Green Light with Chris Long - Myron Rolle on COVID-19, and Chris on Aldon Smith, Bucs Unis and Mailbag.

Episode Date: April 8, 2020

1:38 - NFL News: Aldon Smith, Bucs Unis, and NFL Draft. 16:35 - Social Distancing Fun and NASA Tweet. 19:24 - Myron Rolle on COVID-19. 58:22 - Mailbag. About Chalk Media: Following the unfiltered voice and vision of Chris Long, Chalk Media is the interactive online community for you, the intelligent and humorous sports fan. Driven by access, Chalk delivers a unique perspective that cuts through the canned talking points and provides a variety of content from your favorite sports and entertainment celebrities. Here at Chalk, we don’t take ourselves too seriously, but we are rooted in challenging the perception of professional athletes. We embrace the “real” with a unique combination of humor and intelligence. Chalk is a community with a voice beyond 240 characters that brings a perspective and vibe to a traditionally brash and boastful sports media space. Subscribe and enjoy weekly content including podcasts, documentaries, live chats, celebrity interviews and more. Nothing is off limits at Chalk - hot news items, trending discussions from the NFL, MLB, NHL, NBA, NCAA are just a small part of what we will be sharing with you. 🌍🏀🏈SUBSCRIBE NOW ⚾🏒⛰️ http://bit.ly/chalknetwork Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to Greenlight Pod is your host, Chris Long. Got a lot going on today. I'm going to talk about the NFL for the first time in a little while. I have been laying off the NFL stuff. And I'm not even going to pretend like I'm keeping up with what's going on. I know that that's my primary lane that I'm an NFL guy. But shit. I mean, there's a lot more important things going on than the NFL.

But we will spend a second or two on that. And I'm going to get. Myron Roll on the phone. He is in year three of his residency, I believe, to become a neurosurgeon. I can't say enough about this guy. He was a standout at Florida State and an NFL player for three years and basically gave it up to be a doctor. And 10 years later, almost 10 years later, he is on the front lines fighting for us when it comes to COVID-19. he's at Mass General. And I'll ask him all about that virus, how he's coping with being on the front lines

and how his fellow medical professionals are coping as well. Also I have a mailbag on the tail end we'll do. So yeah, let's get right down to it. NFL news. Okay, Alden Smith to the Cowboys. I'm really excited this guy got a job. He's obviously fucked up in the past. He's done things he wants back.

over five years people can change okay um and although it's absolutely mind boggling to think that somebody can stop playing such a violent sport that you really need to maintain a mindset and a grind i believe to be successful um year after year just being out of the league for a year and a half i realize how hard it is or would be to get back into it. You know, Alden's been out since 2015. And if anybody can come back and be successful as a rusher, I think it's him. He had one of the best feels as a rusher I've ever seen.

He's one of my favorite rushers that played in the league during my tenure. His first three years, he had 42 sacks. The company there is Derek Thomas and Reggie White. Okay. That's how special he was. And I know he had Justin Smith and a lot of people, you know, with the whole Smith Brothers thing in San Francisco would, you know, attribute a lot of his success to rushing with Justin.

I would attribute some of Justin's success those years rushing next to Alden. They were a dominant force that could have existed without one another, but they amplified their effect next to each other. And, you know, the styles of rushers that they were. Obviously, Justin was more of an interior rusher, unlike earlier in his career in Sinci, where he was more of a base Dien. They played off each other well. They got busted on some grab games, but they're still running grab games in the NFL.

That wasn't where all the production came from. Alden had such a great bull jerk complex, which is basically when you get into a guy's chest, you use your length to create separation. Separation makes offensive linemen feel uncomfortable. Alden had length. He had timing. He wasn't, you know, the quickest or the fastest or the strongest, but he had explosiveness and he had length. And like I said, when you create that, you know, with good timing, you time the bull up while, you time the long arm up well, you turn your body at the right angle.

It makes offensive alignment uncomfortable. And a lot of the mileage he got out of that complex was getting guys to feel that discomfort in the distance that he created and getting them to double. their head, stopped their feet, and he'd pull them by. I mean, he was terrific with his hands. A lot of rushers, they could bull you, they could grab you, but they don't, they're not, they're not holding on. And Alden always had a solid grip and an accurate punch when he went to bull rush, and he had technique to go with it in a great field and obviously great talent. When he played, he was probably 260 soaking wet. You know, I played in that division. I knew Alden a little bit. I had great respect for his game and we talk after some games. I don't think

could have been more than 260. I think he carries weight well. They say he's up to 285 pounds. I'm not sure how that works out. I'm not sure how it works out being five years out of football. I'm not sure how it works out with him in a three-point stance, presumably opposite DeMarcus Lawrence in Dallas. But the upside is huge. I mean, even with five years off, from what I understand, from Jay Glazer, he has put in the work and then some. I think he's a, been sober for a very long time. He's attended all the meetings. He's worked his ass off at Jay's gym with a lot of the veterans that work out there with MVP in Los Angeles. And he's ready for a comeback, whatever that means. And I hear he's 285 pounds. So I don't know how he carries

that, but I believe that, you know, if Jay says he's carrying that, if the frame looks good, which he says it does, I'm pretty sure he's in. good shape. Now, the football field thing, it's anybody's guess. But again, one of the best rushers I ever saw in person in that three-year span. And I remember that primetime game against Gabe Carimi. It felt like he had seven sacks in San Francisco against Chicago Bears. That's one of those games that I remember rush-wise as much as any rushers best game, OCU and yours game against Philly, Birds fans. That was incredibly memorable to me as a young rusher watching that my senior year in my apartment. It was a prime time game. I remember where I was when I saw that game. I also

remember where I was when I saw when I saw Alden abusing Gabe Caramey. Now, the thing about Gabe Caramey was Gabe Caramey was getting beat a good bit. And, you know, it's a boomer bus move. I'm excited to see it. And these are the kinds of deals that Dallas is going to have to make some risk reward deals where the reward is big, the risk, not so much, because you're going to have to pay a quarterback and exorbitant amount of money. And to build around a quarterback, sometimes you have to take these boom or bust deals. But it's not like they're paying a ton of money. They're they're going to be able to get out of it with relative ease if it's not going well. I think, you know, first and foremost, good for Alden, and I look forward to watching him play.

