Shaun Newman Podcast - #215 - Mike Kuzmickas

Episode Date: November 3, 2021

CEO of Ichor Blood Services discusses antibody testing, the results they are seeing & life in Mexico. Let me know what you think Text me 587-217-8500 Like the podcast? Support here: https://www.patreon.com/ShaunNewmanPodcast

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give Wade Gartner a call 7808-808-5025. And if you're heading into any of these businesses, let them know that me and Casey sent you, all right? Now let's get on to that T-Var-1 tale of the tape. He's the CEO of I-Corps blood services. I'm talking about Mike Kuzmiskis. So buckle up, here we go. This is Mike Kismiscus, and welcome to the Sean Newman podcast.

Welcome to the Sean Newman podcast. Today, I am joined by Mike Kuzmiscus. So first off, sir, thanks for hopping on. Thanks for having me on. I can hear the background in Mexico. I'm envious. A, it'd just be nice to, I mean, we've got great weather going on here in Alberta right now, but at the same time, I assume you're enjoying a little sunshine down there, shall we say?

It's quite nice down here. Yeah, it's quite 30 degrees every day, you know, partly cloudy. It's nice. Can you give the listener a little bit of your background? Obviously, being the president of I-Corps, that's how I get hooked up with you. But maybe you could give a little bit of your background just so people understand who they're listening to. Sure, you bet. So I'm a Calgary born and raised 36 years.

I've been in Calgary. I'm a mechanical engineer with a mechanical engineering degree from University of Calgary. I have a master's of business from the University of Calgary as well. And so my background professionally is project management in the oil and gas industry for the last 15 years. I was managing pipelines, facilities, well pads. And then at some point, I don't have any medical background at all. I sort of noticed there was a gap in our healthcare system with respect to access to getting lab work done. You could go and wait four or five weeks for an appointment or you know, you try and go and walk in somewhere.

is a 45 minute walk, wait. So I just decided to see what that looked like. And while my wife was pregnant with our second, I quit my engineering job to start up a medical services company pre-COVID. This was pre-COVID. I didn't have a market for anything. I just jumped in the deep end. So that's my professional background,

very steep learning curve once I got into the medical field. And then about three months after I started ICOR, obviously COVID showed up. And we were able to pivot right into doing some antibody testing, right from early days. We were actually the first company in Canada that did antibody testing. And so because we were the first company in Canada that did antibody testing, in my first, you know, six months of business, I was doing interviews for national post global mail, national coverage. We had somebody in Toronto doing some work for us. We had a bunch of people in Alberta, and we just rocketed to the top of Google search rankings. And that's sort of

how the company got built was actually on the back of the COVID antibody testing then. And so since then we've branched out, you know, we're working with a lot of of premier labs, you know, Mayo Clinic being the latest one. We're expanding our offerings. We just announced that we are, will be accredited in BC within probably a month, hopefully, and we're partnering with some organizations out there to bring what we're doing to about 17 pharmacy and medical office locations out in BC. So starting to grow, starting to expand. But certainly right now, the focus is still the vast majority of our calendar is, is that sort of antibody testing that we'll talk about today. So yeah, that's a little bit of my

meandering background and careers, but I'm obviously happy to be aware on that and things are going pretty well. You know, it's what I said to you before we started. We're in this thing and, you know, I'll speak to Alberta specifically. We got 86.8% of the population that is eligible with, you know, the first dose, closing in on 79.6 with the second dose. So, like, as that number shrinks, you know, the pressure that's put on by the government, I just keep going, like, I don't understand why they don't look for solutions.

And I feel like when I stumbled upon you, and I was saying this earlier, that, you know, I've been pumping your tires now for a couple of months easy because I'm like, this just seems like a no-brainer. Like, if people are terrified to get the shot for whatever the reason is, and they're are valid reasons out there. Sure. To me, like, so let them continue to get tested, right? Like, as a government, don't you want to bring the population together?

Yeah. And so what you do just seems like a no-brainer solution to me to prove that people are safe, and that's what we should be maybe pushing for. Yeah, I would agree with you. I think the one-stop shop solution, which is vaccines for all, I just don't think it's going to work here. It's really not. I mean, you've talked to the same people I've talked to.

A lot of these people, they like to use the word vaccine hesitant. I don't think they're vaccine hesitant. I don't think they've ever been more certain of anything in their entire lives, to be totally honest. So, you know, things like $100 handouts for vaccines and, you know, there's just a certain part of our population that's just, they're just not going to get it. And so you're banging your head against a brick wall. So in parallel to that, you have obviously natural immunity, which has been a concept that's been around for, I don't know, a long time. you have testing. Testing as with any market, with any industry, as time goes on,

more competitors enter the marketplace. The price point comes down. So the cost of testing now is down, right? So we've had to align ourselves even on the rapid antigen testing, right? So for, you know, 40 bucks now you can get a rapid test, that'll probably even come down even more. So for people that don't want to get the vaccine, you know, to say you need a rapid test, 70, 72 hours, which is where we're at right now, you know, $120 a week. that's the cost for me to, you know, not get the shot.

I don't know. I don't see why that wouldn't be allowed, to be totally honest with you. The natural immunity thing strikes me as interesting because if Alberta was consistently getting billed as the one getting pumped the worst by COVID through this whole thing, you would think that we would actually be in the best shape of any province right now with respect to moving forward with COVID. You should have a very high population percentage that has,

has seen the virus, has built up immunity, the T-cell immunity, and they should be fine. So I just find it odd that the pressure from Alberta continues, and we're being painted as the worst one in the country, yet really, like I said, if we got hit the worst out of everybody, we should actually be in some of the best shape right now, not being a medical doctor, just falling in common sense. So there's solutions. It's a multifaceted approach that we should be able to go through to get through this. And it should be an understanding.

