Weird Medicine: The Podcast - 402 - The Accidental Doxxist

Episode Date: April 9, 2020

Dr Steve corrects a math error, decides to be hilarious, and accidentally doxxes a listener for about a minute. Tacie has Covid questions. A guy with a wacky toenail. PLEASE VISIT: stuff.doctorsteve.com (for all your online shopping needs!) Feals.com/fluid (get 50% off your 1st subscription shipment of CBD!) TRIPP.COM offer code DRSTEVE (relax and get 20% off!) simplyherbals.net (While it lasts!) noom.doctorsteve.com (lose weight, gain you-know-what) premium.doctorsteve.com (all this can be yours!) DEEPDISCOUNT.COM!  (new sponsor!) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

You're listening to Weird Medicine with Dr. Steve on the Riotcast Network, riotcast.com. I need some touch it. Yo-ho-ho-ho-ho-ho-he-ho. Yeah, me and the garretel. I've got diphtheria crushing my esophagus. I've got Tobolabovs stripping from my nose. I've got the leprosy of the heartbound, exacerbating my infertable woes. I want to take my brain now.

Blast with the wave, an ultrasonic, agographic, and a pulsating shave. I want a magic pill. All my ailments, the health equivalent of citizen gain. And if I don't get it now in the tablet, I think I'm doomed, then I'll have to go insane. I want a requiem for my disease. So I'm aging Dr. Steve. It's weird medicine, the first and still only uncensored medical show in the history of broadcast radio, now a podcast. I'm Dr. Steve with my delightful wife.

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It has helped me get the weight off and keep it off. You know, I'm having, it's a little difficulty right now with my stress eating, but I'm still doing way better than I would have without them. And I'm still keeping the weight at a very manageable place. And I'm looking forward to getting back down to exactly my ideal body weight, which I'm just a few pounds away from. I mean, that's phenomenal. to be your ideal body weight.

It's insane. I haven't been my ideal body weight since after college. I'll never be my ideal body weight. Well, you're ideal to me, taste. Oh, well, thanks, Steve. Noom.doctrsteve.com. And then don't forget Dr. Scott's website at simplyerbils.net. He's banned from the studio, but if you go visit him over there, tell him we're at least talking about him.

Okay, very good. First off, I have an apology. to make. And I thought, you know, I need to stop trying to be funny and just stick to medicine. Amen. So this person sent me a text message through our voicemail thing and said, educate yourself first with the facts for you go on the air and lie. Please look at how many people have the coronavirus in New York. Learn some math. And then he says, there are 20 million people in New York state with 11, I mean, 1113. thousand cases. That's 18% of New York has coronavirus. You claim 0.04% is a little off. Okay. So anyway, so I looked up the numbers and the population of New York State is 19.54 million. And as of this recording, there were 138,863 known cases in the state. So to get the percentage, you take the known cases divided by the population, right? I'm right, right? That's how you do it.

I mean, I don't do math, but I can tell him that. Well, so three divided by 100 is 3%. Yes. If you had three cases in the population was 100, it would be 3% of the population. Okay, so let's ask Alexa. Alexa, what percent of 1.95 million is 138,000? Oh, it's not Alexa. That's Echo.

Sorry. Boo. Let me give myself one of these. Let's try that again. Echo. What percent of 19,000, 540,000 is 13. Oh, shit. Never mind.

Echo, stop. This is very professional. Let's try this again. I mean, I can just do the math, but it'll sound more impressive if she doesn't. Okay, one more time. Echo, what percentage of 19,540,000 is 138,863? 138,863 over 19,540,000 is equivalent to about 0.711%. Okay.

So it's less than 1%, not 18%. Now, here's where the apology comes in. I sent him back. I said, I don't mind pushing numbers around, but please do the calculation before you call me a liar. And then I said, I'll just take a screenshot of that and post it on Twitter. Oh, that was smart. Well, okay, it would have been funny because I didn't really take it personally. It's like everyone's a little on edge, a little on edge, including me.

and I screen capped it and put it on Twitter, didn't realize the fucking guy's phone number was... Oh, no. So I just doxed a listener, and I am extremely sorry that I did that. I immediately, once somebody pointed out to me, I deleted it, and I put out a text saying, please, you know, I didn't intend to dox this guy.

Please just leave him alone. And then I send him a note. Now, after he called me a liar, I have to send him a text saying, I'm so sorry I just accidentally doxed you and I will reimburse you if you need to change your phone number

so anyway Well he started it He did, he started it But it was naughty of me He wasn't well I mean it was Yeah he wasn't very nice No and neither was I

So anyway I Dude or ma'am or miss Or whatever Jerk Whatever you want to be called I apologize and I absolutely would never dock somebody. I was really trying to do it in a lighthearted way.

