Sawbones: A Marital Tour of Misguided Medicine - Sawbones: Dr. Anthony Fauci and Coronavirus Myths

Episode Date: April 17, 2020

This week on Sawbones, we dive into the backstory of Dr. Anthony Fauci, a beacon of hope and reason for so many in these troubling days. In the back half of the show, we also talk about a bunch of coronavirus bulls**t that you knew was bulls**t but we're gonna tell you anyway.Music: "Medicines" by The Taxpayers1

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 misguided medicine. For the mouth. Hello, everybody, and welcome to Saw Bones, a marital tour of misguided medicine.

I'm your co-host, Justin McRoy. I'm Sydney McRoy. Well, Sid, I thought for sure we'd be able to talk about something else by now. If you'd asked me in the Halcyon days of mid-February, I would've said, no way! Well, we still be talking about coronavirus in April. I think that I would've have I thought the same thing. But here I don't like to admit when I'm wrong. That's hard for me. That's very hard for me.

Oh, kidding. I didn't think. This is new information I'm learning now about you, my wife, of 15 years nearly. You don't like to admit when you're wrong. You know who may have known that. Oh, I got to update this chart. I keep on you. You know who may have known. I got to update this chart. I keep on you. You know who may have known better. Justin. Who? Dr. Anthony Fauci. Oh yeah, I love that cat. Yeah. It looks like this year you may lose sexiest man alive again. Robbery. Highway robbery. There seems to be a big movement to get Dr. Fauci that. robbery highway robbery there seems to be a big movement to get dr. Fauci that no no second not only the sexiest man alive i don't know him personally but he does not from my research of him he does not seem like the type to really care about such distinctions i you know what i really like about antony Fauci is in

the press conferences as things have gone on there is has become and you see it when anybody asked a harder question. There's a real from Trump. There's a real ask your mom energy with it's like, I'd love to let you get out that. Let me hold on. You got to ask your mom. Let's see what mom says. Then if she's like, no, you can't get any of that. Like, well, you heard your mom.

I don't know what to tell you. He's trying to play, he's trying to play the parks and wreck. Rob Lowe and the whole energy that him and Ben have when they're like, yeah, right. Oh man, that sounds great. I don't know. Let me check with Ben, no way. Wow.

Can't do it. I don't know. Except way less likable though. Yeah, way less. Then Rob Lowe. Anyway. Yeah. Dr. Anzi Fauci is a hot topic in the news that people get very nervous when he's not around

I would say at any time. Yes I wanted to talk this entire episode isn't just about Dr. Fauci Although I do I did want to talk about him a little bit because we've gotten a few requests to like who who is this guy? Because even though in in the world of infectious disease and the NIH and people who follow that scientific community, he's a giant outside of that world, you may not be as familiar with who he is, what his role is and why some of us just watch these press conferences desperately awaiting the moment

that he will arrive. So I thought that was worth covering a little bit about who he is. And then I wanted to address, we've gotten a lot of emails. I didn't ask for coronavirus questions, but I appreciate getting them because it tells me what people are thinking about and wondering and want to know information about. And there have been a few topics specifically that keep coming up in emails, just, hey, have you thought about this just addressing this one issue? And so I wanted to get into some of the like misinformation that's out there because as we said last week,

this is a time where snake oil would be rampant. I think I've gotten a lot of supporting documentation of that in the last week. And I just to address something else that a couple people have emailed or tweeted about, and I wanted to address real quick, I know that there is a lot of coronavirus stuff out there, and I'm sure there are people for whom it would be, it's less than ideal to continue to have the show be about coronavirus. But I think Sid and I have talked a lot about it.

And honestly, when we're in the middle of a public health crisis and misinformation and staying ahead of that misinformation and educating the public is such an important thing to do right now, it feels weird to not be talking about this because there's so much new information every week, not talking about it seems very strange to us. It seems like kind of shirking our duties for a little bit. So we will get back to the your regularly scheduled programming, I think as soon as we can, but right now,

just it would feel wrong to do so. On a personal note, it's all I can, it's all that's in my head right now, too. So it's really hard for me to Step outside of it and tell you fun Kind of gross weird stories from the past when this is happening right now So and there are many of those on offer We have over 300 episodes you can go back and enjoy as if it's the first time You don't remember the blood-letting episode word for word word, do you go on back? Start at the beginning.