People say, oh, you don't want to get the vaccine, but you're willing to get tested. That's great. At the end of the day, the goal is the same, we're achieving the same goal. You're trying to get to that herd immunity. You can do that any number of ways. So I 100% agree with you. And that's what we're seeing with the work we're doing with the clients we talk to all day, right? A lot of people agree with that. So it's a tough situation to find ourselves in for sure, especially the divisiveness and the hate, right? They're pinning people and neighbors against each other. I wouldn't be the first one to say that I've lost friends over this because of our stance on things. It's really tough.

Yeah, that's, I think we can all attest that. You know, in the beginning, in the beginning, before there was the mandates and now, of course, the vaccine passport, right? I feel like it didn't, it infected some families, right? And by infected, I mean the idea, the divisive ideas. Infected a few families, right? And probably those families argued about politics before that. argued anyway, yeah. But there's a lot of families, including lots of families that are close to me,

that were pretty like tight net, like never anything came between them. I can safely say right now. I'm trying to think of a family where this hasn't come between. I know there's a few out there for sure, but there's a ton that it has come between, which is like, as a government, I just feel like that should be the last thing you want to do. Yeah. The last thing. You know, I was wondering in I-court, you mentioned you're the first company in Canada. I was wondering with all that coverage, has anything changed? Like, you know, like at the start, I would, I would assume you would have been billed as a hero because you're finding ways to allow people to safely conduct work. Now that they're pushing so hard with, with the one-step approach, has anything changed for you? Like, have, like, I guess in my brain, I'm wondering if at any point the government approached you and just was like, hey,

you got something going on here that's really good. And we should like collaborate to help ensure people feel safe. We have, on a federal level, absolutely not. Right. We just don't have the connections to get that in front of anybody. And I don't think there'd be any interest anyway.

On a provincial level, we have, you know, since we started this in July, this specific score base, resulting in data that we have. Since we started presenting those numbers, feedback that we've gotten has been kind of like,

this is interesting. No one's collecting this data. You know, we should look into this. We should look into this. Even you heard Prid McKinney say two months ago, we're going to look into this. I don't know if anyone's looking into it. I think the problem with a lot of this is the political side where the line has been drawn so hard and people have become so entrenched in the one path, solution that there really isn't room politically to show compromise. You kind of all, and you've doubled down, you've tripled down at this point.

So even though it might make sense, I just don't know if politically there's the, it's, you know, the willingness to provide accommodation, because it's a lot easier from a eight billion person simulation perspective the way COVID's being done. The only way you can really, it's difficult to manage that if there's exceptions, right? So the only thing you can really do from that level is say, for the great or good, this is what needs to happen. We're going to have some things along the way that don't make sense. But in the grand picture of the grand scheme, this is how it's got to be. And I think that's the line that everyone's towing. So it doesn't leave any room for individual considerations.

Individual you talked about people that legit can't get it or are scared to get it for, you know, for legit medical reasons or whatever. It doesn't leave any consideration or room in society for that, that side of things, these individuals, which is a country like Canada. I mean, that's Jesus. That's how he came to be is accommodating people. That's how we're we are. So it's just, it's completely backwards from, from our roots to where we are today. It just doesn't make any sense to me. Yeah. And I think the comment, I, you know, you can get a, in the conversations I have behind closed doors, you can get a good feel for what the population is, is worried about right now. And here's something that you talking about considering the individual's

case, you know, empathy, putting yourself right where that person is. Sure. The comment that's come up now multiple times across both provinces has been we're losing our humanity right now is that by this one step approach for the greater good right is that yeah but as we go down further this path and there's this last percentage of the population that like listen i don't want this like i i am not getting this i'm willing to lose everything for it you look at what's happening right now with the vaccine passport people aren't allowed in pretty much anything. And I just had a conversation.

Think of about this, right? I'm a small Saskatchewan boy. In Alberta, there's rinks, right? As we know in Canada, the rink is the heart of any small community. They've been told they're not allowed to serve food in the facility, right? And I mean, they're not allowed to bring in food from outside. I'm going, okay, well, that doesn't really make any sense. Like, I don't know who makes that makes any sense, but whatever.

Okay. We're trying to like blanket this. But if you establish the paper system, you know, the Vax pass, then you can have a full kitchen. But we already know that the vaccine wanes. We already know people with it can transmit it, everything else. And so I go, this is the problem we got going on across everything. Is it like we got this one step approach. Man, logic.

Logic left the building a long time ago. Honestly, it did. Even early days, you take a look at how things like, you know, mask rules were applied and right, the kind of, I was laughing, the concept of a restaurant where if you're sitting down at a table, you don't have to wear a mask, but if you're standing up in the exact same spot, you can take your mask off. You know, like, so it's difficult to follow. The hockey thing is, is interesting, like the concept of making a parent present anything

to watch their six-year-old play hockey, watch their eight-year-old play hockey. It's just odd. We do a lot of testing right now for parents that just want to watch your kids play hockey. You know, we've watched a little program where they can actually do a rapid test from home under video witness by us. So just to make it a little bit easier and, you know, I can do two people at a time just to help them out. But, I mean, it's just, it's just gone, it's gone a little nuts. I don't even know.

I don't even know where to go from there really, yeah. But you're so actually that's a, that's a. That's also trying to think about it. Sorry. So you're talking about the vaccine. So you have a concept now where, you know, the flames went to this early. You have, as long as you've had your vaccines, you know, 22,000 people in the Saddle Dome and everything's roses. I don't know if they had to still wear masks and they're not.