And then my adrenaline, once I realized what I did, I may not even be on Twitter anymore. I mean, that's a banable offense. So anyway, it was just stupid. And I wasn't thinking, and I didn't notice it. I mean, you know, I looked at it, but it's so tiny on that little phone screen. You know, I just didn't see it.

And then I looked at it on the computer. It's like, oh, shoot. That's not something you would do on purpose. No, I absolutely would never do that on purpose. So anyway, so there you go. So what do you got? How are you doing? Oh, my God.

I'm so over this. And I realized, you know, last week I was like, well, it's amazing how a human being can, you know, adapt. And today I'm not feeling that way at all. Really? So you're having good days and bad days. Yes, I guess that's how you would say it. And the highlight of my day is my nap. And I'm a little frustrated today because it doesn't seem like I'm going to fit one in.

Well, because of that, sorry. Go ahead. So, yeah, that's all I got to, I mean, really, what do you want me to? I get up in the morning, I get dressed, what the hell for? I go downstairs, I drink coffee, I do a WebEx or two. yeah yeah well and then your husband is you know to at least two days a week going right into the yeah which i'm into the coverage yeah which yeah is so i'm sure that doesn't help make you feel any better about anything it it doesn't i am being very careful in my darts vader outfit but

still i know i'm thankful for that and you know we have a physician in the area who who does have it and um yeah he put he posted some stuff on uh on social media so we can talk about that uh we won't give out his name but you want to say what what he what your question one one question was that um they um decided to electively put them put him on the ventilator and i just thought why you know i just was going to ask you why why someone would would want what would would be the case if you have COVID, what's the cause of you needing to be put on a ventilator just to rest your body or so you can get better? Well, I don't know that they electively do that.

Is that what he said? Did he say, did he use the words elective? Dude, that's what he used. Oh, okay. Well, okay. Now, sometimes physicians will use that word and they don't mean it the way that. So elective ventilation is something that we use when someone is, you know, donating organs and stuff. So I think what he's saying is they decided to put him on the ventilator because his oxygen requirement was increasing.

That would be my guess. Now, mechanical ventilation is just a form of life support. It's a ventilator's a machine that takes over the work of breathing when you're not able to do that for yourself. I have a non-invasive ventilator in our bedroom. You know, my bi-pap is actually, you know, increases the pressure or the flow when I'm inhaling and gives me a little bit of back pressure when I'm exhaling. And those can be used as non-invasive ventilators in some folks.

They're trying to avoid using those in COVID patients because of the risk of increasing aerosol. you know, because it's not a closed circuit. When you hear that mask farting on someone's face, you know, there's air is leaking around the side of the mask. And so there, I have been reading that people are concerned about using those things in these, in these COVID words. But the mechanical ventilator is basically that. You put a tube down, somebody's throat into their trachea, which is the, breathing tube part of our upper airway, and there's a little balloon in there, and you blow the

balloon up so that you get a good seal. And then you can force air in and allow the air to escape, and then you can add a little bit of back pressure to keep the alvely, the little air pockets and the lung inflated. And all this really does is enhance. oxygen delivery to the lung so that it can be transported across the lining of the lung into the bloodstream, right? So you can, and there's a lot of different parameters that you can adjust, you can adjust the percentage of oxygen all the way up to 100 percent and all the way down to about 21 percent. I remember when I was in medical school, we had this intern come through. Now, regular room air is 21% oxygen, right?

And so they had had this person on 24% oxygen. And then the nurse said, yeah, the person's doing well on 24% oxygen. And the resident said, okay, well, let's just take him on down to 20. It was like, uh-oh. Because that would be less than room air, get it. Yes. So, anyway. The other thing that you can do with a ventilator,

is you can blow off carbon dioxide. If you have someone that is building up carbon dioxide in their lungs because they're not breathing effectively, we'll see this in people with emphysema. You can actually hyperventilate them, so you can increase the rate. So you can change the oxygen concentration. You can change the rate.

And you can change the pressure on the inspiratory. We know when you're breathing in to force more air. in and you can change the pressure when you're breathing out to give you a little bit of back pressure. So those are the main parameters that you as well. Now, would he be asleep? Do they put you asleep? I'm just going to say this. If they have to do this to me, they by God had better put me to sleep. Okay. That's what I was wondering. Because I have such an active gag reflex that if I just stick out my tongue and bring my finger toward my mouth, not even touch anything, I'll start to gag.

