Sawbones: A Marital Tour of Misguided Medicine - Sawbones: COVID-19 and Bad Data

Episode Date: June 12, 2020

OK, yes, this is an episode about medical research, but it's the sexiest medical research story you're ever going to hear. It's got scandal! It's got a detective! It's got a sentient robot equipped with anti-gravity technology!We'd type more here, but we have to assume you're already listening.Music: "Medicines" by The Taxpayers

Sawbones is a show about medical history, and nothing the hosts say should be taken as medical advice or opinion. It's for fun. Can't you just have fun for an hour and not try to diagnose your mystery boil? We think you've earned it. Just sit back, relax, and enjoy a moment of distraction from that weird growth. You're worth it. that weird growth. You're worth it. Alright, time is about to books. One, two, one, of Miss Guided medicine. I'm your co-host Justin McAroy. And I'm Sydney McAroy.

Sydney we've spent the last couple episodes prompted by the Black Lives Matter protests and an sort of rash of police violence etc. talking about racial injustices within the medical system. I would I would argue that it's not a recent rash of police violence, et cetera, talking about racial injustices within the medical system. I would argue that it's not a recent rash of police violence. Oh, it matches a... Recent focus on?

Yes, recent focus on after a long history of police brutality, especially against the black community. And we, now you've really made me look like a jerk wad, Sydney. I'm sorry, I misspoke. No, I'm gonna keep on trucking because I'm helping you because I know what you meant. And much like the celebrities, I know you wouldn't want to come off as saying something other than that. Much like all the white American celebrities, I take responsibility for saying the wrong thing is that gonna go, but, Oof, a doofa, oof Uf, Uf, Uf. But we are not done talking about that, but we are also in the middle of a global pandemic.

And so we are going. Which is, which to be fair. It's all connected. It's all connected. Well, it's connected and that has disproportionately affected black people in this country. So, you know, I think, I think again, definitely affected black people in this country. So, you know, I think, I think again, it's another example of how the system was never made,

we say the system is broken, the system was never made to function for everyone. It was made to function for white people. And that includes the healthcare system as we have discussed a great length, which is reflected in the fact that COVID-19 has disproportionately impacted black people. So we will return to talking about that. This week, a little bit more of a focus on COVID. We wanted to do kind of a general check-in.

It's sort of left for very other shanable reasons, left the sort of mainstream conversation, or at least lost a bit of the limelight that it had pretty much completely absorbed. And it's unfortunate in that when something is not the headline media focus, I see a lot, and I see this reflected on social media, and I think that it's probably true beyond that. There seems to be this kind of belief that perhaps it's not as big a deal. And I think that it's important to remember that there can be multiple things that are all big deals at the same time. And coronavirus seems to have, because it is not the headline, it's, I think some people believe like, well, it must be going away then, right?

Like, we, it's gone. It's gone. It's gone. We lost interest, so. It's over. So that's it. That's the most, it's an American attitude. We lost interest in it, so we don't know.

And that is not the case, but I will say interestingly, and I don't know if this is, there, there has been a bit of an uptick talking about, and this kind of broke through this week, and I, and I asked you about it because I needed some help sort of decoding it that there was a big, uh, Lantern study on, uh, Hygarksy Chloroquine, which we'd discussed in a previous episode. There's big lenses that was retracted. And I saw several, I would say, bad actors on Twitter saying that this is proof that the media just glombed onto this and that the establishment was using this to try to target Trump by fixing the results of things like that. So I wanted to get your hot take.

Yeah, I think I'm glad you brought this to my attention because once I started reading into it one, it became pretty clear to me what really happened and why it is unfortunate in that if you are trying to expedite the not the scientific method, but the process by which we do a study, design a study, do a study like publish, put the data together, not publish it yet, get it reviewed and you know, accepted as something that is a reasonable study and the outcome looks

appropriate based on the method and all that and then get it published. That process has been short-circuited somewhat by necessity. We need data. We need it. Nobody's trying to, for the most part, people aren't trying to mislead anyone. They're just trying to get answers as fast as possible to save lives. There's a need to move fast. But whenever there is that need, and so some of the safeguards against bad methods and

bad science are easier to cross, you open the door for perhaps intentional malfeasance or unintentional, I don't know. It's a strange story I have to say. As I dug into it, I found it a little shocking, the truth behind this article and why it was retracted and exactly what is going on here. It was a lot more in depth than I thought. So. I'm on A, Z, let's go. So there were actually two studies that were retracted.