But the concept that if you're vaccinated, you're fine. Yet we know there's breakthrough cases. We know, you know, effectiveness is waning. We know there's going to be a, it's going to be a mutation comes that escapes the vaccine because everyone's already talked about that. They're already teeing that up. And then you have the data we have. So we have vaccinated people coming in for this test to confirm that their vaccine worked, whether they have immunocompromised concerns or they just want to know.

And we have 30%. We don't have, you know, the vast majority of the people come in are unvaccinated. So we've got a few hundred people that have come in that have been double vacs to come in. And 30% of them leave with scores less than top end. and about 10 to 12% of them leaving nothing. Like the vaccine didn't work. They have zeros on the antibody count. So you have a bunch of people walking around that have been double vaccinated

that the vaccine just didn't work. And you got people walking around that are not vaccinated. They got COVID a year ago walking around with 250s, full strength protection just the same as. So it's just it's like I said, logic left the building. It doesn't make sense. How can you not have this conversation now? From a political perspective, the win on the table is massive.

You've probably got a couple hundred thousand people based on the sample cells. We're saying a couple hundred thousand people in the province that have very good antibody scores. And once those antibodies win, they've still got that T cell memory. So they're probably good to go. Lump those in with your numbers. You're vaccinated herd immunity numbers. And you're probably where you need to be. Like it's really, it's tough.

You got, you got, this is good. You bring up the data that you guys are seeing. Yeah. I got to understand what you just said there. You're saying that people who are double-vaxed, when did they come in to see you that they had no antibos? I just like to clarify that. Sure, sure. And I don't want to make claims.

So we're not set up like a proper clinical trial where you have 40 very detailed questions and you're keeping timelines. All we've tried to do is as people come in for this test, we get them to sign a waiver up front just for your obviously medical privacy. and then we ask them to say as part of what we're doing, we're trying to provide context because it's a semi-quantitative test. It gives you a score out of 250, but no lab is willing to say that if you have a score of 68 or higher, you know, this is what it means.

It's just a score. So to provide some sort of value and relativity, we ask everybody when you come in, do you mind disclosing if you've been vaccinated, if you're unvaccinated, or if you're not comfortable, we'll just put you into the prefer not to say category. Not a big deal.

Data stays with I-court. It's not going anywhere. vast, vast majority of people don't mind disclosing. They're fine. And so what we're seeing and I'll just read these numbers up to you. Sorry while I lean forward to view them. So we've done, I did this report two days ago. I ran another one. We put out a weekly newsletter to everybody who's who's had the test. So as of last week, we've done 5,500 tests, Mayo Clinic antibody tests, unvaccinated people. We've had 3,600, 3,700 people unvaccinated coming for that test. And out of those people, you've had 12% score max score, 250.

So to give you a point of context, most double vaccinated people who come in score, score the in excess of 250. So it's what we call top score, full octane, whatever. So 12% of unvaccinated people have scored the 250, right? So they have the same level of protection as somebody who's been double-baxed. 31% of people, an additional 31% of people, have a score somewhere between zero and 250, which means they have some level of protection. but what it means is that they've seen COVID before.

So even if those antibody scores are actually, you know, going to go down over time and the antibodies clear the body, when we bring a T-cell test in, they'll be positive on T-cell test to show that, you know, they have some level of natural immunity. So 43% of unvaccinated people that have come to see us have encountered COVID and have some level of anti-protection. Yeah, not including any of the people that would have had it,

say, a year and a half ago whose antibodies might have cleared the body by now, but they still have that underlying T-Bron. T-cell memory immunity, right? So there's another bunch of people in there. Fifty-six percent that come in have nothing. So out of that 56 percent, you could argue that the vast majority of them have never seen COVID, and they're still at risk of, you know, getting it. But there's going to be a percentage of that, then again, have that T-cell because they got a really long time ago. On the vaccinated side, we've done 313. So again, not a huge, I wouldn't take that and write the presses about that, but 313. And then out of that, 70 percent of the 313 have the max

score in excess of 250, right? They got full protection. 19% have a score between zero and 250, so somewhere in the middle, and then 10% have goose eggs on that. So either the vaccine didn't work or for whatever reason. So the test itself, the reason we're not kind of in a bullseye target zone for society is it's kind of we're providing testing services that has value to society overall, right? If you if you're vaccinated and you want to make sure, get that little piece of mind that it worked, you know, come get the test, come get your score. If you're unvaccinated and you want to know if you have natural immunity before you decide to go get it, come see us, get your score, get the test, right?

And then under the undisclosed status, we have 1,500 people that didn't want to disclose. And again, 47% of them have some level of antibody present in their body. The majority of the undisclosed people are going to be unvaccinated. They just didn't feel comfortable telling a receptionist at a medical clinic that they were unvaccinated, I think we can agree on that. So those are the numbers. I mean, it's not a,

when we started this out and you had a sample size of 600, you know, you could say, that's too small of a sample size, but you're up into 5,000. We're probably at this point, if I ran another report, we'd be,

we're doing about 150 a day. So, you know, you're going to be over 6,000 people. I mean, it's, it's a sample size that if nothing else should be sparking some conversation

and action to look into it more. I mean, this is, this is legitimate enough in my opinion. and it's interesting. So the concept that somebody who's been double-vaxed is automatically deemed okay. And somebody who has not been vaccinated is automatically deemed not okay. When in the reality, the situation is actually switched.

This person could have a zero and this person could have a 250. It's mind-boggling to me that people are talking about it. And you can see why the anger, these people that have come back with their scores and they've been unvaccinated and they put up a 250, you can understand why they're so upset. You can understand why they've lawyered up and there's legal missiles being fired all over this province right now. If I had a 250 and I wasn't vaccinated, why should I be forced to get vaccinated? It doesn't make any, especially to keep my job and put food on the table. It makes absolutely no sense.