However, that turns out. Other NFL news, no one big uniform guy. Tampa Bay Buccaneers, okay? They finally changed their uniforms today. Today is Tuesday. And they kind of, okay, this is. the equivalent, and I tweeted this, it's an improvement,

no doubt about it. But the bar was pretty low. They have solid uniforms now, okay? This is essentially like fucking up and acting like you did something new when you just admitted your mistake. They just went back to the old ones with some slight alterations.

But it's an improvement. They're kind of giving a nod to 1997 to 2003 of those glory years where they won that Super Bowl with less of that gold color I hate that they had on their pants. It's more true, I guess, pewter, if that's what you're calling it. And I've been known to be critical of pewter, but I think they did a pretty good job using it.

I was one of the many people who hoped that they'd go back to the cream sickles that they wore from 76 to 96 with Bucco Bruce, who my friend of the program, aptly describes as a mascot that looks like he's related to, you know, Paxton Lynch, if you know what Paxton Lynch looks like. And one of the most disappointing things about this new uniform, other than just not going for it all ongoing creamsicle, is that the big pirate ship and the big flag,

the oversized helmet decal stays, I don't think that's great. I think that's a mistake. They've added a black face mask. I think the pants stripe is good You know this is better They kept the orange There's some orange in there That's pretty good

Big movers in the uniform sweepstakes But I think they left some Something on the table here They could have gone cream sickle Whatever it is Thank goodness That Tom Brady the goat Is not trotting out

In front of You know a plastic pirate ship We're wearing shot clock looking numbers on his chest. That would have been terrible. It would have been nearly unwatchable, and they are prime whenever they get back to play in a lot of primetime games. So good thing we're not going to be looking at that, you know, awful, awful uni

that they've been fielding the last five years. Back to the old days a little bit. Now the Falcons, it looks like, and this is kind of real time, as I sat down to record this pod, I saw that my co-host Making Gunner sent me, who's a uniform connoisseur, sent me the Falcons, which got leaked. And we know what happened the last time something got leaked with an NFL uniform or logo. It didn't go so well with the Rams. You know, although, you know, the logo looks better than it did at first on the hat in L.A.

it looks like a fucking Chargers logo. And there's no going back. We could have a similar situation with the Falcons uniforms where they really are going to get their reviews on this thing before they make it public. And I think it could get ugly because these uniforms that I saw look awful. Please tell me there's no gradient. In the picture I saw, it looks like they actually took.

took a step back. And I saw there was a gradient on one of the uniforms that was just awful looking. Who would have thought we would have seen the Bucks leapfrog the Falcons in uniforms? All the Falcons had to do was throw on those throwbacks that they were from time to time and they would have looked terrific. You could go Jeff George era. You could go early, early Michael Vic era and you would have been just fine. But yet you tried to get fancy and you tricked it off. And if the those are the uniforms that you're fielding. I've lost my faith in people making decisions for professional sports teams. An awful, awful miscalculation and a missed opportunity by the Falcons.

If those are truly the uniforms that they'll be unveiling soon that got leaked, I mean, bad stuff. You probably have seen them online by now. The draft thing. Okay. The draft is still going on. as scheduled, obviously they're talking about doing it on Zoom. You might want to be careful with Zoom. There's been a lot of hacking going on with the Zoom system. And that's like classes at

universities and high schools. I mean, imagine what's going to happen to Roger Goodell if they run this thing on Zoom. That's how I'm running like power hours with my buddies. I don't know. risky, but could it be good TV? Yeah. And by the way, I said this on the pod the other day with Jason Hartilius. And we talked about COVID-19 the entire time. If you didn't get a chance to check that out, check that out. Jason is recovering from COVID.

He was in the hospital. He's a producer at NFL Network. He worked with me this fall on NFL Next with Kay Adams and James. happy belated birthday to K Adams. This is me checking to see if you still listen to the pod because you used to be like, yeah, I heard the pod this week, blah, blah, blah. We'll see if you're listening to it as you're socially distancing. So happy birthday, Kay.

But Jason battled COVID and he is on the up and up. We talked about the draft with him being in the business. And, you know, we kind of had the same mindset on that, which is that if you can do it safely, I think you do it. I think, you know, the draft has always been, you know, or football has always been, at least from fans that have communicated this to me during tough times or during divisive times that football is a break from all the bullshit. And a pandemic definitely falls under the category of bullshit. So if you can get a draft to happen to be a distraction for folks and if you do it safely, I'm off. it. I know that it can seem tone-deaf to see people making a bunch of money in the midst of

economic uncertainty, but I don't know why we always take it out on athletes and not CEOs. That's just me. Now, the draft happening on Zoom reminded me of the fact that we've been doing a power hour every weekend, me and some buddies. The background thing is tremendous. I love putting, well, I just say I've put some pretty vulgar backgrounds as my Zoom background, just for the fuck of it to mess with my buddies, to act like a middle schooler. But the problem then is that I've done a couple of interviews with media outlets via Zoom. And as soon as I log in to engage in that conversation with a reporter on the other end and hopefully they're not recording, my background from Power Hour. which could be almost anything pops up. And I have a little mini heart attack.

And I just exit the video as quick as I can. Zoom can be treacherous. And it could be hacked into. Could that make for good TV? Is Roger going to take that risk? We'll see how they do it. One positive thing about sliding in the draft this year is that, I mean, I just think this is the year to do it.

If you're going to slide, this is the year, you're essentially missing out on the hardship of, you know, that all dressed up with nowhere to go look, you know, in front of millions and millions of people sitting in Radio City Music Hall when I played or now whatever city the draft's in. It would have been Vegas this year, but you don't have to go through that if you slide late into the first round, surrounded by your friends, your family, your girlfriend who might not be around in a couple of years. That's always an interesting one. And I wonder, as I watch the draft, some of these significant others, I wonder how you could predict whether or not it's going to last. It's not a fun game to play, but sometimes I play it in my head. You don't have to slide in the draft in front of your friends, family, significant other coaches. You also don't have to slide in the draft sitting in your parents' living room with 50 people who are there to party and wondering.

why you didn't get picked where your draft grade was. Anxious eyes. You don't have to deal with that. You can just sit alone in your room like you're waiting for an Xbox update that's never going to come and just go it alone. I mean, this is a good year to slide. So another thing I wanted to mention was I wanted to shout out my buddy Tom, who is coordinating in the group text. This is kind of the power hour thing reminded me of the fact that, You know, with the pandemic, there's obviously no gambling, but there is an opportunity to get creative in our group text.

