Weird Medicine: The Podcast - 413 - The Tooth of Wisdom and Decay

Episode Date: July 2, 2020

Dr Steve and Tacie get dental questions answered. Other topics: remdesivir cost, bidet selection and use, mask wearing data, mosquito borne illnesses and more. PLEASE VISIT: stuff.doctorsteve.com (for all your online shopping needs!) Feals.com/fluid (get 50% off your 1st subscription shipment of CBD!) simplyherbals.net (While it lasts!) noom.doctorsteve.com (lose weight, gain you-know-what) Get Every Podcast on a Thumb Drive (all this can be yours!) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

We're medicine contains mature contents that may be offended to some listeners. Let me run. What did they wrong then? You know, your house is like another. I've got diphtheriae crushing my esophagus. I've got Tobolivide stripping from my nose. It's got the leprosy of the heartbound, exacerbating my infectable woes. I want to take my brain out and blast it with the wave, an ultrasonic, egographic, and a

pulsating shave. I want a magic pill. All my ailments, the health equivalent of citizen cane. 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. 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 the mother of my children. Tacey. Hello, Tacey. Hello, Steve. This is a show for people who would never listen to a medical show on the radio or the internet. If you've got a question, you're embarrassed to take to your regular medical provider. We can't find an answer anywhere else. Give us a call at 347-7-664323. That's 347 Poohead. Follow us on Twitter at Weird Medicine. And now visit at our website at dr steve.com for podcast, medical news and stuff you can buy or go to our merchandise store

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stuff dot dr steve.com for all of your amazon needs stuff dot dr steve.com and um newm still doing noom love it i have a new counselor and i like her i liked my old one but i somehow she just disappeared without saying goodbye so i have a new one oh but she's very nice good and um we're going on vacation last year. I said, oh, to hell with Noom last year, and I gained 10 pounds. I don't want to do that this year. So I'm taking Noom with me, and I'm taking my scale, and I'm just going to try to be at the beach and not gain a crap load of weight. And you know what it is? It's beer. When I drink a bunch of beer, I gain weight, period. So it's going to be... Sober days.

Well, don't get all excited. It's going to be vodka and diet. tonic days with a little spritz of lime juice, not bad. So that's what I'm doing. And yes, I will be more sober this time than normal. Premium. Also, we're bringing one of Liam's friends and I don't want to act like an idiot in front of him. No. So that will entice me to be, have some accountability because I don't want him going back to his mom and going, God.

That sweet woman. Yep. Mm-hmm. Yep. Dr. Steve is, geez, what the hell's wrong with them? Okay, so we don't want that. But noem. Dot, Dr.steve.com, N-O-O-M dot Dr.steve.com.

It's not a diet. It's a psychology app. You can hit your ideal body weight. You have a counselor. You log your food. There's no points. And it just, and you do these little mini modules every day. And it changes your relationship with food, period.

And with other things, too, for the better, I may say. So Noom. Dot Dr. Steve.com For two weeks free Just try it for free. You download it using that code and you get two weeks free

and then if you sign up for it you get $20 off and it's only a three-month program so it's not like Weight Watchers you've got to pay year after year after year and you can also go to our website although I'll be behind

in fulfilling these orders but you can go to the website and for $30 bucks you can get a face mask as long as they last I've got a few left a weird medicine face mask. They're horrendously ugly. Well, it's because I'm horrendously ugly and it has my face up.

No. Your face is not green like it is on the mask. True, true. It looks like, yeah, looks like I've got a bad hangar. Fluorescent vomit. And, but you go to Dr. Steve.com in the middle of the page. There's the thing that says you can have every show on a thumb drive. It's 30 bucks.

And if you're in Canada, give me a couple extra. bucks. Well, you, God, Lord, I sent one to Canada today, and I've got to do all these customs declarations, and then it costs like five times more to send it to Canada. You don't have to, but if you're in Canada, talk to me, and maybe what we could do is give you access to our drop box that has all of those things on it, and I don't have to ship you anything. And then I can maybe send the mask in an envelope, and then that costs like two bucks to do that. Anyway, So, Dr. Steve.com for that. And then check out Dr. Scott's website at simply herbals.net while it's still going.

