Ask Dr. Drew - How Do We End The Manmade “Loneliness Crisis” Caused By Pandemic Isolation? Dr. Nicole Saphier on Lockdowns, Mandates & COVID’s Aftermath – Ask Dr. Drew – Episode 217

Episode Date: May 20, 2023

“The loneliness crisis was created by Covid isolation, increased social media use, remote workspaces, automated transactions & overall lack of personal interaction,” tweeted Dr. Nicole Saphier. “This is manmade and only we can make it better.” Dr. Nicole Saphier is a board-certified radiologist with advanced fellowship training in breast and oncologic imaging. She is a frequent contributor on Fox News, Fox Business, and MSNBC. “I’m not sure who needs to hear this but, opposing vaccine mandates is not equivalent to opposing vaccines,” Dr. Saphier posted. She has spoken widely about the government’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic, focussing on the topic in her 2021 book “Panic Attack“. In Panic Attack, she uncovers the hypocrisy and hysteria that have characterized so much of the American Pandemic response. Dr. Nicole and her son Hudson published a children’s picture book titled “That’s What Family’s For” about the beauty of relying on one’s family when tough times arise. Find out more at https://www.nicolesaphiermd.com/ and follow Dr. Saphier at https://twitter.com/NBSaphierMD 「 SPONSORED BY 」 • PALEOVALLEY - "Paleovalley has a wide variety of extraordinary products that are both healthful and delicious,” says Dr. Drew. "I am a huge fan of this brand and know you'll love it too!” Get 15% off your first order at https://drdrew.com/paleovalley • THE WELLNESS COMPANY - Counteract harmful spike proteins with TWC's Signature Series Spike Support Formula containing nattokinase and selenium. Learn more about TWC's supplements at https://twc.health/drew • BIRCH GOLD - Don’t let your savings lose value. You can own physical gold and silver in a tax-sheltered retirement account, and Birch Gold will help you do it. Claim your free, no obligation info kit from Birch Gold at https://birchgold.com/drew • GENUCEL - Using a proprietary base formulated by a pharmacist, Genucel has created skincare that can dramatically improve the appearance of facial redness and under-eye puffiness. Genucel uses clinical levels of botanical extracts in their cruelty-free, natural, made-in-the-USA line of products. Get an extra discount with promo code DREW at https://genucel.com/drew 「 MEDICAL NOTE 」 The CDC states that COVID-19 vaccines are safe, effective, and reduce your risk of severe illness. You should always consult your personal physician before making any decisions about your health.  「 ABOUT the SHOW 」 Ask Dr. Drew is produced by Kaleb Nation (https://kalebnation.com) and Susan Pinsky (https://twitter.com/firstladyoflove). This show is for entertainment and/or informational purposes only, and is not a substitute for medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. 「 ABOUT DR. DREW 」 For over 30 years, Dr. Drew has answered questions and offered guidance to millions through popular shows like Celebrity Rehab (VH1), Dr. Drew On Call (HLN), Teen Mom OG (MTV), and the iconic radio show Loveline. Now, Dr. Drew is opening his phone lines to the world by streaming LIVE from his home studio. Watch all of Dr. Drew's latest shows at https://drdrew.tv Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today, I'm pleased to be joined by Dr. Nicole Sapphire. Dr. Sapphire, of course, is a board-certified radiologist with advanced training in breast and oncology imaging. Frequent contributor on Fox News, Fox Business. She has a book that she wrote with her son, Hudson, published a children's picture book. It's called That's What Family's For, about the beauty of relying on one's family

when tough times arise. There it is. We've got a lot to talk about. She's been talking about COVID and some of the insanity there. She has a couple other books I want to discuss with her as well, including one on loneliness. So let's get right to it. Our laws as it pertains to substances are draconian and bizarre.

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Try them out by heading over to paleovalley.com slash drdrew to get 15% off your first order today. Don't miss out on this opportunity to discover a brand that is perfect for your paleo lifestyle. Especially if you are traveling like I do. I bring the turkey and the pork and the beef. I just think so much of this product. And I had beef broth twice today, Susan. I don't know about you, but I think I'm maybe over, if it's possible to overdo that kind of thing. I think it's making my fingernails stronger too. And my hair grow. Collagen. So there you go. So Dr. Nicole Sapphire, board certified radiologist

and advanced training in breast and oncology. The book is That's What Family's For. Let's bring in Dr. Sapphire. Hey there. Hi, guys. So thank you for joining us. Really appreciate it. So I want to do a couple of quick things, sort of business stuff first. One is help people understand what your day job is.

Okay, well, I'm a radiologist, and sometimes people think that that's the person who brings you back to get the x-ray, but no, I'm the person who's actually in the room looking at the images that are taken, whether it's an x-ray, a CT scan, an MRI, nuclear medicine, but I also do a lot more than that. I don't just sit and read images. I'm what you call an interventional radiologist. My specialty is in breast imaging, so I do a lot of breast biopsies, and I put radiation seeds around the cancers so the surgeons can find the cancers at surgery. But I also do a ton of other biopsies, head and neck, needs to do liver and kidneys, and anywhere you can find a lymph node. So I do a mixture of reading the images, but also a lot

of interventions. So that is interesting. So when I think of interventional radiology, I think about threading wires up an artery. But this is, you're talking about putting needles into things under fluoroscopy and other kinds of imaging. So my modality of choice, I use ultrasound, mammography, but also I use MRI. My husband, however, is an endovascular neurosurgeon, and he does thread the wire using fluoro up into the brain to treat aneurysms and strokes. So he puts the coils in the little aneurysms,

and he's the one that also dissolves the croak. Does he have any theory what happened to Jamie Foxx? You know, it's interesting. He's actually written a little bit about Jamie Foxx. He's been also very interested in following Bruce Willis and what's been going on with his dementia. So you may just have to have him on because let me tell you know that, I don't know if you can, if he's interested in this, but Robin Williams, it turned out had Lewy body dementia. It turned out that that's what that was. And so, yeah, it's the Lewy body can have lots of psychiatric symptomatology around it. And then for Jamie Foxx, it just looks to me like something that he had an event, like he had a major interventional procedure of some type and that it took a while to recover.

