Chapo Trap House - 406 - The Hospital feat. John Pearson (3/30/20)

Episode Date: March 31, 2020

We check in on how COVID-19 is affecting some important locations and people in the greater chapo-verse. Then we're joined by Oakland-area nurse John Pearson to discuss how the response to the COVID pandemic reflects the greater industrial and political failings of the American healthcare system. Plugs from John: - PLEASE sign the CA statewide healthcare workers’ demand petition, people can read and sign here: tinyurl.com/CaCOVIDDemands  - To follow what’s happening on the front lines of the COVID crisis where I work follow my account @oaklandnurse on twitter and instagram - Our union chapter facebook page run by rank & filers, with more COVID photos and content: @ahsseiu1021.ourvoice and insta @ahs_seiu_1021_

This is the end of this video. Thank you for watching. If you liked the video, please subscribe to the channel. Okay. Hello, friends. It's your chopper for this week. It's me, Matt Felix and Amber coming to you from our apartments and with you remote social isolation chopper continues.

In just a little bit, we are talking to a Oakland based nurse, John Pearson, about to get his perspective from, you know, the very front lines of the COVID pandemic going on. It was actually like a really, really interesting and good conversation about not just like what it's like to be, you know, working in healthcare right now, but, you know, what it's like to deal in that job with the healthcare system in America and, you know, why it's, you know, strangling the entire country at the moment.

But I would like to say hello again to all of you and my friends and to introduce our ongoing COVID coverage. I have just two quick hits regarding two geographical locations that have been featured on the show before. These are sort of our some favorites again that I think it's worth revisiting. And I'm going to begin with here, courtesy of Politico. At least five residents from the villages have contracted the coronavirus through community spread and or close contact with someone else who had the virus

according to the Florida Department of Health in Sumpter County. The villages is a rapidly growing retirement community of more than 50,000 residents that spans three North Central Florida counties. At least 16 of 29 residents who tested positive had contracted the virus while traveling and another eight residents remain under investigation. So we've got the villages experiencing its own coronavirus thing. I mean, by the way, I have to say that was completely predictable because anyone who enjoys the fine reporting at the New York Post

is that the villages is also an absolute colony of STDs because it's where old people go to fuck. They have a huge, huge, huge STD rate because they don't know what condoms are. They're a million years old. Yeah, no, this is what we're talking about when we say imagine a better world. Is anyone else trying to just bear down on the heir to a screen door fortune while an 80-year-old Cadillac dealer from Council Bluffs, Iowa, simulates your prostate and you can feel his class ring from 1952 right up there?

Yes. What's the problem? I said this to you privately. The most important thing now is that we have things to look forward to after this. We have to save things for after this. This is what I'm looking forward to. Got to think about the future, man. Yes, that's right.

Yeah, well, also we have to think about the residences, the residents of the villages, just still playing pickleball and still... Yeah, they'll be fine. They'll be sunking and funking each other throughout all of this as well. No, the people who most deserve to get owned by this will not have it. Yeah, it's only beloved country music stars that are fucking suffering and dying. The only politician I've heard of to die of it yet is a fucking Bernie labor guy from Detroit.

Yeah. Oh, yeah. Rand Paul's not dead. Jamie Imhoff is 85 years old and he was licking the doorknobs in the fucking Senate cloakroom to prove a point a week ago. He's not going to die. None of these pieces of shit in the villages are going to die. We just need to all accept that.

By the way, John Prine is now, I mean, let's not get ahead of ourselves, but he is now in stable condition. Oh, thank God. Thank God. That's good. That's very good. That's good. No, yeah.

But that is right. That is really sad about that guy from Detroit. But yeah, no, we'll find out next week that COVID-19 can reanimate Jesse Helms. He crawls his way out of the fucking grave. It goes to Washington. Oh, God. I'm going to do a 700 hour filibuster against a Corona virus relief unless we ban the NEA. He's back and Joe Biden will be speaking at his resurrection ceremony.

This is my good friend Jesse Mack. He's back. Listen, we have a set. We have a, so we have, we have a saying, we have a saying, Claymont, you know, where I'm from, that you put somebody, you put somebody in a coffin. Well, that has door for a reason. Oh man. I didn't say the other politician who died because of this was some German health minister

who just threw himself in front of a fucking train. You can't read too much into that because Germans love killing themselves. They love it. Well, I mean, okay, that one is fucking crazy because that guy was like, he was pretty high up in CDU. And apparently people, I mean, who knows, I mean, I get the sense that maybe we won't know the full story as with all politicians suicides. But apparently it was because the economic consequences of this were so much further

beyond what they said publicly and he was freaked out about it. That's what, that's what I've read, but who, who really knows? Well, it's, it's, it's, it is tangentially related to coronavirus. And here's the second one. Here's the second location from Chapa Lore, this is from the New York Times here. As Liberty University's spring break was drawing to a close this month, Jerry Falwell, Jr., its president, spoke with a physician who runs Liberty's student health service about the rampaging coronavirus.

We've lost ability to corral this thing, Dr. Thomas W. Epps, Jr., said he told Mr. Falwell, but he did not urge him to close the school. I am just not going to be presumed so presumptuous as to say, this is what you should do and this is what you shouldn't do, Dr. Epps said in an interview. So Mr. Falwell reopened the university last week, igniting a firestorm. As of Friday, Dr. Epps said nearly a dozen Liberty students were sick with symptoms that suggested COVID-19. Three were referred to the local hospital center for testing.

It says here at the top of it, update as of March 30th, the story has been changed to reflect the first known positive coronavirus test of a Liberty University student. So he sent them all back for spring break at the beginning of this and scattered them to the winds and are now bringing them back to his Liberty University sex engine to spread it some more. I just want to know what medical school instructs you to say, look, I'm not here to tell you what to do. I'm not a doctor.

Listen, I'm not a doctor. Oh, shit, I am. This is Dr. Spachemin from 30 Rock. My doctorate is not in medicine. I just want to be clearer. I love waking up in a hospital bed. Wow. Good Freudian slip there, though.

Yeah, no. Well, that was very Biden-esque of beginning to be into the character. Listen, we've all been in a hospital business, Matt, but I'm waking up in a hospital bed and the first thing I hear from a doctor is, listen, I usually try to stick to myself, keep my nose close to my mouth, because I'm very reassuring. It is amazing. He's like, yeah, he has a PhD in theater arts or something. Yeah.

Oh, yeah, is Jerry and his son, are they still going to phone parties and shit? Yeah. I mean, they're going to Corona phone parties. I've been told that actually Molly sort of burns it out of your system if you have it. So. OK, that's good. Yeah. Take a couple, take some MDMA and fuck Jerry Falwell's wife for him and, you know, you're

laughing. Silver lining to every crisis. Yeah, exactly. So, yes, Liberty University, you know, spring break forever, spring break, spring break with Jerry and his wife. Look at all my shit, literally the shit on the floor as people are dying in the dorm rooms. Look at all this shit.

