Sawbones: A Marital Tour of Misguided Medicine - Sawbones: COVID Reflection and Butts Update

Episode Date: August 11, 2026

While some people in power are trying to minimize how bad things were at the height of COVID-19, we thought it was important to document the real story. Since Dr. Sydnee was working in a hospital at the time, she reflects on the reality of those short-staffed, stressful, overcrowded days. PLUS a lighter note from Justin about butts and an investigation into who is wiping them. Music: "Medicines" by The Taxpayers https://taxpayers.bandcamp.com/ Native Women Lead: https://www.nativewomenlead.org/ Help support this show and unlock bonus content! Become a member at https://maximumfun.org/joinsawbones

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. Everybody, welcome to Sawbones. It's a marital tour of Misguided Medicine.

I'm your co-host, Justin McElroy. And I'm Sidney McElroy. Hey, Sid. Hey, Justin. Kind of unconventional sawbones for this week, as we live in unconventional times. And we wanted to talk about the COVID-19 pandemic that happened. Yes. Well, specifically, a specific aspect of it.

So recently, Dr. Anthony Fauci has been. I don't, being interviewed, grilled, questioned by Congress in regards to policies that were enacted during the pandemic and then also the contents of his diaries. And I'm not sure why, well, we know why. But I don't know what we're hoping to gain from this. I think as of this moment, he's also been held in contempt of Congress for pleading the fifth. I don't really know what will happen with that. But what this led to was renewed conversation about Dr. Falcons. about masking policy, about various restrictions and guidelines that were put in place during the COVID pandemic,

and culminated in an interview with RFK, the Secretary of Health and Human Services, in which he stated that the ICUs during COVID were not full, that that sort of line that we have said before, that, you know, during that time we were trying to reduce the transmission, of COVID because even if most people who got COVID were not going to become severely ill, that it would overwhelm the hospitals and the ICU's and that would lead to excess unnecessary deaths from people being unable to access care beyond the already, you know, fatal nature of the disease in some individuals. Does that make sense?

Yeah. And so we didn't succeed in reducing transmission, and so the ICUs were overwhelmed, the hospitals were overwhelmed. We know this is true. Yeah. And RFK said it wasn't, that the ICUs were not full. This was a myth. Oh.

And so I think it is, I've heard a lot of my fellow health care professionals, doctors, nurses, people who worked in ICU's and hospitals during that time helping to manage COVID or just being in a hospital where COVID was happening, who have spoken out about the truth. And I don't particularly want to revisit that time. Right. It's not something that I enjoy talking about. But I also think that in moments where history is being rewritten by individuals with nefarious intent, it's really important that those of us who lived that history and were witnesses to it speak up and clearly state what happened for the record. because the more voices that tell the truth, the more likely we are to drown out the lies.

Okay. And if we skew our perception of history to a point that we cannot learn from it, then we are, of course, doomed to repeat it. Yeah. And after that, I'll have an equally important update. So I just want to say, first of all, I'm talking about the height of COVID-19. of the pandemic 2020 when a lot of the worst, not all of the worst, but the worst things we would see were happening. So I'm talking about those times. If that is not something you want to engage with right now. We got some wiping news later on the show.

Yeah, Justin's going to talk about some silly stuff in about, what, like 15 minutes, 10 minutes, like 10 minutes. In 10 minutes? Something like that. I'm not going to belabor this. I just, this is just for the record. I feel like I'm on the stand. I feel like I'm just giving my testimony. You're the one who want.

Hey, listen. Listen, Doc. The microphone is yours. I don't. When I start talking about it, I start crying. And I don't like to do that. I don't like to see. I hate crying.

I know. So, first of all, the ICUs were absolutely overwhelmed during the height of the COVID pandemic. We had so many patients who needed supportive care that we definitely in many places were able to provide. And many times this care would be enough to support someone through the worst of their disease process and they were able to leave the hospital alive. However, if you have more patients than you have beds and ventilators and nurses and doctors and so on and so forth, then you can't care for them all and people die. In our hospital, we initially tried to just manage COVID patients all over the hospital. Basically, like if you're admitted, I mean,

this is true for most hospitals. There are units kind of. for different things. Like if you're admitted with a heart problem, we have like the cardiac unit. If you're admitted with a stroke, we have a neuro unit. But also because of the nature

of our health care system, which is completely overwhelmed and inadequate, often you'll just get put wherever there's an empty bed. So initially, COVID was kind of managed all over the hospital by all teams of doctors.