Does that fit your sense too or his? Yeah, to be honest, I mean, I don't know a lot of the details. I haven't been following it that closely, but it does seem like there was an acute event. There was some sort of intervention and now it's going to be a matter of, you know, chronic rehab. And could that have been a ruptured aneurysm? Absolutely possible. You know, there's long-term sequela from that. Could it have been a stroke? Possible. A Hemorrhage? Possible. Many things. Thankfully, we actually have interventions now that something once had almost 100% mortality. Now there is some hope.

Right. So they can go in and dissolve the clot from the stroke or they can go in and evacuate the bleed if there's a small bleed or if it's in the right position. So I'm hoping it's something like that for him for sure. So let's talk. The other bit of business I want to get to is the book. So tell us what I'm, you know, hoping it's something like that for him for sure. Um, so let's talk, the other bit of business I want to get to is the book. So tell us what you and your son wrote about that. That's what family's for. So I'm, I've written a couple of books in the past and they have been your traditional nonfiction, a little bit more serious, make America healthy again and panic attack. Um, but this one is different and I was so excited

to do it because I was able to do it with one is different. And I was so excited to do it because I was able to do it with one of my sons. I'm a mother of three children, all boys. And my middle son last summer was unfortunately given some bad news from a doctor. And we decided to turn something kind of negative in our family into something positive. My son loves to write. I love to write. So we put together this beautifully illustrated children's book that really hones in on reminding people about the importance of family, especially when things are tough. I mean, right now it feels like there's so many people trying to separate children from their family. And there's just so much chaos going around that, you know, you almost feel like a divide between parents and kids. But this book, again, brings you back to that family unit and just reminding you how important it is to lean on your family.

And maybe things aren't going to be perfect, but as long as you have them by your side, it's certainly going to be better. Yeah, I feel like we've gone through a window of approximately 30 years where families have been systematically eroded or attacked. Do you think we're coming back around? It was eroded in the past, in my humble opinion, in the name of, there's all kinds of families. There's not one kind of family. Okay, got it. Got it. There's all kinds of families. But families are really, really important. And do you think we're coming back around? Well, you know, first of all, I think the erosion of that family unit started decades ago, certainly as women kind of ventured off into the workforce, which by the way, I'm very happy about. I'm a full-time working mom. But it has kind of taken away some of those stereotypical roles.

You know, my husband cooks dinner probably more than I do these days. But as you're mentioning, as we've continued to evolve, this family unit has eroded in the sense that, well, you have a much higher divorce rate. It's not the typical mother and fathers anymore. You have two mothers. You have two fathers. You have a whole cadre of family raising children. And so you've kind of gotten away from that typical family unit. And while it really has seemed like we've gone into the wrong direction, in my opinion, I can tell you what happened with Glenn Youngkin in the last couple of years has really renewed my faith that the American people truly want to come back and really bring

the parents and the children back together. Parents want to be involved in their children's lives, not just on the periphery. They want to have a say in their education. They want to know what they're doing online. And I do think that throughout COVID, parents, to be honest, they got distracted. You think children are on social media? Well, adults are on social media too. And so if you think kids are on it a lot, adults are on it even more. So it is just as important for parents to kind of get off that social media just a little bit more and focus more on their children. So are we getting to a better place? I hope so. I think we have a long way to go. Remember when Hillary Clinton wrote that book, It Takes a Village? I remember when she wrote that and I thought, yeah, a village can be

helpful when all else fails. But the optimum, there's still a difference between something that's optimal and something that's sort of a rescue. Well, that's right. And so first of all, it does take a village. I was rushing home from the hospital today to pick up my kids from school because my husband called in for an emergency he was supposed to get them he couldn't so he was in and I was five minutes late and for most parents and listen it's not a big deal to be five minutes late to anything but for kids sometimes it can be so I'm texting other moms I'm like just let my children know they're not abandoned and I will be there. But so, you know, 99% of the time it's mom and dad and their family.

But I'll tell you, I do reach out for a lifeline when I need it. So I want to circle back around to the unhappiness around screens. We know, I mean, the data is in. Screens are hurting adolescent kids, right, and young children, especially younger females. I want to quote some data that just came out in JAMA this last week. This is a 2021 CDC study, and things maybe have worsened since then. 57% of adolescent girls, 17,000 high school age students, 57% persistently sad or hopeless, 30% serious suicidal ideation. 30%.

These freaking lockdowns and then the turning kids loose on screens could not have been worse for, say, 8 to 15-year-olds. Just couldn't have been worse. And predictably, it was easy to predict this was going to happen. I'm going to let you comment on that, but I really want to understand why our public health officials didn't do the usual consideration of doing harm with their interventions. Hold on a second. You're quoting the 2023 JAMA article based on 2021 data. That's all the information you need right there. That is how behind they are when it comes to putting children as a priority. In late 2020, you had the nonprofit Fair Health.

They already came out with the data. They showed medical insurance claims for teens were up for ER visits, mental health issues, whether it was psychosis of sorts, anxiety, depression, suicidal ideations. The data was there the end of 2020. And what happened? They continued to keep things locked down. There was not an immediate push to open schools. Sure, you have Randy Weingarten, the president of the ATF, the

teachers union saying, oh, we tried really hard. That's bull. You know, that's untrue. And everything that she has done has gone against what was best for our children. And as the emails continue to be released, she was in cahoots with the CDC. They fell to the political pressure and they caved to the politics of it all. And not once were children put first. And as we're seeing now, we have all of the consequences of it. We have already many teen suicides. We have teens addicted. We don't need a JAMA study to tell us this. We know we knew then, and so did they and shame on them. And the fact that there are not repercussions for their actions and they still have jobs is appalling. I totally agree with you.