Okay, Dr. Anthony Fauci. So first of all. Who does not sound like you think he's going to, when you just see pictures in video of him, you do not expect that man's accent, the thick, sort of, New York accent, you don't expect. I really, through my readings about him, grown to appreciate him, I consider him now a friend of the show. Close friend. He's in the plenty of the elder realm and Dr. Louis LaZania. I think Dr. Anthony

Fauci can join. Can't top the name though. Can't top the name. Can't be Louis LaZania. So he is the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease, which you probably didn't think about a lot before this. There's a lot of stuff like that. Well, unless you're me, then you may have actually a lot of our listeners maybe did. He's been in that position for 36 years. I read, he was appointed to that position in 84, and when I read that, that my first thought was, that was the year after I was born, almost my entire life he's been in that role.

And I say that to underscore that he's worked with Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Bush, Obama, and now Trump. So he's been there a long time through a lot of presidential administrations, through a lot of different political philosophies and leanings because at the core of it He considers himself a science guy Which does not have a political party or should not should not should not

So as we've alluded to he was born in Brooklyn Christmas Eve 1940 He worked his parents owned a pharmacy and he would make deliveries for the pharmacy on his bike. So he basically is George Bailey so far. Well, the pharmacy wasn't George Bailey's parents. They of course owned the Bailey building alone. But yes, he did make deliveries for the pharmacy. I'm for Mr. Goward. so it's a pharmacist. Okay, moving on. I just, I know a lot of it. Well, he also wasn't born on Christmas Eve.

He died on Christmas Eve if you want to get like, snippy about it, Sydney. Anyway, when he was younger, and I think this is relevant, for me, this helps me decide like, when I'm thinking about a person and how much stock I put into all of their expertise. I like to know that it's not just they know the facts and the science.

I like to know about the heart that's underneath there that helps me personally and some other people may be similar. He actually was really interested in the humanities when he was younger. He leaned toward the humanities. A lot of his family members interested in the humanities when he was younger. He leaned toward the humanities. A lot of his family members were in the humanities. But he also... By humanities, you mean like? Like the classics and philosophy and religious studies and languages and those kinds of things.

Art. Those sorts of pursuits, not necessarily scientific pursuits. But he also was interested in science, and he eventually landed on medicine because he felt it melded the two. And I really appreciate that perspective. I think we should think about that more. But he studied both the classics and philosophy and all the romance languages and all that stuff, as well as the science classes

that he needed for med school, which I think gives him a really unique perspective. Stuff, he's still part of like the American philosophical society, which I think is interesting. He probably does have a lot of time for that right now, but I'm glad it's here. He's keeping up his dues. I would say, he seems like the kind of guy who has,

he can make time for all the things he needs to do. I think he works like 18 hour days. He needs to take it easy. I mean, he's a giant. He immediately went from Cornell into the public health services and he basically worked with them through the NIH until today. So he spent his entire career after he finished residency, he has been doing this. He liked infectious disease because you could save lives.

People were really sick and if you did the right things you could make them better and save their life. That is a nice thing about infectious disease. And when he went in it's interesting because you see this kind of turning point in the history of medicine and we've talked about it a little bit on the show. There was a time period where we thought we had conquered infectious diseases where there's actually all these great essays written after the antibiotic era where you see people saying, well, I mean, there's still polio, which is a problem, but basically other than polio, we nailed it. We get.

Like, we have antibiotics, now we have vaccines. We're good forever. That's fine. You know. And then by the time he entered actually this field, right at the beginning of the 80s, people really thought, he even thought, maybe I'm going into an area of research that is done. And of course, what would happen soon after he joined the NIH and started working in public health is the HIV epidemic.

So obviously this will be proven wrong. His, I think it's relevant to note that his early work, he did a lot of research into the immune system because at the National Cancer Institute they were using these new chemotherapy agents which would help with the cancer, but also as a side effect would just devastate the immune system. Right. That's what a lot of them do. They suppress your immune system and leave you open to other infections.

He saw that as a, well, what if we took these drugs and used them for things like vasculitis, which is your immune system attacking you? We could suppress your own immune system intentionally. Instead of a side effect, we'll do it to try to treat disease. And this line of thinking, him and the other researchers involved, led to all kinds of new treatments for lupus, for rheumatoid arthritis, for the rejection of organ transplants, all those kinds of things. So I think that it's relevant to know that his background and not just infectious diseases, but also the human immune system and immunology and the suppression of the immune system made

him just the perfect person when a new disease began to be recognized in the 80s in the United States that was occurring largely among gay men. He was the researcher who said we should look into this. And a lot of people at the agency were saying, why do we, no, this is not where our area of interest or study is, like, no, no. And this is a marginalized part of society, and we're not interested in this. He was one of the ones leading the charge, publishing the paper saying, we need to pay attention to this.

This is big. This is going to be big. He would create the agency that would dedicate itself to studying HIV and AIDS, helping to prove the link, first of all, between HIV and AIDS, and then come up with ways to manage it. And beyond that, I think it's really interesting to know that when he first started working on HIV and AIDS research, he was actually hated by a lot of the activist community. Like, if you look at, you know, act up and the game in health crisis and like Larry Kramer specifically, they hated Fauci.