We've got matchbox cars in the driveway, taking bets, a bunch of us get in action, and, you know, it's filmed every time, slow motion. You can see who the winners are. Tom's a terrific cinematographer. He is raising the morale in the group text by running these races. kind of fun. So if you haven't tried it, you know, in the wake of pretty much anything you could bet on being shut down, I think there's something here for you to fill the void with. And that's matchbox cars. Get your buddies together. Throw in a group text. The buy-in is the buy-in. It's whatever. And put a yardstick down, line the cars up. Pull that yardstick out from, from,

from under the cars and let those babies run and see where they go. It will have the group text pop in. Also, NASA tweeted at me this week. Big deal. I've been admiring the moon. I guess it's like a super duper moon tonight. There was a super moon the night before. And the moon has been lit.

The moon has been thirst trapping. And me, like everybody, else tries to take a picture of it every time it's it's absolutely gorgeous uh with my iPhone and uh i've realized i probably have about 200 pictures of a yellowish white um grainy light uh circle of light in my phone and that would be the moon um i don't know why it's taking me 200 pictures to realize i'm never going to get that fucking picture i wanted uh where you can see the craters i think part of me thinks that by 215 the craters will come out maybe the iPhone 12 will be able to get it but it's not doing it I'm going to try to do something the night revolutionary when I call my wife outside and I tell her

to look at the moon we're not going to we're not going to tilt our heads back and stare at the moon through our phones for five minutes and walk back inside we're going to look at the fucking moon for a little bit no pictures iPhone not getting it done but NASA tweeted at me. Pretty cool. They tweeted a link from some NASA people in response to my tweet. So anyways, without further ado, let's get Myron roll on the line. Again, he is training, studying to be a neurologist. He's in like year three of his residency. And he has volunteered to help out in the fight against coronavirus. He's at Mass General. He's going to tell us all about that. Really, really great having myron roll on the line somebody to have immense respect for welcoming now to the green light

podcast somebody i legitimately look up to you know we throw the word hero around a lot and uh used to be a peer of mine now he is uh far superior he is a neurosurgery um well you're going to be a neurosurgeon when are you going to when are you going to make the transition to have the actual title yeah from a resident right now my third year it takes seven years to become a full-fledged attending nurse surgeon, so I got a couple more years ago. Do you remember Myron Role? Myron Role was one of the biggest studs in the country when it came to football, went to Florida State inexplicably. He should have been a Virginia Cavalier. I don't know what happened there. We would have to have you up north, but it all worked out.

Oxford for a year, the Titans for three years drafted and decided he wanted to walk away and become a doctor. And I'm glad that, you know, if you're going to be cutting into my brain, that you're going to be having to study for seven years, that seems long enough to me. Yeah, for sure, for sure, absolutely. So right now, before we get into the obvious stuff, you're on the front line. Battling COVID, your floor at Mass General has turned into a surge clinic and you volunteered to work it. And you guys have 1,200 cases as of yesterday of COVID, which is wild. I do want to plug your foundation because I think it's great work you're doing, reading right off the site.

I don't want to butcher anything. It's dedicated to supporting wellness, educational, and other charitable initiatives throughout the world that benefit children and families of need. And you started this thing in 2009. What are you guys doing as we speak? I know things are probably on hold with COVID a little bit. Yeah, no, thanks for talking.

But yeah, absolutely, man. Our foundation, it means a lot to me. The Myron Elroll Foundation, you know, we help children, especially disenfranchise and marginalized kids in America and even back home in the Bahamas, where I'm originally from. I've always had a heart for service. My favorite Bible verse comes from Matthew 2540.

Jesus talking to his disciples, in as much as ye have done for the least of these, my brethren, you have done unto me. So the least of these is the type of people that we try to affect change in. So we run this academy, this wellness and leadership academy for foster kids in Florida and in the Bahamas. We do something called Rose to Success, a playoff of the Rhodes Scholarship,

sort of an academic workshop for these kids, and get them thinking better as sort of students. and how to figure out this game of academia and work through that road. So it's something that we love every year. We work at it, and it's been consistent since 2009, still doing it now. We're looking to expand here in Boston

because I'm here for seven years, so it's been great. And it's one of the highlights of my year, whenever we get to see these kids come out of the situation where they thought they didn't have a chance, they didn't have any future. And now they at least see an opportunity. for them. And if we can provide that for them, it's amazing. I think that's wonderful, man. And I know

it's got to be tough right now. I mean, I run a foundation of my own. And, you know, people are, that sort of thing might take a backseat for a little while. But I think, I think it's all hands on deck here domestically to support our communities and the things that people are going through. So, you're really fighting battles on, on multiple fronts now. And I applaud you for that. So I appreciate you. And obviously, as I mentioned earlier, you are on the front line. You're about to do a 24-hour shift right now. Is that your first? Yeah. So I've done 24-hour shifts on Friday and Sunday. I have another one tomorrow. So this, you know, our hospital has been transformed, Chris. I mean, we, when you walk in now, it doesn't look like Match General anymore. It's a Harvard hospital, very big, a thousand beds in our hospital where a major transfer center for New

England, Vermont, Maine, across the country, even internationally, we get paid. from Bahrain or the UAE. And so to see our hospital now where everyone has to wear a face mask, everyone gets hand sanitizer as soon as you walk in the hospital, the clinics aren't open anymore. Everything is done virtually now to keep people away from the hospital because it is sort of a nitest of infection right now. The emergency department is overflowing with people who are coming in off the street

with symptoms analogous to COVID-19 or positive tests. Our neurosurgical floor, as you mentioned, has been transformed. Our operating rooms are slowing down. I did an operation today, but I think by next week, we're gonna stop any elective cases and just have these operating rooms be available for potential ICUs. We've even transferred our pediatric ICU patients

from our hospital to the local children's hospital so that the pediatric ICU now can become an adult ICU for more bed space so that just the hospital is just sort of energy focus, resources, all on COVID-19. And for neurosurgeons like us, you know, we're just trying to adapt and adjust now. We're not doing brain tumors and spine surgery anymore. We're trying to take care of these patients who have COVID-19