It was so predictable too. That's one of the reasons I started screaming at the beginning and it was, you know, to be fair, I'm looking at panic attack. Your, your book is up next to you. The panic caused by the, by the press was perhaps the inciting influence, if not 80% of the cause. But two quick stories. I had a nightly local newscast I had here in Los Angeles during the first year of the pandemic, sort of upping stories on pandemic with another anchor. And I interviewed a woman who was the secretary. I'm trying to find this footage. She's either the secretary of the LA Unified School District or the LA Unified School Teachers Union. But it was about eight months, nine months into the pandemic, the draconian lockdowns here.

It was maybe 12 months in. And she comes on. She goes, we have to have sand sanitizers and plexiglass shields and blah, blah, blah, listing all these things. And I said, let's not argue about whether you need it or it's appropriate or not. Let's do it. How about that? Let's do it. How long is it going to take?

Let's do it in open schools. And she pushed back like she didn't understand what I was saying. Three times I went around with her. Let's do it. It's too important. You want it done? Let's get it done. She ended up calling me sexist and racist. That's where she went with it. That sounds about right. Brilliant. Brilliant. And then the other experience I had, and Susan, my wife, has unfortunately heard me tell this a million

times, was watching the Ukrainian women and children stream into Poland, people putting microphones in their face, and every woman saying the same thing. It was terrible. Our sons, our husbands are back there. But these kids have been out of school for two weeks. Two weeks. We have to get them back in school and put them in non-Ukrainian speaking, non-English

speaking schools because two weeks was insane to have kids out of school. In the meantime, we're out two years. Well, what about when Randy Weingarten actually took a trip to Ukraine so she could help consult on how to make sure that kids don't have learning loss? Yet here we are in the United States and every metric our children are no longer meeting, whether they're in kindergarten or they're graduating from high school. And that's why we're rolling back SATs, we're rolling back ACTs, and we're lowering the bar so kids can actually graduate from high school just to make sure that they're checking those boxes. But make no mistake, our children are not being educated. They are well behind par.

And unfortunately, it's going to take a very long time to recover from. That is disgusting. We should all be disgusted by that trip. Now, so the other thing I wanted to bring up, you already took on the JAMA article I saw last week, but this is actually some good news in the medical literature. You're reading a certain medical literature. I'm reading the general medical literature. I've been reading it my entire career, the New England Journal, the JAMA, and Annals of Internal Medicine, and I rely on it. I read it carefully. It's how I adjust my position on certain treatments and cases and things. For the last year and a half, it was clear to me that there

was some adulteration of the editorial process. It was just clear. Because the medical literature is always back and forth. That's why we do meta-analyses because there's a back and forth in the literature. Some are very strongly positive, some are sort of negative, and you sort of get a consensus on what the reality is. And hopefully, it's all well-done studies and we can critique whether one was better than the other, this kind of thing. Through COVID, the information was going one way and one way only and so i knew it was adulterated i just knew it it just couldn't be any other way until this week annals of internal medicine i read it cover to cover i was excited the whole time i was reading it because there were provocative articles asking the questions they should have been asking for the last year and a half including

strongly advocating for early treatment with fluvoxamine and budesonide. They had a large study that showed excellent results in early moderate COVID. Why didn't we know that 18 months ago? We could have actually prevent people from going in the hospital. Why wasn't public health teaching the public about the illness and how to prevent complications, how to get the right treatments from your doctor, what a monoclonal antibody is, and how to not go, and why steroids were useful, and why not go to the hospital. I never heard any of that. All I heard was shelter in place, which is some of the most disgusting words of the pandemic. Well, we did hear about those medications, right? But then we just had, they had the knee-jerk

reflex that came out, and Dr. Fauci continued to say, well, we don't have the evidence to demonstrate that it works. So please don't go out there and start prescribing things unless we say that it's the right thing to do. And as we know, as we saw with hydroxychloroquine and others, which have not necessarily been proven to work, but we saw the same thing that prescribing rights were taken away and people were being criticized for trying new things rather than accepting lockdowns, rather than accepting potentially a higher death rate. And you only have to look at the CDC. The CDC itself has been the biggest failure throughout the entire pandemic. They failed to put forth adequate data. Every single study that they put forward was one of the most flawed, biased studies that would have never, never passed muster pre-COVID.

It was embarrassing. It was appalling. And I walked into COVID having full trust in the CDC. I have walked out completely disappointed. I have the exact same experience. I was chanting that we just need to listen to Fauci and the CDC and they'll get us through this. I couldn't have been more wrong. And I'm crestfallen. What do you think happened? It's upsetting for certain. And I can say that in the beginning that I did have a lot of

forgivings. Like, let's say we had a lot of evolving information. I understand that we didn't want to have mass hysteria, but ultimately what happened is they caused mass hysteria. And unfortunately it was the Trump factor. In my opinion, the Trump factor is what led to it. People's wanted to see president Trump fail and they didn't want anything that he did to have any positive effect. So when he quickly was starting to call for schools to reopen, which was the right thing to do, you saw that flip side that he is going to kill people and all of the damage that he was going to do, but ultimately he was right. And I think that there is just a group of people in this country who will stop at nothing to make him look bad,

even if he is right. I'm not saying he was right on everything, but he was right on a few things, but he couldn't let it happen because they let politics get in the way. Yeah. That was my sense in California. As soon as he started talking about opening up, that's when lockdowns were mandated in the state of California. And the more he started talking about, you know, we're going to get through this. It's going to be okay. Next thing I know they're bulldozing skate parks and a soldering pay basketball hoops. And then I, I went over this this morning with Adam Parola, the, in November, the,

you know, the restaurants were all closed down and then, and then then governor Newsom is spotted at the French laundry, having, having dinner with his friends. I can't with that guy. I cannot with that guy. Two weeks later, not only does he double down on the restaurant lockdowns, he locks down outdoor dining in addition. Which, again, in the entire literature I could find, two cases of outdoor transmission of COVID. Which probably weren't really outdoor transmission of COVID. Two cases out of

7 billion people. Which probably weren't really outdoor transmission. I don't even believe it. Right. Correct. I agree with you. It was two extraordinary cases where people were close talking for some reason in an environment where there was no wind and no circulation.