A lot of the protests of the time period were not just aimed at the Reagan administration, but were aimed at him specifically. There were lines and songs that referenced Fauci because they hated him so much, mainly because not of anything that he said or did specifically, but they felt that the process to get new drugs to the market for AIDS patients was so slow and plotting and arduous that it was resulting in too many unnecessary deaths, which is all true, isn't that? I say they think that they thought that

whether this was all true. Acurate. It's all accurate. And one of the big problems is that if you had tried an experimental drug before a trial, they wouldn't let you into a trial. And a lot of AIDS patients were seeking out these medications for themselves because they were medicines that they knew were working, but they couldn't get them.

And so when they could, they would try them and then they would get excluded from trials for other medications, which was a huge problem. And you really see this kind of change in Fauci, where he listens to Larry Kramer. He works with Mark Harrington, who is a key figure in act up. And he starts working with all of these activists and saying, you know what, I get it. If I were them, I would be doing the same thing. Of course, they feel this way. And his mindset as this kind of like very rigid, scientist really shifted to, there has to be more of a humanistic quality to the way we address things. We can't just say, well, this is our process for approving a drug. We have to go through these steps. And yes, it's going to take years, but too

bad, we have to find a way to address a crisis. And he was really the researcher who led that charge. He owes, and he would say this to today, I've read interviews with him recently. The activists were the ones who made the change. He was smart enough to listen to them and help apply those principles to the scientific community. And so as a result, he came up with something that they called the parallel track, which was basically instead of the way that you approve a drug is you have to prove, you come up with a drug, then you have to prove that it's safe first. Then you have to prove that it's effective second.

Then you start doing trials in large numbers of humans to see about other side effects or adverse events that you didn't necessarily predict early or on before it is finally approved. This process takes years. What he came up with was the idea that if we know a drug is safe, we can do clinical trials with it, but also get it out to the patients who need it the most. Once we know it's safe, because there were drugs that we had a very strong suspicion we're effective and we weren't getting them to the right people. So he was instrumental in creating that and in helping get people medications faster to try to save lives, you know. And he would build on this in later years, everything that he did with HIV

to help create PEPFAR to take these HIV drugs that we eventually would have in the US that would be widely, you know, acquirable by United States citizens and say, hey, what about the developing world, where they don't have any of these medications? So you would build on this throughout his career. But it's really interesting because you see a scientist who recognizes the limits of just like cold hard data and statistics, and still wants those, but like embraces the patient perspective as well. And this changes medicine forever.

It's important to know that this moment in history, not just Fauci, but all of the activists who were involved. Today, when you have a doctor prescribed you a medication, do they just say, take this, don't ask me why, just take it, trust me, I'm your doctor. No. What would you think if your doctor said that? I would be hurt, and I wouldn't take it,

and the trust would be bad. Right. This is why, I mean, this is this in a large, this this philosophical approach that is embodied by this movement is in large part why now you talk to your doctor about medications. You have to be able to get an advocate for yourself in your own health care. Yes, and about you having the autonomy, which should have already been a principal in our ethics, but to say, give me all the information and let me make the best choice for me as opposed to the paternalistic view, which is, I'm the doctor, I know, look, I care about you a lot, but you don't know

what's best for yourself. Just trust me and do what I say, which I can't imagine ever saying to a patient, but that was standard prior to that. You can imagine thinking, probably. I have moments where I think, please listen to me, please, I know what I'm talking about. It's usually a vaccine thing. It's usually me begging somebody to get a flu vaccine. But I also recognize at the end of the day that you're allowed to make whatever decision is best for you once you have all the information.

But anyway, so this would change medicine forever, this interaction between Fauci and the activists and everything that surrounded HIV and AIDS. And Fauci would continue in his role at the agency to guide us through H5N1 and H1N1 and Zika and Ebola. And through all of these things, he's continued to do research and write about the big one, the big bad one that we're not prepared for. But to think about all the ways we could be prepared for it and to try to make the right recommendations and get his information to the right people. And because we listen to him for all these years, that's what we've been so well prepared.

Because we took everything he said very seriously and took it to heart. And that's why we basically crushed it. Hurray you, America. Unfortunately, I don't know. Knowing the right answers or at least having, I would say that he he has the right the right ideas that will lead us to the answers and getting people to pay for them and create the kind of Infrastructures to enforce them and make them happen are two different things and now we arrive at COVID-19 today and now we arrive at COVID-19 today. So before I get into, I wanted to present all that about Fauci,

so you know, I believe he has, I think, beyond the obvious scientific qualifications to do the things he's doing, he has a lifetime of experience. And some really creative ideas that had we done them earlier could have been very helpful. Things like a platform vaccine, I think this fascinating, if we could have a platform vaccine that could adapt to a whole different like family of viruses, how much more prepared could we be for something like corona virus?