Look at all this virus I got. Just the last one. I mean, there's no, there's no reason to really read this piece, but I think just like the headline says it all. This came out last week and I just I just really wanted to bring it up on the show because I think it says so much. This is, of course, courtesy of my favorite magazine, The Atlantic. This is in their ideas section.

This is by Alex. I love those ideas. Give me those ideas. Alex Wagner contributing writer ideas all over me. And she is, of course, co-host of The Circus on a show. What is that? Showtime? Who gives a shit?

Anyway, the headline is. That's a show. That's the show I was on. Oh, right. My first TV credit. Here it is. Were you the clown? Woo.

Oh. Yeah. I've decided. Yeah. So I've decided that Bernie and Chapa Trappos is way of doing politics. It's not the way forward. I certain people who I won't name don't believe in building coalitions, calling other people clowns and stuff.

I will be volunteering for John Hickenlooper's campaign for Senate in 2026. All right. So this is courtesy of The Atlantic. I'm just, I'm just going to read the headline in the sub subhead. Stay alive, Joe Biden. Democrats need little Democrats. Democrats need little from the front runner beyond his corporeal presence. Absolutely.

That's how low the fucking bar has been corporeal just means material body. So he could literally be a corpse. Yeah. So they're telling us everything with that title. Yeah. I mean, if you think about it for a second, that's insane because a, a, like a comatose candidate will probably not win an election even against Donald Trump in the middle of a crisis, but they are admitting they don't care if he beats Trump.

Democrats only need him to be alive long enough to get the nomination to make sure Bernie doesn't get it. At that point it's whatever. They don't give a shit. Yeah. No, I mean, like this, I mean, again, it's pointless to read the fucking article because you know, you know what's in it. It's just the, the, I read it before the show and it just basically, she's just sort of

astounded that like all the time she spent on the campaign trail, basically nobody fucking was excited for Joe Biden. And then like as soon as South Carolina happened, everyone just sort of decided randomly. How did that happen? Yeah. He was the guy. Yeah. And she's just, I just showed up in Washington DC yesterday from a, I got off the turnip.

I literally bounced off of a turnip truck into Washington DC and now I'm exploring the Beltway. Honestly, like these people are just revealing themselves to be fucking insane psychopaths. I mean, like in the sense where they're just like, yeah, it would be perfectly fine if he were taxidermy and just sitting next to me and I could hold his hand and I would feel better about the world. If I just had his corporeal presence, that is freakish, that is fetish, that is like psychoshit as in the movie psycho, as in Norman Bates shit, keeping a body around.

You are a freak. No. But you know what? I got to say, at least these people's delusion is lacking in smugness. The people that I'm getting really like, I just like go white with rage and then it immediately evaporates because I just don't, I'm too dissociated to feel anything for too long at this point. But the people who are still writing takes like, how COVID is a feminist nightmare and it's like, shut up.

It's not a feminist nightmare. Men are dying more than women. Could you, could you? It's a feminist dream. I'm not. Could you, can something just for one second, just for a second not be about you, like you specifically the writer in the Atlantic. Like can you just let something exist because you don't want, in many ways, we're kind of

a social species. So if something happens to someone else, that does sort of like, you know, that, that should affect you insofar as you have like human empathy and a connection to the world and the people around you. It doesn't have to literally be about you all of the fucking time. Amber, you mentioned psycho. The movie that this brings to mind for me with Joe Biden and his corporeal presence and this ongoing presidential campaign is what they did with Bella Lugosi and plan nine from

outer space. In about a week, Joe Biden's going to come out, but he's going to be holding like a jacket over his face as he approaches the podium. And it's going to be his brother. Have you seen that motherfucker? Yeah, yeah. From the eyes up, from the eyes up, they really look. I'm part of the faction that's pulling for Francis Biden.

He's my favorite secondary Biden brother. You see the one who's doing the corrupt medical industry dealings or is that the other one? I believe that's Jim. I believe that's Jim. Francis, like Francis's scams are like very down home and fun. They're like just like local real estate bullshit and Delaware. Like I don't like selling a barn to a donkey that you incorporated as an escort. He still calls it a flim flam.

Yeah. No. Yeah. Francis is Francis is a good old down home boy. Jim is like a big city, city slickster who does nephew crimes, but I'm a big Francis fan. No, but just to that like Atlantic piece where they've set the bar at just his body and they just need a body to fill a space that is not Bernie Sanders.

That's it. That's literally all they fucking care about. And again, this is in the midst of a crisis that vastly outstrips 9-11 in terms of its scope and damage it's going to do to the country. And that's all they fucking care about. This is like, Matt, you've talked about this so many times. This is like the most black pill shit imaginable. And then honestly, voters are complicit in it because they're just like sort of told

what to do and they're like, oh, okay, he's the guy. We're going along with it. It's just like... Yeah. Democratic voters have been absolutely housebroken. It's amazing. That's all they fucking care about. And really what it comes down to is like, I mean, again, I don't want to read the article,

but basically what it says is, look. No one's really excited for Biden, but like the number one thing everyone cares about is just beating Donald Trump. And the reason that they all decided seemingly overnight that he was the guy is because that they were told to. They were told that he's the guy. And that's how the media... People say like, oh, this primary wasn't fixed.

Democratic voters just didn't like Bernie Sanders. It's because it was fixed in the sense that the party and the media that supports them... First of all, they didn't cover Bernie Sanders when they didn't have to. And then when they did, they only ever covered him as the guy that's unelectable or too big of a risk. And like, that's it. It's just they gave everyone the excuses that they needed to like cover their own ass. It's like, you'd be like, oh, well, this is why we can't have anything good.

This is why we have to settle for like a senile... Look at the counter... Groper. Imagine a counterfactual world where anybody but Bernie had won the first three contests, which has never been done before by anyone. It would have been a completely different landscape. And they denied him any kind of like a validation for winning, which was one of the big things I was assuming was going to be part of it.

Is that, well, if he wins, it's going to create, you know, a sense of his electability. It's like, I totally underestimated the degree to which they would just deny reality as it was happening and insist that he was still wild. And more importantly, that a critical mass of Democratic primary voters just listened to what they're told and say, yep, he's unelectable. So there we go. Let's move now into our interview with John Pearson, an Oakland nurse who will, you know, I think give us a much needed perspective on what is actually happening with people

who are, you know, trying to cure people and, you know, save our civilization at this moment right now. So, yeah, John Pearson, everybody, let's go. So right now we are joined by John Pearson, who is a nurse in Oakland, an SEIU local 1021 member, and also an East Bay DSA member. John Pearson, how are you doing? Good. How are you guys doing today?

I'm doing good. I guess, so you are a nurse based in Oakland and you are, you know, kind of at the front lines of this global pandemic right now. So I guess just my first question is like, what's it like where you're working and how are you and your colleagues holding up in the midst of all of this? I mean, everybody's really anxious. I just came from the hospital actually now and did a quick decon before this interview. People are really worried.