The one that got the most press was the Lancet study. And by the way, the Lancet and the New England Journal of Medicine, which are the two journals that had to retract COVID-related studies, are respected medical journals. They're among the good ones. Yes, and so- And which should be noted though, as long as we're on the topic though, the Lancet is a much cooler name for publication than the New England Journal of Medicine.

The Lancet is a cool name for a publication. It's a cool name for a publication. But they're both generally accepted to be respectable publications that go through appropriate peer review processes. I mean, because there are a lot of journals. And know this if you don't already. If you are somebody who looks to journals for truth, do some digging into, if you find a journal where you're like, I've never heard of this one before, do some digging into the journal before you just accept, like what their process is, how they get, how they review things, where their funding comes from, all these things matter.

Anyway, these are, these are, these are generally accepted to be good ones. So the first thing from the Lansing got the most press because it involved hydroxychloroquine, which has unfortunately become a political medication, which I didn't know there would be one, but there it well. You should have guessed. You should have guessed. That's not true. Our history of HIV tells us that a lot of medicine is political. But hydroxychloroquine was looked at in a huge study in the Lancet to see if as Trump

has suggested it is going to be this miraculous cure for COVID. And here's what they say Trump and some of our top scientific minds, right, Sydney? Well, no, just now, I think I think that among actual scientific minds, the answer, the the the feelings on hydroxychloroquine has always been, maybe it works or it doesn't work, I don't think there's been anybody who has been touting it as a miraculous cure that I would call a scientific mind. Anyway, so here's the study. Hydroxychloroquine or chloroquine with or without a macrolyde

for treatment of COVID-19, a multinational registry analysis. That is the name. for treatment of COVID-19, a multinational registry analysis. That is the name. Scientific studies never have sexy names, I would say. Very rarely. Sometimes they'll come up with an acronym. They'll name it in a way that they have like, Jupiter is the acronym or something. That now that's now that's cool.

Now that city is cool. They didn't do that with this study. Oh, that's less cool because man like come here Super man. That's cool. This study is not a party This study looked at the efficacy of hydroxychloroquine or chloroquine With or without because you may have remember it was the question was should you treat somebody with it and should you pair it with Azethamysin the Z-PAC the antibiotic that's a macro wide that's what they're talking about so alone or with azithromycin, the z-pack, the antibiotic. That's a macro-wide. That's what they're talking about. So alone or with azithromycin, in 96,000, 32 patients, in 671 hospitals from six continents.

It seems good. It's huge, right? And in order to do that, like, as you may imagine, we're in the midst of a pandemic, it's not like they went from hospital to hospital and set up a study. There was a bunch of different people working at different hospitals that were doing it's like smaller. Well, sort of. This is really observational. So if you're going to do a study like this, all you need is a bunch of data. You don't really even need other people involved. You just need to get a bunch of data. So they took a database that compiled diagnosis codes, treatment histories, outcome measures, whether it be death

or you know, ventilator use, whatever. They took all that data from all of these hospitals, put it into a big giant database that could be searched and analyzed for the use of researchers. Now, you may imagine this database could have tons of different info, right? And like, you can see where something like that would be used in medicine. We have this giant database that just has a whole bunch of information about patients, about what they, what diagnoses they have. I mean, there's value in a big database like that.

So what they did is they took a big database like that and they just looked for certain things and analyzed what they found. So you don't really have to connect to any one of those 671 hospitals to do that. They're feeding the data into their computers because that's what you do now. You put all of your records into the EHR, electronic health record, and all of that goes into the database, and the database is being analyzed by these researchers. Does that make sense? Because that is how this data was collected.