This novel coronavirus, if we had had a platform vaccine based on SARS and MERS and these older corona viruses that we knew about, that we could just immediately adapt and make a, I saw it called a bespoke vaccine for this our decent. We could make them so much faster if we made, if we put the time and energy into that. Same thing with like a flu vaccine that you could get once every 10 years instead of every year.

There's so many, he has all these ideas and hopefully maybe now people will listen to him. I'll take it all seriously. That we're all turning to him. Yeah. I try to listen to Fauci for sure, but I'm hearing so many other things sitting out there on the internet about COVID. and I don't know what to believe well, Justin

I want to tell you about that and You should believe me I know I know but I'm on the internet so much you you couldn't possibly Okay, all right, well, I couldn't pause. There's way too much internet out there to run all of it past you before I do that Let's go to the billing department. Let's go! The medicines, the medicines, the askin' if my God before the mouth. Sid, you got to help me sort through all this internet. I've consumed, I can't wait any longer.

I've got so many great different ideas about coronavirus that I have to hear the truth. So a lot of the emails that we got asking questions about coronavirus led back to misinformation from one person in particular. And I hate to, I really didn't want to present this episode as like the good doctor and the bad doctor because I don't want to I don't want to put mainly because we are a little bit behind on the good doctor. So we didn't

want to drag you know I'm sure there's been some real some real big shakeups with Freddie high more than the whole gang over there. But well I don't I don't want to put these two humans on equal footing because I believe that Dr. Fauci's motivations are honest, you know, and I do not feel that about this other figure and I don't want to elevate them to the same level, which by the way, there's a great profile on Dr. Fauci. A lot of this information came from Michael Specter in the New Yorker. So in case you're curious, you can read a lot more about him because he's fascinating and a very good job.

Stop hesitating talking about this other person's hitting. I want to talk about Dr. Shiva, who I think has a lot of, he's managed to make some waves with some pretty outrageous claims. More waves than I would have expected. This has come to me from multiple different avenues, not just emails from our listeners, and I always appreciate that avenue, because that again tells me what's out there. But I've seen it on my own like Facebook feed. I've seen it addressed in some of the groups I'm in by other doctors who are concerned about this information. And I've heard it echoed not credited to him, but his ideas are gaining a foothold outside

of him, as if they are new ideas from other places. And this makes me nervous because they seem so outrageous to me, but obviously there's something resonating here. So Dr. Shiva, that's not his actual name, but that's the name he likes to go by. So I'm just going to call him Dr. Shiva. He is a, he's a graduate of MIT, which I think that might have something to do with why

people listen to him. Because like if you look at his academic credentials, if you look at his degrees, they're very impressive. He's not a medical doctor, he's a PhD in biological engineering, so he is a doctor. He earned the title doctor. Even though I think a lot of people would assume that if you're giving medical recommendations, you're a medical doctor. Yeah. He is not, he did not go to any medical school. But he does, he went to an impressive school and he has impressive degrees. And I'm sure knows a lot of things.

I would not debate that. OK. But just having a lot of information does not necessarily mean that you do, you make the best use of it. He believes, he's a big defender of traditional medicine, but not only in like concept, not in the specifics. The practices of traditional medicine, he doesn't necessarily endorse, but the idea of the body as a system is he believes is something

that traditional medicine understands. and by traditional medicine, I mean like not alternative medicine. No, I mean, I mean, alternative, I mean like medical traditions that are handed down through the centuries as opposed to what we learn, like scientifically grounded. I should say traditional as like folk medicine. Okay. That kind of medicine. Okay. That kind of medicine. Okay. He believes that there is a, because he studied that, that's what he was called that he study.

And he believes that there is an idea of the body is a system that doctors don't get, but he does. Okay. Because of his work in like biological engineering and like computer systems and that kinds of thing. Like he thinks that we should look at the body like a computer or a car. Okay.

He believes a few other things that are, I think are relevant to this conversation. He thinks that like me, here's what he would say about me because I'm a doctor, I have an MD, and I probably do, too. I assume both of us would be in the same boat here, that we are not inherently evil, but we're dumb.

We don't learn things in medical school that are relevant to most people. We don't know how to keep people healthy or manage disease because of our allegiance to big pharma. Our only interest is in giving you pills. But we can't help it because we're just sheep. And that's all we're taught. Sheeple. Yeah. And the only good thing that I could do would be like surgery, although I don't do surgeries, but a surgeon might have something to offer you or like in trauma. Like he says, if you fall or hit and hit your head or something, maybe a doctor could help you. So other than that, basically everything we say and do is crap.