Yeah, I agree with you. You didn't need much circulation for this thing to be not that as contagious as it could otherwise be. Yeah, for sure. And unfortunately, all of our basic science knowledge, people just ignored it, thinking that this was some incredible virus that went against everything that we have learned for decades in virology. At the end of the day, as a coronavirus, we should have known it's highly transmissible. We should have known you're going

to get it multiple times because we've had common cold. We've also had SARS in the past. So we had knowledge, we had information, but we ignored it and we gave into the panic and the politics of it all. And it was to our detriment. What happened to our profession? What do you think went wrong? We went so off the rail in so many different ways. What's your thoughts on that? Same thing. I truly believe that we have become such a divided nation because of politics that it has divided us in whole. It has divided the medical community. It has divided the people on the street. It has divided anywhere you look. I mean, you look at Hollywood, you have people divided there. And throughout COVID, it was you either walk the line with Fauci, or you don't. And in that is a division. And I can tell you that you had some of the

most wonderful medical centers in the United States completely ignore science and just go along with the party line. That made no sense. They allowed the mandates knowing that the vaccines no longer stop transmission. And they fired healthcare personnel when we had a healthcare shortage. And we were behind on cancer screenings and treatments and other very necessary things. That is not what do no harm is all about. And we completely forgot it. I think the public doesn't trust a lot of physicians anymore. And I'm not sure that they should, because let's be honest, you had a lot of physicians, again, not follow the science and just walk the party line. And when patients have

already been hesitant, thinking that some doctors are more for money than for their patients, this just added fuel to that fire. Yes, there are bad apples, but I will say as a whole, most doctors want to do good but covid certainly hurts absolutely absolutely i completely agree with you i've never met a group that was so self-sacrificing frankly that's why we get undermined so easily we're too busy doing what we're supposed to do for our patients it's trained into us yeah i i there's still, though, this weird hysteria, and it's still in his healthcare. When I walk into healthcare facilities, I still see placards everywhere, six feet saves lives, for which there is no evidence, for which that was invented out of whole cloth thin air. And we have healthcare providers advocating for this, essentially,

you know, a talisman and ritual. Why don't they just say, forget six feet, just walk around the chair three times when you enter a room. It has as much effect as six foot distance. Well, do you know what the worst part is? Is that Dr. Rachel Rochelle Walensky, the CDC director, she knew that, which is why in private emails before she became CDC director, she was asked by the local school board what they should be doing. Do they need to maintain the six feet? In her email, she said six feet is probably unnecessary. You're probably fine just with three feet. And then as soon as she stepped into the CDC, what happened? Schools required six feet

spacing. If they couldn't comply, they weren't allowed to open, which is why you had millions of children out of school. And she's closer to right with three feet because there's no such thing really as social distancing with a coronavirus unless you're 60 feet. And I've spoken to people that were in the room when they were trying to make a decision what to require people to do. And they were trying to decide between three feet and 60 feet and they finally just said all right six feet they can get people to do that which again this is that you know if you've been in situations medically where doctors go we got to do something that that is how you harm patients when you when you're i don't know about you but when residents would say stuff like that to me i would go berserk i had to do something no you didn't no you don't. You will harm people

if you're just doing something to do something. Yeah. There's always the option to not do something and sometimes not doing something is the best thing you can do. That's right. So Dr. Safai and I are going to take some calls. Those of you that are on Twitter spaces that would like to join us over on Twitter spaces, you just raise your hand. Caleb can put the cartoon up that shows you how you do it. You just click the microphone in the lower left-hand corner. There it is. And once you have done so, I will look for that listener request. And when you come on, you have to press it again.

It goes mute after I call you up to the podium. And if you do agree to come up, you'll be streaming out on multiple platforms, Twitter, Twitch, Facebook, YouTube, Rumble, wherever you can catch a thing. Let's quickly take a call here. We have to take a break first. You want to do it first? I was going to take a call first. Okay. My producers. Let's take a break. Let's do a quick break. We'll take a break. And Nicole, we talked once privately about an opportunity you had. Is that something we can talk about publicly?

Because I made the mistake of telling Susan, my wife, about it. Okay. So, Susan, really quick before we go to break. Okay. And Nicole, the opportunity to do a housewives thing. And what are your thoughts? I just divulged that to her about five minutes ago. I got invited to once, and I just decided against it.

I got the Beverly Hills. That's true. I got the Beverly Hills. I know. We're not in Beverly Hills. I'm just not. Yeah, I don't know if I could live up to that imagery. Well, the other thing is we looked at each other and go,

I can't think of any marriages that make it through. Maybe Lisa and what's his name now make it through, and the Osbournes made it, but marriages don't tend to make it through reality cameras. Are you going down that road still, or is it not a thing? You know, I'm friends with several of the Jersey and a couple of the New York Housewives, which is how it's kind of in my circle. I wouldn't say that it's in my purview right now. I'm very busy. The hospital keeps me extremely busy.