I think it's important to know that it wasn't like a physician in some hospital, in one of these six or seven-to-one hospitals saying, like, let me collect this data to send to our study. It wasn't like that. So they looked for how many patients had COVID in the facility, how many got these meds, how many didn't, and how did they do, how many died, whatever. After analyzing on this data, they came to the conclusion that patients treated with hydroxychloroquine or hydroxychloroquine plus azothermisin did no better than the patients who weren't treated

with it. And in fact, they found a higher rate of life-threatening fatal arrhythmias. Seems bad. Part abnormal heart rhythms. Seems bad for a high-doxychloroquine. So they published this study in the Lancet and the whole world gasped. And all of the different, there were some big actual trials going on

with hydroxychloroquine across the world where they were actually, instead of just looking at data, they were actually like giving these patients hydroxychloroquine, not giving these patients hydroxychloroquine and watching what happened, which is a better, that's a more robust study to do than to just observe data. So a lot of these studies got shut down as a result of this because Because if you, I mean, you can't do that, right? Like that's unethical. If you have evidence that you're studying a drug

that's gonna kill people, you can't give people the drug. Right. So the study is shut down. So those studies shut down. And a lot of people thought, okay, we're past this whole hydroxychloroquine nonsense. Fast forward to, I think it was just like a week or so later, it was a pretty short period of time, whereas scientists started reading this. Immediately people started to notice problems with the study, with the data, with the

whole method of it. And they started to call out individual problems. And then eventually 200 scientists would come together to write a letter to the Lancet to say, this is a problem. There is a problem with this study and you are better than this and you need to look into this. So one of the things they immediately identified

is that the numbers for Australia didn't make sense. Like they knew what the Australian numbers were and the numbers in this study were way higher. And so immediately they were like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, that's not possible that the data is accurate because of even just this one piece, we know we in Australia know this is wrong. And then they looked into it went oops sorry one of the hospitals was marked as being in Australia but wasn't actually in Australia it was somewhere else. So our bad that's the only problem. So initially they put out that as like okay yes found it problem addressed got it. And then they were like well no no no no, no, no, there's more.

There's some more things here. How did you get this much data? Because it does seem remarkable, right? Because this data was collected between the period of December and April as the world was just figuring out throughout various countries and various places where these hospitals are.

When we were just figuring out what was going on, how did we collect so much data? How did we get it so exact? How could we come to these conclusions? The number is mind-boggling, really. I mean, it's just, it's so many patients, it's so much information. People really started to question like, I don't know, I don't think these methods make sense. And then some of the hospitals,

some of those 671 hospitals who were said to have collaborated with this study, started to say, hey, we didn't, we don't know who these people are. We don't know anything about this. What do you mean? So the 671 hospitals should at least know that their data is being fed into this database

They don't know anything about it So all the sudden all these places that supposedly have relationships with these authors With these with this study with this database. We're going we I don't know how they would get our data like We didn't we didn't agree to sign over your data to anybody Like we didn't we didn't agree to sign over your data to anybody Specifically the hospital in Glasgow was like the NHS is not doing this We're not part of this I don't know what they're talking about and we're named as being part of this and we're not So then it started to call into question the whole thing

So the authors of the study issue to statement that said Look We got all this data from this database and we thought the database was accurate. But now we're seeing that maybe it's not. So we're going to do an independent review. We're going to hire people to come in and review this database to see if the database is true.

Because what they're saying is what the stuff we did with the data we know is solid. But the data that we got initial. Yes, it's the raw data solid. So they they asked for this review and then they came out after that and said, you know what, actually they won't let us do it. They're telling us that because of various privacy and access and okay. All this different stuff, they're not letting us put independent reviewers on this database. And so now we can't verify the integrity of the data. So the authors themselves requested that the Lancet retract the study. So I feel like we're in closer to the villain of the piece, isn't he?

And then following this, there was the study in the New England Journal of Medicine, Cardiovascular Disease Drug Therapy and Mortality in COVID-19, which was specifically looking at the danger of taking a class of blood pressure medications, ACE inhibitors, while you have COVID, because this has been a question, is it more dangerous to take this if you have the disease? And it said that it was okay. This was also based on data using that same database. And so it was retracted by any J.M. because they were like, okay, well, if the database is in question, then the study is in question, so let's retract that too.