because their respiratory issues are amazing and it's really impressive. And you just have to really work quickly, get the right scans, get the right consults in order, and try to save them as best you can because when it does hit and it hits severely, these people decomposate very quickly. Yeah, and, you know, this has become kind of a, well, especially initially there was a there were a population of people downplaying it as the flu um not understanding you know that this is a novel virus so even if it were like the flu from what i understand that would still be a really bad deal and i'll let you kind of uh weigh in on the

differences in in the flu and and and covid but you're you're you're going to be a nerd a neurosurgeon i mean this isn't and you're you don't deal in the world of upper respiratory stuff on the regular But you and a lot of other doctors from different, you know, vocations under the medical umbrella have rushed to the scene to help out. Now, that means that there's probably a learning curve, right, a little bit of one. And then also that, as you mentioned, a lot of elective surgeries are being canceled. So one, how big was that learning curve? And then, two, you know, mentioning, you did maybe your last neurosurgery recently, are there any elective surgeries that not? not getting them can be life-threatening? Who's getting hit the hardest? Yeah, no, that's a great

question. So the learning care first question is very steep. And thankfully, we've had some medical attendings and medical doctors who are great teachers. And to be at Harvard at this hospital, it is a teaching hospital. So sort of education is required or at least assumed to be a part of your role of treating patients. You treat patients and you also teach. And so they've had to teach, you know, OB-Gyines, neurosurgeons like us, dermatologists, anyone who typically doesn't deal with these upper respiratory viral illnesses what to do. And they've given us modules to look at and they've given us some sort of a steep, you know, sort of reading and literature, some up-to-date literature, some journal articles to just kind of dive into and kind of get ready. They make sure that we're

not doing anything that's out of our scope of practice. You know, we're not going to go an intubate a person. I mean, we know how to take off of the skull and take out of the skull and take out a brain tumor, but we're not intubating everyone in the operating room. We have anesthesiologists for that. But if you need to put in orders, if you need to get a chest x-ray, if you need to draw labs, these are things that we can do. I know how to do these things. We are medical doctors first before we specialize into neurosurgeons. So absolutely, great question. But the learning curve is deep. We have great people to kind of help. As for those cases that have been postponed or canceled, you know, it's hard when you think about a neurosurgery case being

elective, right? Somebody's got a benign brain tumor. And I mean, I'm sure you probably want that out. And you don't want to keep waiting with this thing in your head like, oh, man, you know, when is this going to grow? Is this going to cause a seizure? Is this going to turn from being an elective case to an urgent, emerging case? And we know, Chris, that evidence has shown us that if we take urgent and emerging cases and the outcomes, the patient outcomes after those cases, they don't do as well as the elective cases. What's the reason for that? Well, elective cases are controlled. they're slow, they're optimized. You have all the right labs, the right personnel, you've got the right equipment.

Everything is just in order. It just moves with a better rhythm and pace. Urgent and immersion, it's like fast and furious. It's just like go go get it done. You can miss a step. You can lose blood that you're not supposed to lose. You can have the wrong equipment in there. You might not have the staff that's capable of kind of managing that situation.

So these patients, unfortunately, don't do as well. So it's a great question. I think right now we're trying to, as well, as well, best we can parse out the patients who need those elective surgeries, like for instance, the case I did this morning was a guy with, you know, a brain tumor that was pretty serious and stage well advanced. And he needed this. But for those ones who are maybe, you know, lower stages or smaller or asymptomatic and younger, you know, we take in all these factors, we might tell them, hey, right now the hospital is a night is for infection. It's not a great place to be. And we're

slowing our resources down so that we can redirect them to the COVID-19. People have to be scared when they hear that. Yeah, they're very scared. And it's been hard, especially the older population, because, one, they, you know, I've been dealing with their issue. Say a person's got a spine herniation, a disc herniation, and they can't walk. And they're walking is getting worse. It's a real pain that they're feeling and they're expecting to get treated by us.

It becomes a problem and is a tough decision to make. but it's one ultimately after you explain the situation, give them the facts, give them the fact that, you know, if you were to come in here as a 76-year-old person with a chronic disc in your back, you may leave,

unfortunately, infected with COVID-19. That's how bad it is right now. Right. It's riskier for you to come in and get to surgery. No question. No question. And so in saying that,

I think the patients are sort of getting an understanding, but certainly it's not an easy thing to go through and it's a hard conversation for sure. At what point did you know watching the news or following this thing, tracking it since early this year? I can remember a moment when I was in Africa for Waterboys,

my initiative. And I was worried, A, when I saw that it was spreading in Italy that we were going to have a real problem here and B, that I might not even be able to get back home. I made it back in late February, but a few weeks later, it could have been a lot more complicated. Was there a time

as a doctor where you're saying, I might be called to the front lines in this fight. And was there a moment where you realized it was going to get this bad? Did you ever see it getting this bad? I did not see it getting this bad. I mean, I knew about two or three weeks ago when our hospital started to make some adjustments, they didn't let us fly to any conferences anymore,

and they were kind of reducing the number of patients, families that were able to come and visit them. But they were starting to make these adjustments hospital-wide, I said, ooh, this might be serious. And they may be hearing some of the stats that are coming from epidemiologists and other, you know, trackers who say, okay, well, this is how many number of infected patients Boston is going to see in the next week or two weeks or three weeks. When they started to make these changes, I said, well, we're a big hospital with a lot of resources. And if we're making this adjustment, then I can only imagine what the suburban local community hospitals are doing. And so we need to take this seriously.

And it wasn't until about a week or two ago that our department. started to make the more micro and minute adjustments to our daily schedule to let us know that, yeah, this is real, all hands on deck. It doesn't matter if you're being redeployed to the ICU, to the emergency department, to the surge clinic. You're going to have a role here because we all need to be in this fight together. And define surge clinic because that's what your floor has become. Yeah, so a surge clinic is basically a hospital within a hospital that sees patients that come from the street with COVID-19 or maybe symptoms analogous to COVID-19. And it's run by medical doctors and infectious disease doctors, and we welcome them with open arms, come in and act to scribes, write notes, take histories, put oxygen on people if they need it, get the proper labs, draw those labs, triage them and manage them through the hospital. If they need to come into the hospital, get them to the right floor.