The whole purpose of this program is to get people to that goal. And I'm already there, right? I'm already there. Why am I being forced to do this? So I fully understand. And I, you know, I empathize with people 100%. It's very frustrating. Yeah.

I see ICOR, the service you provide is a very not a divisive test. Like bring people together, right? Because, you know, if I'm vaccinated right now, if I was vaccinated three months ago, I'd be sitting there going, I got this incased, we're all good. I, you know, I'm not doing anything. And then the more information that keeps coming out, now you start to realize I can transmit it, I can get it again. Fuck, now it's waning after six, eight months.

Fuck. Yeah. Okay. So even if I'm sitting here and I got both shots, to me, your test, all of a sudden becomes like, maybe I should go in there and see what I actually have because like, holy crap, right? Like maybe a government study should be like I just, I look at this. I think, man. You'd think like the billions of dollars being thrown out. Everybody just keeps saying it while it's too expensive. You know, it's like too expensive. The hell are we talking about. We just dropped like. like trillions of dollars across the entire planet on everything but things that makes sense. Trying to get to the end goal. That's right. I feel like the end goal for me and you, at least, I hope, is like, man, let's just figure creative ways to beat this so that we all come together and we create less things that

are divisive. Now, I am not perfect. I will say that right now because there's going to be some listener going, oh, but remember the time you had this guy? Yes, I remember. And I've had my blunders. Absolutely. I'm not perfect. But I look at this and I just go, as we move forward, and as I hear both premieres help, the leader of this country, just ram things down the population's throat. I go like, so when are they going to start talking about things that actually makes sense to get us out of this so we can move on with life and carry on? Because that's what everybody wants. That's why, that's why, like, everybody's trying as hard as they can to move on. And I hear you talk all that stuff. I go, man, that makes a lot of sense. Why wouldn't they approach ICOR or whoever and be like, listen, the goal of getting vaccinated is to give you these antibodies?

Geez, let's do that. Let's test everybody and see what we got. So then we can put out to the population. Hey, listen, actually, instead of it being 86.8% with immunity, we actually have 97% right now. Gee, that's nice. You saw the UK did that, right? They did, I think they did a couple hundred thousand study. and they came out in Dean, but I think they had 97% herd immunity

because they combined vaccination rates with natural immunity positive on the antibody. So it's hard to say that you know, you have a plan in mind that you're trying to execute, you know, plan the work, work to plan when you don't know what you're starting from, right? Until you include these numbers in your data, you don't actually know what you're starting from and what you're trying to work from. So it would just be really nice to know where is Alberta actually at? As I said, if we got kicked in the teeth as bad as we did this last year, we should be in very good shape right now, actually. I listen to the FDA's.

We both got young kids. So I listened to FDA has an eight-hour meeting on when they voted for five to 11-year-olds. And it's a scary number. Well, for me, it's a scary number, right? Or maybe for a lot of people, it's like reassuring. They voted 17-0 in favor of giving five to 11-year-olds. the ability to get the vaccine, right? And me and you sitting here, I'm sure you're like, oh boy, that's, that's, but I listened to it.

And, you know, one of the things that I found interesting was a doctor kept saying, you know, I think kids have actually done their part in that they know for sure 30 million American kids have already come in contact with COVID is what they were talking about. and that they have natural immunity. Like, you know, but in fairness, I found it very interesting because it's a bunch of medical doctors talking about whether or not to give a vaccine to kids. And they weighed the risk of not giving it to them is now you're going to now you're essentially denying kids at risk who could be at risk. The ability to get something that could save their life is what they deemed, right? But the doctors sitting there talking, we're going, yeah, but there's.

there's so many kids have already been infected. They already have natural immunity. We already know that. Like that in combination with everything else we've done should almost eliminate them. And then we can tack on the percentage of children dying from this are, well, in Alberta we know, is zero. Yeah. Yeah. It goes back to how this thing started and how it should have been the whole time.

If you are at risk where you feel you are at risk or you have done your own due diligence and research and you feel that the vaccine is something that right for you or your kid to protect yourself, go get it. That's what this country is all about is universal health care access. Go, go get it. But I just don't know how the narrative changed to, we're considering now vaccinating five to 12s to use them as in a little bit, you know, bulletproof shields to protect society's vulnerable. And the kids aren't, you just said it yourself.

The kids aren't at risk of this necessarily. It's really a tough concept. And like I said, I have a daughter who's going to be in that age range soon. And as a parent, man, it's a very, very tough one. It's a very, very tough. We are using them as a bulletproof vest. I don't think to, I didn't want to go too crazy. No, no, no, you don't have to say it. I can say it sitting here. Listen, the conversations I get into, I go, why are we vaccine five to 11 year olds? Right. Like, I implore all my listeners to do their own research. I got a bunch of critical thinkers.

If you go look at the Alberta website, there's been one kid under the age of 19 die from this. I believe that is the one that they just, right, that had stage four cancer. It came out as a big fricking debacle in Alberta, right? Yeah, absolutely. So there's been one who had underlying health conditions. And I'm not, listen, I'm not like, my heart breaks for that family. But they've even come out and said like he didn't die because of COVID. Anyway.

So we're vaccinated kids. And when I grill people or, you know, because people want to come talk to me now because I won't leave this subject alone. So they'll come and talk to me. And I go, so why are we vaccinating kids? Well, you know, a bunch of them are getting sick in school. Okay. But is anything happening? Well, no.