All right, and then we find the owner of the database, we pull off the mask. It's Mr. Barnes, the owner of the Old Amusement Park. I knew it. Why did you set this database, Mr. Barnes? Why are you trying to fool all of us? And wouldn't have got away with it too if it wasn't for Sydney, Maguroy.

That is not, that is not who owns the database. It's not Mr. Barnes, okay, let me pull the mask off, I get, you're right. It's Tony Shaloub. I never thought, monk himself. Why are you, why are you implicating poor Tony Shaloub in this? I'm pulling in the mask off again, you're right,

it wasn't Tony Shaloub, Simon Cowell, that's a little treat for everybody that saw this smooth movie, which Simon Cowell is inexplicably featured. It was, I do think you like the name. Okay. The name of the database is Serger's Fear. Activate Serger's Fear. And sentient data platform.

This seems to be the weak link in this chain. And I'm going to tell you more. I'm going to tell you more about the history of Sergis fear and how we got to this. But before I do that, let's go to the billing department. Let's go. The medicines. The medicines that ask you let my God for the mouth. my God for the mouth. Sydney, I believe you were about to besmirch the good name of my new robot friend, Surgeosphere. You can see him hovering behind me using his anti-grave lifters. And I just, whatever you have to say to me, you can say to

Surgeosphere, my new best friend, who is also a robot. Well, if you want to find out more about you can say to Sergis fear. My new best friend, who is there also a robot? Well, if you want to find out more about Sergis fear, I'll tell you. I'll ask him. If I want to know, listen, if I want to know more about Sergis fear, I'll ask him. Hey, Justin. Yeah. Do me a favor. Well, I'm starting to talk.

Pull up an open tab there and Google Sergis fear and try to go to their website. The database is called Sergis fear. I think the first thing you should know about it, yeah. The database is called Sergis fear. And I think the first thing you should know about it. Yeah, just go to the Sergis fear website right there. Oh, no, this site is suspended. Oh, everybody's coming from a guy's Sergis fear. I think it's in high Sergis fear. They're broke up police after you. Serggesphere was initially started back in 2008 by a doctor, Sapon Desai, who by the way,

is one of the authors of this study. I think it's worth noting. Okay. One of the authors of the study that was retracted. So wait a minute. So wait a minute. So wait. No wait, stop.

Hold on. He's a co-author on this study. So this guy, I may look silly after you give me more info, but the situation is I understand it. Where it was everybody who offered this study is like, we need to do an independent review of this. And this guy was like,

Yo, we do, who made this? Hey, hey, whoever made this day to get out here, we need to do an independent review of it. And then he puts on a mustache and calls the bag like, no, you cannot. He was actually the only one who did not call for its retraction. I should, I should have noted that. He was, he was the one who did not like, he was a part of the original like, is there a concern? And then it sounds like he, I feel bad for the other authors because they're so far. I have no reason to believe that they were intentionally

misleading anybody. I really don't. And I can't, I'm not going to sit here and judge Dury and whatever the expression is. I don't know if this guy, I mean, it sounds bad for him, but I am not an investigative journalist. I have read the work of journalists who figured all this out. And I am not, I don't know what he knew and how he got his data and what his methods were.

I don't know. I am just telling you facts. This is where we are right now. So I'm not going to sit here and accuse anybody of anything because I don't know exactly who knew what when. Okay. So, Dr. DeSai is a vascular surgeon. He started the company back in 2008 and initially he was selling medical textbooks to students. He started this while he was in residency by the way.

So like this guy's- Wow, industry. This guy's got tons of energy. He's very busy. He has an MD, he has a PhD in an adby in Cell Biology. There's been some questions about other degrees. He may or may not hold There was some evidence that a Wikipedia page was edited back in the past

Like to add things that were not verifiable. I don't know He tried he did have his own medical journal briefly at one point. Not anymore. He got an MBA in 2012. So very, very active, very, very busy. In 2019, surgesphere transition from textbooks to medical data. To, and this, this idea is not strange, right? Like this is not the only company that would do this. No, it's sex here. I mean, textbooks are boring. We get in a medical data. That's the hot spot

right there. Well, it's no, but I mean, like from a, okay, you know that marketing companies want your data, right? They want all the stuff about it. That's why Facebook keeps surfacing me ads for the same things over and over again, because I want everybody to have my data. I'm really loose with it in the hopes that eventually it will be useless. So everybody has my data, no one will want it anymore. That's my theory. So most a lot of companies want your data so they can sell you stuff. Well, in medicine, your data is useful for us to research, right? Like that you can see where this connects.