All right. Why don't we talk about what everybody is talking about is remdesivir and COVID-19? So, Gilead sciences that created remdesivir, which is a nucleoside analog. nucleotide analog. And so when the virus is trying to reproduce its genetic material, it thinks that this is a building block and it's not. So it incorporates it, and then it just stops. And so that the whole thing fails.

Because this stupid virus also codes for an error checking device. It has an error checking device that goes through the RNA to make sure it's being created properly. How insane is that? It's scary. It has this set of proteins and they go and they walk down the RNA to make sure that it's being coded properly. And, you know, these things are just little nanomachines.

They're machines made out of protein. They reproduce for no discernible reason. They just reproduce just to reproduce. Matter of fact, they have no purpose. That's what we call a teleological argument. There's no purpose. They just can. They just do.

And to no end, and we could live in concert with them if they just wouldn't make us sick. But because they do make us sick, we're going to have to declare war on them. There was another story this week about a new H1N1 influenza that was detected in China that has the ability to very rapidly attach itself to huge. epithelial cells. Those are the cells lining the airways and other places. And therefore, these clickbait, oh, you know, a potential pandemic. Maybe, you know, we have a travel ban. I think just about every country has a travel ban with China. And China right now doesn't want anything coming in. So they've got travel bans themselves. I'm not sure how this is going to

move around as easily as things did when we had a completely open society. And hopefully, Hopefully, because we're hearing about this before, I think there's only been one human that actually got it, if that, and that was sort of a case report, hopefully we can nip this one in the bud before it gets unleashed on the world population. So we'll see. Lots of travel bans against the U.S. too. Sure, yeah.

Well, and they should. I agree. I agree. Lots of cases. And I wouldn't want us coming there right now. and everybody just needs to hang loose and let this thing finish up. And we'll have it finished pretty soon, I'm hoping. I'm still hopeful for the Favapiraviravir data.

That is the medication made by Fujifilm. That's an oral pill that has at least in one study in Russia showed 80% effectiveness. And I'm not sure how they defined effectiveness. but if it's good enough to keep people mostly out of the hospital and mostly from dying, there's really no reason for us to continue all of this isolation. You just get it, you go to your doctor, you get the pills, you take the pills, you isolate yourself, you don't go to the hospital and you don't die. This could be over at that point.

And then we can take time and make sure we get a good vaccine, one that will not have adverse effects. You know, the problem with rushing a vaccine to market was like in the 70s. We rushed to market a vaccine against the swine flu then that had higher than normal incidents of people getting Gionne-Barre syndrome, which is a neurologic disorder where, you know, it first affects your feet than the legs and then can work its way up to the respiratory muscles. When it does that, that's a problem. And then it re-descends most of the time people who, get mostly better, if not all the way better.

But you know what else causes Gianberetase? Nope. Influenza, the actual virus. So it's the body in the immune system's response to the actual virus and then the actual viral particles that causes this nothing inherently bad about the vaccine. But we don't, if we can have a pill, and this is pie in the sky, we're going to get the data in about two weeks, then we can. hopefully we can be done with this for the most part

and then leisurely get a finally get a coronavirus vaccine that actually works and maybe we can as a human species be done with these stupid coronaviruses. The ups shot, by the way, of having maybe a universal coronavirus vaccine would be cutting the common cold in about it. That would be something, wouldn't it? Yeah, it would. So, all right. So, but anyway, Gilead Sciences disclosed pricing for COVID-19 treatment remdesivir.