Also being on Fox News, having a children's book, and I have a couple of other things I'm working on to be announced soon. But I am always up for new opportunities. So I am someone who considers every opportunity in front of me. So I never say never. That's, that is a good way to go. I mean, I, I always,

when I've talked to our peers about who want to do some of this stuff in media, I always just say, do not quit your day job and don't say no day. And the Explorer thing, see what, see what's there. See if you can turn it into something that you can feel good about and it makes a good difference. Okay, Dr. Nicole Sapphire, you can follow her at NicoleSapphireMD.com. Sapphire is with one P as opposed to two. Is that correct? And it's I-E-R.

It's not spelled like a stone. It's S-A-P-H-I-E-R. That's the way my mother-in-law pronounces it, so that's what we go with. Okay. What's the way my mother-in-law pronounces it, so that's what we go with. Okay. What's the heritage on that? French. Safier. Safier.

Safier. Safier. Okay, we'll take a little break. We'll take a little break. Do you speak French? No. No. I'm Italian.

Oh, cute. Say come ma femme. Ma muff. Okay, we'll be right back with dr nissafran some calls right after this over the last few months no doubt you've heard a lot about spike protein certainly on this program the reality is once lockdowns are well behind us we will likely still be dealing with the effects of covid and potentially the covid19 vaccines, the spike protein may prove to be an important part of our story. With that in mind, I want to introduce you to the Wellness Company's Spike Support Formula. Whether you've been vaccinated or not, spike protein may be something you have become concerned about. The good news is that there's some interesting research on how to potentially deal with it. Studies have suggested that natokinase and dandelion root are showing some potential in protecting you and your family. Our friend,

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Should I turn your mic on? That would be great. Thank you. My voice is gone. I wanted to just tell you how beautiful you are. Well, thank you. God bless you. All thanks to Jen, yourself.

Yeah. Also, if you like any of our sponsors, any of these things reach your need to buy, we really appreciate your support. We fortunately have. We have some great ones. Also, just I think what Susan's trying to also say is that there's a new page on the website. If you go to drdrew.com slash sponsors, it lists all of our sponsors. And if you before you go and buy anything, go there because there's actually coupon codes,

discount links if you do it through that page. So I recommend if you're interested in any of buy anything, go there because there's actually coupon codes, discount links if you do it through that page. So I recommend if you're interested in any of these products, go there. Apparently there's a Paleo Valley slash Drew out there. But you have to go to paleovalley.com slash Dr. Drew. So you go to the website, you'll get the right link. And we'll get credit. Our website. So I hope you're buying their stuff off of there too.

I am. Because we get lots of that stuff. I already, I bought some more beef sticks and some. I know. I've been eating them. And Genu, I actually buy GenuCell there too. Dr. Nicole Sapphire, sorry about that. I haven't bought gold yet though.

I'm thinking about it. Well, I do love turkey sticks and skincare. So I'm liking this conversation. Me too. That's exactly right. So I feel grateful that I can advocate for these things that I really plastics and skincare. So I'm liking this conversation. Me too. That's exactly right. So I feel grateful that I can advocate for these things that I really like and use. So another quick thing about that Annals article before we go to the calls. And again, those of you on the Twitter spaces, if you want to head over to Twitter spaces,

click that button in the little left-hand corner. I'll bring you up onto the podium. But there was another article I thought was really interesting. Another sort of question that could not have been asked even three months ago. They essentially said, yes, we have lots of observational studies on vaccines, mRNA vaccines in particular. And we all know those are not very useful. And they essentially said, why are we not doing matched studies with unvaccinated individuals? Just take a vaccine to unvaccinated cohort, match people, and follow forward.

It's an easy thing to do. You're advocating for all these observational studies. Why not just add a match control to it so we can actually say something? Well, because all of the funding has gone to trying to prove that the vaccine works. And they don't actually want to identify if they don't work. That hasn't been the goal all along. As we have seen, you have the U.S. government working very closely with Pfizer and Moderna, and there's a lot of money there. And for the most part, it was all good intention.

They have run with it. And unfortunately, you don't actually have independent funding. It's actually trying to do legitimate long term studies when it comes to these vaccines. I do think we're going to get there, but I don't know if they're going to do it. And I can't imagine at this point it's going to be the U.S. government who funds it. And we are seeing a lot of vaccine injury, just a lot of it. And the fact that that isn't sort of an important point of discussion, and there is excess mortality in many countries, particularly Western countries, unexplained. Governments seem uninterested in explaining it. I don't know if it's the vaccine. I don't know what it is. Is it

post-COVID? I don't know. But that this stuff is allowed to trundle along at the same rate of excess death nearly as we had during the pandemic. Well, I don't want to overstate it, but the pandemic's excess mortality, you know, in total was not a lot different than what we've been going through the last year. Well, the excess mortality from directly from a COVID infection. And then on top of that, from the sequela from our COVID lockdowns and things that came from it. And then, yes, as you're saying, you had, what about the patients that we put on ventilators that we know that actually probably led to their death instead of helping them? What about some of the medications that people were being given that caused toxicity? I mean, there was a lot of iatrogenic death

that can be, should be counted in the excess deaths as not as it pertains to a COVID related death, but another form of death. And so I think that it's going to take some time. I think we're far too close to the pandemic for people to truly be looking at this critically. But I do believe that when it comes to the iatrogenic stuff, meaning healthcare cause, when it comes to some of the vaccine-related stuff, it's going to take a long time for people to critically look at that data. And the fact that we abandon care of people. We just go home until you're sick.