If they don't, you make sure that they go self-quarantine and you arrange the proper and necessary follow-up for them after. So it's a, it's sort of a, just a, you know, a drive-through clinic that our hospital is doing in the midst of handling all these very acute cases. When you show up to that surge clinic, where's your head at? Are you, are you afraid? Are you got to be afraid? I'm, I say I'm nervous a little bit, but I think I'm more nervous for the patients because I know where this can lead. I've walked into the emergency department from having a consult that's, you know, call me say, hey, Myron, there's a neurosurgical patient down here. They've got a brain bleed. They

were on a blood thinner and they're 90 years old. And I walk past that room. And the next room, I see somebody get emergently or urgently intubated because they have COVID-19 and then their family being called because they're having end of life for goals of care discussions. That is the extreme. That's the end line of this thing. This is where these patients can go. They can go from talking to you and me on a day-to-day basis enjoying their life, drinking water, doing everything that they've been doing in the next second, having to have a tube down their throat and a family being called and saying, well, if this patient was outside of their body and seeing how they looked right now with a tube down their mouth, would they want to be in this state? And so these are very challenging

conversations that have. And I'm nervous for those patients to come off the street with this because I know it can get there. And my role, just like any of my colleague's role, is just, you know, to kind of help manage them and get them the right consults and get them to the right labs and get them to the right floor so they were managed appropriately. It sounds like this, obviously there's a number of differences between this and other illnesses that we've had to deal with that we're more familiar with.

But one being that there's no roadmap and you do hear stories, I mean, talking about the British prime minister, who you would assume has the best in health care. He's probably relatively healthy. he's not elderly, he's older, but I can remember seeing him Skype into a press conference looking healthy one day after his diagnosis, and then, you know, he's hanging out at home, and within 24 hours, he's in ICU. And these turns happen quickly. Have you heard stories of extreme turns like you're talking about that stick in your head? So, yeah, I mean, just, you know, that story was a real story that I had mentioned. about the emergent and urgent intubation.

And those are never ones that you want to go through either. I've seen patients be turned prone because sometimes it's easier to expand your lungs and to breathe better when you turn on your belly rather than supplying on your back. These are things that are happening quite often. Typically, that would happen maybe once or twice a day, but now it's happening eight to nine, ten times in these ICUs where these, you know, rest story illness has just really taken a hold of these individuals. And I think these stories of the Prime Minister from the UK, of Chris Cuomo from CNN, of other celebrities or people who have a platform to speak to people who may not see a hospital or understand what's happening in a hospital, I think these stories are making it more real for people, or at least I hope it is.

Because for a long time, I think people were doubting that this was, A, happening, and B, that it should matter to either one of us. These were just numbers, right? 5,000 people die in the UK, 10,000 in America. They just seem like stats and figures. But when you think about it, these are real people with real lives, real stories, with real families who are being affected by this as well. And you don't want that to be you or anyone you love to do your part. And we've all talked about the part that the normal citizenry and the demos can do,

social distancing, physical distancing, stay at home, healthy lifestyle, lifestyle behavior modifications, we're going outside, these sorts of things, because everyone's got a role. We do it in health care, but everyone in the normal life can do it as well. Well, you make a good point. It was relatively faceless, and you could write off a lot of the statistics as, and that may be true, and I'll let you weigh in on that. But, you know, we could all look at the statistics and say, well, most people have preexisting conditions or elderly, but you can't deny that there are a number of anecdotal stories

right now coming from younger patients who seemingly are very healthy, who either die or get very, very sick. And to your point, like having folks who are celebrities or people who are visual, like, they're available, whether it's like, you know, Chris Cuomo's going on the news, he's describing his symptoms, he's there every day from his basement, you know, a politician. I mean, that's somebody that you would assume has the best of the best in health care. And, you know, I think it helped people to see that, A, you can get very serious. sick. And B, you can get better, too. So, I mean, like, take it seriously. But I had a producer.

I did a show in the fall for NFL network. And he's 42 years old. He ended up in ICU. He wasn't hooked up to a breathing machine. But he did have oxygen and he was out and he's still sick. Two weeks later, just knocked down. Can't get it. So I think that those sort of anecdotal stories help a lot. When you talk about this disease and the end of the road scenario that you mentioned earlier, which is a fast turn or, you know, for the worst. How do people die from this? I mean, like, what kills these people? You know, in their final moments, what is happening to your body?

Because I don't see that graphically described very often either. You lose the ability to do the things that make us live on a day-to-day basis. Give us the exams that we have. Give us the ability to function. Move our arms, breathe, see. do all the senses that we typically have available to us. And so without oxygenation, without the ability to sort of have the normal functioning of these organs, you succumb to this.

And it's a real problem. And no matter how much oxygen you have, no many, how much respiratory support you can get, sometimes it's too grave, especially if you have these preexisting conditions where your immune system is sort of fighting and battling your AFib or your chronic diabetes or your hypertension or your AIDS or your endogenous steroid use or something like that, you know, just or exogenous steroid use. It's just your immune system is sort of fighting this other battle when you have this other disease that's coming around the back and say, okay, we're going to take you out this way.

So it's very difficult. And could they be, they could be truly underlying conditions, like not just things that you knew you had been diagnosed with, but something you didn't know you had. and this virus brings it out. Oh, yeah. It worsens it. I mean, to the point where they can't exist together and you can't get over it. Yeah, absolutely.

And the age is a real thing, too, because just, you know, you and I, as younger people, we have a lot of functional reserve in our body to be able to fight anything, really. I mean, we're stronger. We're athletes. We're young, just in general. And so our body just naturally has more cells, more blood volume, able to sort of get to the different parts of our body the way it needs to. Our vessels aren't corroded with athoscrotic plaque and things like that where it gets hard to get to the highway isn't clogged to get to the organs that we need to.

But for these older people who've had 80 years or 90 years of having their arteries plaques and having them narrowed or don't have as many cells to get through or their blood is a lot thinner or the heart doesn't pump as fast or pump as strong as maybe ours or so it doesn't have that surge, that push to get out. All these things are just natural in the aging process. And so that's what makes it difficult, too, to get oxygen to the different parts of the body, especially we're not getting it in with this virus. And that's why pneumonia knocks out people who are 85, 9 years old. And it doesn't knock out us. It looks like a little stumble. We keep moving.

