viral syndromes. If you remember, you may not be old enough to remember, but there was a whole time when people talked about chronic Epstein-Barr and then chronic fatigue syndrome, then chronic fatigue morphed into fibromyalgia. chronic viral syndromes, COVID has proven that to be an incorrect posture, that we should be very respectful and concerned about post-viral syndromes of all types, and we should be interested in figuring out ways to treat it. Now, the category of chronic fatigue and all the other monikers that have gone with it have always shown to have some benefit from SSRIs, which is why it caused some people to go, oh, it's just depression. No, it turns out that certain SSRIs are highly anti-inflammatory in the central nervous system through this Sigma-1 system, most particularly fluvoxamine and Prozac. Those two medicines have very powerful stimulation of the Sigma-1 system.

So you can at least go to your doctor and say, I'm depressed. And maybe you can get him to prescribe it that way. Like, fatigue is making me depressed. I feel like an antidepressant would help me. Maybe that's what's happening. We don't know. But it certainly does help people. Okay. that's what's happening we don't know but it certainly does help people okay yeah i'm actually

already uh referred out to uh psychiatry psychiatry as well so you talk about fluvoxamine and prozac with those doctors and they're very familiar and very low thresholds for using those medicines that's good news okay all right all right great good luck thank you yeah all right back to the phone lines here. This is, let me see if I can get the name. Cause everyone's got these funny. You are killing it today. Really? Well, I was quite excited to talk about Renee,

Vinay Prasad. I had a lot of ideas in my head. I know, I know, but you're doing a fair bit. Hi, yes. How's it going? Good. How are you? I'm well, thank you for asking. So I'm in Canada and I really was hesitant to get vaxxed primarily because we have such a high population and I felt like I already had COVID, but I was never tested for it, unfortunately. Anyways, long story short, because of all the restrictions that they have placed on us, including pressure from work, I chose to get vaccinated. And this was like about 10 days ago where I had my first shots. And, um, last a couple of nights ago, while I was sleeping, I was awakened by, um, extreme dizziness. And, um, the first two days I really had the regular symptom of muscle ache at the site of where I was shot.

But it was a full 10 days later when I was awakened by dizziness. And then I kept trying to go back to sleep. And as soon as I'd lay down on my left side, I would get dizziness again. So I was wondering, should I be concerned to get my second shot? I mean, my doctor is going to pro, he's very much like as many of the doctors here, there. Let me, let me, let me suggest this. And I'm not telling you what to do. You do it with your doctor, but there's no doubt in my mind that has something to do with the vaccine. The vaccine has all kinds of strange, the spike protein has all kinds of strange neurological correlates associated

with it. Ringing in the ears, dizziness, you know, facial palsies, a lot of cranial nerve stuff, very strange. None of this life-threatening, none of it is serious. It all goes away. So that's the good news. But you worry that next time it could be a much more severe reaction. One of the ways that they're mitigating these things is by separating the vaccines by more time. And there's actually some evidence that by getting, you know, four, six,

eight weeks out, but we're talking about the mRNA vaccines, HIDA, HIDA, right? Yes. So, so there's some evidence that waiting longer actually enhances immunity and

decreases the, you know, the duration of, of duration of immunogenicity. So if you were my patient, I would say, you know, I really want to get you that second vaccine, but let's wait six weeks. Let's wait a while and let's be on our toes next time. If you have certain reactions, we'll think of ways we can help you with that, but a little more time pass. I've seen Monica Gandhi suggest that that may be one of the ways of reducing myocarditis risk in young males. She is taking that position quite aggressively, that rather than taking the 12-year-old male and

giving them vaccine three weeks apart, let's do it six weeks apart, eight weeks apart, and that seems to help reduce some of these side effects. Okay. Thank you. Can I just ask you a quick question related? I'm also taking rabiprazole. I've been on it for almost two months. Is there a chance it could be maybe an interaction or because of the medication I'm taking? The omeprazole, is that the medicine you said uh rabiprazole yeah um those medicines can cause dizziness by themselves so hard to hard to say but but i i wouldn't i wouldn't worry about a severe interaction i would not worry about a significant interaction okay okay i think what you can think to yourself is well maybe it's the medicine caused the dizziness and not the uh not the virus but uh not the vaccine rather but i'd still wait i'd i'd

hedge my bet a little bit plus there seems to be some advantages to waiting longer between the mrna vaccines now she does bring up two interesting things i want to address one is you can test for exposure you can test for immunity to covet it's just not commercially available it's not easy not easily available if you go to your doctor and say i I want to see if I've been exposed, he or she will essentially do an antibody screen. That's not a very good screen of anything. I, for a long time, told you about Adatex score. That's how you get a full spectrum of all the different antibodies that your B cells are producing and the neutralizing antibodies. The problem with the aditix score and any other assessment of immunology, we have not done the research necessary to standardize. You know how we say

what's a normal sodium level, what's a normal thyroid level? That's called a standardization, a normal range of results. We haven't figured out that standard yet for COVID antibodies. We could, we're just not doing the research. And I don't know why, because there are more sophisticated ways of doing this than just vaccinating everybody. You can standardize immunity, test people. It's expensive. It's cumbersome, but people could show their immunity. You could also get tested. This is what they do in France. In France, they let you show your immunity, even though that's kind of a vague notion still. I think we could do a better job with that. You can show your test results, and they have tests on every corner.