So I can't even imagine them sticking this thing down my throat. And will they keep them asleep? So yes and no. What we found is there's a lot of different medications that you can use. You can use propofal, which was Michael Jackson's Magic Milk. And we can use Versed, which is a Valium-like drug, except it's got a very short half-life. and they can use another drug called Presidex or Diprovan, which affects breathing less,

and then you can use fentanyl as well, which is an opioid. And all of these things can be used to make people more comfortable while they're on the vent. The problem is the longer you have people on sedation, the longer it takes for them to recover. You've had, have you ever had a colonoscopy? Yes, yes. How did, after you were under for probably 15 minutes, did you feel goofy afterward? Yes, but that was before, um, motion detected at the front door. Thank you, Echo.

That was before, um, Propofal. Oh, okay. Okay. So, I don't know that. Yeah, I'm sorry, Alexa, Echo, whoever. Um, yeah, so you just multiply that times 14. And, well, you know, so you did it for 15 minutes, so four times that would be an hour, and four times 24 would be a day. And then multiply all that times 14 days for some people being on the vent.

It's really hard to shake some of that stuff, particularly things like fentanyl, which are fat soluble. You know, that means that the fat cells in our body become a reservoir for that, and it just sort of accumulates and then has to, be cleared from the body in dribs and drabs and drabs over a period of time. And so we try not to sedate people for too long, but, you know, you've got to do something to pass the time if you're just laying there with this tube down your throat. So, yeah. Now, you remember that balloon we talked about in the trachea?

That balloon can cause problems if over a period of time Do you want to go see if there's somebody down there? I don't know if people listening can hear that, but the dogs are going crazy. And, yeah, I've got my gun right here. Let me know if I need to come down with barrels blazing. But anyway, because I doxed some guy. Where was I?

Hell, I don't even remember what we were talking about. So this is going to be one of those shows. everybody. All right. Let's take some phone calls. Number one thing. Don't take advice from some asshole on the radio. All right, very good. Thank you, Ronnie B. Motion detected at the front door.

What a very professional show this is. I had a question about the thing that everybody's talking about nowadays. What's the difference between like airborne and foodborne pathogens or viruses or whatever. It seems like we're all talking about wearing masks and stuff, but nobody's worried about getting a hamburger from the drive-thru.

Yeah. Thanks. Have a great day. Bye. Okay. No. And you know, I'm going to quit saying it's a really great question because they're all great questions, and I'm so sick of hearing the nightly news conference, where every question

somebody asks, whatever the doctor expert is, has to say that's a great question. They're all great questions, so let's just stipulate that. There is currently zero evidence of COVID-19 being transmitted through food that I am aware of. And this virus is extremely thermolabile, which means that in the presence of heat, it will completely denature and become inactivated. And, you know, raw food, you know, somebody hawked a lugy on it and then you just ate it, maybe, so you might go easy on that. but, you know, if you're going to a place where they're cleaning their utensils and cleaning their areas and using gloves properly, by the way, some of the fast food places are not using gloves properly. They've got people who are handling money with the gloves and, you know, digging around in things and then putting a lid on your cup and then running their hand all the way around it to seal the lid. that's not the proper way to use gloves, just by the way.

We appreciate the effort, but you've got to think about what you're contaminating. But, you know, the biology of the viruses that can't survive for surfaces for a real long time. And, you know, foodborne viruses like norovirus can last for days on. surfaces. And, you know, these things aren't bacteria so they can't grow inside of food. Either the amount of virus that's on the food is just what was placed there. And that will decrease exponentially over time, according to the half-life on that surface. So the stomach is very acidic and therefore should offer some protection for people who still have acidic stomachs. Even people on

PPI's, you know, proton pump inhibitors, still have acidic stomachs. They're just not as acidic as they were. So, you know, if you're worried about the packaging, I understand that. Wash your hands after handling the packaging and just treat it like it's contaminated

and you should be okay. You know, food that comes from restaurants should be extremely low risk. because food industry workers already are quite aware of standards for food handling, and they have a heightened awareness about food safety. So that should set your mind at ease. I'm not aware of any case in the United States or anywhere in the world that's been pinned toward food. I may be wrong on that, and I'm willing to be corrected, but if it does happen, it's exceedingly rare.

Now, you asked about airborne. There's been some talk about this virus being able to be transmitted by close talking. So, again, don't close talk with people. Those cases would be exceedingly rare. However, as this virus becomes less and less rare in our environment, that's why now the CDC is recommending that we wear masks because there's so many cases now. And remember we talked in the past about the Diamond Princess that half of the people that tested positive had no symptoms whatsoever. So it was about 46 percent, but let's just say half. So for every case you've got that you know about, there's at least one other case that you didn't know about.