Right. The natural process. So I want to talk about the doctors because I think people have said a lot about the doctors. People are applauding their efforts. You know, they're thankful for people like you. But I also don't know that they really get the factors that go into decision making for some of these people on the front lines. You know, I talked to a friend who says he has to consider not going home to his family. We have a nurse in particular I can think of who's got an immunocompromised daughter at home.

And so she's now working on a non-COVID-19 floor. and there's been some threats that that floor is going to turn into a COVID-19 patient floor. And she's making the hard decision to say, well, if this happens, I may have to step out of work for a while because I don't want to have my daughter be susceptible to this infection if I get it and bring it to her. And so that's a real tough choice. She loves working. She's one of our best nurses. It can be a value loss on our end, not to have her around, regardless if she's taking care of neurosurgical people.

patients or COVID-19 patients. She's just spectacular, very bright, and picks up a lot of things quickly, and she's got to make this tough choice. So we may lose a member like that. Our hospital is guaranteeing some hotels locally because the hours that our employees are working are really, really long.

And if you live 45 minutes away, an hour away, in New Hampshire, perhaps, or something like that, they're guaranteeing some hotel rooms nearby, so you don't have to go home. and bring this infection to your family. So people are thinking about it for sure. When you come in, what are they? I mean, they have to like check you at the door and, you know, probably you're changing

clothes and in and out. What's going on when you walk in and when you leave? Yeah, so there's an app that we use in our healthcare system. This is partners app that really goes through all the different symptoms that you may have. If you have no symptoms, you're cleared for work. If you do have a symptom, then you get triage into a different area and they kind of figure it out from there. but you have to put on hand sanitizer in the mask, like I mentioned.

So you're being checked and screen as you walk in. And then just a personal thing for myself and others, we take off our scrubs before we get home, so we're not bringing it to our families and loved ones. I send my wife down to Georgia, so she's away from me right now. I'm not just exposing her. So all these different decisions, these personal decisions are being made.

The antiviral medicine conversation, you know, there's been, whether you like the way the information was disseminated or not, there's been talk about, you know, in particular, a drug that starts with H that I will butcher hydrochloroquine. Yeah, hydroxychloroquine. Okay, so stuff like this. Okay, what's the biggest misconception? And that may well be the answer, but I know there's some people that think that in a crisis like this, the red tape is gone and that, you know, we're going to have a drug in a month. And we're not even talking about vaccines right now. We're talking about like drugs.

What's the biggest misconception with this process for people as far as the, the solutions we're going to have done line, including a vaccine, but even before that? Is it because you want people to be healthy because you care about their health and their general well-being? Or is it because you want them to join the workforce again, get the economy running, and get the whole country back up again? You know, it's sort of, where's the motivation coming from? But me, as a medical professional, and as several others have said,

said, you cannot unleash a drug onto the market into the world for consumption widely without being tested, without it being safe. You do not want some sort of medication to harm a patient worse than what is trying to treat or what is trying to prevent. And without finite, definitive, evidence-based, peer-reviewed, studied trials that are sort of the gold standard, these randomized control trials, with good, good, you know, good power and really, you know, good solid evidence, it's just, it's hard for me to get behind something that honestly may just be experimental at the time.

Yes, we're in a difficult situation. Yes, it's dire, but I honestly believe that with a flattening of the curve, everyone sort of buying in collectively to, you know, do their part, social distance and all that, I think you give the time for vaccinations and maybe for hydroxychloroquine coupled with azithromycin they were saying, you know, sort of be tested and see if it can work. I just think it's really, really ambitious and it honestly could be deleterious to take it right now just on a whim and just on a prayer and on a hope. Yeah, it just seems like the best medicine right now is to stay your ass home. I mean, like for me, I got no problem doing it. I can speak for myself. I know that I have

what I need. I'm very blessed. Like my family's, you know, healthy and I have a job that I can work from home. I understand not everybody can do that. So I'm not minimizing that dilemma, but I think that if you can, staying home is, you know, we're looking for the next wonder drug. It's going to take time. Not only that, the vaccine's going to take a long time. Where are we right now? You mentioned flattening the curve. You hear different things about that. You'll hear, you'll hear, oh, brace yourself, this is going to be the worst week. The timeline, as you see it. And that's the thing. There's no, the virus sets the timeline. That's what I keep hearing on the news. And I would tend to agree there. But where are we in this battle as you look at it? Yeah, I mean, I see the last

numbers that, you know, I was able to take a look at. You know, we're still sort of going up a little bit actually in this country and the UK as well. Other places, France, South Korea, they're starting to flatten a little bit as their numbers are going down. Boston in particular, I can just speak for our city because we're getting constant updates from our mayor in our hospital administration. We're going to see a surge next week and a week after, potentially. Mid-April is supposed to be the real, real big time. But I still think we have ways to go. As far as the end game, the timeline, as you mentioned, the virus sort of determines that. And I've heard people whispering about having NFL games and sporting events, you know,

around these times in a week or month or, you know, whatever the case may be. I just hesitate towards saying that that's the right move because, you know, you have so many people that are infected. There's people who are infected who don't know they're infected. You're in a very communal setting when you're in a stadium, when you're in a locker room, you may just be reintroducing this bad bug, this bad virus to a group of people who are just waiting to be infected based on the proximity they have to be to enjoy something that we all love. We want it back. We all do. There's no question anyone's questioning whether we want to start the seasons up again or get back to the NCAA or those things.

But they have to be very smart about it and be patient. We just have to prioritize for one year, dude. This is like our generation's test. Maybe just chill out for a year and just don't expect football. And if football comes, you know, as sports fans, which is very secondary, tertiary even, or I could go down the line. I don't have the vocabulary for it.

But, I mean, it's a thousand, you know, rungs down the ladder to what we should be worrying about. But I'm with you. I would be surprised if the NFL starts on time. I also, you know, just as somebody who doesn't know jack shit about any of this stuff, I'm looking at it and saying, why wouldn't there be a second surge? Like, why when we get this thing under control, we're going to rush back out and expect to pack stadiums with 70,000 people.