Okay. So why are we vaccinated? So why are we vaccinated? Well, because there's high transmissibility ability a bunch of kids. We got to protect the teachers. I'm like, yeah, but the whole thought process is, is adults. get to choose. So they're choosing whether they want to take the risk or not. So why are we putting a whole bunch of children in the line of getting a vaccine that has no long-term data from something

they're statistically not going to have issues with? Yeah. There's my my my stance on this is that there may not be there there there may not be data to say that this is this is an unsafe past past, path, but there isn't data to say this is a safe path either. So to me, if, you know, my family had the option to make choices to not, to at least buy some time, you know, I just, I just don't agree with if the concern is preventing spread to protect our teachers or to protect their teachers' families, well, those, as you said, those people have the choice. They took their vaccine. If they took their vaccine and they trust the vaccine, I don't know why you would you would vaccinate a class of 30, 6 year olds to protect that individual.

It doesn't logic. Again, as I said, off the top logic is gone. It doesn't make sense to me. So the greater good philosophy, I get it, right? A billion person planet simulation trying to minimize damage. I get it. But the country that I love, used to love, whatever, it was born on accommodation, individual rights, and allowing people to make their own decision.

That's what made it so great and it's gone right now. It's gone. So it's tough. You want to, can we talk about Mexico? I know, we're talking about Mexico. We're talking. You probably wondered, I wonder what I'm getting myself into. No, we talk, we talked with Mexico.

We, so when, when Trudeau dropped his band-aid, whatever it was a month ago, and he said, basically after, after October 30th, anybody who's not vaccinated will not be able to get a plane in this country, right? So I, we read into that a little bit. We, we phone some private charter flights and, you know, everything was the same. Anything was regulated by the federal airline industry, you would be able to get on a plane. So the choice we had was basically get on a plane before the 30th or don't. And so we're in the fortunate situation where I can run, you know, my home office is, is mobile. I could run that from anywhere. And so we sold our car, packed up, our house, put some stuff in a sea can, and we just jumped on a plane one-way ticket down here.

So we're down in state leader right now. The plan is to, you know, spend our six-month visa down here that you're allowed to spend it and sort of see what happens with Canada. But, you know, the way things are going, there's a lot of money and a lot of infrastructure being invested in Green Pass type, you know, barcode scanner systems that it's potential that we may not be able to come back and then leave again. And so we just wanted to take a break. We just wanted to take a break, give everything a chance to see where it falls out,

see what happens with the 5 to 12th. I would imagine the way that that's going to go is there's going to be a new variant that comes out that targets children to justify the vaccine on children campaign. And I would imagine that mandatory vaccines in schools is something that's going to be a hot topic for the next six months, right? Is your kid need to be vaccinated to 10th classroom to get an education? So we just came down here to take a break. We come down to this place not really knowing I don't speak Spanish.

I don't surf. It's a surf town. We just came and get away. We come in yesterday and there's, you know, it's this entire expat community. There's people from Canada and the U.S. We went to a Halloween party last night. There's 300 people here with their kids, you know, all ages running around, having a good time, just living life, being a community.

It was amazing. And, you know, you contrast that to what's going on where people are, you know, see photos of kids in classrooms wearing masks with plexiglass, around their desks. Like you just, you look at the two comparisons side by side and you just can't believe the world you're living in right now. It's a little nuts.

So that's what we did. We were, you know, a little life adventure. If nothing else, it's a cool adventure. We come down here. We come home.

But it was just something we wanted to do and take a little break and we'll see where things go. You know, I got good friends that have been talking about doing exactly what you're doing. And they've been talking about this for close to a year. I've been arguing with them about it for close to a year. This was before the VACs passed was even an idea, or at least talked about on a political level.

And I hear more and more people doing exactly what you're doing, which is, you know what, I'm just going to get out for a bit. I'm going to stretch the lag, so to speak. and we're just going to go take a view from outside the place and watch and see what happens, which is an interesting concept, to be honest, right? Like, that's what I just think, you know, you said you love Canada. I think we all love Canada. But we're starting to go, like, do I, like, in order for, in order for me to go play hockey,

we've got to have a Vax passport in place, right? Yeah. You're like, I get the health and safety of everything, but like, I feel like we've gone overboard. And we keep talking logic and common sense. It seems like they're not there. But to see people leaving Canada, a place that's been a refuge for refugees for how many years is a wild concept. Yeah. Yeah, it is.

It is. And I mean, I'd love to tell you that, you know, when we sent our antibody scores into the Alberta Health, services, net care or whatever, that they were like, oh, yeah, this is great. We're going to add this to your thing. And, you know, it's just as good, you can get your barcode and you're treated the same.

And that's kind of we're holding out for us. You know, we guys accept these, these antibody scores to show that we're on the same level as anyone else and we could travel with everyone else. And, you know, that'd be great. But in the meantime, like you said, we're, you know, in a weird sense, fleeing Canada for Mexico. It's weird.

It's just a strange place. So, I mean, I'm in, I'm in contact with, with people all day, every day. Like I told you off the top there, I just put a, I'm not on social media, really. LinkedIn is the only thing I'm on. And I put out a LinkedIn post there, just sort of telling people what we did. And usually I'll get, you know, 900 to 1,000 views. It's not a big, not a big presence at all.

But this one's at 50,000 and growing of people very supportive, being like, I wish I could do the same thing as you. We've been thinking about that for a while. You know, maybe we'll see you down there. Like, it's just, this feeling of mass exodus, like being chased at the country. It's bizarre right now. Absolutely bizarre. So that's because, but that's because there's there's 10 to 20% of the population, somewhere in that range that is being persecuted for how they view this situation. Right. And, and not their only option they see where they can actually function

in a community, you know, you mentioned community, like, and actually go to a restaurant or play a sport or you know like i still have a hard time like understanding how a gym is not an essential service just look at the statistics like if you're not active you smoke you're obese like you got to go look at those statistics like we should be encouraging everybody to eat healthy take your vitamins and get the hell in a gym and start moving your body yeah if you put uh a fraction of the covid budget into just giving everybody free gym access for two years and, you know, grocery deliveries and, you know, whatever. I mean, we know, what is it?