We're starting to see a surge here in California, just the first little bits of it. And I think like probably a good summary of what it's like for us is like this is a crisis happening on top of a crisis that's preexisting that's been happening for years and years and years. So we're kind of used to like, you know, trying to figure things out by ourselves. I mean, a good analogy for it probably is like, you know, we're constantly plugging holes on a sinking ship. And I think this crisis has, has like all of a sudden made it much clearer to the public

how fucked up our healthcare system is, how poorly staffed and poorly equipped we are and how ill equipped we are to deal with a crisis like this. We're just not prepared for it, not even in the slightest. I mean, I can give you so many examples, but we have been having this internal disaster declared for years since 2017. And you know, before that, it just wasn't given a name. And that internal disaster is, you know, it gets called overhead like a code like a patient's dying in the hospital.

And it happens like, you know, we've had some months where it happens a third of the time, sometimes a half of the time. And what that really means is that the hospital's so full that we can't even see the new patients that are coming in. The last shift I worked, I had a patient that waited for 13 hours to see the doctor. And that's, that's not an exaggeration like that kind of stuff happens all the time. So it's like for us, it's like, we're already stretched to the max and beyond. And this COVID crisis is coming like right on top of it.

So basically, you know, you were all nurses and you guys especially are already at the front lines of this country's health care crisis or lack of health care crisis because of this patchwork privatized system. And then on top of that now, there's a global pandemic that is stretching to the limit and already broken health care system. Right. Yep. That's it.

So you mentioned real quick before this interview, you did a, a, you decon. That's like, I assume decontaminated yourself. Yeah. Oh, so what, what does that process like? Well, What do you do? Well, the, the crazy thing is that we haven't had any special or extra training to deal with COVID.

And you know, I've been, I've been talking quite a bit to other health care workers across the country over the last few weeks. I'm president of our union chapter, which is about 3000 workers across our county health system. It's like, you know, pretty much wall to wall everybody except for the doctors and managers are in the same union. And you know, knowing what's going on here and elsewhere, like it's the same thing. Nobody's gotten trained to deal with this.

And so we have to figure it out ourselves. So like to give you an example, we don't have a place to change clothes or decon at the hospital in the ER. I work in an ER. And so you just got to figure it out yourself. So what that means for me is coming home, taking off my clothes outside the door, putting them in a box that we wrote COVID on. And then, you know, we blast them with hot water in the washing machine.

And I take a shower and that's decon. So more than that, could you just walk us through what is a typical shift or day at the job like for you right now in the midst of all this? And how does it differ from what it used to be? To be honest, it's not that different actually. I mean, probably about half of the time we don't have break coverage. And so you come in for a 12-hour shift and you learn at the beginning of your shift that the hospital hasn't provided other nurses to take care of your patients while you go

eat or go to the bathroom. And so you just make do, right? Like you run away and grab that stuff or go to the bathroom as quick as you can. And then go back to your assignment. You know, God forbid you're not in like a patient with assignments or a patient assignment with like patients that are crashing. And so that's typical and that, you know, that's still going on, especially on the night, definitely on night shift.

The things that are different right now, and you know, I think it's important to point out like before the surge of patients has really kicked off in California, we had this crazy shortage of protective equipment. You know, I think most people now are familiar with the term PPE. And so like last night, I got a text photo last night and then called people to confirm it that nurses on one of our units were wearing trash bags to handle patients that were either COVID positive or that we are still testing and we think they might be. And so somebody posted a photo on their Facebook account.

We're in a trash bag, you know, like, Hey, this is what, what's going on. And like before the surge gets here, we already don't have enough stuff. That's really terrifying. It's also before the point where lots of us start getting sick, which is totally going to happen. And so, you know, one of the, one of the great things that's been happening, like, you know, this is one of the, this is probably like the worst thing that's going to happen our whole lives.

Well, hopefully it's the worst. And I think, you know, it's important for us to point out and like notice some of the good things that come out of this. And one is that like, man, it's like, you know, I keep wondering, like, where are all the libertarians? Cause like, cause like they seem to have disappeared because everybody's coming together. And like, I'm seeing my coworkers, like just to give you an example of some stuff my coworkers have been doing.

It became really clear at the beginning of this that we were going to need a bunch of these devices called a PAPR. It's like a space helmet with a air hose that goes to your belt and then like a blower with a HEPA filter. So it's like, it really isolates you away from any diseases or airborne stuff. And we need these especially for a procedure called intubation, which is sticking a breathing tube down a patient's throat and then hooking them up to a ventilator, helping them breathe. That procedure sprays aerosolizes viruses and like puts them up in the air in like a

really fine microscopic mist. And so this COVID can hang in the air for up to three hours like that. And when you're doing this procedure, it's a whole bunch of people around the bedside all right over the patient, you know, like right up in their airway, like up in their face. And so you're getting sprayed with this stuff. And so to be safe, you need these helmets that purify the air and keep you away from the mist.

And our hospital at the beginning of this had only one in the ER and it was broken, had a crack in it. I remember cause I wear it cause I got a beard for other patients cause I can't wear a mask. And we got three extra, they gave us three extra. They're kind of like, you know, like the least helpful kind of those, the best, the most helpful kind has like a full hood and these only cover your face and part of your head. So my coworkers, like, you know, doctors, nurses, respiratory therapists all quickly realized, holy shit, our hospital is not going to be able to figure this out.

And it doesn't even look like they're trying. We need tons more of these things. What are we going to do? And the hospital saying, well, you know, they're not available, everything's sold out, sorry. And so we raised $20,000 in like eight hours with a GoFundMe. I think now it's up to $40,000. And then a bunch of us spent like, I remember staying up like a whole night about a week ago doing research on these devices, a bunch of other people got involved and we all just

like pitched in and people found these things. So like, you know, hospital and the government are saying, well, they're just gone. They're not there. And so we found them like in dark corners of the internet, you know, like little mom and pop distributors had a friend, actually a DSA friend who works for a pharmaceutical company say, oh, my boss can get some of those. And we got them and we ordered them, we paid for them ourselves and we're going to use them.

Yeah. I mean, like there are stories, you know, all over the place from all over the country of that kind of thing of sort of spontaneous, I guess, like collectively minded like action of like people stepping up in whatever ways they can creatively or financially or otherwise to fill the gaps left by our, you know, threadbare society basically. But when you talk about the example of nurses wearing trash bags because of the lack of adequate equipment or safety precautions to deal with this, I mean, I know you can like we register that on a certain level like Jesus, like that's fucked up.

But I mean, what accounts for that, I mean, like more broadly speaking in the wealthiest country in human history? Yeah, that's a super good question. And one that the reporters have been asking, you know, thank God finally. And I mean, I think it's pretty clear. It's like, look, our healthcare system is just not set up to take care of everybody in the country. It's not.