It doesn't seem realistic to me. That's correct. Yeah, you're absolutely right. I think that the best mode of sort of determining, and again, this could be from my own myopia of being in a hospital, but the best mode of determining. But the best mode of determining how well we're doing is when you see hospitals start opening up their floors again, right? Our neurosurgical floor turns back into a neurosurgical floor. Our operating room started to pick up again.

Our amount of ventilators we're using, amount of oxygen support that we're using, those things go down, the deaths go down, the infected people go down. When you use hospitals and healthcare systems as a barometer, you say, okay, well, our most sick is sort of going down. The trend is going down. And you want to see it consistently go down, not a blip here, and then go. up and a but you want to see it consistently go down, make it a trend. So you know at one point it's going to reach its bottom. And at that point, then you can consider getting back to this normal life. And that's, I think that's the way we got to go. Is this the best time that this could have happened in the year? I mean, like, for this to happen in the summer, there is the possibility

that the weather, you know, alters the trajectory of this curve or whatever. You know, if it were the dead of winter, you're also dealing with like the start of flu season. Could it have been a lot worse in the fall? And does the summer factor into it at all for you and what you're hearing in your line of work? So you hear some things that, well, it's not hitting the tropical countries as much. The Bahamas has, I think, 33 infected patients and six deaths. Haiti's got one or something very low.

Detention capabilities and people could be dying in Haiti and we don't have, you know, like the medical infrastructure there just isn't very good. Absolutely. You might not know, right? I mean, these are these are aspects. The tests aren't widely available in some of these low to middle income countries. So, I'm not widely available here, and we got more money than God in the United States and we can't get our shit together and get people tested. When are we going to know, when are we going to have a testing protocol that's sufficient in your eyes as you look at it? Yeah, I'm hoping soon. You know, I think that you know, hospitals are certainly being overtaxed.

and overwhelmed. And I know that some department of health in different parts of the country, especially here in Massachusetts, I can speak for, they've developed these like sort of driving clinics that sort of offloading the pressure from the hospital. But it needs to be more readily accessible. I think we obviously were behind. We're still playing a little bit of catch up at this point, getting the test available, getting the expediency of the test. So you get results quicker and you're not waiting around for two or three days in a hospital taking up a bed space if you don't need to. And then also making sure that we're not just solely relying on one test.

If we need to do two tests, to make sure we have an absolute true positive or a true negative and not a false positive or a false negative, make sure that we get that squared away too. And as the testing gets better, do you anticipate the mortality rate goes a little bit more in our favor because there's going to be more folks that we didn't know had it? And then, like, I forgot to ask you, you know,

for the flu truthers who think this is, is the flu if they don't get it yet. How different is it from the flu? I mean, people cite mortality. People die of the flu every year. Yeah, well, everybody has the flu. It's on such a larger scale. Can you help maybe alleviate that intellectual burden that some people are suffering from? Yeah, the first question, I think test, you know, more tests and more people being test, whenever you increase the power of a study, whenever you have more people in your study, you can get more accurate numbers for sure. So you may see our mortality numbers go up. You may see the morbidity numbers go up just because we know more, more information. And that's very helpful for epidemiologists sort of trend and track everything that's going on. As for the flu conversation, I heard that in the beginning that is no worse than a flu. And it's like a common cold. Shouldn't worry about it. But frankly, I'm not being called to the emergency departments. I haven't seen in three years of working there consistently as a neurosurgical resident where they're like, well, this patient has the flu, but they also have a brain bleed.

It's very serious, and it does knock people out. It knocks those specific people out, as we were mentioning before. If you're already sick and you come in just appreciated on your immune system, yeah, it's certainly going to affect people in a very bad way. But there's no point. There's no point to equating the flu and COVID because one's a novel virus. Like it's, you're talking about, like, what's the point of arguing that the flu, and even if the rates change or lower a little,

bit. One is novel and one's not. We build up immunity to the flu for quite some time. I mean, I've been getting the flu since I was a kid. So it's crazy. I mean, there's a lot of misinformation out there. I do want to ask you in a second where you're getting your news from so people can go to the right place to get their news. But first, I do want to ask you, what do you think the new normal is pre-pandemic or pre-vaccine and post-vaccine? How do you think this changes, the way we do things in society, do you have any inclinations of how that might change? Yeah. You know, I think that the way we think about preventing something like this from happening again

is making sure that if we hear any sort of growing concern from another country or from maybe even a part of our own country, that we develop quickly a systematic approach from hospital to the non-hospital sector of life that manages this expeditiously. We've seen the countries that have acted quickly and promptly sort of have a better response in totality, right? So you see South Africa, for instance, again, different economy, you know, different culture. All these things are different. However, it is still a very developed nation that's got some wonderful technology and

advancements that we have here in America. But they responded quickly. They had their right response. and they activated a lot of their personnel in many aspects of their life. So if we see this happen or have a glimpse of this will happen again, I think it needs to be a very quick response, a swift response, so that we're not playing catch-up like we're playing right now. That's difficult to manage on any level, regardless of what kind of leader you are,

what party you belong to, if you're behind, you're not going to make it. You find people, you know, and I have my politics, whatever, we're not going down that road, But you find people that when you're critical of the government's response at this point, it's, it's your, you're politicizing a pandemic. No, we have to learn something from this. Or the next one, if the Ebola virus had the transmittability of COVID, we would be all gone. Like, and that's the scary thing. This is like a love tap relative, and I'm not trying to minimize it, but what it could be, it could be way worse. Not to mention people are dying.

That's the primary, that's the primary issue. here. So if you're if you're an economics major and you're worried about that, why don't we spend ahead of the next one and be ready? Absolutely. No, you're actually right. Yeah. Gras me know. Well, if you agree with me that I'm feeling good about myself right now. Okay. What where can people get news on this thing? Because there's a ton of before I let you go, I think that this has been incredibly informative. People as this thing develops are going to be going to their news sources. And if they don't like what they hear there. They might write it off. Where's the right place? Where do doctors read the

news about this thing? So we actually read articles, journal articles. That's where we go. And some of that language may be maybe a little bit difficult to digest. But we go to Journal of American Medical Association. We go to New England Journal of Medicine. We go to these like scientific and scholastic articles because these are peer reviewed and data. data-driven and non-biased, right? They're just like purely facts that you're getting. So if you can Google journal articles, COVID-19, you know, you'll get some really factual articles that will be very helpful without a slant politically one way or the other.