And that's no big deal when you've got a thousand cases in the country. It becomes a bigger deal when you have 300,000 cases in the country or 3 million cases. in the country. So that's why they're now recommending that people wear masks, because if you're asymptomatic, it may decrease the transmission somewhat. Now, there's a study that just came out, I don't know, last week where, and I believe it was in Korea. It was a very neat study.

They had people cough on a petri disk that had COVID. It's like, well, you got it. What else you got to do? Let's do a, you know, you got time to do a study. Let's do a study. So they had them cough into a petri dish. And then they had them put on a cotton mask and then a regular surgical mask and they had them cough into another petri dish and then counted the number of particles.

And they were still able to transmit particles onto this petri dish. Now, one thing I didn't get from the study was how close was it? Because the distance away actually matters. Now, remember, we talked previously about this inverse square rule. which has to do with things that disperse diminishing with the inverse of the, or with the square of the distance. So if they spewed out a certain number of particles, then when they were two times as far away,

it's actually a quarter as much as many particles. So if at one foot you measure it at two feet, it would be a fourth as much, and then at, you know, at three feet, it would be a ninth as much, et cetera, right? So if you wear a mask and you decrease that by 50%, say, I don't know what the number was. It might have been much less than that, but if it was 50%, then because of the inverse square rule, you're actually making a huge difference when you get out to, say, six feet where people, should be standing from you. The other thing is that

let's just say that wearing a mask prevents 1% of illness. When you've got 100 patients that have this, you might not even prevent one illness because you're not going to come into contact with them. But when you've got

100,000 people, you prevent 1% of those, that's 1,000 people. I'll wear a mask to prevent a thousand people from getting this and dying, you know. You know what I mean? So, anyway, all right. Anything going on down there when you went downstairs? Oh, yeah.

Oh, yeah? Okay. You're okay? Yeah. Okay. No, but not because of that. Okay. Oh, you feel bad.

Now, you were mean to that guy. Yeah, I was mean to the guy who was mean to Steve. Well, and then I made things 10 times worse. I should have just stopped and just kept my mouth shut. Don't try to be funny. That's the thing about, I mean. Don't try to be funny. These, oh, social media can really just, and nobody ever wins these arguments.

That's right. Like, I got in an argument with somebody one time because she said that physicians make money off prescriptions that they write. Yeah. That is not true, not true. I wish it were true. I'd write the hell out of some stuff. I'd do too. Yeah, we'd do a whole lot better.

That is not true. If you believe that, you are wrong. You are flat out wrong. I argued with this woman on this website. Yeah, there's no one. On Facebook. And at the end of it, I just said, oh, just whatever, get your flu shot. And I lost that argument.

And I know for a fact. Whatever, get your flu shot. Yes. I know for a fact I was right. Still lost the argument. You know, I said you can call the FDA. you can ask them, you can ask your local physician, you can talk to any nurse that calls them prescriptions, you know, you can ask anybody, and I still lost that argument, and I know

for 100% I was wrong. Right, if you get upset, you lost already. Yes, and so I just, oh, I just cannot, I cannot do these social media arguments. They're just not worth it ever, ever. Every time I do something like that, I get burned, and I, I don't. or I burned myself every single time. That was just stupid. And if that dude is listening, I could not be more sorry.

And I really was just dicking around with him because I knew, you know, he was stressed out and looked at those numbers and freaked out and was like, damn, you know, you're minimizing this. I'm not trying to minimize anything. No, we're not trying to minimize it here. I mean, especially, no, not this. That does bring me to a question I had, Steve. Sure. if you have if I have okay to ask it.

Yeah, maybe I can do better with this on them the ventilator question. I was still worried about this stupid social media thing. I was very distracted trying to answer that. Everybody, almost everybody's been burned. And if you haven't been burned, congratulations. Congratulations on being a lot smarter than everybody else. And, you know, way to go, dude. That's great.

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discount. Thank you. But, you know, I've been, again, my scientific website that I go to called Facebook. Yes. I see a lot of articles about people saying that the curve is already flat.

Okay. Can you speak to that? I can, a little bit. there are a couple of curves. And so which curve are we talking about? So I am now looking at Daniel Stout. You know Daniel. He comes over here.