And for the most part, it doesn't even pretend to, right? Like the, even if there's a pretense about it, it's pretty cynical. And so of course we're not ready for this, right? Like we don't have enough equipment. And you know, this is interesting also is that hospital administrators go gaga for two things, lean production and just in time production. And so lean, lean management or lean production is both of these come from the auto industry and lean management is like all about basically kind of getting workers to find ways to cut

corners in ways that the hospital won't have to be responsible and to kind of like work to find ways to make yourself like squeeze out more production every hour. And also how to like find ways to not have as many coworkers to help you, right? And then just in time is like all about this precisely timed supply chain. And so of course we can't find enough protective gear right now because that precisely timed supply chain has completely broken down, it's really brittle and it's not something that's going to work when we're trying to take care of patients and have a crisis. This crisis is predictable.

Like we knew a pandemic was going to happen at some point. And the fact that we just don't have the resources to deal with it, I think is really, it's really criminal and it's going to result in more deaths, like a lot more deaths. Just like going back to what you said, like just the simple fact of the matter is that our healthcare system is not set up to deal with a situation where everybody or not everybody, but like a significant percentage of the country needs to use it. So that begs the question, what is it set up to do? That's a great question.

I mean, like I'm, I work in a public hospital, public sector hospital, it's at like a county trauma center and general hospital, it's kind of like the safety net, like if you can't go anywhere else, this is where you got to go. And pretty clearly that kind of hospital, like the public system, it's set up to sort of like stave off the worst, the worst results of the for-profit healthcare system, right? So like homeless people, they're dying, like that's where they go. That's it, you know, it's unfortunately, like the ER I work in, like most ERs serves as primary care for lots of people because there's no adequate primary care, meaning like, you know,

your doctor helping you manage your diabetes so that you don't die early or your doctor helping you manage your high blood pressure, et cetera. Like a lot of the problems we see, like the emergencies we see in the ER are social diseases that are completely and utterly preventable. Like there's no, it's not like somebody needs to invent cures and that will stop all these things. We know what stops these things from happening and that's just not happening. Like to give you an example, if you live in Alameda County, where we are, and you want

a dental appointment and you don't have dental insurance and you can't pay out of pocket, and you want to, like, you basically have two options. One is to go to the UC Berkeley and they have a fishbowl that they pull a couple names out of every day. You put your name in the fishbowl. Or you can come to where I work at Highland and go to the dental clinic, which is an excellent dental clinic, but you've got to start calling at 5.30 in the morning to get an appointment. And I've tried calling for my own patients that come into the ER, you know, to get a

dental appointment and you can't get through because so many people are calling and people come from like Nevada to go to this clinic. So it's not set up to meet the need for care. What it's set up to do, the whole healthcare system, is to make profits for the hospital industry, the pharmaceutical industry, the insurance companies, right? So there's like a huge mismatch. And even in the public system, we see that mismatch happening all the time, right? The decisions our leaders make have nothing to do with the actual need, right?

That's where you should start, is what is the need, let's try to meet it. And that's not what they're using for their calculations. Yeah, well, not to sound conspiratorial, but like, it's like just literally a proverb that like an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. And we know that. But it's actually, it could be pretty lucrative to wait until you have to get that pound of cure. Yeah, that makes tons of sense.

I mean, people are basically incentivized, even if they have insurance, most of them, to not go get that preventative care or the primary care. I just want to like just return something you said a little bit earlier, and that like that is like dealing with the fact like that you and your colleagues basically accept that like some or a lot of you are going to get sick doing your job and doing a job that is probably the most single most like essential job right now if you're talking about a country under quarantine and dealing with this crisis. I mean, I guess like, like, like, how do you, how do you deal with that factor?

How do you like rationally or emotionally prepare yourself to go to work every day knowing that? I mean, you know, we all signed up for this and we, you know, we know that we're putting ourselves in harm's way carrying for our patients for lots of reasons, including, you know, contracting things. But what what is really enraging is that people whose entire responsibility it is to make sure that we have like the right protective gear or people that are it's, you know, like Governor Newsom or Trump, right, like it's their responsibilities set standards that

are based on science and keeping people safe and stopping the spread of this disease. They're doing the wrong, they're doing the opposite stuff, right? So like Trump and Governor Newsom have been rapidly lowering the standards for, you know, for the protective gear we have to wear, right? So their solution for like, we don't have enough protective gear, at least, you know, we're not willing to go get the right protective gear is not going to find it and making it happen, which they could totally do. It's just lowering the standard so the hospitals can say they're not breaking rules.

I think that's what's really enraging. I mean, like, you know, we're all we love our jobs. We get frustrated when we can't do it because we don't have the right equipment or staffing. But we know we signed up for this and we're all just kind of, you know, we were dedicated to it. That's this is what we do. And we're used to it. And we know we're in it together, which makes us feel stronger.

But it's really scary to know that, you know, I think this is an important realization that a lot of my coworkers are starting to have that really it's just us like nobody else is going to protect us. We have to stick together and we have to fight for things we need. And I'm watching it happen. It's really amazing and wonderful to watch people kind of wake up to that and then also see them carried out. I think that's that's what's keeping us going right now is the fact that our coworkers are

trying to sort out how can we protect each other? How can we keep each other and our families and the public safe? What about other staff that is, you know, actually integral to the hospital functioning in a clean and efficient way? Like what about like porters and room cleaners? And I mean, what's the staffing like for that? And what's their what are their jobs like and are they are they well prepared? Are they equipped?

That's a really great question. And it's one we kind of, you know, kind of like struggle within the union a lot because and I think especially in this moment, I've talked to, you know, a good number of press like usually, you know, we have to really in the union go after the press to get them to talk to us. And, you know, everybody's watching right now and a common question from the press has been, you know, like, hey, we've been talking to lots of doctors, but we really want to hear from the nurses.

And like, we're in a big we're in a 3000 member union chapter and it's got like over 200 job classifications in it. And so like, one of the awesome things about that is that we get, you know, like nurses get to stand in solidarity with like, like if a if a housekeeping worker gets in trouble with their boss, I get to go in the office and then go defend them and represent them and help them organize to fight the boss. And they do the same for us. It's really cool, right?

Like we have housekeeping workers and clerks that are steward union stewards, and they'll come like defend a nurse that happens all the time. And it's really cool. And to answer your question, Amber, about, you know, like, what's their job like? I mean, it's, it's, it's horrifying kind of like in the same level. So like to use that example of a housekeeper, right, like we say all the time because it's real. I think, oh, it's like the guy with the broom, but they're on the front lines of infection

control. Like, if we don't have enough of them, then literally patients are getting more infections dying faster and getting really sick. And guess what? The hospital laid off a whole big slew of them recently, got rid of, they had like a little promotion they could do to maintenance Porter, where they like polish the floors and use some heavy machinery. And the hospital's trying to get rid of that little promotion for, you know, people that

have a high school degree as, as like a career path. They work extremely short. So like to give you a real example of it in our 50 bed ER trauma center that's like extremely busy and overcrowded management usually only staffs two of those people to clean the rooms. And so there's not even a pretense that rooms are cleaned in between patients. And so what does that really mean? That means there's blood splatters on the curtains. That means there's blood splatters on the beds.