If we're all feeding these diagnoses and these treatments and these outcomes and computers, we can start to figure out what's going on with people. So like a big database that collects medical information is not strange. That's a good idea. And it could be very profitable, as you may imagine. So he transitioned his company to do this back in 2019. I don't know

what else it has been involved in specifically. Sergius fear as an entity, but obviously the database whatever it is has been used in these two giant studies, one of which decides a co-author. So, now that nobody could verify any of the data, and we started to wonder what the heck is up with surgesphere, and it's called this other study into question, people have started digging into Dr. Dessai himself to try to figure out, like, is this intentional? Is it just made up? Does he have data? What is this thing? Like, what are we dealing with?

You know, I mean, you can't. There's no way he just made all these numbers up, whole cloth. So, like, where is all this coming from? I wouldn't say there's no way. I mean, we've seen a lot worse on this show. That's true. It would be pretty wild. I don't want to impune his character,

but I'm the saying it would not be outside the scope of reality. I really don't know. I will, I am following the lead of a new friend of the show. I love when I find a new friend of the show. Remember when we found Dr. Lasagna? Yeah. He became a new friend of the show. Dr. Elizabeth Bick is our new friend of the show.

She is a microbiologist who specializes in scientific integrity. She's like a detective, a science detective, who looks at my research. Like bones, basically like bones. No, I don't think that's what bones did. A science detective, yeah, sure. Well, but no, this is like a detective to look for bad science. detective, yeah, sure. Well, but no, this is like a detective to look for bad science. Oh, not so you're saying not a detective with science powers, but a detective who specializes

in bad science. Well, she also has science powers. Oh, so she's even better than bones. Okay, great. Sure, Sydney, whatever. I've never seen bones, but I'm going to say she's better than bones. You're not okay. Just talk a bunch of nonsense on our podcast city, that's fine.

We're supposed to be reason based in skeptical, but you go ahead and talk about your nonsense about how this anybody's been to the bones. Okay, that's fine. So. You know me, seasons, bones ran, I can't start. Dr. Beck looked into a research paper that was co-authored by Desi back in 2005,

which was actually the basis of his PhD. And in the paper, which was published in the journal of neurophysiology, she found some problems. She found all the way back in 2005. She looked at this research and went, okay, one of the things she specializes in, you're gonna think this is cool. She can analyze scientific images and look for manipulation. Mmm. To see if this is really an image of like, because we're talking about pictures of cells and things, right?

We're like, the average layperson would look at it and go, I don't know, is that what that's for? Like people on Reddit try to spot Photoshop's, right? Except yes, except she is an expert in this area. So are they? They're on Reddit. Why would they be weighing in if they were experts at me? So she started looking and she found that there were these tissue sections.

They were looking at the inner ear of different rodents. And she could find like where he had, whoa, someone. I don't know who has duplicated the same part of an image into multiple other places within the image to play with the data. And she called the whole thing into question because of these images that she says are fraudulent. So like they were copy and paste it. Okay, and she is the expert on this.

She has done a ton of this. And this has triggered a ton of examination into basically every paper he's ever been involved with. So now there's this big search into all the research that he's done in the past to see like, is it other stuff maybe manipulated or misleading or wrong? We don't know. And it's also found stuff like digging into his past.

I thought this was interesting for our audience. At one point, there's a video of him where he was starting a crowdfunding campaign for a product that was a wearable, neural induction device. Oh man, what a sign me up. That sounds awesome. That could increase brain function and creativity.

It's like a limitless pill except you'd wear it. Sharks, I'm here to pitch you on my limitless pill except you wear it. This is my assistant, surgesphere. The hovering anti-grave bot. I don't think it ever happened, but anyway. Yeah, so you know it didn't happen because you can look at me and not see one on me.