I think last time I checked, there was 78% of mortalities in Alberta were with people that had three, three or more pre-existing health conditions. So we know that this is a, it's a virus of the unhealthy and of the old. We know that. And there's a lot of people that, you know, it's unfortunate, but like we know that. So if your best chance of getting it and fighting it off and dealing with it is to be healthy,

agreed. Why would you, why would you shut the jail? him and force people to order Uber fast food and not talk to each other as he faces all day. It's just the response of how this is gone just doesn't make any sense. And even if the science says that those things don't help, well, they don't hurt. They're not going to hurt. Being healthy doesn't, it doesn't hurt. Running on a treadmill is not going to make your chances of fighting off COVID worse.

So why did we take it away? Right. Just, yeah. Well, it's the average age of death in Alberta, right now is 78. So it has, it is slowly coming down, but in theory, it probably should slowly come down. I mean, after you go through the wave of how many elderly passed away in the first goal from everything. Like, I mean, but 82 point, I always point this out, 82.7% have hypertension or high blood pressure. High, you know, like that's of people that have died in Alberta.

You're like, I think, yeah, stress is like the number one medical condition of concern, right? And so what you do is you increase people's stress by locking them up and feeding them. Instead of finding, because I feel like there's a huge chunk. And I'm talking about everybody right now that wants to do, you know, if they believe, you know, like vitamin C, vitamin D, zinc, etc. all these things work. Well, everybody knows it in the business world. Then there's this huge run on all these vitamins, right? People are looking right now for ways to help themselves, you know, fight this, right?

Be apart, like, and so all I just, I have struggled with the government not enlisting, you know, the way your brain thinks, working with ICOR and how you guys have attacked this situation, the medical, I'm struggling with why politicians can't see it that way. way. And I'm not sitting here saying put all their money into I-Corps. I'm certainly not, I sound like I'm advocating for that. We couldn't handle that capacity anyway, but I mean, on that same thought process, give everybody an antibody test and a bottle of vitamin B when they go to the clinic. And you get every single medical, just the same way you implode everybody to do vaccines. You get everybody to do blood draws. And you get all the labs you can to get together and standardize a test and do an actual program. So here's some vitamin D. Here's an

antibody test, let's baseline this damn thing and see where we are instead of just shooting from the hip like we have it, right? I fully support that. We'd get a piece of that. It'd be great. But the bigger goal would be, let's, you know, see where the hell we are right now. What scares me, and I'm just going to divert a little bit, so what scares me is the clientele that we're seeing in our offices, right? So people are concerned about our medical system crumbling, right? You see it in the news. They're bringing in the Army nurses and the system's crumbling and you see in Quebec they basically put thousands of workers on unpaid leave and now they're having to pay out almost what a couple hundred million dollars and in bonuses and incentives

to try and back sale those people to make sure the system doesn't fall apart so the people that we see a lot of are nurses pilots firefighters first responders we see a lot of these people and so these mandates, you've seen the silent protests, you've seen, you've seen a lot of the stuff. Our system, if it's already stressed, what's going to happen to us in December when you've now cut out a bunch of firefighters and nurses and remove those people from our infrastructure? What's going to happen to us? That's what concerns me. It's not like we're just seeing the average person come in.

Like we're seeing people that play a pretty significant part in our society come in that say, hey, I'm, you know, I have zero plans to get this, this vaccine. I just, I had it back in whatever. I have this natural immunity. I just, I'm not going to get the vaccine. And if they're going to take my job away, that's fine. So what's going to happen in December? Like, there's just a, there's a labor pool problem right now. I just wonder what the plan is.

And I know part of the reason that we left as well is just we're a little bit scared about where this is going. with some of that, right? So it's interesting. We're going to keep doing what we're doing, right? And keep providing the data and keep talking to people and both sides, right? We want to see a lot of vaccinated people coming to because what I don't want is if you're double vaccinated, I don't want you necessarily walking around thinking you're superperson. And then all of a sudden you do a test and you actually don't have any.

And you had a condition that you didn't know about that your body prevented you from developing antibodies. We want you to come in. We want you to get a test. and when you get your score back, if it's not where you thought it was going to be, we want you to go talk to your doctor and figure out what your plan of attack is. Antibody testing should be done on everybody, regardless of what side of this thing you're on. It'd be good to know, like I said, baseline where everyone's at.

How about, I know a bunch of people that have come and got antibody testing, and then they've been, I believe, emailed back from IACOR talking about T-cell testing, possibly coming in 2022. Is that a possible? Because you mentioned antibody testing. That's what the vaccine, that's what everybody wants is the high levels of antibodies. But over time, they're going to disappear, be flushed out of the body. T cells are the ones that attack the virus from my understanding.

So having a test that shows the T cell, what your T cell levels are, which I believe is in other countries. But right now, for the life of me, I can't find anything in Canada. No, no. So, you know, again, off the top, I'm not, I don't have a medical background, but I don't want to not speak anything, but T cells basically your memory cells. So even though your antibodies clear your body, your T cell, they have that memory, that blueprint's there. So down the road, when they encounter that virus, your T cells kick in and immediately put

in rapid production of those antibodies to help fight the virus off. So even if you have zero antibodies present, you still may have that underlying T cell immunity. So I have been desperate to find a T cell test because, you know, I put it a, I just put out a note one day on it. I said, hey, anyone who's interested in giving me a, and jumping on our I core wait list for a T-cell test, as soon as we have one available, I'll just do a newsletter blast and we'll get it going. And I had like 4,000 people on it in like 48 hours, right? Like, it's a very sought after test for the reasons that we talked about. And so none of Alberta's major, or none of Canada's major lab groups are in development on one. There's the, the company in

the states that got their FDA-EA-EA approval for it, they've engaged with lab core to do their blood draws. So you are able to get it in the States. I think the price point somewhere around 300 Canadian, 350 Canadian. So it's not a cheap test. But just banging my head against the well to get one up here. And so I actually have a call today with that company. I think I might have changed their mind and convinced them to sell it north of the border. So fingers crossed on that. But I mean, that's another piece of the puzzle. You want to talk about how this is a multifaceted attack on this pandemic. That's another one, right? Is get your T-cell testing. Get your antibody testing done. Do some testing to find out.