Or you can show your vaccine passport. When people have options, they loosen, they soften, and they're more likely to cooperate without all the hesitancy that people have today. Josh, let's see. I'll get Josh up here. Dr. Drew. Hey, what's up? Not much. So yesterday you were talking about histrionic personality traits and aggression. Yeah.

And then you're adding narcissism to it today. Well, histrionic is a narcissistic disorder. And so my question is how do we know there's good evidence we know there's good uh research to suggest that we've had a massive narcissistic turn in the last 30 40 years i mean there was debate in the 19th century whether there was such a thing as a narcissistic personality that's how far we've come from that. And we've clearly made that turn. My question is, how did we go from narcissism to more histrionic features?

Why didn't we just think? I have a theory about that. And actually it has to do with you. Okay. Loveline was a show that opened up discourse for sexual discussion. And my theory is that without that sort of national openness to sexuality and sexual discussion, that could be a cause. Because right now,

if someone has a question, it's not just if they have a question, but it's not open. It's a closed system. You know, it's in psychoanalysis, say a closed system, but it's really a place where people can't get these things, even thinking about them. I mean, the listeners of Loveline would constantly have to turn this stuff over in their mind. And it gave them a way to to the reason i'm saying that is because in histrionic there's a mix-up between sex and proper ego function that's that's an old theory that's not really thought to be uh accurate you're really talking about conversion reactions and repression all this stuff that that i don't know that a lot of people would agree that that's an accurate way to think about histrionic. Though I must admit, there are actually schools of thought that are trying to put everything on the cluster B under a narcissistic sort of label.

And it's just the differing traits of narcissistic injury, essentially, or different strategies of dealing with narcissistic injury and dysregulation. So to sort of push it over to sexual repression, that was a pertinent for a Victorian society that Freud found himself in in 1850. There is not sexual repression now. So the idea that people don't have a place to go with their sexual material, this is the internet. They go with a lot. Maybe they were overstimulated with that stuff. But Josh, thank you. I've got a couple more calls I got to get to. And I want to be sure. Oh, Drew, I got my Additix score.

Yes, you did. Let me send it to you. Well, I got it too. I seen it. Oh, you saw it? Yeah, it's not good. What do you mean? You have a 15 on the neutralizing antibodies,

which means you need to oh you've got that was before the booster yeah yeah it was before the booster that showed me you needed to get the booster okay so i had the booster last week i couldn't wait for the score which was good my instinct was right you know i had the pfizer vaccine in january and also you know both of them and i ran out and got the booster because we're going to travel, but I'm glad I did now. Yeah, no, I'm glad you did too. I had a hunch. And that gave me diarrhea. I had a hunch. And by the way, we are seeing some diarrhea from, I've talked to several people now with two weeks of diarrhea from the vaccine. Two weeks. Yeah. My stomach hasn't been the same, but you know,

it's not that bad. No, it's worth it. You're, I did not like. I remember when we got off the plane, I felt like I was going to throw up. I'll tell you what, when I read your aditics score and here's what I got from it. You had okay antibody levels, but you had really good IgA levels. And IgA is the spike protein antibody that shows up in your nose to prevent infection. So you had some protection from that. You did not have good neutralizing antibodies, meaning if the virus get in, you couldn't neutralize it. Now, we don't have very good T-cell assessment. There might be an army of T-cells ready to back up that IGA. We don't know. I'd rather see you get boosted and get better neutralizing antibodies. Maybe Caleb will show the picture of it at the end of the show. Okay. I want to get Jeff in here. Jeff, go ahead. Hey, thanks, Dr. Drew. You bet. I got a question about vaccines and youth.

You know, I'm fully vaccinated, but my son is not, and I respect that and his reasonings. The thing that we're dealing with right now is that my grandson, he's 14, and he's a really great athlete. And he plays, getting into high school ball and plays on select teams. And we're struggling right now trying to decide if it's him taking the vaccine as something that he should be doing at his age. The majority of the other players on his teams and in high school, they are vaccinated in the community that they live in. And so we're just really struggling with that. I know my son coaches baseball and basketball, and he's not allowed to do that unvaccinated. And then now,

you know, now the pressure is with my grandson who, you know, with all rights and purposes, you know, he's, he's an A-type personality kid. And, you know, I just, I don't want to see him struggle with feeling left out. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. But let's, let's reason through. So, so your son is how old? He's 32. Okay.