So anyway, we were talking about remdesivir being this nucleotide analog, and it stops the virus from reproducing. And they've shown that it hastens the time to recovery and viral clearance, the absolute numbers of people who took it who died were less in the treatment group, but it was not statistically significant because they had to terminate the study early because they were showing

a clinical effect or they didn't want to give placebo to people anymore. It was no longer ethical to give people placebo. So we presume that that will become statistically significant the more we do. Plus we've got now dexamethosone that we can use for people

who have severe disease that are in that what we called cytokine storm where the immune system goes into overdrive and makes them even sicker. And dexmethosone, dirt cheap, a couple of bucks a dose. Well, I, in my early, one of my earliest COVID-19 situation reports on YouTube, by the way, go watch those, just go to the laugh button channel and look for the playlists and we're one of the playlist. I had applauded Gilead Sciences because they originally said that their medication would be sold for $9 a dose. Yes. $9 a dose. And I said, well, that is really cool of them

to sell this drug for $9 a dose because they could probably sell it for $300 a dose. Well, guess what? So I think it's a 10-day course and it looks, I think it's once a day that's I'm not up on that exactly, but the new price is $3,120 for a course, which works out to about $300 a dose, so I'll give myself one of these. But so Robert Reich, who was a Democratic politician, worked under Carter, if I remember correctly. tweeted out, well, you know, Gilead got $70 million in grant money to make this. And now they're going to turn around and make this huge profit off of this. So I don't know how huge the profit's going to be because they had to expend. I wonder how much they spent on this.

It was probably close to a billion dollars. Now, what Gilead did say was that if someone is on government insurance, they're going to sell for $2,340. Okay. So now, so they're giving the discount to the government, presumably because they got this grant. So let's figure out how many patients they have to treat to pay back that $70 million, right? So if you would taste, or we could ask Echo to do it, what's $310 minus $2340? So $3.120 for commercial patients, $2,3,340 for government.

government-assured patients. So what's that work out, too? $780. $780. So they're giving the government a $780 discount. Now take $70 million, which was the amount of the federal grant money that they got, and divide that by, what was it? What did you say?

$780. $780, $780, divided it by $780. So $70 million divided by $780. $89,743. So if they treat $89,000 patients over the lifetime of this illness with remdesivir, which is not really outside the realm of possibility, then they will have paid that money back. So, okay, I would have liked it better at $9 a dose, but at least they're paying the grant money back.

Okay, so that's where we are. Now, Gilead says, of course, this is very self-serving, but this is an open letter from Daniel O'Day, who is chairman and CEO of Gilead Sciences. And he said, let me see if I can find this. Okay, well, now they're saying the vast majority of patients are expected to receive a five-day treatment course using six vials. And so $3.90 per vial. So anyway, I was off on the 10-day course. But anyway, so what, where in the hell is it, yeah, private insurance companies will pay $5.20 per vile. And they said that, okay, that COVID-19, remdesivir shortened time to recovery by an average of four days.

Taking the example in the United States, earlier hospital discharge would result in hospital savings of $12,000 per patient. even just considering these immediate savings to the health care system alone, we can set potential value that the remdesivir provides. This is before we factor in the direct benefit to those patients who may have shorter stay in the hospital. We have decided to price remdesivir well below this value. So that's interesting that that's the equation that they use. How much would you save so that we could price it at that? Apparently, this is a model that's used in the pharmaceuticals.

industry. And I was unaware of that until now that they use that metric, that kind of metric. You know, how much benefit does the health system get on average from us doing this? And then we're going to price it somewhere around there. It's kind of interesting. So they're saying, look at us, we could have charged $12,000, but we're only going to charge this much. So, you know, I don't know what to say. $9 sounded better to me. But, well, of course it did. Of course.