He's a computer genius. He does our website. And he has a website that I've put out on my Twitter if I'm still on Twitter when you listen to this. But if not, it's Stout Labs-COVID-com. We need to come up with a bit. L.Y for that really quick. But anyway, it's COVID-19 stats. I wonder if you searched Stout Labs, COVID-19 stats, it would come up. But he has this thing broken down by total cases, deaths, new cases, new deaths, case per 100,000, et cetera. And I will be referencing this on my COVID sit rep on

Sundays, which if you've not checked those out, the most recent one will have the most current numbers, but the other ones before, you can skip over the statistics and go to the meat of the things, because I do some basic information on those two. Like someone asked about the type A, blood type O dichotomy, and I talked about that and explained it and all those kinds of things. So I talked about the IGM testing. What about the curve, though? Okay, sorry.

So I'm getting to the curb. So I'm looking at the total cases in the United States is, rather than being exponential at this point, in other words, going up by the same multiplier every time. So if you go, you have two cases, then four, then eight, then 16, then 32, then 64, that's an exponential increase. You're going up by a multiple of two every time, right? but if you go 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, had to think about that one for a second, sorry, 12, 14, that is a linear increase in that you're going up by the same number of cases every day. Does that make sense?

Yes. Okay. So on a regular X, Y, axis, the arithmetic increase, you know, that sort of 2468, we'll make a straight line, whereas the exponential one will make a curve that curves up sharply the farther it goes, right? So instead of curving up sharply at this point, we have gone into sort of a linear expansion at this point, which means that the cases are still going up, but they're going up by approximately the same number every day. It's still a high number, but, you know, we're not doubling at the rate that we were originally.

Now, if you look at new cases, though, let's look at new cases. What you see is that there was a peak on 4.420, and then on 4.5, it was slightly decreased, and then 4.6 rows, but just to a very small degree, and then on 4.7, about the same. So there is some decrease. Now, this is what did I say, four days. There could be data sitting on somebody's desk for four days. That's why I'm not so quick to say, hey, we've already passed the peak. Well, I've been reading this about the curve being flat for weeks.

I think these people feel like that it was flat before everybody made such a big deal about it. I think a lot of these people are people who think that the economy is suffering. more than the damage that COVID can do. Yeah. And that's where they're kind of getting at. I understand that. And, well, some of them, and I've heard people say this, well, it's just old people like me.

And I'm just an old expendable asshole, right? So who cares if I die? But here's the problem with that thinking is that if this thing carries a, let's just say 1% mortality, just 1%, 99% of people get better, okay? And it's not probably too far from being right. But let's say 1%. Well, we've had 60 million influenza cases in this country this year and with a point like 0.1% mortality rate.

It's somewhere in there. I haven't worked out the numbers this year yet, but it's generally pretty low. If 60 million people got this virus, 1% of those would be how much? What would that be? Let's ask, Echo. Echo, what's 1% of 60 million? 1% of 60 million is 600,000. So that would be 600,000 people die as opposed to 50,000 that have died from influenza this year.

So it would be 10 times more. And then it's not just the deaths, though. there's, for every one person who dies, there's at least one to five people that end up in the hospital. And so, let's just say, worst case scenario, it's, you know, three million people in the hospital all in this short period of time. Now you've got people being treated in the hallways, and if you get appendicitis, you can't, there's nowhere for you to go. If you break your knee, they can't take you, you know, that kind of so. That's what we're really trying to avoid a complete collapse. in the medical system.

I understand that people are freaking about the economy. And, I mean, we're taking a cut and pay, too, by the way. I haven't told you about that, at least until this thing is over for two months. And, you know, I'm willing to take the hit if it'll help. But there are other people who are way, way worse off than taking a cut and pay. You know, our friends that work in restaurants and in the service industries and the industries that are really hardest hit in the hotel, airlines, those kinds of places. And people are looking at their 401Ks and freaking the F-out, and I don't blame them one bit.

So on the other hand, I don't know what the answer, what a better answer would be, because we can't risk complete collapse of the medical system either. So this is what I propose. We take the hit this time, help people as much as we can, donate, double-tip, triple-tip, you know, I'm okay with the government printing money in this case, although that's just going to increase inflation and make people poorer over time. But, you know, for right now, try to make people whole. And then let's just declare war on these effing viruses so this doesn't happen again. We need to have a space race type program to eradicate human viruses from this world as far as,

or at least be able to have such a rapid response that we can respond to a possible pandemic-causing pathogen within days to weeks rather than weeks to months to years. You know, that's what we've got to have because we can never let this ever happen again. We have the technology now that we can do that. Let's come in. Look, if we're not going to go to Mars like I wanted to do, that's fine. And let's spend that money on doing this and no more viruses, unless somebody can show me that there's some benefit to having viruses around. I know there may be some viruses that are beneficial to us in that they keep certain, I don't know, parasites down or whatever. You know, if we killed all viruses, we might be overrun with some dang slug or something, you know, that's even worse than the viruses where I don't know.