So I, at the time, was working as an academic family medicine physician in a hospital setting. I did more inpatient medicine than the average family doctor does in this country. You often think of like internal medicine as the hospital doctors, and family medicine is like the outpatient clinic doctors. And that's true a lot of places.

But in our specific area, family medicine does a lot of hospital medicine too. I was trained in more hospital medicine than the average family doc. So I was there a lot leading a team of residents and students. It was decided pretty early on that the attending should be the one to care for COVID patients. So we can, two reasons. One, this was pre-vaccine. We were all vulnerable. And we didn't understand the disease process very well or transmission.

So while we thought in 95s and all of the PPE we were wearing was adequate, we didn't completely know. And why put a resident or a student at risk when the only person who really needs to walk in that room and see the patient from the team is me, the attending? And let's be honest, if you know anything about that system, they ain't paying the rest. residents have to go in there on it. No, no. They are not getting hazard pay. No, they are not. No, the residents are paid very little, are overworked and underpaid and underappreciated. And the students are paying to be there. So we certainly didn't want to send students in there. Now, all that aside, the nurses and the respiratory therapists and a lot of the other staff in the hospital, they had to go in every room no matter what. So I think I don't want to take away from their experience, which was

more intense in many ways than mine. as the physician. So I rounded on the, at first in our hospital, there were very few COVID patients. West Virginia, I think was the last state in the country to get a COVID case. You remember that? We were so proud. Do you remember that? We were so like, so cocksure about the whole thing. It hit West Virginia on St. Patrick's Day of 2020. Wow. I remember that very well. That was our first case of COVID. I remember the first case of COVID that I managed in the hospital. And I'm going to be very vague in general, obviously, for HIPAA reasons, but it was not a particularly serious case. I remember thinking, if this is what it's going to be like, we can handle it. This is intense wearing all the

PPE and not just wearing it because I had to, because sometimes in a hospital you're supposed to wear all this PPE, but you're not really that worried. In this case, I was genuinely worried. Sure. Was intense, but the wave hadn't hit yet. By the next time my turn-on service came around, we were fully in sort of the height of COVID cases that year. We had created a COVID unit to try to concentrate exposure among staff to one area because what we were finding is that staff in the hospital were becoming sick pretty rapidly. We, while in the rooms, I think most people were pretty good about wearing protective

equipment. Outside of the rooms is where transmission was happening in the break rooms and at the nurse's station, where somebody might pull down their masks for a second just because it's getting irritating. And then, of course, outside of the hospital, people were still going to stores, to church, to gatherings, and not necessarily wearing masks. And so a lot of the staff became ill. This limited the number of people we had available to take care of COVID patients, and the COVID unit spilled out into the rest of the hospital. I can tell you that there were definitely many weeks where our ICU's were both full.

Our COVID unit was full. our pulmonary unit that's like a unit for patients with lung disease in general was full the ER was holding multiple overflow beds completely full at times

having patients stay in hallways because the ER was completely full the PACU which is where you go after surgery generally and the reason we use the PACU is because they're supporting people who have just come off of a ventilator

usually or some sort of supportive respiratory care perhaps something like that or been under anesthesia and so they have a little more monitoring than other units in the hospital vulnerable time. So that would be a unit where you could put COVID patients and they could receive a higher level of care than maybe on the regular hospital floor. But we were basically converting every spare bed we had that could be monitored into a COVID bed and still not even coming close to meeting the need.

It became this situation where you're trying to decide how stable is stable enough to leave the hospital because we desperately need beds. but at the same time, if you discharge somebody too quickly before, you know, they're ready. Sure. Then they may come back very quickly, even sicker than before. And so then, like, in health care, we talk about our different ethical principles, do good, do no harm. Justice is one of them, autonomy is the other one. But justice, like, how do I weigh? You're basically better, but you could probably use one more day.