And he has not been vaccinated. He is not vaccinated. And it's, yeah. And has he had COVID? You know, he thinks he has, I have advised him to go in and get the antibody test. Yeah. You know, but he hasn't done that. He just has some philosophical differences.

And trust me, I've tried to talk to him analytically about the science, but he's just not there yet. And that pours over onto his son. Hold on. So if he is your son overweight or any other risk factors or anything? Oh, no, he's in great shape. Have you appealed to him on the sort of group basis that we're trying to reduce the spread of this thing? Oh, absolutely. In the replication and variants and all that, that doesn't appeal to him?

You know what? Not at this point. And then now with my grandson and sports and all of those things, you know, that's what I'm with that kind of rigid thinking on his part for his own sort of, um, vaccine status, it's going to be really hard to get them over to a teenager. Right.

That's going to be very difficult. I, it seems to me that what are the studies showing for teens for that one through 7,000 myocarditis? That's your number. Everything else looks pretty good. It is not a trivial decision. It's a serious decision that parents should take very seriously. We're going to see, you know, as we get into the tens and hundreds of thousands of vaccines for that age group, you're going to see more myocarditis.

It's going to look a little more scary as we go forward. My instinct on this is for you to work on your son. And if you can get him vaccinated and he does well, that will soften his... And at the very least, you could appeal to him saying, hey, I guess you already have, you said, do you want to transmit it to your son, to these other kids? Is that really what you want to do? How would you feel if that happened? Yeah. Is there any studies that you can point me to in regards to teens and those type of things that you think might appeal to him? Again, the best discussions I've heard is from Vinay Prasad. You can go to his Plenary Session podcast. He goes over the data there on many of his pods.

And he cites the material. You can pull the citations that he goes over the data there on many of his pods and he cites the material. You can pull the citations that he goes over. That's the best. And I'm going to have him in here next week, hopefully. So that's the best stuff I know of. But yeah, it's a rough,

it's rough, man. Did you have the vaccine? Whoops. Did you have the vaccine yourself? We have to get this back. Hold on. Yeah. Because I got calls through. Do you have the vaccine yourself we have to get this back hold on oh yeah because i got calls through do you have you still there yes i am okay did you have the vaccine yourself oh yeah i did johnson and johnson and i'm you're fine yeah i i mean i i would just keep at him keep working him

do a lot of um use the word wonderment a lot. Wonder. I wonder how you'd feel if you use that approach. Like how, how are you going to feel? I wonder how that would work for you and what, uh, how just make him think about the consequences of his choices. Uh, and let's see if we can get him to get the vaccine. Then I think you might see, again, it'll be dependent what the community does around your son, your grandson, of course, but, uh, these are really tough problems. These are really difficult problems. And as much as possible, you got to come at people not through the, uh, the, the, what is the word I'm looking for? Whether you're either, you know, on or off, this sort of digital sort of, you know, binary. Don't come at them from a binary position. Come at them from a holistic position of, you know, how you make choices, what it looks like, what goes one direction,

what it looks like if it goes another, and then get whatever data you can. Maybe Dr. Prasad will have something on those podcasts. You guys, I got to call this person who just broke through here. Did you see that question? Which question? About my immunity score. What was the question? Any idea what it was before getting any vaccination shot? The thing about my nose, the fact that it was zero before you'd have zero before, right? So this is how do you know I didn't have COVID and it's just, This is not a COVID profile. I can tell you now categorically you did not have COVID. But I have something good in my nose that came from the vaccine. You have decent spike IgA in your nose that came from the vaccine.

You have to explain that because I am not a medical person. So you first, there's IgG and IgM, which are the circulating spike proteins. And those are the ones you really use once the virus gets in to neutralize it. And there's a way of testing the neutralizing antibodies. Unfortunately, your neutralizing was low. Doesn't mean you don't have T cells, which are the direct killer cells and the ones that sort of direct the army of B cells. You might have a good T cell response.

We don't know how to measure that yet quite effectively. All we do know is we can measure the IgG, the IgM, and the IgA, and your IgA looked pretty good to me in terms of protecting you from the outside world for the IgA that shows up in your nose against the virus. Now, if the virus gets in, you might get in some trouble, which is why it was a great idea. Once it gets past my nose hair. Exactly, which it really could. Not your nose hair. This is a biological event. If it gets to the IGA, it's because it's gotten well past your nose hairs. But it's just like a protective barrier. Think of it as a biological barrier. But if it gets in- I wish Caleb could show it. I sent it to him, but I don't know if he has it.