but we need to at least look at it and if we're not going to eradicate the take the battle to them at least be ready when they try to attack us again because this is bullshit you know Ebola can kiss my ass Marburg can kiss my ass

smallpox you're done you know we did it with smallpox we had it beat in measles in this country back in what 2008 there wasn't a single native case of measles. There were cases of measles, but none of them were contracted in the United States. Of course, we've blown that now. But if you don't like vaccines, okay, we'll come up with

another way. But we can't allow this. Stupid nanomachine. That's all viruses are. They're nanomachines. Like on Star Trek. It's very much like Star Trek. And they are, little machines, and all they do is reproduce themselves, to what end? To no end whatsoever, just to reproduce and then eventually die out, stupid effing things. We may have viral DNA in our genome, though, and so maybe there is some benefit to evolution. I don't know. There's greater minds than mine, but I can't stand. I'm looking at this curve.

I can't stand it. You're listening to Weird Medicine. Gee, Tase, do you experience stress or have anxiety right now? No, not lately. Or why would you? Or have chronic pain or have trouble sleeping at least once a week? Well, you're not alone. Many people do.

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and you'll get 50% off your first order with free shipping. It's F-E-A-L-S.com slash fluid to become a member and get 50% automatically taken off your first order with free shipping. Fields.com slash fluid. You're listening to Weird Medicine. Now, I know you've got a question. I'm looking at states. Let's just look at states real quick. So I'm looking at U.S. data, and let's look at New York.

A number of cases right now, 139,857, but new cases, new cases. That curve is not only flattened, but it is declining pretty nicely. Now, again, it's just been over the last four days. So I am hopeful that that means that we are over the hump in New York. But like I said, every once in a while, you'll get this data, I will sit on somebody's desk for three or four days. So I want to see a trend that lasts for, you know, seven to 14 days before we start, you know, relaxing. Other states, unbelievable.

I'm looking at Florida. Florida has done pretty well in flattening that curve right now. And let's pull up Louisiana real quick. Yeah, New Orleans is a concern. Yeah, New Orleans is a concern, but Louisiana as a whole had a big spot. spike on 4-2, and then another smaller spike on 4-4, and then another even smaller one on 4-6. Now, their data is undulating like a sine wave, which makes me think that's reporting. Somebody's reporting.

There are some parishes that are reporting every other day or something. Because I read that a lot more, the death rate is a lot higher in Louisiana because of the health factors. Yeah, let's see. Because everybody down south is heavier. Yeah, we eat a lot of gravy and biscuits and stuff and we have more hypertension and diabetes. That is true. New deaths in Louisiana.

Now, we're recording this. And look, we're doing this off the top of our head. So Wednesday, April 8th. So new deaths in Louisiana, according to this, were 70 today or sorry, yes. yesterday. And they were 35 the day before, but then it was kind of just smoldering before that. And it peaked on 4-3, where Louisiana had 60, 68 on 4-5. So anyway, now New York was at 594 and then 791 yesterday. So you will see the number of deaths lagging.

you know, that will decline about 14 days after the new cases decline because it makes sense. If someone gets exposed today, they'll get symptomatic in 5 to 11 days. 96% of people will be symptomatic by day 11, and then they'll be sick for another, say, 14 days. So it can take up to 25 days to see these curves lag with, you know, conform to each other. So if they had zero new cases in New York starting tomorrow, they would still see some increase in the number of deaths over the next few days to weeks. Does that make sense? Yes. One last question.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know a lot of people are drinking more. I mean, I hear that. I can't say I'm personally experiencing it. Ha-ha. But how long is it going to take us all to dry out? What about our liver enzymes? Then, you know, I know when you stop alcohol, there's a great bunch of anxiety, and then people are going to be trying to get out and get life back to normal.

And I can't even imagine the anxiety levels. And I just, I just was wondering, how long does it take people to dry out? You know, good things can cause stress too. So when we get back into our regular lives, be prepared for stress. I mean, you and I have both experienced. the first day on vacation stress. And I know I really don't handle it well.