Okay. He thinks that good health is mainly about maintaining homeostasis of your bodily systems. So balancing our humors. I didn't say that, but I certainly I said it. I certainly see echoes of this because the idea, his idea is that an external pathogen can't really cause the disease. Bracing. He says that we cycle through viruses and bacteria constantly that we're just filled with viruses and bacteria all the time. And like, and what's, what's hard about people like this is that that is not untrue. We do fight off a huge number of viruses and bacteria all the time. You have no idea your body just takes care of just disposes of instantly and you didn't

even know that you were exposed to it. But then sometimes we don't, and then we get sick, and that's the germ theory of disease. What he would argue is that it has nothing to do with the external factors as much as if we have balanced our systems appropriately so that our immune system is healthy. And he constantly refers to both a weak and overactive immune system, which seem counter like, yeah, those are two different things. But anyway, all you have to do is individualize to every single person what they need to do to make their immune system stronger, usually through vitamins and supplements and diet and exercise and those kinds of things, which does sound a lot

like for humans. And he also, he talks about individualized medicine. And I think that's another thing to address because while individualized medicine means I think about you as a person and what exactly you need in your life and I help you achieve that goal and that seems like all really good, what he means is that if you get strep throat and I get strep throat, we don't necessarily both need an antibiotic for that. You might need this collection of vitamins and I might need this collection of vitamins because it's what's happening in our bodies completely different

whereas I would argue no we both have strep throat. Yes. Right. Okay. Does that make more sense? Yep. Yeah. He argues thirdly that HIV did not cause AIDS does not cause AIDS.

It's a bad one. Part of why he hates Fauci so much. He takes a lot of aim at deep state, Fauci, as he reversed him, because he was part of the researchers that... The cover up to try to make it seem like HIV cause AIDS. And so I don't know how to... HIV causes AIDS. There it is folks.

We broke it right here for you. So but he believes it's so weird to say you believe otherwise. He doesn't know that. He doesn't know that. He doesn't know that. He doesn't know that. That's good. That's good. Fourth he believes that vaccines harm our immune system and are unnecessary. All this is shocking. Now, I know it's weird to think of the anti-vaxxer. What a twist. So you can imagine where he comes down on a vaccine for COVID.

Yeah. When it comes to COVID-19 specifically, and this is why he's, because I think he's been pushing a lot of this stuff for a while, is might, would be my guess, but we've all heard of him because of this. He says it is not a problem with the virus, but with our immune systems. And so if we just did the right things

for our immune systems, nobody would get sick, and we could fix everybody who already is sick. Okay, we don't need meds, except for sometimes hydroxychloroquine is in his combo, so actually that one's okay. Sure. But other meds, no, we need vitamins. Ah.

DA and C. Yeah. Are the vitamins we need? We got it. And if we would all take them, we wouldn't get sick. Like, you could prevent getting coronavirus if you take enough of these. Well, this is huge.

And if we, and he also doesn't believe in social distancing. So what he says is, basically, if your levels of these vitamins are normal, go out into the world. You're fine, you're body will handle it. Yes, you're fine. You're not gonna get sick, you're cool. If you have deficiencies, you just get them replaced

and then go out into the world, you're fine, no problems. And for people who are already sick, like in the ICU or whatever, they just need high dose infusions of vitamin C. So once any day, they're good. Ventalators make things worse. Weird, okay. Why do we need so many? That's my question.

Well, and I mean, it's one of those where he uses the proof that like so many people who go on ventilators don't survive, so ventilators must be bad. Mm, spacious reasoning. Uh-huh. And it's hard again, because like there is a reason why you don't want to have someone on a ventilator longer than necessary, because there can be damage done to the lungs

from the ventilator. But if they can't breathe without the ventilator. That's bad too. That's almost worse, one might say. Right. So I mean, he's playing on things that have just enough truth in them that you could find other evidence for certain aspects of what he's saying out there in the world from real doctors.

And so then it makes you question all of it, right? Right. Because there's just enough in there to make you pause. To address these specifically. So let's just be quite a heel turn, by the way, if at the end of it, you're like, and so I get it now, vitamins, that's the way to do it. No. No. Okay. So you didn't pause for that long. So let's address these, these ideas, the ones we have, I mean, I'm not going to give the HIV AIDS thing any, there's no space for that here. He's wrong. We're right. That's it.