But I've got 10 people boarded in the ER that desperately need my attention right now. And as you can imagine, that's really difficult for people who work in health care to make the decision like, I have to prioritize this person over you right now. And then you're making that decision over and over again every single day that you're going to work while constantly being worried that you're going to contract this virus that we barely understand anything about. Now, I have been told in many like sort of patient circles that doctors base that decision on who makes the biggest prettiest doe eyes at them. Is that true? because I'm always giving some of my most adorable looks, and I'd hate to think that that effort is wasted. I think what people with intentions similar to RFK would have you believe

is that we make that decision based somehow on monetary gain or insurance status. I will tell you that when I was walking in and out of COVID room after COVID room, in 95, that I would not, I couldn't get a new one until I had used. the one that I had the number of hours that you're allowed to. So we all had paper bags that we would mark how many hours we wore it each day or how many minutes cumulatively and then before we could get a new one. And as I was going in and out of these rooms and taking off gown after gown and we're all dripping in sweat and exhausted, I was not thinking about anybody's insurance status or how much money I might make off them or any.

anything related to business or money. Just, well, you just promise me that you were tracking your bowel movements because that will become extremely important soon in the episode, and I just want to know that you were covered. For many of us who worked in health care at that time, when you walked into the hospital, the safest thing you could do was don all of your PPE and then try not to take it off until you left the building. Now, because of the nature of health care shifts, that's impossible.

you have to eat and drink or at least drink fluids, even if you're not going to eat, even if you're going to go without food, the whole shift. And most of us have to pee at some point. And every time you broke that PPE, you felt at risk. My exposure to COVID came in our call room, not in a patient room. And the result of that was that I had to spend time hiding in a room in our basement

until we got all of our necessary testing back, while I wandered if I, like, if right now I was developing an infection that might kill me because it was pre-vaccine, we didn't understand much, and all I could do was stay away from Justin and the kids because, you know, I didn't want them to get sick with this new deadly virus too. I, I, there were a lot of patients that I cared for.

And many will tell you, like, well, most people, lived. Yes, that's true. But many didn't. And I, one thing I will, I will always remember is that one patient I cared for the day before that patient was transferred to the ICU and then would never come out. They were struggling to breathe and the patient's hair was all tangled and matted from being in a hospital bed for days and had like fallen into their face. And they were gasping and they were trying to use their oxygen and it was a bad situation. And I remember taking the hairband off my wrist and pulling their hair up out of their face. And then the next day they were, they had been transferred to the ICU by the time I rounded again and I never saw them again.

And I know that doesn't feel like a big deal. But what I will say is that everybody else who works in healthcare has dozens of stories just like that, that they will carry with them forever. And it is a huge betrayal of the work that all of these individuals did for the Secretary of Health and Human Services to sit on television and say the ICUs were not full or to in any way undermine the tragedy of that time, the trauma of that time. And how much damage that did to a lot of us and our ability to, I don't know, trust the system. around us, trust the government, trust each other. So anyway, it was a lie. The ICs were full. The hospitals were full. And there was a lot of unnecessary suffering because of that. And could we go back and criticize a lot of policy from that time? Yeah. We have on this show said that in the early days of the pandemic, we got it wrong. I didn't think what happened

also also trump was president like it just to remind you that's what was happening so yeah i bet things are handled them properly but to take away from how devastating that experience was for the individuals who were sick for their families for those of us who worked in health care for us as a as the human race i was going to say as a country but it was the entire world i mean i you just can't i don't know if it was if it was malice or ignorant or if he just thinks if he lies enough, we'll all believe him. I think the bigger question, Sid, and those are all good questions. Don't give me wrong.