I mean, go home until you can't breathe. That was the weirdest, weirdest chapter in the history of American medicine. I I'll never forget that. Uh, Michael, you're unmuted. You're ready to go. Hey, Dr. Drew, long time, no C-slash here. Thank you for lovelining coming to UC Irvine long, long ago. Oh my gosh. Was that at the, uh, I did two things that are, if I spoke at the medical school of graduation, is that what you're talking about? Or did I also. The Brent event center in like 99 or 2000,

probably weird. Wow. Anyway, my privilege. When men were men. Yeah. When we used to be able to go talk at colleges and have a nice discourse. Oh God.

That's what I want to thank you for. And all of you, not just Dr. Drew is like, um, the truth has three sides and maybe it's because i'm barely on the autistic spectrum but i've always hated politics for in the way of getting to finding the truth and spraying the truth and we'll probably spend years looking back at all the things we did wrong uh during this crisis so i'm just glad to hear some like courageous exploration and criticism.

But let the chips fall where they may. Yeah. So. Yeah. We're just asking questions. And all these people. Thank you, Michael. And all these people that have been silenced, you know, guys like Jay Bhattacharya, people

that are just, you know, extraordinary academicians and professionals and humans, silenced and condemned for suggesting, frankly, what we should have been doing. And it's interesting. I saw Dr. Fauci recently saying, oh, the Great Barrington Declaration, which Dr. Bhattacharya was one of the chief authors. They're just advocating letting it rip. No, no one ever advocated let it rip. No legitimate source just said let it rip. And how he could characterize it, or if he thought that's what

he was reading, suggests that he didn't read it. One question I have is, you know, with media being the way it is, I figured, you know, I had some tolerance for sort of like the reality of social media and politics that the government had tried as much as possible to have like a united voice, a united narrative, because if you have mixed signals, people get confused and the effectiveness of recommended guidelines and interventions is weakened. And, you know, then we saw people people cut some people get copying hypocrites like it's really tough because one of the true observations i felt i heard under covid was look a lot of people are watching the scientific process unfold in real time who are who are not scientists and

so you know trial and error is how i've lived my life especially when it comes to social skills and so i don't know if this was just like a growing pains kind of situation where it's like trial and error is how I've lived my life, especially when it comes to social skills. And so I don't know if this was just like a growing pains kind of situation where it's like, well, Hey, everyone who ignored science and math in high school, let's add Dr. Zafar.

And by the way, you seem to be accommodating very nicely. Your, your social skills are well done on that, sir. So Dr. Zafar, what do you say to that?

Certainly. Well, it did seem like trial and error, but it shouldn't have been, we had a lot more knowledge and tools. That's Certainly. Well, it did seem like trial and error, but it shouldn't have been. We had a lot more knowledge and tools, Eric Padre, well before the pandemic that we should have utilized. And unfortunately, we kind of threw them to the wayside and didn't allow some of our expertise to take foot. Including this notion that the American public can't handle the truth. We had a movie back in the 80s where Jack Nicholson played a villain where those words came out of his mouth. And that really, you can't

handle the truth, was a rallying point for liberals against the establishment, claiming that they were doing things that we should be all aware of. Now they're the ones pushing this notion that the American public can't handle the truth and need to hear lies. It's too much for me. It's upside down. Great movie and a great reference. You're absolutely right. And that's exactly what it was.

Americans do not know what is good for them. Parents don't know what's good for their children. No, we know what's right for you. Do what we say and you will have to deal with the consequences. That's what happened. That is what happened. And it is, I am disgusted by so much now. You're reminding me all the things that just disgust me from the pandemic. And that was, that was one of them. I heard, I heard RFK say something, RFK Jr. say something very interesting the other day. I mentioned on this show before, so I'm going to drive Susan crazy repeating

something. But he said they asked him, you know, what would you do to unify the country? He goes, what would I do? I'd stop lying to them. Stop lying. And I thought, oh yeah, that would get us about 80% of the way there. It's a good start. Yeah, a good start, exactly.

Caleb, were you trying to communicate with me there? I saw your little signal go with your bat. Your bat signal go up. Okay. Wrong button. Let's get Josh. Okay. Josh up here.

Anyone else? Raise your hand. We can bring you on up to the podium. Just like Josh. Josh, what's up? Hey, Dr. Drew. So the question that I have about mental health in the pandemic is how much of this is a prior susceptibility to mental illness or actually a mental illness undiagnosed? And then the pandemic comes and we blame the pandemic.

But really, we weren't doing perfectly beforehand. You're absolutely right. You were absolutely right. I agree. All right. Good question. Don't go further with that question. Which hand first, the chicken or the egg? Because already so complicated so leave it right there i'll let dr safar stick her teeth into it

you know he's completely right and this isn't just a feeling we have there's data to show this our mental illness rates were way up the five to ten years preceding the pandemic now some of that is due to overdiagnoses, you know, not overdiagnoses, but more diagnoses, I should say, in the sense that we've kind of really, you know, honified in on those DSMV criteria. And to be honest, people are being labeled with anxiety and depression when it's not really a disorder, but just because they're feeling some of these feelings. And so you already had a rise in that, but you also had increase in true mental illness as it pertains, because what happened? Well, you had this cell

phones, you have social media, all of a sudden you're having people having fewer actual social interactions. And all they are doing is being more dependent on their social media. And this is giving them feelings of loneliness, inadequacy. You saw body dysmorphic disorder. I mean, you only have to look as far as Hollywood to see that on social media, what women's bodies look like these days are just a suggestion. It's not what God gave you.

And all of a sudden, teenage girls feel like this is what it's supposed to be. So the pandemic didn't cause that, but what did we do? We thrust that social media into the faces of these children. They had even less social interaction. They forgot what it's like to be in the real world, and their reality turned into social media. And substance abuse.