Vitamin D, first of all, can you be deficient in vitamin D, Sher? I'm kind of feeling, I feel, I'm pretty sure I am currently. There's a whole argument to be made here where he also talks about how warm climates can help defeat the virus, which is like a thought people have had like will it be better in the summer everybody's been questioning that what will we see numbers drop in the summer because everything gets warmer and we have not seen like the highest rates of disease in the like tropical region of the world. There've been all these questions about that and he likes to play right into that. I would say that if you're gonna make the argument that people deficient in vitamin D and A

are more likely to get sick of this, the highest levels of those deficiencies are actually in the developing world in the tropical parts of the world too, where the most people aren't getting sick. Yeah, so. Vitamin A deficiency to start with is extremely rare outside of the developing world.

You do not have vitamin A deficiency. I do not have a vitamin A deficiency. There's no need to give us vitamin A. And that would be true for the vast majority of Americans period. Vitamin D deficiency does occur. Again, it's not common, but it does, it does occur. Vitamin D, if you are deficient in it, yes, there are a number of reasons why it would be good to take a supplement. However, both of these and vitamin C we can throw in, they're all these things, all they do is help to, they have some function in supporting our immune system, but there is zero evidence that normal levels prevent disease or in any way help treat disease. We've done this research. We know this, or else we would have been giving you

vitamins for a long time. But we're not telling you to take vitamin A. Why do you? Because we did the research. It doesn't it doesn't prevent disease. It doesn't treat disease. Yes, we should maintain normal levels for a variety of reasons. That's not one of them. Vitamin D is actually bad in an inflammatory state. There are actually reasons why you wouldn't want to give somebody vitamin D if they are acutely ill. Beyond that vitamin C, we've done a whole show on vitamin C. There's a ton of misinformation about what vitamin C can and can't do. And there are researchers still studying it. This is not, this is something that he's putting out there and people will think is groundbreaking. But people have been studying vitamin C in sepsis and in ards, which is the severe respiratory condition that a lot of these patients seem to deteriorate too.

People have been studying this for a while and there have actually been some studies that have thought like, well maybe a vitamin C infusion alongside, usually thiamine and some steroids might be beneficial in some patients. The data was we weren't sure. There were some problems with some end points. And anyway, this is already being studied. There's even there's a protocol out there, the Merrick protocol, which is already something that they try and I see use. None of this is new. None of it is going to cure COVID. knew none of it is going to cure COVID. It is an area of research, but it he is not telling you anything that scientists haven't already looked into for a long time. And I think it's very frustrating to see not only is it bad science, but it's it's stuff we already are thinking about. Saying that doctors won't tell you, no, doctors are thinking and looking into this stuff and disregarding what doesn't work

and pursuing the things that does. He wouldn't know though. Because he didn't go to medical school. Get him. So he doesn't know what we learned. Got it. When he says that we don't know anything about the immune system, I would say, well, you didn't go.

So you probably wouldn't know what we know about the immune system. There it is. Um, and when it comes to things like it's not, you know, disease isn't COVID isn't due to coronavirus, AIDS isn't due to HIV. Robert Koch in the late 1800s came up with a series of postulates. So if you want to know if how we decide does something cause disease, we can dig back into history, 1890, a German physician, Robert Koch, who said,

if a bacteria is present or a virus in every case of a disease, and you can isolate it from the host and grow it, and then you can give it to a healthy person and they get that disease, and then you can isolate it from that person and grow it. It is the causative agent of the disease. This is an established scientific truth that we have known for a long time,

and there are caveats and exceptions in specific ways, there are some things that are hard to grow and that kind of thing. But generally speaking, this is how we know that these things are true because of science, and we don't guess, and it's not politically motivated, it's Base. Yes. So unless you have been diagnosed with an immunodeficiency, your immune system works. That is not the problem. And vitamins will not prevent this, and vitamins will not fix this. And if you, especially if you eat, if you live in the developed world and you eat a very diet, you probably don't need any supplements.

And if you do have certain dietary restrictions, you probably already know the supplements you need. It has nothing to do with an imbalance in your homeostasis. So why are we saying all this stuff? Why is it anybody telling the truth about vitamins? There's a lot of, I mean, I don't want to get into what doctor. She was political Motivations are I think it's pretty clear if you watch any of his videos. I mean he's running for the Senate so I think I think you can guess where he stands on a lot of well you don't have to guess

He'll tell you where he stands. He wants us to open everything back up immediately and in social distancing and he'll tell you where he stands. He wants us to open everything back up immediately and in social distancing. And I would say that if we immediately open everything back up and in social distancing, that could be catastrophic. And I think Dr. Fauci made that very clear in the press conference that we watched last night, where we were the plan to open America up or whatever or whatever plan to open up America again. Yes. Where that was laid out for us. It's inspiring to inspiring maybe gets me psyched. Some some things that specifically he claims that I think have misled some people is that

if you want to know that everything he's saying is true just look at our response to this compared to H1N1. And we did not do all of these things that we're doing now during the 2009 H1N1 pandemic because we did not want to, there were not forces seeking to destroy the presidency of Barack Obama, the way that they are seeking to destroy the presidency of Barack Obama, the way that they are seeking to destroy the presidency of Donald Trump. A couple of things, the mortality of H1N1 seems to have been quite a bit lower. We still don't know final mortality of COVID-19, but estimates are between 1 and 2% whereas the estimates of H1N1 were a lot more similar to the seasonal, the seasonal flu is around 0.1 percent. H1N1 was certainly, it did not appear to be any worse than that.