That means there's hair and like dried vomit and all kinds of stuff. Like I'm not, I'm not exaggerating. This is there. We've got picks of it. There's overflowing garbage, biohazardous waste, overflowing sharps containers. I mean, and that's because the corners have been cut and we have an austerity public health system that's been happening for years and years and years. And this crisis is just like coming right on top of it.

So like, you know, you mentioned earlier that, you know, God willing, this is, this will be like the most serious thing we have to deal with in our lifetimes. But like, you know, everyone's kind of freaking out about it. Everyone's like, life has sort of, you know, changed in both small and dramatic ways because of this. And, but everyone's just sort of waiting around wondering what's going to happen. But at the same time, there's no big like dramatic thing to see, like, you know, 9-11 or whatever.

You can't go outside and see a coronavirus like blowing up a building or whatever. And, you know, you leave your house to go shopping or whatever, and, you know, the streets are maybe less crowded, but it doesn't look like the apocalypse. And I think people, I think a lot of people don't understand that it's actually illegal to film anyone in a hospital. So like, that's why you're not seeing, you know, news footage of people having microphones shoved in their face and an ER or whatever. But like, for people listening to this, like in their, in their apartment or house, whatever,

like staying home, not, you know, not teleworking or whatever, telecommuting. What do you wish, like for the listener, people like under understood about this crisis right now that like maybe they don't get or you're seeing people not really connect with? I mean, I think for them to know that this isn't a crisis that just kind of like dropped from the sky and all of a sudden things are bad in healthcare, that this has been going on for years and years and years. And that our health system is, you know, like I said earlier, just not set up to take care of everybody in the country.

And it absolutely needs to be. We need universal healthcare now. And you know, another thing that I think the public kind of misses out on that I touched on earlier too is like hospitals aren't just doctors and nurses. Hospitals are actually a majority of other kinds of workers and they have a lot of struggles as well. You know, one of the big struggles is that workers that are in offices. So like, you know, we have people that do medical billing and also like do clinic appointments

for patients, calling them on the phone. Those people can be working from home and hospitals are right now, including ours, claiming those people are all essential and need to stay at work, sitting like, you know, one or two feet from each other, sneezing and coughing. And that's not okay. I mean, hospitals are working high risk nurses, doctors, you know, housekeepers, all right right in patients' faces that are like, you know, 65 years old or have diabetes or some other thing that puts them more at risk for coronavirus.

Those people need to be at home. And there are so many things that all those people could be doing. Like, I think we need to kind of like imagine a better world and then fight for that kind of stuff to happen. So, so like, you know, if my coworkers who are in their 60s or have some high risk condition and can't take care of patients right now, like they could be at home and they could be calling elderly people checking in on them that are sheltering in place. They could be calling our coworkers who are quarantined and making sure they're okay.

They could be, you know, like spreading information. There's so many things that could be happening. There's a huge need right now for all this stuff to happen. And I think we need to think bigger. I think those are important things for the public to know that, you know, like this is a crisis on top of a crisis that's already happening. And we need to make sure this never happens again. You talk about the need to imagine a better world and then kind of work backwards from

there rather than starting with like, well, this is the world we live in. How do we get to that? You know, I don't know, having nurses not wear garbage bags in a fucking hospital. I mean, depressingly, it seems like, you know, we've just are still, you know, still in the midst of, but, you know, like, you know, we've spent like the whole first half of this year on a presidential campaign of which Medicare for All was a big issue and it was an issue associated with Bernie Sanders and his campaign. And it certainly seems like a significant chunk of the Democratic electorate was not

willing to understand the need for why there is no compromise on this, why it really is Medicare for All or nothing. And it's really something you bang your head against. Like, if someone didn't understand it before the dire need for this, like, is there any change now? Like, I mean, come on, like, after this, like, you know, what do you tell people? Like, does this change the way we talk about the need for something like Medicare for All? Could it be any more apparent?

Like, what's it going to take? Yeah. That's a good question. I mean, you know, I think we're wondering the same thing, but it seems like the public is slowly waking up to, you know, kind of like what's already going on inside of hospitals. And I really, really hope that this clarifies for people this crisis, you know, like, there's just no way around it. If we can't provide care for everybody that gets sick, which we're not going to be able

to at all, like, like, we're going to get to the, you know, this is probably the most terrifying thing that we're all worried about happening and it's happening already in other states is having this decision between who lives and who dies because we just don't have enough equipment or because we don't have enough staff to take care of people. I mean, like, that is terrifying and no health care worker wants to be in that, no, no person wants to be in that position, right? And I think that, like, the starkness of that reality and the number of people that are going to die, like, I really hope that that drills home for people that there is no way

around the fact that we need universal health care, we need Medicare for All, we need to have a health care system that actually is ready to care for everybody, like, we need that stuff now and it's completely 100% possible. I mean, like, for instance, Joe Biden was just asked by a reporter, I'm just going to quote it here briefly, the reporter asked him, our health care system seems to be crumbling under this crisis. Are you now reconsidering your position when it comes to single payer health care? And he starts by responding, single payer will not solve that at all.

The thing that is needed, for example, we have a whole number of hospitals that are being stretched, including rural hospitals, that are going to need more financing. That doesn't come from a single payer system. That comes from the federal government stepping up and dealing with the concerns that they have, the reimbursements that they're going to get, how they're going to be able to move forward. And he just goes on to talk about, I suggested we should have people in China at the onset of this event that all started in the Wuhan province.

And what happened? We did not insist that they go into the areas. So that's all I can do. Say what I know has to be done. There's no point in trying to read through this. This is interviewing Junior Soprano after he wandered out and walked on the highway. So if you're even going to give a shit enough to try to parse anything out of this, he's saying that instead of doing Medicare for all, we need to give loans to rural hospitals

because only the federal government can do that. Who does he think is doing single payer? The Kiwani's Club? This is, there's no point in reading into this. I'm a little bit also, again, this is me trying to read chicken bones at this point. But what does he mean, have people, does he want to do Big Bird Goes to China for Corona? Yeah, no, he wants to send a gang of guys who wear big leather jackets and sing songs into Wuhan province.

We're shutting down these wet markets, Jack. Yeah. Yeah. No, yeah, we're going to, yeah, we're going to bang the razor against the pangolin being hanged in the wet market. I don't know what the fuck he's talking about. No one does. Yeah.

No one has any fucking clue. He said, Biden is, is the fact that they're doing this with him, the fact that they're dragging his old dead ass out here to spout gibberish tells you all you need to know. You don't have to listen to his words about healthcare. They were willing to do this to put him out there and him be the guy in this moment to avoid Medicare for all. So that tells you all you need to know about where the Democratic party is on this subject, that they're willing to put this demented old man out there to just, to just sound like

he's on the verge of dying and not care that, but like, what do you think's going to happen when you try to roll that out to general election? They don't care. That's all we know. That's all this tells us. They don't give a shit. That's the, I mean, you could already tell that, look, even like, even, even countries like the UK, even countries where you can make like generally the same criticisms that

you do of America, people realized that the health insurance, the system of private health insurance is the dominant form of coverage. It's the main form of coverage is suicidal. It doesn't even make any business sense. I mean, it would have, it would have eventually been unsolved unless like without ACA. It's a fun, it's, it's catastrophic. It's suicidal for nations. If you go on an infinite timeline, it's, you're like, eventually like you get declining

birth rates, which we're already seeing, you'll have insolvent social security that you have a completely hobbled country where no one can do anything. No one can have kids. No one can change jobs. No one can change jobs. Technically, they can't afford to even die, but they'll do that anyway. It's just like, it's like, even if you're doing the most cynical reading of it, it fails there.