I mean, you know, $9 is a lot less. But if we don't pay for innovation, we will have no innovation, period. True. So at $9 a dose, there's no way they're going to make their billion dollars back. So anyway, all right. A couple of vaccines are showing promise. The Oxford vaccine is in phase three trials. So right now, Motley Fool, which is a.

financial website is looking at the Oxford vaccine and saying that they feel that they're probably in the best position to get to market first, but that's as long as the vaccine is proven safe and effective. And then Moderna's messenger RNA. Yeah, if you remember last time we talked about that one, that's a weird vaccine where you're actually injecting the instructions for the body to make the protein, that then the body then makes antibodies, too. Oh, that's cool. Yeah, so you're injecting messenger RNA that gets incorporated in the cells. And what messenger RNA does is transcription RNA comes and makes proteins off of those

instructions. And this messenger RNA strand codes for the spike protein of the coronavirus, particularly the SARS COV-2 protein that attaches to the ACE2 receptors in the body. I really like, by the way, our audience, because they've been listening long enough, we can just throw out jargon like that and they actually know what we're talking about. So it's very good. So I'll give our audience. Oh, no, no, no, not that one.

This one. There we go. Sorry. So, yeah, and that is just cool as hell. And it more closely mimics an infection. If you just inject the proteins and then they're gone, that doesn't act like an infection. But if you inject messenger RNA and then the body starts making these proteins and releasing them from cells, it seems more like a true infection may give you better immunity. So that is cool.

Looking forward to that. So anyway, all right. We've got a lot of, you and I are going on vacation to a state that if we, if we live, lived in New York, if we went on vacation to this state, we would have to quarantine ourselves for two weeks when we came back. Actually, Tennessee is on that list, too. I just saw that. Yeah. Yeah. So there you go. So we're going to go and just be very careful. Very careful. And we're going to try to have a good time. And if it sucks, we'll come home where all our stuff is. Because you can shelter in place. Yeah, well, you can shelter in place at the beach. Yeah. But

all my stuff is here if I've got to just be holed up in the house. So it'll be interesting if they close the beaches, what kind of effing beach trip this will be. But it won't be work, even though they'll still call me anyway. You and I were in Jamaica once, and I remember having to go to the hotel lobby, which was the only place they had Wi-Fi so I could Skype back. because at that this was before international plans and stuff I had no way to call back I remember that I don't have anything to say about it that's okay that's nothing to say I just remember it

all right so I would like to see this end as quickly as possible I would too and I believe it will getting so old it is it's kind of irritating it's really irritating all right number one thing don't take advice from some asshole on the radio let's take some questions okay here's a non COVID-19 question oh how exciting uh oh no

okay no okay here we go about butt I've been saying what putting stuff in mine lately yeah it's good kind of nice nothing too crazy but uh yeah it feels good

feels mad uh can't do any damage uh i imagine could went too far a lost something up there but that's what i'm planning on doing but anyway i also have a very powerful shower novel

that I can stream water straight up there to clean it up but there is occasionally like lately i've been doing it till it gets really hard to hold in So it feels like it really got to blow.

Then I sit on the toilet and just evacuate from brown water there. Well, he's given himself a tap water, anima. Yeah, sounds that way. Sounds also that he's sticking other things up in there too, right? Yeah, and let me tell you something. When we're in the emergency room, the common convention is when someone comes into the emergency room, and they've got something, they've lost something up their ass. Just say you sat on it.

We all know you didn't, but everyone will just accept that fiction. That way you can sort of save some face, and nobody has to explore your interesting, you know, hobby any further. You just sat on it. I sat on it. I don't know what happened. It might be something good just to stop altogether, though. Yeah, well, in my opinion.

Some people like it, but there are toys that they make that are designed for ass play. I recommend, if you're going to do this at all, lots of lube, go slow and go low and go slow. And you only use things that are made to go up your, you know, up your into your rectum. Because you can lose it. And you think you never will. But if it's got any kind of rounded edge on it that you're holding in your hand, you're going to go bloop. Because if you've ever used a suppository, you shove it in with your finger. And then all of a sudden, the ass kind of just grabs it and takes it the rest of the way.

There are muscles in there that will close. And anything that's rounded, it's got a rounded edge on it. If they can get on the other side of that, those muscles will close and it will go right up into your rectum. So, and the same for people who are doing urethral sounding, too. Urethral sounding can have adverse effects. What is that? That's where they take, well, you know what sounding is, right? If you're in the, okay, so when we go with Captain Mike.