So you know it didn't happen because you can look at me and not see one on me. So you know, I will tell you that typically, I mean, you don't see retractions of giant landmark studies in well-respected medical journals often. But when you do see retractions, it's not usually this dramatic. It's usually just like, oh, we found a conflict of interest or, you know, what your methodology turned out to be flawed in this very specific way that wouldn't be obvious to everyone. And it is not usually this. On the bright side, I think that learning about Dr. Beck has been great because, again, I think our listeners would enjoy knowing what she does. Not only, again, a microbiologist works on the human microbiome.

She was involved in like, color of vaccine research for a while before she kind of devoted herself to scientific integrity, preserving it, and fighting like manipulation of scientific research for other ends. She actually took 2019 off of paid work to just pursue this. Why does this happen? Where does this happen? What are the causes of this kind of fake stuff? She found like, apparently, specifically in China, medical students are, they have to publish research before they can become doctors. That's incredibly demanding. I will say that as a medical student here, if I had had to publish before I could become an MD, that would have been very, very difficult. And so as a result, there was,

she found this paper mill where people were just ch turning out these studies, true, untrue, duplicated, whatever, just so people could publish something and move on with their lives. Who? And anyway, she's off to the mission. How I get the nerd to do your homework, huh? Yes, except this is scientific data that adds to our body of knowledge.

And if it's fake, then it's bad. And it takes us in the wrong direction. We're saying that they were all nerds. Everybody involved with art. Got it. Okay, I'll just say that distinction. So where does this leave us with, by the way, you should follow around Twitter. At micro-biam bi-o-m digest. I know. The perfect handle for that. I love her now. She's a coolist. Thank you for her radical work. You are my Sherlock.

Anyway, so where are we with hydroxychloroquine? I'll ask her to be Sydney's friend if you would mind. Please, be my friend. I'm a fan. So anyway, there was another study which was not as fraught as this one. Did have some flaws, but it looked at using hydroxychloroquine for what we would call post-exposure prophylaxis, meaning I have been hanging out with you

and I found out that you were just diagnosed with COVID. I could take this right away to try to prevent me from getting COVID. That's post-exposure. As opposed to pre-exposure, which would be like, I take it every day before I go to work because I know I'm gonna be exposed to it. That's post exposure. I suppose a pre-exposure, which would be like, I take it every day before I go to work, because I know I'm gonna be exposed to it. That's pre-exposure.

I kinda like the morning after pill. That's a way to look at it. Okay, I know that that's not a virus. No. It's a sparmise, but you get the idea. It's a good metaphor. You're nodding in fatif... They're better, no, they're better metaphors,

but we'll just... You're giving me two thumbs up, but nodding in fatically. So better. No, they're better metaphors, but we'll just give you me two thumbs up, but not in fatically. So I'm assuming it's great metaphor. Post-exposure preval access. And it did not see any effect, but it was, again, not a perfect study. Obviously, bigger trials still need to be done.

And we still need to look at a lot of people are still trying to claim that it's great for pre-exposure preval access, meaning that as a physician, when I start working in the hospital again next week, if I take it every day before I go to work, I will prevent, you know, getting COVID that way. And I have currently, we have no evidence to say this is true. We have no evidence to say that it works as a cure, as a treatment, as post-exposure

pre-afflexus, as pre-exposure pre-afflexus. We don't have any evidence to say any of that. We don't have definitive proof that it doesn't work, I would say. But yeah, it's much harder to prove a negative proof. Yes, and I would say that the body of small studies, the body of research that says it doesn't, is growing bigger and bigger every day. of small studies, the body of research that says it doesn't is growing bigger and bigger every day. But I don't know, these big trials that had to be stopped have been restarted.