It's a cancer on everything, but they don't give a shit. They would rather lose the election than lose, you know, the people who are keeping cap afloat. Jesus. Yeah. No, but John, like, it's back to this thing, like, you know, I remember during the last Democratic debate, the, you know, the issue was single because this was just the very beginning of like, you know, this crisis really started to percolate onto the national consciousness.

There was this question about like, you know, Italy, which is being, which is, you know, very hard hit. And Joe Biden's line was that like single payer isn't helping them. Like, how do you respond to something like that? I mean, that doesn't make any sense. I mean, single payer is not helping Italy. Yeah. I mean, there's just, there's no connection there, right?

Like this is a global pandemic. It's something that jumped up. And I mean, we're seeing there are other countries that have universal healthcare, right, that are worse off than some of the others. There was a actually a decent New York Times article about this. And what we're seeing is that the countries that were not as prepared ahead of time, like doing the shelter in place type measures or providing the right protective equipment, like I saw a mention of Spain as a particular place where the death rate is pretty high

and the curve didn't get flattened, you know, kind of like enough. So, so like, you know, I mean, that's apples and oranges. That's not a helpful way to think about this. It's not about like, you know, if you have single payer, then all of a sudden everything's better. Of course, there are other things that are important, but like, it's a crime and a tragedy and a travesty here in the US that we just don't have. Like, you know, if our hospital where I work is full of patients already, how are we going

to handle even 10 extra COVID-19 patients? Like that just doesn't make any sense. And the reason is like, the whole structure, the number of beds, the number of nurses, the number of doctors, the number of like, you know, the amount of equipment, all that is just based on only providing care to people that can pay. And then a handful of people that get into the safety net. And that's it. And so I think comparing us to Italy, that's not fair.

It's not right. Italy has a great universal healthcare system. Maybe they just didn't prepare well enough and far enough in advance for this. But I don't think that's a fair comparison for him to make. Well, and also countries like Italy and Spain, which have been subjected to like deranged EU budgeting and are like historically poorer Southern European countries with a lot of economic depression, the idea that they're going to have like incredibly robust healthcare systems.

There's like other factors that go into healthcare system. One of them being like, literally, do you have the resources for your population? And the most upsetting thing about the U.S. is that we have so much money. I mean, there's so much money here. Other countries historically have had to really, to create a humane system, like look at Cuba. Cuba has no fucking money. And yet they have budgeted a healthcare system that is just enviable to Americans.

And they're a very poor country, but like... I'm thinking of like local example, right? So like I'm in the East Bay, Almeida County, that's our county where Oakland and Berkeley are in a bunch of other cities. So like here's the drastic, you know, like contrast, right? So you have like massive amounts of tech money and real estate money pouring into this county. The county is incredibly wealthy. And then at the same time, you have this county hospital system that literally isn't

providing shoes to homeless people and people that get shot and hit by cars and sexual assault patients when they leave the hospital. What do they leave in? If we're lucky and we could find them, they leave in a paper shirt and paper pants and hospital socks, like in the middle of the night in the cold. We've been like raking our hospital's board of trustees over the colds for this for months, and they don't seem to be able to like even figure out how to make a fix. Yeah.

And the money's there. That's the most upsetting thing. Like you see all that money. You see that tech money. It's right here. It's completely insane. And then also just the argument from Biden, like it's like, well, it didn't help them. It's like, well, first of all, you don't actually know that.

Second of all, like, what is your argument that like, well, socialized healthcare people will still get sick? Like, yeah, they will, but we'll be able to manage it and help people and save lives. It's like, wait, it's not, it's not a panacea for human health. It's the best thing we can possibly do. Has anyone actually asked like, and tried to push it beyond him talking about sasperilla Biden on his fixation during the campaign about why you can't have socialized medicine here because people love the insurance they have for their jobs.

What about the mill literally millions of people who have lost their jobs already and are going to lose their jobs in the next couple of months? They can get health insurance. They get Cobra as long as they sell the soul of their first three born children, they will be able to afford one monthly payment of Cobra, which they will need as they're going to have those children. Cobra is insanely expensive. The idea that anybody ever pulls out Cobra is like some sort of defense of the system.

When you ask questions about what if you lose your job is insane. Like you could not be more disconnected from reality thinking that's an affordable option for basically anyone, a more realistic option than Cobra. Cobra is buying a gun and trying to become John Q. If you get fired, that's a far more fucking realistic option. I can't wait till that happens, by the way. Oh, dude, that's a great quarantine pick movie. Let's all rewatch the classic film, John Q, about Denzel who takes a hospital hostage

to get his son cancer treatment. James Woods plays the evil hospital administrator in that movie. He didn't know he was in a movie again, just like in Casino. Amber made a really important point, I think, that people need to understand and is that a lot of the horrible things that happen to people that end up in the hospital, and especially the masses of poor people that are dying or literally just dying earlier, it's because we don't have that kind of single payer system. If we had that and we actually had enough clinics and doctors for people to go get their

primary care and follow up and actual teaching, like, hey, you've got diabetes, here's what that means, and here's the consequences if you can't take your medicine and check your blood sugar. That stuff just literally isn't happening in the U.S. I'm watching it happen every shift. We have all these patients, mostly in poverty, who just don't have that kind of support from the healthcare system, and so they just aren't taking their medication or not, checking their blood sugar. I mean, nearly every diabetic patient we have that is in a life-threatening emergency, they're

not doing those things, and because we're just not set up to help them understand why they need to and what the consequences are and then how to do it, I mean, like, people just don't even have to deal with that. Because that's ongoing care. Right. Yeah. And so it's not hard to figure out how to prevent this stuff. It's because people's basic needs are not getting met.

Like, that's the cause of all this awful stuff is just basic needs are not getting met, and it's totally within possibility for us to meet those needs. Okay, so I have two big, I have one kind of big, scary question and then one sort of smaller, more hopeful question, but I'll do the scary one first. And this is sort of the $64,000 question I think a lot of people are thinking about. Like I mentioned, if you're staying home or if you're lucky enough to have a job where you can telecommute or just like something to keep you inside, a lot of people still have to go to work, but basically everyone's feeling various varying levels of anxiety or

just like belief that this is all a conspiracy or a hoax or whatever. And it's hard to gauge like just, you know, I guess that my question is how bad is this right now and how bad is it going to get in your opinion? John, are you a crisis actor? Yeah. I'm definitely not a crisis actor. I've legit had blood vomit, shit and spit on many parts of my body, didn't ask for it, but it just happened because of my job.