So that's part of it. There was some partial immunity to H1N1 among older segments of the population, if you remember, from older flu vaccines that they had gotten older vaccines, which we do not have any immunity to this whatsoever. This, the R-NOT, how many people you are likely to infect if you're sick, seems to be a little bit higher for this. I think if you look to pass, you can see that this, unfortunately, COVID-19 has just the perfect array of qualities. SARS was very deadly, but not nearly as infectious. H1N1 was very infectious, but not as deadly.

And then this is both. This is both, which is bad. And that does not mean that it's hopeless. We are doing the right things. Staying home, you know, washing your hands, wearing a mask in public, limiting, you know, washing your hands, wearing a mask in public, limiting, you know, protecting parts of our society that are specifically at risk, you know, protecting our elderly. These things are working, which is why you're going to see people say it was an overreaction. This was all for nothing. Cause it works. Cause it works.

If it works, it's, then we didn't need, you gave a really good example to me yesterday about the, I stole that I forget who I saw tweet this. I saw this on Twitter, though, I'd like to credit them, but I don't, I just saw it. And I don't remember who tweeted it, but essentially it was, at this point, saying that we can stop social distancing is like saying, I have jumped out of the plane and my parachute opened and I am floating gently to the earth and I am not plummeting to my death, which is proof that I never needed the parachute to begin with and cutting the strings.

I forget, if anybody knows who said that, I'll mention them on the show next week, but I saw that comparison and it wasn't, I'm not quoting them, but that was the idea. And I think that that's a good way to think about it. Like we're doing the right things. Let's continue floating gently to the earth. I know it's frustrating. I know it's scary. I know there are a lot of other reasons to be concerned. I understand how many

people are out of jobs and I understand, you know, all of the repercussions, economic and, you know, health insurance and all the things, homelessness, everything that stems from that. But the answer is not to just undo it all, because I don't think anybody feels morally okay with just what did Dr. Oz say? Be about a two or three percent increase in mortality if we open the schools back. Open the schools back. And that was appetizing. I don't see how that's appetizing. Man, we've managed to keep Dr. Ross out of the show for a little bit now. We may have to circle back around all draws. I love to revisit draws. Some other things, I don't, essential oils certainly

don't work for COVID. Dang it. Why am I drinking so much of them? They won't help if people are trying to sell you those. Please don't buy them for COVID to prevent or treat. There are a variety of vitamin cocktails. A lot of them include zinc and like really high doses of melatonin that I've seen floating throughout the internet. I don't, I'd say that some of this is based on the same things that this Dr. Sheaver is saying, but the melatonin thing I wonder if it's just to put you to sleep so you don't, I'd say that some of this is based on the same things that this Dr. Sheaver is saying, but the melatonin thing, I wonder if it's just to put you to sleep so you don't think about it? I don't know, because it really high doses of melatonin. I've also seen, of course.

Wait, pre-move on. Welcome to Munch Squad's podcast, The Thundin Podcast, Highline, The Lies, and Grace of Brand Eating. I have a special first munch squad within a Sabons I wanted to share with you. I don't know about this. Smoothie King is adding an immune builder, veggie superfood option,

that I thought you would be so excited to hear about. Given the heightened focus on immune health around the world, Smoothie King is launching a new flavor to its immune builder smoothie lineup. It's this veggie superfood smoothie. It's going to debut at just a beautiful 14th. It's got non-GMO fruits and vegetables like organic spinach, kale carrots, bananas and dates. And it has immune support enhancer, which contains 800% of guest daily vitamin C plus zinc,

iron calcium to support a healthier immune system. Is that so this should knock it out? This should knock it out. No. I mean, if you want to drink that because you enjoy it, you can, but dude, but that's the thing. If you, if you want, I mean, eating a healthy diet, getting plenty of exercise, drinking plenty of water, getting a good amount of sleep, engaging in activities that make you feel calm and at peace and fulfilled with the world. These are all important things.