And, I mean, frankly, I think our hospital and other major hospitals, Stanford, Hopkins, Mayo Clinic, Cleveland Clinic, you know, they have some wonderful resources on their websites. you actually go right to the source and you figure out, okay, you know, I like this article. I'm seeing what I'm seeing here. There's videos, this tutorials. Our hospital has got a lot of that at Mass General. So I think your hospitals, I think maybe your departments of health locally, these journal articles, this is the best way that we go at it, try to stay away from, you know, maybe some of the other networks that may have a politicized agenda, fortunately.

Well, I got a great idea, a Rosetta Stone for a doctor speak, that we could, you know, maybe we could, once. this thing. You and I could get rich off this thing. We just take peer reviewed journals and translate them in layman's terms. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So hit me up when this thing's over. Mark, can't thank you enough for your time. I know you're getting ready to do a 24-hour shift. I speak for everybody listening when I say we, oh man, I appreciate you. And to think that you were once just a lowly NFL football player and now you're a hero saving lives and volunteering to walk under that floor every night. I just, I thank you from the out of my heart and I'm appreciate to be joined.

Thanks, man. It was great catching up with you. Tell your brother and your dad, I said, hello, man. You're awesome. Everything that I've seen you do, you know, on Twitter, you're just super, super well respected and obviously got a great sense of humor too. I know you and George. You got to. You got to. Yeah, man. It's amazing to watch. So thank you for having me. Thanks, bro. We got to get you on another time and stay safe and my best of the family and kick

some ass, dude. Thanks, brother. So, Myron Roll, great, great guest, very insightful. And I just can't thank Myron and people like Myron enough. Pretty remarkable as I sit here at home and stress myself out because I'm doing a little social distancing or I got to watch the news at night and it's bad news. I mean, he's living that bad news and he's seeing it firsthand and he volunteered to do it. And I know there's a lot of people like Myron who don't get the credit because they weren't football players. But, you know, Myron's one of many.

and I'm just very appreciative that we have guys and girls like that. So thanks to Myron. Let's get to Mailbag before I roll. Texting with big letters asks, what's my favorite non-outcast Dungeon Family album? That would be Soul Food, Goody Mob. Quarantine workouts, somebody asked me about that. I'm not doing a whole, whole lot.

I'm just, I'm eating a whole whole lot. So I have to do things to burn or expend the energy that I'm taking in as I stare at my fridge and walk away and stare at my fridge and walk away every night after 8 p.m. So I got to do something. I'm going to move. I can't get soft and blubbery during the pandemic. Listen, there could be a summer. I don't think there's going to be a summer. but in the event that there is, I can't just roll up to the community pool without coming correct.

I'm going to need at least four abs. So I'm doing things like crunches, toe touches, stuff like that. And I'm doing at least 25 to 50 of them a day. And then I'm doing 100 push-ups. Yeah, a day. 30 minutes on the bike or so. again, I just want to be ready just in case. I'm in the bullpen. Summer, if you need me, I won't be, I won't be sporting the soft bod. The dad bod, maybe, not the soft bod. I don't want

to embarrass my family. So yeah, I'm sweating a little bit, but I sweat more for like, to be honest, I sweat a little bit more just to feel good, you know. I'm in a better mood if I'm working out. I know I'm not the only one. That's kind of the way I am. So, AG, fit for life asks, hardest working teammates versus teammates who didn't have to work out at all. Well, there are some guys who are more naturally gifted, and I'm not going to, I'm not going to mention them because they might take it as a slight insinuating that they didn't earn what they have. They're definitely guys who don't have to do shit and just roll out there and play ball. Lane Johnson is a guy who has every contraption known to man. He spends like an extra two hours in the weight room every day

doing weird shit, weird exercises, watching like John Bay style videos, watching like YouTube videos, like very fringy tinfoil hat fitness routines, but he's working his fucking ass off. And that dude is strong. So whatever he's doing, it's working. BG, he's the guy who 7 a.m. and when you get there in camp, he's just going to be hanging out in his football pads. Practice could be at 3 p.m. B.G. wakes up, puts on his football pads. I don't even think, I think B.G. might put on his football pads

when he gets out of bed in the morning at the fucking Marriott, where we stay during camp. I think BG drives to work in his football uniform, like he's a Pee-Wee football player. He will lift weights in his football pants. He is ready to practice. every day, every day. And he loves lifting heavy weights.

He's one of the strongest individuals I've played with, and he loves to throw around the weights. So those are the guys who work really hard in the weight room, on the Eagles, at least, on my last stop. Stance Armstrong asks, Would you rather get shot in the kneecap or go through an entire training camp in a hazmat suit? Let me Google the recovery process

for getting shot in the fucking kneecap, because you will not catch me in a hazmat suit in Earth City, Missouri, where the actual heat is 103 and the heat index is like 120 and you're in a bowl like where all the moisture is settling and there's a dump, like literally a dump a half mile away that they had to shut down because there was like radioactive waste burning underneath the dump. I don't know. I don't know the X's and O's of doing bad shit for the environment,

but whatever they were doing wasn't good. And it wasn't good for the people practicing right there. Might have been safer in a hazmat suit, ironically, but I say all that to say this. With all that bullshit going on in the heat, all that stuff, if I had to do that in a hazmat suit, I'm going to die. So getting shot in the kneecap, I can recover from. Yeah, getting shot in the kneecap for me.

And then Candy Ken asked me what my favorite clips album is. It's not a real discussion for me. It's Lord Willing. And that's a masterful album production-wise. And it's got some just favorites for me. You've got Virginia. You've got grinding. Coddam.

You've got Gangster Lean, which is probably my favorite one. And then I'm Not You, which. is one of the most underrated clip songs, period. Yeah, period. Great song. Anyways, thanks again to Myron Roll, and I will catch you next time.

Hope everybody stands safe. I've got some good interviews coming up later in the week. One surprise interview that I'm not going to tease much. You just got to tune in. It's going to be a big deal, a big fucking deal. This interview, I don't want to get your hopes up but get them up um and then i've got joe barksdale as well and when i set it up like that i did not mean for it to sound like i have this great interview and i just have joe barksdale as well

joe barksdale is going to be a great interview but i have one person uh coming on later this week that i'm really excited about so keep tuning in uh and appreciate you all listening take it easy