I've been trying to be better now that I'm cognizant of it because you think, oh, I'm going on vacation, it'll be awesome. And then you just kind of in my case, get kind of prickly and easy to just get frustrated and stuff like that. And it's crazy. So to the alcohol question, levels usually rise after

alcohol intake that, you know, if it's continued for several weeks. And within about six weeks of abstinence, those levels generally will decrease to within the normal reference range, assuming you haven't done permanent damage. The half-life of this liver enzyme GGT is about 14 to 26 days. So let's say 20 days. So if it's up to 100 on day one and it's going to go down to say 15, then it'll be 50 after about 20 days. and then 25 after 40 days

and then work its way down to its final low level of 15. So, yeah, and just be careful. Taking a lot of Tylenol while you're drinking a lot is a recipe for liver problems. So try to avoid that and not binge drinking and Tylenol for sure. And if you have a drinking problem, if you feel like you have a problem,

there are virtual meetings on AA now. We have a mutual friend. who I recommended that he call AA and get in on a virtual meeting because he's just having a hard time with this, you know. So it's tough and nothing easy about it. I think when things start to get better and start to go back to normal, I mean, I would like for you to spend some time on, you know, how to reduce anxiety because that's going to be huge.

I mean, the whole world's going to be prickly. Agreed. Well, let's do one exercise right now. We've done it before on this show, but it's very effective, and it's called square breathing. And this is when you start feeling anxious, because the other day, I was in my office. And, you know, I used to have pretty bad anxiety.

I had panic disorder, all kinds of stuff, and I'm mostly 100% gone. I mean, cured. I hate to use the word cured. because obviously I'm not because the other day I was in my office and I started feeling lightheaded and I thought oh gosh maybe my oxygen level is low maybe I've got a problem I got my nurse to check my oxygen level is 100% and that's not normal 96 you know to 98%'s pretty normal for walking around so the fact that it was so high was it was likely that I was hyperventilating and didn't even realize it

And then I realized what it was was anxiety. I was having anxiety. It had been so long since I had it. I forgot what it felt like. So one way to break that when you start feeling that is to do this thing called square breathing because the physical symptoms of hyperventilation come from blowing off too much carbon dioxide. And so your carbon dioxide level drops, your heart may start beating faster. You'll get tingling of your fingers tingling around your mouth.

mouth and you'll feel light-headed. So, and that's a product of hyperventilation. You say, well, I don't feel like I'm breathing fast. You could breathe one time a minute more than your body actually needs, and this will still happen. It'll take longer. Like, I could hyperventilate right now and get

it down in a minute, but it might take me an hour or two if I'm just anxious and I'm breathing 13 times a minute when I only need to breathe 12 because I'm anxious. So to stop that, you could breathe into a paper bag. That's one way to do it. If you breathe into a paper bag, you're blowing out carbon dioxide, then re-inhaling it, and that carbon dioxide that you're re-inhaling goes back

into your lungs and increases your carbon dioxide level and your bloodstream, and the symptoms go away. Problem is, if you do this on a subway, you just put a target on your back, that this person's having a problem. And so there's another way to do it, and that's, as I said, square breathing. So let's do it square breathing so you're going to inhale for four beats however long those four beats are it doesn't matter but you're going to inhale for four then you're going to hold for four then exhale for then hold for four and repeat now if you will continue to do that you can only inhale or exhale one-fourth of the time, right? There's no other number that it could be.

And if you're only inhaling or exhaling 25% of the time, it is impossible for you to hyperventilate, then your carbon dioxide levels will increase in about a minute, and you will feel better almost immediately. And the great thing about it is you can do this on the subway or in a plane or anywhere else, and no one ever has to know what you're doing because they can't detect it.

So, all right. That's just a little tidbit from your old pal, Dr. Steve, and we'll do more as time goes on. I think that's a good idea, Tase. Thank you. You're a dang genius. All right. Let's see here. Okay.

Hey, doctor. My name is Jimmy. Hey, Jimmy. I went to a doctor. They said I thought I had toe fungus. My toes are getting, nails are getting real thick and crusty. But they said it's not fungus. I tried Lamacil for six months.

It did nothing. They said my toes were injured when I was younger and I would just have to live with it. I'd like to get your fault. Thank you. Oh. Well, that's weird. You know, did this happen to you suddenly? If so, that hypothesis doesn't make sense to me.

You know, changes in your toenails are usually a sign of an underlying condition, not always. and if they grow thicker over time, it's often a fungal infection called onocomycosis. So I'd be interested to know why they said it wasn't that. Because as they continue to thicken, they just get bigger and bigger. And now your shoes push down on them and it causes pain. And I had one toenail.