we are. So I really, really hope I have that soon. It's a price point that's a lot higher than I was hoping it was going to be for people because it's hard to justify that spend, especially in times like this. But I don't think so. Yeah, I don't think a lot of people would disagree with you. Listen, I sit here and go, people want to know that they're safe, right? Sure, yeah. And for certain people, they believe they're safe because of the vaccine. There's other people that believe they're safe because they don't believe it's real. And there's a spectrum along that line. Sure. And if it's a one-time test to go, listen, I got all the immunity I need. Here's my teeth. Like, to me, I'm not saying people are willing to pay 10 grand for it.

I'm not saying it needs to be $20 either, right? Like, what I find really odd is I just, I don't understand why the government isn't enlisting private businesses, uh, critical thinkers to help them find a way out of this. It makes zero sense to me, Mike. Like zero. I don't know. I mean, even, not even enlisting us. You know, they've gotten to some hot water before with some of the contracts they've signed or whatever. And I get that. But I mean, like, don't even engage us. Don't even enlist us. Just look at the, look at the numbers. Look at the data. Look at the data and decide to do something with it by yourself. Say, you know what? That's interesting data. We don't trust it. We're going to go do our own

study. Then, then go ahead and do your own study. It would take them no time. We've done what It's taken us, we're not a big company, right? It's taken us two, two months, two and a half months to get to the point of having 6,000 data points. They could get that overnight if they wanted to. If they put out an announcement said, hey, everybody who's interested in getting an antibody test, you know, you can book online here. We've opened up 10,000 spots.

Guaranteed, you know, it'll be comp by the government. You'd have that overnight. You'd have your result, your data set in a week and you can make some decisions. I don't understand that, especially what you said, the printing money in this world right now, like it doesn't matter because it doesn't. And I say, I say screw that about getting in hot water. They're in hot water every single day. Like, I mean, literally that's what politics is right now. I don't understand, like, they got this. I have a lose, lose, shitty situation for politicians. Saskatchewan's got this COVID task force now,

right? They got their war room set up. Why not invite a few people in? And maybe they already have done this. So maybe I need to preface this by saying, I don't understand who's all in their war room. Okay. Sure. Yeah. But to me, I go like, Do you need to have doctors in there? Absolutely. Do you need to have some other people in there? Well, I would hope so, right? Like, you can have 10 doctors in there,

but wouldn't you want to have like just some people who think differently? Just like, listen, why don't we try X, Y, Z, get some data points, look at this, give you options. That's basic management practices. You surround yourself with people that are different from you with different skillsets and different mindsets. You don't surround yourself with like-minded individuals. I mean, that's basic, basic project management, basic business management. So I totally agree, right? Bring it, bring an engineer in to the conversation that has no medical background at all, right?

I'll have a very different perspective on things than a lot of people. Well, maybe it's completely wrong, but at least entertain the perspective. That's the whole, that's the whole concept of these, you know, a lot of oil and gas companies in town when they go on these projects. They just have right at the front end of the stage, they just invite a bunch of people and they have these two, three day offsite sessions where you just get a bunch of people from different backgrounds and you sit with a whiteboard and there's no bad ideas. You just put shit out there. Right. And you'd be surprised the creativity that comes out from something like that. Oh, I didn't think about that. Somebody who's single-mindedly medical background, they've only been taught to train to think this way. They're not going to think about somebody's other perspective. So I agree. It should be a well-rounded conversation with a bunch of people that may not even be relevant to the field itself, but you'll get something. none of it. Can you imagine if the government of Alberta had on YouTube a group of like 20 people from across the province with different backgrounds, obviously leaning towards medical backgrounds, but invited in some just some thinkers, and then just had a whiteboard and threw up ideas and just said, listen, guys, there's no bad ideas. And that's all they did for the public to see that.

Wouldn't that just all of a sudden grow trust immediately? Oh man. 100%. I mean, 100%. I mean, I mean, it'd be exposing themselves in a way that showed vulnerability that I think most people would respect. There's going to be those hardcore people that wouldn't have any respect for that. But I think the vast, vast majority of people would appreciate that vulnerability and appreciate the willingness to be like, hey, listen, we're looking for help to do. We're open book. Like, let's, let's brainstorm. Let's come up with something here. You know, 100% agree with you.

You won't see that, but 100%. Why won't we see that? Politics, man. Politics is politics. It's just, you have to exceed. exude the air of certainty and confidence at all times. Well, then my thought is maybe politics needs to change. Because to me...

That's a whole different pod. Yeah, maybe it is. To me, I just, I'm having a hard time really understanding. They all, you know, not all. I just hear that a lot is like, oh, it's just politics, right? Politics will never admit they're wrong. They'll never, like, go back. They'll never, and it's like, why not?