Just so you can see what it looks like. Do you want to show it, Caleb? I want to censor out all of her personal info, so I'll have it ready for the next show. Crop my information. Next show. Next show. Okay, what's going on? We'll show it on. It's interesting. They had to take like four vials of blood.

What you should do is show mine versus hers because mine looks totally different. Yeah, so take a snapshot of yours and send it to Caleb. Mine looks impressive. Mine is like, whoa. Yeah, that's good. Let's get yours and then just take a snapshot of it because you need a password to get it. We're going to be in here tomorrow with the writer of Dope Sick at three o'clock.

Is that correct? Or three thirty? Yes, that's correct. There it is. That's Macy. Three o'clock? Three o'clock, everybody? Are we all in agreement?

Three p.m. Pacific, yes. Three o'clock. I see it up there. Three o'clock Pacific. And Caleb's doing Ask Dr. Drew this whole week for us. And you know what? I have to apologize. I was so busy with the phone today.

I didn't even go on Restream. So that's never happened before. It's okay. They were behaving. Oh, except for Sophie. I had to mute her. What happened to Sophie? I don't know. She was just saying crazy stuff. Sophie was there yesterday. Yeah, she was saying stuff like they use bleach. We don't, I don't, we don't need that in our stream. Well, I'm on the restream now, just as an homage to you guys. I'm back on it.

So I know we love you guys. And I, I've never done that. Not been a high C Margaret. We have some great people on clubhouse. We appreciate the clubhouses. I don't know if they're still there. Did you shut it off yet? We haven't done, uh, and we got a super chat, uh, thoughts on using L-methylfolate in addicted

patients who have the MTHFR gene. Do I believe these patients can have dopamine tone raised by testing L-methylfolate? Uh, of Callie, uh, I think, uh, uh, methylfolate is a good idea for most people, especially if they have that genetic mutation. It's certainly that we give tons of folate to drug addicts and alcoholics as a matter of routine because they're often deficient from the drugs and from the alcohol especially. But to try to adjust the chemistry sufficiently to have a clinical effect, no, that will not work. The overwhelming biology of addiction is so profound, we have no way to really pharmacologically alter it. And it's a wiring function and a genetic, epigenetic phenomenology as much as it is a biological effect at the synaptic level.

Adjusting the synapse, adjusting the dopamine levels doesn't do a hell of a lot. It takes time for the genes that have been turned on and off by the drugs of addiction. It takes time for those genetic mechanisms to dial back, as well as the rewiring to develop to turn on the frontal lobes, to decrease the drive systems, to decrease the ventral tegmental sensitivity into the shell of the nucleus accumbens. This is fantastically complex biology that is not affected by single agents. Not a bad idea. Good thing, but not going to have a really significant clinical effect.

Folate generally in an alcoholic reduces the incidence of Wernicke syndrome. And so we give it in bucket loads. All right. I'm going to end the Clubhouse.ernicke syndrome. And so we give it in buck loads, bucket, bucket loads. All right. I'm going to end the clubhouse. We think if you want some more excitement, go to Fox LA tonight online and you can see true there. I'm going to end the clubhouse room. We thank y'all for being here.

We'll be in here. I think maybe tomorrow. I think it's foxla.com slash live or something like that. I believe that's true. Fox LA. Hold on here. Let me see. You're done with the clubhouse. So I can turn on the clubhouse and I'm looking at the restream now that I actually came on here with Chris. Caroline turned eight this weekend. Thank you for your kindness

and support. Happy birthday to Caroline. That's a great age. That is a great age. Caroline. I think she's correct. Caroline, happy birthday. Okay. I'm going to, we're going to wrap up the entire thread here. I'm looking at- You're like Hobo Kelly now. Yes, it is like Hobo Kelly, who only you and I make that, would understand that timely reference. I'm sure there's other people here. Unless you were watching TV in 1964, you would not know who Hobo Kelly was. And you have to have been watching in a couple of urban environments like Los Angeles to know Hobo Kelly. But thank you for those timely references because i appreciate that i love that so uh dress you up like hobo kelly for for halloween and you can just go those big fake

sunglasses hi caroline i see you okay now so i have to explain this so what hobo kelly would do is she would put on these giant oversized sunglasses and go, oh, I can see it's Susie. It's Susie. It's Susan's birthday. Susan, look under your bed. There's a present from your mom. And oh, it's Caroline's birthday, too.

I bet her mom, Chris, has got some very fun plans for her. I see it. I see what's coming. There's a party coming. And it's still the last time Susan heard this. She was six. And it's still delights her presently at this current age. I was four.

Four. Beg your pardon. Okay. I'm going to wrap this up. We thank you all for being here. We'll see you on tomorrow at three o'clock. Dope sick is the book. And then Friday with Greg Ellis.

We'll 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 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.