It was so gross. And I remember the very last straw was when And we got on a boat to do a parasailing thing. And I caught these 16-year-old girls looking at my feet with this look of disgust. And it's like, oh, he's so gross. And so as soon as we got home, I made an appointment, had that toenail ripped off. And so fungal infections can be, can look like toenails that change color. Or they get this thick and this junk under.

underneath, and they split or crumble, or they could look scaly or chalky, stuff like that. So any of those things, if they have debris under them. I wish we had a picture. Yeah, it'd be nice if this was a video show. But just Google onico mycosis. Onico mycosis just means it's a fancy name for toenail fungus. Do you remember that guy on Opie and Anthony that used to flee was his name? He used to pee on his feet because he said it killed the fungus.

Well, that was, yes, he was talking about athletes' foot. I remember that. It's disgusting. Was it flea? He was a kid, right? Wasn't that his name? I think so. It was the first show we ever did, I think.

I wonder what's going on with him now. I don't know. I don't know. Probably still peeing on his feet. Probably still. He says it's made his skin soft, too. We did justify some of what he was saying, and it made the producers men because they, apparently, I guess, I don't know, they wanted us to crap on him,

but urea, which is found in urine, it can be made into a cream called urea cream, strangely enough, that you would call urea containing cream, urea cream, and it is a skin softener, and you can also soften nails with it. We would have people put urea cream on their nails before we would go in with a dremel drill to just, you know, to drill them, grind them down if they got too big. So there you go. Now, if you have onocomycosis, which they told this guy he didn't, I would love for him to call back and tell us why they thought that it wasn't that. There is a medication on the market called Jublia.

They're not sponsors of this show. You put it on for 48 weeks, and it will decrease toenail fungus, fungus significantly, in people who already don't have toenails that are already destroyed, okay? So if it's just starting. Now, the interesting thing is that I also read a study that showed that VIX vapor rub, if you put it on twice a day on your toes, will resolve toenail fungus in 48 weeks. So it may not be the medicine in the jublia. I don't know. It may just be that putting something on your toenails for 48 weeks is enough to kill the fungus. Like suffocates it? Yeah, maybe, maybe. But I found that Vicks thing very interesting. because it was exactly the same amount of time that you're supposed to put this other stuff on.

Now, toenails grow really slowly. I bashed my toenail once. I think it took a year for the divot to kind of grow out and finally allow me to clip it off so that you couldn't see it anymore. So there you go. There's your one non-COVID question. So are your feet not gross now? I don't think so. I mean, I've had two giant, I've had my two big toenails removed.

and then, you know, if you don't really look hard, you can't really tell, but it's not a big brown, disgusting horns sticking out of my foot anymore. This is horrendous. I was so embarrassed. It wasn't like I was trying to make time with these girls, but, you know, just the look on their faces. It's just, ew. Oh, he is so gross. Your feet have to look.

They just have to, they have to look good. Yeah, people actually do look at your feet, I guess. They really, really do. And that's why women spend all that money in salons. Okay, well, you're about ready to get out of here We're getting into that season Where it's going to be a thousand degrees up here So we'll have to turn the air conditioning on

It never works that well But I apologize for that Okay You haven't had to be up here During those times that I remember But it gets pretty bad But we'll turn the fan on And well, maybe we just get naked

Well, thanks always go to my delight wife, Tacey. Thanks for being here. The response from Twitter and Facebook and emails has been nothing but positive. Until that one guy that I was mean to. Well, I've, anyway, I got to go, I got to go text him again and just tell him I'm sorry. Well, I mean, I think at some point you need to just drop it. I know, I know. I need to make amends, though. Well, it sounds like you have really tried and yeah anyway I hope

he must listen to this because that's where he emailed me so dude just email me and I'm sorry so we can't forget Rob Sprant's Bob Kelly Greg Hughes Anthony Coomia Jim Norton Travis Teft

Lewis Johnson Paul Off Charsky Eric Nagel Roland Campos Sam Roberts Pat Duffy Dennis Falcone Matt from the syndicate Ron Bennington and Fez Watley whose support of this show has never gone on appreciated Listen to our SiriusXM show on the Faction Talk channel, SiriusXM Channel 103, Saturdays at 8 p.m. Eastern, Sunday at 5 p.m. Eastern on demand and other times at Jim McClure's pleasure.

Many thanks to our listeners whose voicemail and topic ideas make this job very easy. Go to our website at Dr. Steve.com for schedules and podcasts and other crap. Until next time, check your stupid nuts for lumps, quit smoking, get off your asses and get some exercise. We'll see you in one week for the next edition of Weird Medicine. Thank you, everybody. Thank you. Thank you.