Yes. And he has that stick that's got the, has the depth on it. You stick it in the creek to see where you are with regard to the depth and where the tide is and all that stuff. That's called sounding. So people will do that in their urethra, too. They will take a rigid rod and stick it in their cockhole and then right down the urethra into the bladder. And some people get pleasure out of that. Wow.

I have seen people do this with a glass rod. I do not recommend that because when it breaks, it will lacerate your urethra. And then what happens is, oh, yeah, then you lacerate your urethra like that, they have to fillet open your penis and, you know, to sew it back up again. It sounds like I'm getting choked up because I'm emotional about this, but it's just my allergies. Did you get nailed by this sandstorm? Yes, I did.

Oh, my goodness. Yes. Is it over? I don't know. I don't think so. I'm still having some effects from it. And it still looks so hazy outside. It's been crazy.

Well, I thought that was, I thought they were nuts, but that was a real thing. Yeah, where we are in the mountains, you couldn't see from one mountain to another. We had a true. And by the time it got here, of course, all the sand. was gone. All that's left is the very minute particulate dust. Because any sand that got blown into the air just came to the ground. Anyway, it's horrible.

It is horrible. All right. So, yeah, go easy with sticking things in orifices. I'm not a namby-pambi, just say no type person. Do what you like. But be safe. You've got to be safe. And a light bulb does not belong up your ass.

I don't understand why a light bulb ever became a thing. Well, it's because it's shaped properly. You know, it kind of tapers at the bottom and then, and you can use a candelabra light too, you know, and it's got the, you can hold on to the screw and don't do that. You will lose track of it or it will break and then you will be, if it breaks, you've got a whirl to hurt. And if you lose track of it at the best, you're going to be going to the emergency room and having to use this shape. Fiction that you sat on a candelabra bulb and somehow it went up your ass. Oh. Okay. So please don't do that. Go to Adam and Eve or one of those websites or, you know, an adult store and they've got but play. Oh, you know what you can use? What?

A fletus flute. Oh, no. No. You have one behind you. Flatisflute.com. I think they're still doing their thing. Let me see. Let's look. Are you sure that's safe to do that with? Well, it's a butt plug. You know, I never knew that. Yeah, that's what's for. The fletus flute is a whistling butt plug. Let me see.

Yep, the website's still up. And there's a picture of me looking like the Renan Stimpy artist did it. That was Son of Fritz did the artwork. And it looks sort of like a Renan Stimpy cartoon. And there's a big, hairy ass in the foreground. and then it's farting musical notes into my face, and then I have a big smile on my face like it's the most wonderful thing in the world.

So check out flatusflute.com and tell them your old pal, Dr. Steve, sent you. I have nothing to do with them. I told them it was okay if they put my face on there, though, because I thought it was hilarious. Do you remember the year we gave those at that Christmas party. Yes.

So Tacey had all these friends. They were all, you know, nano and octo and septuagenarians. Yes. And they had one of those Christmas parties where you do, where you exchange gifts and you could steal from other people and all this stuff. And I'm sure they had some racist name for it because that's just how they are. But, and then, but they were very surprised when they received a, flate, a box of flatis fluency.

Anyway, all right. Also, get a bidet. Oh. Get a bidet. Also, don't shoot water up your ass under pressure either. That can cause some problems if it balloons. If you, you know, if you have a turd in there and then you're shooting water in and the colon starts to balloon out, it's not really designed to do that under water pressure.

And that can cause problems as well. If you have a diverticulum in there, you could rupture it. So nothing under pressure like that. So that guy should stop that. Yeah, but if he just likes the feeling, you can get a to-to toilet if you got the money. That will shoot water up your ass, but at an appropriate pressure. And we were talking to Robert Kelly about bidets because he's our go-to bidet expert. and he told us to get the tushy.

It's very inexpensive. It was less than $100. And the one we got didn't have any fancy stuff on it because we don't have hot and cold water next to our toilet and we don't have electricity. So if you want warmed water, you need either one that uses electricity to warm the water or you need a warm water outlet next to it.