So we'll see, a proper research takes time. And I mean, we'll see. But I would say that one of the loudest voices yelling about this surgesphere stuff was a doctor Raul, did Jay Raul, who did a study on hydroxychloroquine early on with like 24 people in it that showed amazing results supposedly and has been highly criticized. His methodology has been all caught into question also by Dr. Beck. So there were problems on both sides of this. The surges for your data right now, we cannot verify its integrity whatsoever,

but his study was also flawed. So I mean, this is why it shouldn't be political. This is why a medicine should either work or not work, and we can find it out through objective data, not because somebody stands at a podium and says it does or not. Fair enough. One other thing I wanted to remark on other than all this

confusion about hydroxychloroquine is the World Health Organization released a statement that was widely covered by the media that a symptomatic spread of COVID was not happening. Yes, or was very as extremely rare. Extremely rare. So our initial big worry was that it seemed to be that you could get this, not have any symptoms, but go out into the world and spread it to be silent spreaders.

Yes. And that made it very dangerous because then you're not going to stay at home. You're not going to, you know, write. And now they're saying, oh, no, not a problem. Okay. I don't think that they were, because there were a lot of people saying, look, the World Health Organization is trying to mislead everybody where they don't know what they're saying, oh, no, not a problem. Okay, I don't think that they were, because there were a lot of people saying, look, the World Health Organization is trying to mislead everybody, where they don't know what they're doing.

I don't think that's true. I just think maybe they're not great science communicators all the time. I think that's what we're dealing with. A lot of our... You know, they should get the best science communicator on the planet, who I happened to be married to, Dr. City, Macroi, just hire the, just hire the, the number one gun as I call her.

Well, the said stir. Well, if the world health, health organization is looking for communication, help, I'm, well, I don't have a lot of free time, but I have some hours here. If you don't do it, I'm going to get service here to do it. And he communicates with the two things, binary code and tasers, okay? You don't want service. And questionable data.

Questionable data. And unquestioning judgment. He's just pure judgment and has bad data. He sucks. I'm actually sitting, I'm getting pretty scared of service here. I know that we've become close in the past 25 minutes. I'm getting a little freaked out about our burgeoning friendship.

So anyway, the, here's the truth. Justin, if you had, if you have contracted coronavirus, okay. You get us to that out there? No, I know you haven't, but this is the best way to explain this. There is a chance that you will be asymptomatic, right? That right now, you would be positive if I tested you, but if I said do you have symptoms, you'd say, no. Now there's also a time period where I would test you

and you would be positive, but if I asked you if you had symptoms, you would say no. And then a day later, you would get symptoms. That's pre-symptomatic. That data point has already been established. Exactly. And that's right now. We're not following enough people longitudinally and saying like, Hey, do you have symptoms? No. Okay. I'm going to ask you again tomorrow. Hey, do you have symptoms to know who's asymptomatic, meaning they'll never have symptoms and who's pre-symptomatic, meaning they just don't have them yet. And the other people that haven't been sussed out and all this data are people who have

very mild symptoms or kind of a typical symptoms who might not think to mention it. Like, you know, we've heard a lot of people have some GI problems with this as opposed to the traditional like cough, shortness of breath. So we say, do you have any symptoms? And you say no, because you don't think to mention that you had diarrhea. So they're not dividing out,

asymptomatic, pre-symptomatic, and mildly symptomatic people with that statement. Because pre-symptomatic people, we have no reason to think they're not contagious. They almost certainly are. I would say that the very small percentage of people who actually have no single, like, why don't I say very small percentage?

However, many people have absolutely no symptoms, whatsoever, the entire time that they have coronavirus, what they're trying to say is those people do not seem to be particularly big threats in terms of transmitting the virus. But we don't know how many of those people are actually pre-symptomatic and are going to get symptoms at some point. That is what the World Health Organization was trying to stay. So it doesn't change any of the recommendations. You still need to wear a mask if you're going out in public. You still need to avoid large groups. You still need to, if you're sick, stay home, of course. But if you're at risk, you need to stay

out of public as much as you can. All of those things remain true. That statement doesn't change anything. And I think that it was just, it was factually correct, but it was contextually misleading. And not again, I'm not saying intentionally, I just think that you have to really think through these things, especially when there's so much misinformation, there's so many people with agendas, and there's so many people who are so quick to look for conspiracy,

you really have to be careful how you word these things. So that is the truth underneath all that In terms of current numbers I think the latest data is that 21 states actually have increasing numbers of COVID right now There was some thought or there was some reports that it was related to the protests that Timeline does not work out right now thought there were some reports that it was related to the protests. That timeline does not work out right now. These probably are related to a couple things.