But here's my, the bigger question I have is this about our RFK. This is my question. Does he wipe his butt? Well, Justin. Don't worry, dear. You don't have to answer this because I have a hard-hitting investigation all prepared for you. trying to answer the question. Do you think the RFK

Jr. wipes his butt? Well, you're going to have to tell me after we go to the belly department. Let's go. The medicines, the medicines that ask you lit macabre for the mouth. Now, Sidney, I know you know the name Sean Omarah, Dr. Sean Omarah. But I wanted to... Do you know what he's a doctor of?

Yes, and we'll get there. Okay. I didn't know. I read that he was the nutrition advisor, but I don't know what his degree is. is in. Well, where did Sean O'Mara, who is a sort of health optimization expert for the Trump, for the Trump cabinet? I hate that term. Yeah, it's rough, isn't it? Wait, is he just for the Trump cabinet? Like, he only advises the cabinet?

Well, no. I mean, it's just, that's one of the many things that he does. He advises a lot of high net worth individuals. He started out as a cop. Start as a cop in. DC as an undercover narcotics officer. How he got his start. Then he transitioned to law and then he pivoted into medicine. Wait, as in like he

went to law school? See, he graduated from Villanova with a jurist doctor in 89. And then he trained as an emergency medicine doctor. Did he do a residency? Like he finished? Honey, I

I'm not Wikipedia. I'm just reading to you about whether or not he wipes his butt. So you got to let me get to that. I'm just curious. A lot of people will say I trained in something and then the question is, but did you finish? Sure. Did you do it? I'm actually not one of the precogs from Minority Report. I'm just a guy with a printout

about whether or not this guy wipes his butt. Okay. Okay. Thank you. He left the ER and he started doing concierge medicine. He calls himself the, this is a quote, the only physician in the world specializing in health and performance optimization. He is completely built around advising like high net worth folks, reportedly up to $18,000

bucks for a consultation. And he discovered that the root of all of our problems was visceral fat. The root of all of our problems. Yes. While he was doing all this. concierge medicine. He was at he was really hitting his wealthy clients up soliciting donations for a charity called dr. Sean's non-profit. Hmm that's that's that's really so interesting one of the most interesting about he told them that they would be eligible for a deduction from their taxes by

working with Dr. Sean's non-profit or they could pay for a consultation with pre-tax dollars. That's according to the Minnesota Attorney General's office so interesting that they are interested in this as well. What does his nonprofit do? Nothing, because it doesn't exist. Oh. On June 14, 2023, the Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison

filed an official assurance of discontinuance against O'Mara. Ellison stated on the record, the doctor-patient relationship should be one of complete trust. Dr. O'Mara abused the trust of prospective patients and donors by claiming that clinic fees and donations

would benefit a non-existent charity. Yeah, also the AG's filing said that Omar had a past medical licensing history that involved allegations of misleading conduct. And that's what's, that was within 2023. Fast forward in 2026 and all American wants to notice, this is this guy wiping his blood or not. Can I say something? Can I say something? Yeah, sure. About, I think this is, this is tricky. He goes by Dr. Sean here. You have referenced him as Dr.

Sean. Dr. Sean. And like, when you say Dr. Sean, it makes me think of Dr. Nick from the symptoms. Simpsons. Sorry, what was the name of the show again? The symptoms? Symptoms? Maybe after season 40. Yo. And that's such a double-edged sword because my patients, and so I always think like if you go by a doctor your first name, then you sound like the fake doctor. Hello everybody on Dr. Sean.

Yeah, you sound like a scam artist. Yeah. But then at the same time I go by. Yeah, the doctor shown's real charity. We're doing great work. A lot of my patients call me Dr. Sidney. And so am I, do I sound like a scam artist too? I'm just trying to be relatable and approachable.

He has somehow become the sort of diet guru for this administration. Of course he has. Of course he has. Yeah, he's advising RFK Jr., J.D. Vance, the Commerce Secretary, Howard Lutnik, and Transportation Secretary, Sean Duffy. Here's what he's pushing. He's pushing these clients into a regimen where they consume only the flesh of grass-fed animals,

and they pair that with fermented foods like sourcroped. Okay. I don't even know. I mean, like just that? They recently altered our dietary guidelines, encouraging more daily fermented foods, and that's heavily influenced by this guy's lobbying. The, we're now...