Like, who wrote that book? Why can't we have a little bit of vulnerability? and just say, listen, we've invited in, you know, X, Y, Z, and here's some things we're exploring. We don't know if they'll be right, but we're going to explore them, because other countries are using things like early treatment. Gee, that seems like a smart thing. Other countries are doing things like T-cell testing. Other countries are using natural immunity, the antibody test to help bring the community back together to understand, like, listen, yeah, this isn't no light situation, but there's people who've got it.

that can add to our overall population of herd immunity. What is herd immunity? For the love of God, can somebody please tell me what we have to get to? Because initially it was 70%, Mike. Then it was, you know, I had a doctor on said 80, 85. Well, the numbers are like, what am I missing? What's going to be interesting to me is as the double vaccinated become eligible for the boosters. And the people who decide not to get the booster.

then become classified as unvaccinated. Like Israel. Right. And the numbers actually start to go down. It's just going to be interesting to see society's response because it's been fine to be on the train of, you know, two Vax, do my part. I'm safe. I'm covered like you said off the top.

Good to go. But now that's completely changed. And now it's looking like it's going to be an annual booster every year, you know, for an indeterminate period of time. I just wonder how many people who signed onto the original plan are going to still be, you know, part of that and how many are going to fall off. So I don't really see the number, unless you start having this natural immunity discussion, I don't see the number, the gap that they're chasing, the 90 plus percent hurt immunity.

I don't see that changing unless you include the stuff that, you know, that we're talking about in that, in that conversation. Yeah. Well, regardless, I appreciate you hopping on and doing this with me from your lovely spot in Mexico. I'm a little jealous, mainly because of the heat, the sun. I'm no surfer, but I gladly go dunk myself in the water. I think right now it'd be a little frosty to go jump in an Alberta lake myself. Is there anything else that you want viewers to know about ICOR before I let you go? When it comes to antibody testing or rapid tests, you know, like there's a, what you do is a service that a lot of people, all sides of the board, I think, you know, we go back to can utilize.

I really think people will be utilizing this for the foreseeable future. Is there anything else you want them to know before I let you go? Yeah, I mean, I'll take the opportunity for sure. So, you know, as I said, we're off the top. We're not a lab. We're a service provider. We're a facilitator. And I think people need to understand that we have a full, full way to help people out.

So, you know, we have a PCR by mail kit that if you can't get to a facility or you want to take a kit with you to come back into Canada, you can do that. We have rapid testing, video witnessing. So if you and your wife want to do a rapid test at home video witnessed by us to go watch a kid play hockey, we can cover you on that. that. We have, we have, you know, Hawaii approved PCR testing. We have general lab work in Calgary, medicine hat. Medicine hack, not quite yet, but Calgary. So if you have lab work from your doctor that you haven't done in two years because you've been stuck at home and you can't get into CAPL right now for six weeks, you can come see us for 50 bucks. We'll do your draws for you and drop it off at APL. So it's kind of like a little skip the line service. We have, when working with

Mayo, we have a suite of, you know, heart ceremonies tests that we're going to start rolling down to check your heart health. We have, we're basically just trying to bring services to people that, that close the gap in health care and allow people to take the amazing concept of taking health care into your own hands. I mean, that's what we're trying to do here. So if you have any questions with with Icore, how we can help what we can do. I mean, we have we have live chat on our website. We have phone numbers. We have customer service. We just want to help people get through this thing. And I core is not a obviously we're heavily weighted in COVID right now just because of where it is, but that's not how I want to, that's not what I want this company to be. I don't want this to be COVID and done.

I want this to be, we want to be there for people to provide them with the service they need, right? appreciate your support. Obviously, pumping our tires is great. We're happy to be part of this conversation. I really hope that our continued effort and push on the government to start thinking about the critical questions and start thinking about, you know, immunity will help. And the more people that get into this and start doing the testing, the bigger the numbers to get, you know, the more they're going to have to pay attention. You start to get up to 10,000 people. You start to get up to 15,000 people.

I mean, those are starting to get numbers that are difficult to ignore. So having yourself and others like you have me on to talk about it and bring awareness to it. I mean, that's how this goes because you're not going to see this. You know, we had we had all 55 major news outlets open my press release about antibody testing and not a single one that wanted to talk to me about it. Right. I mean, I think that speaks volumes to where we are right now. So the only platform we have is shows like yourself.

So I do really appreciate it. And glad I could come on and provide a little perspective. That hurts my brain right there, what you just said. Yeah. Right. Right. My PR guys. Is the PR guy?

here to solve this problem or to just make it never go away. And now I sound like a conspiracy theorist, but when I hear, like, what the fuck is going on? And pardon the French to the listener, but Jesus. Yeah. That hurts. That's brutal. My PR guy said it was the, it was the, it was the, um, the largest open rate he's seen on a press release in a long time.

And I didn't get a single, you know, when I went out and I had antibody testing off the top back year and a half ago. Like I said, every single globe and national and everyone jumped on, had me on. It was a story at the time. Now I come out with data saying, you know, you've potentially got 42% of your population that's got natural immunity. I don't get a single interview request. Nobody wanted to talk to me about it. So I agree with you. The full court press is on. What are we doing? Get vaccinated. That is the only way. We're not going to talk about anything else. No compromise. Yeah. Basically. Yeah. Well, happy to come on any other time. If anything changes, if I get a T-cell test, if the data changes, you know, happy to be in touch and come back on.

Get us a T-cell test because I know a lot of people, a lot of people are very interested in having that done. And as soon as you get that, I'll make sure to bring you back on because I'd love to hear about it and what it's going to be the offer and everything else. Heck, maybe what else is going on in Mexico as you sit down there for the winter. Maybe we'll just have to have a live update from Mexico. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, come on down. No, that sounds great. Thanks, Sean. Thanks for having me on.

Yeah, thank you. All right. Hey, folks, thanks for joining us today. If you just stumbled on the show, please click subscribe. Then, scroll to the bottom and rate and leave a review. I promise it helps. Remember, every Monday and Wednesday, we will have a new guest sitting down to share their story. The Sean Newman podcast available for free on Apple, Spotify, YouTube,

and wherever else you get your podcast fix. Until next time.