And I know what that's like and it sucks, it's not fun. So I'm not a crisis actor. Yeah, I mean, like, look, it's already really scary where you guys are at right in New York. I've been talking to lots of people in New York, nurses and respiratory therapists. And I mean, it's terrifying, right? Like we've seen the body bags on the news, pretty clearly, like some of the shelter in place type stuff has reduced the rate that this is surging at. But you know, if we have most parts of our healthcare system completely stretched to

the max and our politicians and lawmakers like doing the opposite of what needs to happen, right? Like Governor Newsom, who's supposed to be the anti-Trump or whatever, like he just got rid of the hospital regulations in California till June. Sorry, Governor Cuomo here in New York is about to push through a budget that will cut Medicaid. What the fuck, right in the middle of the crisis? Yeah.

Like this is insane shit. And so like, that's... Sanely epic, I'm sorry. Yeah, I mean, there's potential for this to be really horrifying. And I think like the point that we're all really scared of is when healthcare workers are getting sick and then aren't able to be at work. Or you know what is actually the opposite happening, right? Getting sick and staying at work because they're not testing us and not screening us.

That's happening right where I work, right? Like it's crazy because like the front door is padlocked with like 15 giant locks and the back door is fully open. So like patients are getting screened as they come in, they're not tested, which they should be, but they're at least screened. Do you have a fever and have you traveled? Have you had any sick contacts? The back door is wide open.

All of us just walk in there in a right shoulder to shoulder all day. And so like we're mixing and then also reusing protective gear that's disposable and not meant to be reused and literally spreading infection from patient to patient. I mean, like that's exactly what's going on because of the way this is all set up. And so it's kind of terrifying thinking of like this peeking really fast and getting tons of patients. The other thing is like, you know, especially after talking to respiratory therapists in other states that have been handling COVID patients and some of the nurses, like this

is a really the consequences of a critical, you know, a patient becoming critical with COVID are really terrifying. This is a really hard disease to manage. Once somebody, when somebody's lungs start filling up with fluid, they need like constant attention and basically the ventilators are tuned to settings to keep them breathing that are really close to the point where we can damage their lungs. And so that means constant attention from respiratory therapists and from nurses and doctors.

And we're not staffed to be able to do that. We don't even have the ventilators and not ventilators to handle a huge surge. So I think that's kind of like what's right in front of us and likely is about to happen in California and is happening in New York. I think with Cuomo specifically, I mean, we all remember Katrina, right? We've never gotten a death toll for Katrina that anyone can quite agree on. And I think that was deliberate. I think the most cynical and maybe the most correct reading of this is maybe for some

blue state governors, this is a Katrina opportunity where you can have enough people die that aren't recorded because they don't even get to go to the fucking hospital because you've cut Medicaid, you feel like you've relieved a tax burden on your state and you get to tell people how great your recovery was. You get to be the Giuliani of the center. Yeah, well, he's certainly trying to convey or leverage this moment into something advantageous for him politically. I don't know how effective that's going to be.

I think people are pretty scared and just looking at the way, I mean, New Yorkers don't want to do anything that anyone tells them to do. It's not a place of a shared social contract, but where I am, everyone's kind of doing it. You walk around and people are far apart and they cross the street. Everyone's trying to sort of go about their day but still observe all of the social distancing rules. I don't know how he's going to win the hearts and minds of a populace that's really scared. Well, I mean, that's when they usually do great is when people are terrified, then their

leaders can't even handle the idea of not leaving them because that's too destabilizing and scary. I mean, look at Trump. He's a 60% approver right now because people don't want to count on the idea that the president doesn't know what he's doing at a time like this. I think that goes for governors. He's at 60% approval of his handling of the coronavirus, not his own rub, which is terrifying right now.

It's just so funny. The only thing that matters is his budget and who nobody gives a shit. Yeah. The issue that matters right now and they think he's doing a good job because the idea that he's not is too scary. And I think that goes for all of these guys. We're going to see how they think he's doing in a week, but if that's the case, then that's going to happen to all of them, presumably all of their approval ratings are going to

start falling. Yeah. Just to speak to Amber's point for a second before I ask John another question, I mean, we basically live in the same neighborhood, but what I've seen, for instance, going shopping and which they have instituted, you only can let a few people in the store at the time. There is sort of a line to get into go shopping, but everyone who's waiting on that line was six feet apart and everyone understood it and was getting along with each other. And when you got into the supermarket, people were friendly.

This is not like social barbarism where people were fighting each other over a can of beans or anything like that. So I think that's important to stress as well. On the street level, at least where I am right now anecdotally, individually people get it and I think are helping each other and understand that the little inconveniences are a small price to pay for the much larger issue, which I guess is what I want to talk about, which is like, okay, we can ponder a lot of the worst case scenarios here and New York City is certainly at the forefront of the worst case scenario, but John, as you mentioned,

there are measures that we know for sure do help and have worked like shelter at home and largely avoiding social contact, staying inside as much as you can. These things actually can help, but again, just for our listeners here, outside of things like, I don't know, organizing and advocating for a single payer health system, or if you own a ventilator factory, consider getting it up and running again. I don't know. Oh, I like had one of those at my old apartment. I'm sorry.

I threw it out. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. You were using it for gaming. But John. Yeah. Sorry. Felix could have bought everyone in New York a ventilator, but he chose to get gaming

mouses for himself instead, very bad, very selfish. That's basically what happened with that one company is what happened. That's what happened with that one company that bought a company that was going to make a ventilator that was like cheaper and more efficient than they were making. So they bought it out and pulled the plug on it so that they wouldn't have to compete with it. And now we're, now we're looking great. John, did you read that story in the New York Times about the ventilator companies,

like the actual medical device industry and the fucking insane that is where they just like, they bought out a company that was going to make a cheap, affordable ventilator that worked to stop them from doing that. Yes. I did see that. That was wild. And, but also kind of like not surprising, sort of like a, you know, Silicon Valley fail, failed project kind of thing.

It sounded like your question was sort of like, you know, what else can be done? Yeah. The individual people, like what can they do? What is their like social responsibility? Like washing hands, staying indoors? What should people be thinking about in terms of like their role to play in their sort of social responsibility right now? Yeah.

I mean, like, look, I think that those sort of individual measures are helpful, right? Like it's, it looks like the social distancing is, is having an effect in actually flattening the curve, which, you know, flattening the curve is supposed to like reduce the impact on our already extremely stressed healthcare system. You know, this is a part of like the flattening the curve. We're having to do that in part because, because our healthcare system is, is terrible and isn't ready to meet the need, right? But it is important and we need to do it.

But there are so many things that can, can happen and they, they're literally within the power of our government, our state governments and also the federal government. And that's stuff like, you know, not only like manufacturing ventilators, which there's a question about whether that can actually happen quickly, but definitely manufacturing PPE, protective gear can happen. There are, there's a really great researcher from the New York state nurses association named David Pratt, who I've been talking to, he put on a memo to their members about exactly this.