Just this guy. Just this guy saying, hey, we got to get more kimchi up in this joint. Yeah. So he is advising a lot of people to on this diet, this really French diet. Whoa. It just like your hot take on that. Does it sound pretty good? Well, I mean, we've talked about this administration's love affair with red meat.

They love to tell people to eat more meat and that there's not really a lot of evidence to support that that is something we need to do. First of all, we eat plenty of meat as a country. And secondly, there's plenty of evidence to suggest that too much red meat. meat is bad for you. And so it's a weird. It's a weird. Like, no, we should not, there is no, I would say there is no evidence that we need to be foisting more meat into the American diet. Do we need to eat protein?

Yeah, of course. But the idea that we need to force more meat on people is not true. And the fermented food thing is rough. I like sourcrow. I like kimchi. And I have nothing, I have no evidence that they're bad for me, certainly, or you. Like I don't believe that we have a body of evidence to suggest you shouldn't eat fermented food. But I think it's one of those things where like people take an idea like that and run with it.

And they're like, this is the answer to all of your problems. Just eat more fermented food. And we don't have evidence that that's true either. That like if you eat enough kimchi, you'll never get heart disease and you'll never get cancer and you'll live forever. There's no study to suggest that. So if you like kimchi, you should eat it. It's tasty. I like kimchi.

You know what else I don't have any evidence of? that Dr. Sean O'Marro wipes his butt. Okay, tell me about... I have evidence of that. Tell me about his butt. So he recently did an interview with the New York Times. Like, recently I mean this month.

The first thing I wanted to tell you about is the urine because, man, you talked about how you had to pee and I was about to last before the break and I was about to snake in there with a, but did it look like Mountain Dew? But then the tone dropped in such a way. We're doing the serious stuff first,

so that we could then do a palate cleanser, so to speak, of fermented food and clean bowel movements. So on the video called The New York Times, Omar held up a jar of his own urine. The author of the piece, Willie Staley described as the color of Mountain Dew. And Omar said, passing urine, this color is a good thing.

That's a quote. What is he? Well, I mean, I know he's eating fermented, but that wouldn't make it. your urine, Mountain Dew colored. What is he doing? I mean, it sounds like he needs to drink more water. We're getting to the hot of it.

Are you ready, Sydney? Get ready. There was a time where if you brought a jar of your own pee to an interview, you could not be an advisor to the president. Yes, but at this point, he's already an advisor. So now it's just sort of like, you know, here's what's up. So anyway, he boasted about his right, pee-pee. And then he pulls out, he pulls out the Bristol stool chart.

Mm-hmm. I'm familiar. Okay. And he boasts about his perfect type four snakes, which was like a point at the end and a point at each end. It's just like, he said, he described his own bowel movements as this is a quote, odorless, wipe free over in three to seven seconds and nearly orgasmic. This is what he said in an exact quote To the New York Times The Paper of Record for the United States of America

I could have a bowel movement behind a sheet At a dinner party in the corner of the room And nobody would know Is that a brag? That's a that's a fumble brag I think is what they call that And he said this is the real Type 4 snakes

He says that his don't need toilet paper He says when you start eating healthy You don't need toilet paper animals in the wild have no residual stool on their anus. How does he, did he check? The notes are down there now, so I can't tell you anything else official. Did he investigate wild animal buttholes to a point where he felt confident in making that statement? Because I feel like you need a body of evidence before you make a statement like that.

I don't know. I don't know if a bear's butt has residual. Listen, I was very polite during your segment. I feel like I didn't interrupt with my own COVID stories. no matter how traumatic they might have been. Sorry. I couldn't order for many of my favorite restaurants for many weeks. Listen, Sid, I put the notes away.

So anything else after this point is me extrapolating. And I do not stand behind it from a legally defensible position. It's just me, popular humorous, Justin McElroy. What would you like to say about this man's but white being? By extension, if this man's method of judging success is his not having. having to wipe his butt. And then this is what he is foisting onto these people who are in the government, like RFK Jr. and J.D. Vance.