Well, okay. And so let's add to that, that we had lots of, we opened this conversation talking about the erosion of the family, which family, which is an adverse childhood experience by definition. So we had lots of childhood trauma coming into this. We had lots of cluster B in the access to category, lots of borderline narcissists, sociopaths, that stuff that comes out of all the trauma. And, of course, there are mood disorders associated with that too. And then substance has become out of control. As we know now, fentanyl is ridiculous, but cannabis is so concentrated that it has taken a lot of kids out. You mentioned ER visits for

psychosis. It is way up with THC-related psychosis, like really seeing a lot of it now. And some of that is because people are sitting at home with nothing else to do to feel better. And then you add to that the high levels in some states where it's recreational, and you get into really serious trouble and neurological trouble fast. Yeah. People get frustrated when you talk about marijuana thinking, oh, it's just marijuana. It's just weed. People have been smoking it for decades. This is not the same marijuana that was going around 20, 30 years ago that people were smoking randomly, you know, that you associate even with the hippies. It's not the same stuff. A lot of it is chemically altered. It's much more condensed as you say, and a lot of it is laced with other things. And so yes, while maybe THC in itself is not as harmful as some of these other medications in high doses in such

young brains and young bodies. Yes, it can be toxic. And just like we saw with cigarettes, doctors used to say, hey, smoke a cigarette. It's going to help you breathe. All right, well, talk to me in 10 to 20 years. Let me know how this highly concentrated THC works out for you. We're already seeing some of the detriments of it. I'm pretty certain we're

going to have a lot of literature on how harmful it actually was in the years to come. Yeah. Yeah. Not everybody. And I no way do I want people in jail with that drug. Nope. Nope. I'm not up for that at all. But I want an honest conversation medically about what we happen to be seeing josh does that pretty much wrap around your question yeah and i would just say to add to that that i feel like coming out of this and we're still coming out of it and we've got to give ourselves enough time to really come out of it but i do think there is fertile ground here for for some more spiritual growth not so much mental health and psychiatry and therapy, but spiritual movement.

And that's the only thing I would, the coda that I would add to it. Josh, hear, hear. And I think we started with a bit of a spiritual vacuum and we ended with a massive spiritual vacuum. Dr. Safaree, you want to jump on that one? That's right. Faith, family, and friends.

That's truly what my children's book is all about, that there's so much negativity going on around us and you just have to bring it back home. And for most people, it is faith, family, and friends that we need to be focusing on to get through some of these hard times. Yeah, that's absolutely right. I mean, look, the principles of recovery are basically, you know, faith, have some concept of faith, closeness, some relationship where you discuss about your difficult feelings, service, gratitude. There you go. That about gets you most of the way where you need to go. I don't know. I've wondered if we are

heading towards another great awakening. It seems like that's what this country does. I'm not advocating it. I'm just looking at history and thinking, boy, that's what this country tends to do when it gets into trouble like this. I wonder if you have any thoughts about that. I mean, I just hope that we can get to a place as a country and coming out of all the vitriol of the pandemic and start making some progress. I don't think, I think the anger and the hurt and the frustration, the divisiveness will all be there until we start seeing the government put their best foot forward and do things that we believe are truly helping people. When you look at the Southwest border right now, you don't see a lot of action to control the fentanyl coming in. That touches every American, every American who is

worried about their children, their family getting fentanyl. Those are big actions and it doesn't have to be political. It needs to be about the American people. And until the government starts gaining a moniker of trust from Americans, I think it's going to be tough going forward. No, I agree. Pragmatic. And let's put a little light on the fentanyl deal. We're not just talking about opioid addicts getting their hands on a little too much fentanyl. There is an increase, the very positive slope right now, on young people experiencing fentanyl poisoning. In other words, they get some Xanax offline. It turns out it's laced with fentanyl.

They're dead. That is a very positive slope to that population and people need to wake up to it they're finding ways to get their hands on pharmaceutical like things online and otherwise and most of that has fentanyl in it and kids are dying yes they are this is uh charlotte i'll give charl Charlotte a chance to come on up here. Charlotte, you got to unmute yourself there. The mic in the lower left-hand corner,

Nicole, I appreciate your patience. We're, we're almost through the time here. We've, we've parked you outside. She's waiting to go in to see her son play basketball. Charlotte,

you're still muted. There you are. Hi, thank you. Thank you for letting me speak yeah i just um have a bit of an issue when people blame the word pandemic on mental health um and what's going on i think obviously it's the uh response to the pandemic or whatever you want to call it yes yes so so that's a really good point. So you're saying the things we did in response to the pandemic and the things we, the rhetoric and the press, that's what caused the mental health crisis, correct?

Yeah, 100%. Yeah, 100%. Because obviously different countries act in different ways. And, you know, a lot of opinions are that some policies were too harsh and that's like lockdowns, for example. And so, yeah, what's your thoughts on that? Lockdowns were a catastrophe top to bottom, in my humble opinion. It's one thing to have done it for a short period of time, but in the state I live in, we did it for a year and a half or something insane like that. I'm going to read you something. I don't know if, Charlotte, you heard earlier in this conversation with Dr. Sapphire, but we were talking about how young females are doing so poorly. And in this JAMA article that Dr. Sapphire pointed out was already two years too late, but they did say something I'm going to quote there that as one of their reasons for young girls doing so poorly, they pointed at lockdowns and they said it probably affected girls more because

girls, quote, need greater level of emotional intimacy. Social isolation is the most serious torture you can give a human being. And you take an adolescent, a particular adolescent female, and you isolate her and tell her that if she has contact with other humans, she's going to kill her parents or her grandparents. Are you kidding me? Of course that's going to kill her parents or her grandparents? Are you kidding me? Of course that's going to make them depressed and anxious. Yeah, 100%.