But this one was just pure cold water. The cold water does not bother me. No, me neither. It feels good. After a big hot turd passes through there, cold water feels pretty good. It's amazing how good it feels. How clean you feel. Yes.

Yeah, because usually I try to train myself, and this is more than you need to know, because you're my spouse. I would prefer to imagine that you never evacuate your bowels ever and that... Honey, I don't. And that you would think the same of me. but the fact is I do, and my bowels train so every morning they'll go, and then I just jump in the shower after that. You know, I'll do a little light cleanup and then jump in the shower. But on the times when that isn't effective, this bidet is awesome.

And it kind of sluces up your, I mean, it sluces through. I thought it would shoot from below, but it doesn't. It shoots from behind, and then through the ass crack itself, like sort of an upside down river, right? Yes. Is that how you would describe that? Yeah. And you feel quite amazing afterward.

Now, it doesn't seem to do anything for urine, but that's no big deal. Who cares about that? Yeah. For a woman, you'd have to have one that'd shoot you from the front. And then you'd just be sitting on the pot all day. Oh, yes. All right, so get a bidet. Oh, we originally thought about getting bidet because we couldn't

find any toilet paper in the store. Now the shortage seems to have evaded significantly. I made a score today. Did you? Excellent. All right. Okie-doke. Dr. Steve, it's Jim Norton. Hello, Jim Norton. This is what I wanted to ask you. Yes.

Why are there surges happening all over the country, but not in New York, where they were protesting? Why in certain places, not in other places? You know, Florida, Arizona. How come we're only seeing selective surgeon? Okay.

It may be, that's an excellent question. Thank you, Jim. I'll give you a, oh, you know what I should do? I'll give him one of these. Give yourself a bill. So it may be an illusion. There may be, okay, so you see people on the streets in New York and other places, shoulder to shoulder, exercising their right to peaceful assembly,

for the most part, and we don't seem to see anything, any consequences as far as COVID is concerned from that. Of course, it takes five days to 11 days to display symptoms, and then another five to 11 days to end up in the hospital, and then up to 55 days to die from it. So we may not be in that time frame quite yet where we're seeing a big surge in hospital. The other thing is, the age group in those protests tended to be very young compared to me anyway. The youth, two things, young people aren't as affected by this. They don't die as much.

They don't end up in the hospital, although they do, all of those things, but not nearly at the rate of people my age and older. And also, they tend not to go to the doctor. Exactly. But they also tend to spread it. Yes. So it may be rampant, and we just don't know it because they're not presenting for testing. They're not presenting for symptoms. They're only showing up when they get sick enough to go to the hospital. And then we see a small spike in that, but that's all we're seeing. So that would be my guess. You would think, though, that some of their elderly family members or friends would be going to the hospital.

Yeah, if they have any of those, you know, a lot of those, when I was that age, I didn't, you know, I wasn't going to hang out with the man. You know, I wanted to move out and live with my friends, you know. So I didn't see my parents except on Thanksgiving and Christmas, so. Oh. I don't. We have two that are going to be exactly like that. But we like each other's company, right?

Yes, we do. Okay. Well, you and I do. I don't know about them anymore. Yeah, no, I mean, you know. Yeah, no, they're 17 and 15. The last people in the world they would prefer to hang out with is us, although, you know, they'll hang out with us on vacation. So that's all I ask.

I'm fine. I look forward to it. Me too. All right. Dr. Steve. Yes. It's Marcus from North Carolina. Hey, Marcus.

They just made it fucking mandatory for me to wear a goddamn mask. Right. Fucking stupid. Okay. You got a behavioral issue because wearing a mask turns me into a fucking asshole. Turns you into one? Enough for me to not wear that goddamn mask. Yeah.