And it was super helpful. And basically like there are giant stockpiles of this equipment out there in the private sector and warehouses and factories. There are a bunch of different kinds of masks that are slightly different than N95, but even more protective. Like the kind of stuff people are probably used to seeing used when people are spray painting or like using, you know, sanding or doing dusty things. Those PAPR devices that my coworkers and I fundraise and then bought are used in mining

and in other heavy industry. That stuff is, it's very literally out there and can be requisitioned and brought to hospitals now to protect us. And you know, the scary thing of course, right, is like if we don't have the right gear, it's not just us that's in the line of fire. It's literally every other patient that we go and take care of, right? And then our families. And so we're just vectors of disease if we don't have the right equipment.

So that's just like one little thing. But other stuff that can happen, right, is like the California said no to this. Let the nursing students and other medical professional folks that are in school, let them out early and let them work at their level that they're trained to. So like, you know, my partner's in nursing school, she could totally like work as a nurse's aide and the state could quickly waive their requirements for that, license them, do some quick testing and send them out as like a, you know, extra staffing to help us out. It would help hugely.

You know, Amber was asking about other workers, those housekeepers, guess what? We need probably like three times more than we have right now. And there's tons of people out there that need work and need a job, especially like young, healthy people who have good immune systems, who are less likely to get sick and die from this disease, like put them to work. Let's do it. Like let's go, we can do that right now. Single payer obviously needs to happen quickly.

So these are the kind of things that people should be putting public pressure on about. And actually good that you asked the question because a group of us healthcare workers across the state of California have been trying to get people to sign a petition that's a list of exactly these kinds of demands. If I send you guys the URL for the petition, would you mind posting in the show notes? Absolutely. Of course. Absolutely.

And if any other go fund me's or anything like that, please send it to us. So we'd love to, to blast that out and put it in the show description. Absolutely. We'll do. Yeah. You'll notice there that a lot of stuff that we need to do to help this unfortunately does not actually rely on individual choices. I mean, social distancing is the most you could sort of do individually, but we're going

to have to do a lot of stuff together to get through this. And so I think for Americans, it can be sort of difficult to think of projects as anything other than like a series of like consumption choices or, or, you know, whatever, Twitter slogans or whatever, but this is, this is like a big thing. And I'd say pay attention to, to, to what the unions are doing, what the unions are demanding. But I actually had two more questions if you have a, please, you have the time. So one, I was wondering if you John or anyone else had been following tech's attempt to

disrupt, to disrupt the COVID response. Specifically, I saw that a company that I used to get birth control from like a delivery service called NERCS, like NERS with an X. I swear to God, I'm not making it up. We're putting out their own home tests that were apparently like not approved so people could theoretically order them, but they were not approved. So they've stopped offering them and maybe they're back, I'm not sure. But like, moreover, if there is a supply of tests, if public hospitals don't have access

to those tests, like how is that anything other than like medical profiteering? Yeah, I mean, that, that, that to me sounds a little bit like the stuff from the Elizabeth Holmes documentary where they were doing, I think hepatitis C testing and then giving people false positives and false negatives, which then, you know, cause those patients to make choices about their lives that either like infected other people or, you know, like to the very least felony assault, basically, like, like we've, like we've had before, right? Like not kidding here, right? Like layoffs happen that we then fight back about together and, and push back the layoffs.

But like management will screw up the process, announce, you know, tell people your job is ending in a week and we're like, no, no, that's not what the contract says. And then this has happened, right? To workers, suicide, right? You get that notice and you kill yourself. And like in the end of the fight, the layoff can't, doesn't happen, but it's, to me, it's kind of like that. It's like, you know, don't interfere, don't jump in here and try to do your tech disrupting

or innovating or whatever. It's not helping. You're just confusing the process and probably causing more deaths. Yeah, possibly like exacerbating the, the issue. And you know what? I'm sorry. If they were sitting on a big pile of tests, those should be expropriated from them. Yes, absolutely.

Like those should be given to public fucking hospitals. You are a, no better than like a wartime profiteer. So final question. What would be the correct punishment for CEOs of tech companies like that? Or like say like, like the guys that like hoard all the, the masks and then sell them at a markup. Any of those profiteers and an ideal world, you know, theoretically parody in the game. I have an answer.

What's the ideal punishment? Oh, okay. So all of our hospital housekeeping workers get to take two months off, all expenses paid on the tech, those tech CEOs accounts, right? And go to wherever they want to go. Maybe Tahiti or Mexico or something. And then those tech CEOs have to come and they have to clean up vomit, blood and like COVID PPE at the hospital during the whole crisis.

I like it. Very restorative. Yeah. I mean, I was going to say, you know, again, in, in a video game or fictional short story, they would be made to lick every elevator button in Manhattan. Just five random people going to sneeze in their face. Yeah. Johns is much more humane and restorative, but I hate these people so God damn much.

So God damn much. Like either your test is shit and you're making things worse for people and they're dangerous or your test is good. And frankly, it should be expropriated from you and given to public fucking hospitals. Yeah. I mean, we saw in other countries that they did rapid, you know, they very quickly developed rapid testing for this and this is exactly how they contained it. You know, like...

I have antibodies testing in the UK already, I think, which is like really helpful and we aren't even talking about that because it's like to find out the people that already had it might have immunity and like, that would be cool. I would like to know if I had it. It would be amazing to live in a country that could do anything at all. I mean, if you could, if you could, if you could fucking screen this, screen this virus or treat it using like public relations doctrines or create it, creating, creating debt back securities that always crash.

The only things this country can actually do, if you could create a viral marketing campaign for it, like, you know, maybe, but no, this is, this is no longer a country that can actually do anything at all, which is amazing when you consider that we have an absurd amount of land and resources. One of the only places where everything you actually need is right there and we gave it up to be like, yeah, we invented flash mobs. We're the richest, most self-sufficient, you know, most successful country, if maybe the second, but, you know, at least salutatorian in the world and we are completely fucking

incompetent. We can't do anything. Sorry, John, our guest is running late for another call. Oh. Sorry about that, John. Yeah. Sorry. I think he has to duck out.

I mean, we were going to do half an hour, but honestly, this was so good. It went over. Yeah. But I would just like to thank, again, John Pearson, Oakland nurse, once again, SEIU local 1021 union member and East Bay DSA member. Sorry we couldn't say goodbye to you, but we will put all those links in the show description. And once again, I want to thank John Pearson again. Please stay safe.

Please stay healthy. What we're doing right now is, you know, heroic. I know that's corny, but there's no other word for it. So thanks again to John Pearson. You got it. We'll do. Thank you all. This has been really wonderful.

Appreciate your support. If people want to know more about what my coworkers and I are up to during the crisis, it's at Oakland nurse on Twitter and Instagram. So stay safe, y'all, and thank you so much. Take care. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Stay safe. Thank you. Bye. Bye. Bye.