One, the re-opening in many of these states. Two, Memorial Day related celebrations. There were a lot of Memorial Day type gatherings that these are probably related to. In addition, there's been increased testing in some of these states. And so that's added to it too. They're just finding more of these patients. There've also been several like isolated large outbreaks in some of these states. Like in our own state, there was an isolated outbreak within one of our jails. Yeah. And so it made the numbers spike, but it was isolated to that population. And, you know, we could we can trace that in a way that you couldn't trace a widespread outbreak

necessarily. I know we don't have that. Would you think it's fair to say that, and I'm, this is this may be asking you to do much too much speculation, but would you fear to think it's for to say though that we have not seen the Explosive growth that I think a lot of people expected when some of these states started opening back up. I think that's true I think what we kind of thought would happen is that a predictable two weeks after things opened up We would see our hospitals overwhelmed again. Yeah. And it wasn't quite like that. One, I would say it's taken a little longer.

And two, it hasn't been that dramatic. But I would caution that that doesn't mean it's not going to get worse. In all these states where the numbers are going up, the numbers are going up. I mean, something needs to be done to address that. Right. And I know Arizona has been has had concerns that their hospital system could get overwhelmed

with this. There've been concerns within their hospital systems. So, you know, we're not we're not out of the woods by any stretch. And the more I think people aren't thinking about it and they're getting lacks and complacent. And because it's not top of the top of the fold anymore, I think that that puts us even more at risk. I don't you know, I'm not going to sit here and say that there is no risk to protesting. If you are out in the streets protesting, of course, there is risk there. And as I've said before, I'm not saying that we shouldn't be doing it, but there is a risk to it where I'm asked as much as possible, wash your hands as much as possible. If you are

sick, I would encourage you to stay home. For the safety of others, you know, if you're ill, you don't want to go out and spread that to other people. I'm going to take care of yourself. You want to get better. But there may be more cases as a result of protests. I don't, I mean, people are out in gatherings. And so I would be lying if I said, well, I don't think that I think just because it causes just doesn't mean that people are out in gatherings. And so I would be lying if I said, well, I don't think that, I think just because it causes just doesn't mean that people in groups can't accidentally spread a virus. So I would continue to be cautious.

I would please, please wear a mask. There's a lot of good data. The more we get into this, the more we find that, if you wear a mask and I wear a mask, we're protecting each other, you wearing a mask protects me from you, You wearing a mask protects me from you. Me wearing a mask protects you from me. And so if we're all wearing masks, we can greatly reduce how we spread this virus when

we do go out in public. And I would continue to encourage you to do things thoughtfully. There are great lists out there from epidemiologists and virologists talking about how to safely engage in different activities this summer. NPR put out a report from camping to dining out. Here's how experts rate the risks of 14 summer activities. And I thought that was a really interesting way to look at what could you do if you need to do some stuff this summer. What could you do that's lower risk? What could you do that's lower risk? And then take your own health into account. There is no safe activity other than staying home right now.

But everybody's not going to stay home. So do things thoughtfully, purposefully, and wear a mask? Well, I mean, that's disappointing for me. I try to make it a point in every July of going to King of Zealand and looking at resurface in the park. So that is off the table for me this year. Yeah, I would not. Good for my tongue, I guess.

So I was a lot of a variation. I mean, the World Health Organization has said that the risk of surface spreading is lower than originally thought. Okay. So you're thinking I could like lick the beast. I'm just glad I got to lick the four texts one more time before they took it down. No, please don't lick any surfaces.

That's a new one I've never said on this show before. Not on this show, but to our children yesterday. Constantly. Constantly. Every moment of every day. We talk about not licking things, but please be safe, please be thoughtful, please not just for yourselves, but for others. For me, thank you so much for listening to the podcast. We hope you've enjoyed yourself.

Thank you to the taxpayers for these that are song medicines as the intro and outro of our program. And thank you so much to you for listening. We really appreciate it. That is gonna do it for this week. So until next time, my name is Justin McRoy. I'm Sydney McRoy.

And as always, don't drill a hole in your head. Alright!