There is no doctor on earth that would tell you not to do them. When he says doctors want to push pills on you instead of these things, that's such a false dichotomy. No, I want everybody to be able to do all those things. I know right now it's hard. We take for granted because we live in a rural area, we can go outside in our backyard. There's nobody out there. It's just us. You know, you can't do that if you live in a city right now and that's very, that's not good for our health. Right, but I

am. I still want to ask you about the immune bill or veggie superfood and mixed berry smoothies. I'd feel like you haven't covered them exactly because I do wanna hit you with this quote from this movie King of the GMO Rachel Rebecca Miller. Supplementing your diet with healthy vitamin rich foods is more important than ever. And the veggie superfood smoothie is purposefully crafted to fulfill that need.

So do you feel that's accurate? Do you think that this is going to knock it out basically? No. No. Now let me ask you this side question. If you go to smoothie king via carry out and get a superfood smoothie, are you in fact creating more hazard for yourself by the nature of going to pick up this smoothie from another human being? I would not say that that is an essential trip.

I certainly wouldn't say that either, Sydney. I, I, I just, I, that frustrates me when, and that's part of why I wanted to contrast Fauci with these ideas is that as a, as a doctor, I want, ideally, nobody would need my services, right? In a perfect world, ever. I don't believe that that will ever be the world. We will always have things, you know, diseases and illnesses and things. And so my goal is to make people need me as little as possible and be able to take care of things for themselves as much as possible.

And as much as diet and exercise and sleep take care of things for themselves as much as possible. And as much as diet and exercise and sleep and sunshine can do that, that's fantastic. But it would be completely naive of reality to say that that's all that all of us need. No, some of us need medicine every day. And sometimes we need a new vaccine to prevent a deadly illness for all of us, which is, which is the, that's going to be the ultimate thing for COVID-19, I believe.

Well, we could also shut off on the 5G though. I don't even know how to... But the bug. If we shut off on the 5G. I would refer you to Coke's postulates when it comes to COVID-19 is caused by coronavirus, which is a virus. 5G is not a virus. Justin, could you explain better what 5G is? Because I'm a doctor and it's basically phone food that flies in the air to give your phone

the food it needs of data. And I will say this, if you need a good sort of rejoinder, but I believe is the word to that, we don't have 5G in much Virginia and we do have coronavirus. Oh, hey. So that's a pretty good, we're still on the LTE tip. So. That's a good way to, there you go. I mean anecdotal, but.

Finally, I fixed one. anecdotal, but for a state of human beings. Yes, and we do, even though it took us a while to find it, we do unfortunately have coronavirus here. I would just encourage everybody to remember all these things that people like this character are saying. They sound very simple and that's attractive, especially right now because everything's

scary and overwhelming and frustrating because we want to go about our lives. I get it. I do too. We've been in this house a long time. A long time. True. My children would say the same thing. I would, yes. Yes. True. My children would say the same thing. I would yes. Yes. Yes.

And I understand the attraction of those ideas. I would I would counter with the attraction of complexity. Complexity is that's what sciences and that's what public health and disease management and crisis management. That's what all this is. It's complex. And that is challenging. But if we work together and we find our way through that, that's so much more rewarding. That is what it is, just that complex. Every time an expert says we don't know yet,

it's not because they're keeping a secret from you or because it's been solved since ancient times and Dr. Shiva is going to tell you about it. It's because we don't know yet because that's the way science works. It's slow and it's hard and a lot of your preconceived notions are incomplete or incorrect and you've just got to work through them. And watching that play out in real time is very hard, I think, because there are so many opportunities for people to take advantage of that process and make it seem like it doesn't work. That play out in real time is very hard, I think, because there are so many opportunities

for people to take advantage of that process and make it seem like it doesn't work, and that it's broken and that people don't know what they're doing. But it just is that complex. You just have to trust in people like Dr. Fauci and give it time and know that we're going to be okay. We need to maintain social distancing. There is no reason to think that any of that should end right now. That is just, it's wild to me to think about that.

I would not, if they ended it in this stay right now, we would not be leaving our home. No way. And continue to do the things you're doing, wear a mask and wash your hands and stay safe, stay home, stay healthy. do whatever you got to do. I know that it's hard, but... And shut up the 5J. May you mind so I'll shut it off. No, don't shut up the 5J.

Thank you so much for listening to our program, Sobhunts. We hope you're hanging in there doing okay. We appreciate you very much. Thanks to the taxpayers for the use of their song medicines as the intro and outro of our program. And thank you to you so much for listening. We appreciate you. This is gonna do it for us for this week, but be sure to join us again next time for cell phones. Until then, my name is Justin McRoy. I'm Cindy McRoy.

And as always, don't drill a hole in your head. Maximumfun.org. Comedy and culture. Artist-owned? Audience-supported.