He's saying, listen, if you want to be sick at eating and dope at pooping, you don't have to wipe your butt. So he's like checking in with him every day. Like, well, guys, do you still have to wipe? Did you wipe today? Did you wipe today? And there had to be a moment, there had to be a moment where they were like, you know what? I think I'm done.

I'm just going to let go and let God. because the only way you know you can't prove a negative, right? You can't prove you didn't need to wipe. You just have to believe it. You have to believe it. So what I just, what I think is that probably J.D. Vance and R.F.K.

Jr. and Sean Omar don't wipe their butts. That's all I'm saying, according to the paper of record. I mean, he says you shouldn't have to if you eat the diet I eat. So it sounds like he doesn't. He's advising RFK Jr. and J.D. Vance, the vice president of the United States of America. on this side that says that they don't have to wipe their butts anymore. Do you wonder ever...

I'm saying RFK Jr. and J.D. Vance probably have poop in their butts from where they don't wipe it. And this guy, too. Do you ever wonder if all of this is an extended public humiliation prank on J.D. Vance? Do you feel like... He never wins out on any of these. No, like I feel like... God, he's like the Charlie Brown of living.

Trump elevated him to this place where we all had to look at him and hear him. And we all were like, oh, no, we don't like any. anything this guy's selling. Rough, man. And then he was like, let's put your relationship with your wife on display and how uncomfortable

the two of you appear around each other. And we can all discuss that for a while. And then the couch thing, we're all going to know that and we're all going to talk about that. And then we're going to put this guy

in the New York Times who says he tells you not to wipe your butt. And everybody's going to say J.D. Vance doesn't wipe his butt now. And he's like, I don't know. Please don't sue me.

I don't know if he wipes his butt. I'm saying. Actually, I did the part earlier when this is just humor. Popular humorous. and Cindy McElroy. I didn't even put the doctor on there because we're just goofing. It has raised the question.

I'm asking the question. Does JD Vance wipe his butt? Does he wipe his butt that day? Probably not. I don't know. If this was all an extended prank on J.D. Vance, it would make more sense than anything else that's happened. Yes.

Thank you so much for listening to our podcast, Sawbones. We hope you have, you feel better than you did before. Is that fair? It just takes a few seconds. And like of all the ways to save the planet, preserving those few sheets of toilet paper, I don't know that that's the way. Right. Like, it's okay. Keep it clean.

Just for your own comfort. For no other reason. Oh, by the way. Try a bidet. If you can try a bidet. No, no, no. This is what I'm saying to you. These cats are all operating in spheres where they have bidet access 100% of the time.

This is the hidden secret, right? They're blasting it out. But you still need a dab. It's wet. You need a dab. Just a dab. Just a dab. Please, go.

It's uncomfortable. Or just don't tell people not to wipe their butts. You're in charge of health. Hey, thanks so much for listening to our podcast. My brother, my brother. It feels like it, doesn't it? I know. There was a lot of, a lot of butt content there.

We really spun out at the end. Yeah. If you just skipped the first part of this, you're welcome. You're welcome to our medical history podcast, Sawbones. It's a thinky show for sophisticates. We'll get back to business. as usual next week. I just, I feel like, you know who always has business as usual? Dr. Sean O'Mara. Three to seven seconds. Three seven seconds. Orgasmic. Nearly orgasmic business. Nearly orgasmic.

I just, I just, again, I think it is important. If you have a platform and you know a truth, I think you should stand up and say it because there are plenty of voices who are willing to lie. And the more of us who keep saying the truth, the more it will be what we know and remember an upon in the future. Thank you so much for listening. Thanks to the taxpayers for the use of their song, Medicines, as the intro and outro of our program. Wanted to let you know that if you wanted to support the show and show your support of the show, you can go to mackleroymerch.com because we have a sawbone sticker with our new logo designed by

Matt Taylor, and you can pick that up at mackerelmarch.com. It's very cool. It's very cool. That's going to do it for us until next. My name is Justin McRoy. I'm Sidney McRoy. As always, don't drill a hole in your hands. Maximum Fun.

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