I don't know if you can tell from my accent. I'm in England. Where are you? A lot of the propaganda was don't kill grandma over and over again on daytime TV. Horrible. Yeah, yeah. And I even think back to like male friends I knew who live on their own

and it wasn't just females. And I was panicking like crazy that, you know, they're not going to survive. And yeah, so yeah, all around a terrible idea. And you can't blame the word pandemic. It's a pandemic policy. Thank you. Thank you. You watch John Campbell, I pandemic. It's a pandemic policy. Thank you. Thank you.

You watch John Campbell, I suspect. You watch his little videos. Very useful. Very helpful. Yes? Yeah, I'm not totally convinced on him, but yes, useful. And where are you?

Where are you calling from? Good. I like your skepticism. It's good. Have an opinion. North Yorkshire in England. Nice. Well, thank you for your call.

Appreciate it. No problem. You bet. Okay. so that was interesting right That's one of the weird things About this whole thing that the whole world went down With this at least the western world What happened to us So strange

Well we were all in it together But yet as she pointed out We were in solitaire Solitary confinement Just I just You know we had a mayor here in Los Angeles But yet, as she pointed out, we were in solitary. Solitary confinement. I just, you know, we had a mayor here in Los Angeles. Like any prison movie. Yes, I know. We had a mayor here in Los Angeles that every night got on TV and said, you need to shelter in place.

And I said, that's what you tell somebody where there's an incoming nuclear weapon or when there's somebody shooting outside. How do you think that's going to affect people's mental health? They're hearing a leader say shelter in place. You know, you're, there's going to be mass. He used the word mass casualties as though he was talking about the weather. It just, it was just disgusting. But anyway, and you wrote a book on loneliness show is, did you get to a lot of this in the book? So, I mean, obviously, I think the title of panic attack was very, very appropriate coming out of COVID because that's what happened. You had a lot of policies that led to a lot of mental illness. Big one was loneliness, isolation.

Now you have Surgeon General coming out talking about a loneliness epidemic. And I'm like, well, you contributed and this is your fault. And therefore, you need to do something to fix it. And that is why I needed to put out this children's book with my son Hudson, because it is time to refocus. It is time to get back to faith, family, and friends. And remember that that's what family is for. Family truly is everything.

And if you all want to follow Dr. Nicole Sapphire further, it's Nicole Sapphire. Again, not like the stone. It's S-A-P-F-I-E-R. It's M-D. Nicole Sapphire, M-D. It's probably what they call the Sapphire vein. It's probably something like that's what Sapphire means. Something like that.

Right? It probably does. But I appreciate you coming in. I feel like we're in mind meld. There's nothing you've said that I disagree with nothing you've written I disagree with and I and I do feel like those of us that are like minded have to kind of stick together because it's, it's, it's a strange, strange time. And I'm

open to all opinions. I don't want to condemn anybody for their opinion. But I and I try to understand other opinions. I really try to understand it, but it's hard for me. Certainly I agree with just about everything that, that you've said today. Do you find that your peers are disagreeing with you a lot or are they coming around? You know, it's interesting when I have an article out in like the Wall Street Journal or, you know, foxnewsdigital.com. You know, I will get a lot of emails from some colleagues silently, quietly saying, I really liked your piece. I really agree with what you said. But I also know that there is a flip side to that because I also hear from the

top levels when people disagree with me. Thankfully, I'm very confident in what I say. Nothing I say is rhetoric. Everything that I say is fact-based and I do acknowledge and respect other people's opinions. I just hope that people have the same mutual respect for mine. Yes. And again, over-centralization, over-bureaucratization of medicine is a dangerous thing. And I think we saw that in this pandemic as well. Well, Nicole, go that in this pandemic as well. Well, Nicole, go in and watch the basketball game. Thank you for spending some time with us. And I will get your husband in here to chat him up.

We'll do a little neuro disease thing, which is something that I'm very interested in. And just have a great day. And we'll hope to talk soon. And we'll look for whatever these projects are you say are coming out soon. Absolutely. Thanks so much for having me on, guys. All right. You bet. Of course. Dr. Cole Sapphire, again, she is a board-certified radiologist.

She's an author. She is a mom. And the book is That's What Family's For. All right. So I think I got to wrap things up today. I had to go a little bit short. Caleb, perhaps you want to put the upcoming shows on the screen here. I know we've had, again, one of the reasons it gets a little confusing, we put our upcoming shows on here. Carol Roth on May 16th. May 17th, it was going to be Dr. Seema Hutter, but he just

rescheduled us. May 18th, Jordan Schachtel. And then May 22nd, Robert F. Kennedy is scheduled. Again, I beg your indulgence as it comes to some of these busier people, particularly on the international stage. You can follow at AskDrDrew for updates on shows and guests at AskDrDrew. And of course, DrDrew.tv will send you blasts there as well. I appreciate you guys being on Twitter spaces and asking them, contributing, asking

those good questions. It's much appreciated. We'll always try to, I still want to do a show soon, Caleb, of just questions. So I want to get to that if we possibly can. Just me and the listeners asking questions. And of course, all of you over on Restream, we're watching you guys. And

Susan, of course, is in there with the Rumble Ranters. We see you as well. All right. So we will wrap this up and we will be in again tomorrow at two o'clock, three o'clock. I beg your pardon.

And we will see you then. Ask Dr. Drew is produced by Caleb Nation and Susan Pinsky. As a reminder, the discussions here are not a substitute for medical care, diagnosis, or treatment. This show is intended for educational and informational purposes only.

I am a licensed physician, but I am not a replacement for your personal doctor, and I am not practicing medicine here. Always remember that our understanding of medicine and science is constantly evolving. Though my opinion is based on the information that is available to me today, some of the contents of this show could be outdated in the future. Be sure to check with trusted resources in case any of the information has been updated since this was published. If you or someone you know is in immediate danger, don't call me. Call 911. If you're feeling hopeless or suicidal, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 800-273-8255. You can find more of my recommended organizations and helpful resources at drdrew.com slash help.