So he, Marcus's argument is if I wear a mask, it turns me into an effing a hole and that makes me not want to wear the mask. Okay. So I've seen this, you know, wearing a mask is a free speech issue. A lot of people sit that same crap about seatbelts, too. You know, there's a reason why they can require people to wear seatbelts. And the reason is that, yeah, it's a freedom, you know, you have freedom not to wear one, but they can require you to wear it to the point that they will find you legally, you know, liable if you don't wear one. because people who don't wear them end up getting thrown from the car.

And then there's a decrease of productivity to society. There is a decrease to, or there is an increase to cost to society and medical bills that some have to be subsidized and stuff like that. So the government has decided that they can require us to wear seat belts for societal good. But you say, I don't need somebody to babysit me to tell me what to do, right? And the same thing with tobacco. Although they're not making it illegal, they've allowed places to say you can't smoke here and there. You remember back when we were smoking, you could smoke about anywhere. Everywhere.

And we were pissed because all of a sudden now you couldn't smoke in all these places. Now, thank God. You know, we've been quit for 20-some years. I'm very happy about it. but they're happy that I can go places where people aren't smoking. But that was also allowed because smoking has been demonstrated to put a large financial and health burden on society. It isn't just affecting you. It's not necessarily a victimless crime.

I'm saying what they say. I'm not saying that's me saying that. That's what they're saying. So I think they can use the same argument with mask wearing. If they can demonstrate, which I think they have, because we talked about it last show and on this last COVID sit-wrap on the laugh button channel, that wearing masks prevents transmission, even if it's 10%. With the 2 million cases, that's 200,000 cases, right? Mm-hmm. Yeah, that would have been prevented.

And about 12,000 deaths so far. Yeah. that could have been prevented, even if it's just 10%. And the evidence shows that it's more than that. It's not for you. It's for other people. Right. So, yeah, wear your mask, Marcus.

Come on, dude. It's just for a little while longer. Nobody likes it. You're doing your civic duty. You're helping out your fellow man. And it may even prevent you from getting it to under certain circumstances. Again, even if it just reduces 5% of it. of you getting it as opposed to you asymptomatically giving it to somebody else.

And you say, yeah, well, asymptomatic people tend not to give it. Yeah, but you still cough sometimes or you yell or you're singing or you're laughing. You can still transmit it to other people. Those droplets are tiny. Yep. Everywhere. Again, I am a libertarian. So the idea of the government mandating that we do things that make us say,

I'm not, you know, I would argue normally against something like that. But this is something that helps keep society safe. And anything you can do, you're just doing your part. You know, it's not a fiction that wearing a mask is helpful to society to decrease transmission of this disease. It's not a fiction. It's very politicized right now. And I was in the grocery store today, and I was just looking at the people who didn't have one on. I'm like, what is your deal?

Yeah, I know. So, and go look at our last situation report. It's the most recent one, and I won't be doing one for a couple of weeks. But I went over the study. I don't want to bore you with it today because it's pretty dry. But the study that looked at a bunch of different mask studies and mushed the data together and found that mask wearing is actually quite effective to prevent the spread of this disease. So there you go.

All right. Hey, this is going to be like a really silly question, just out of curiosity. Well, you called the right place. If a mosquito bites somebody with, like, you know, that's corona positive. Yeah. And then, like, he goes half a block and bites me. Is it possible for me to contract a disease? Great question.

We have answered it before. Yes. What were you going to say, Tase? I don't remember the answer. Oh, no. It is not possible. There's not been a single case of COVID-19 being transmitted by mosquitoes. And the reason is it doesn't work the way that we think it does.

So when the mosquitoes transmit Zika, the mosquito is actually infected with Zika. When they transmit malaria, they're infected with the malaria. malaria lives in the mosquito's stomach and then gets regurgitated into the bloodstream when they bite somebody. There are no ACE2 receptors anywhere in the mosquito, therefore they can't get infected by this particular coronavirus and therefore they cannot transmit it. Now, the other thing is, is it's not really a blood-borne disease. The virus may affect the blood vessels, but it's not the viral particle.

that are infecting the blood vessels, what affects the blood vessels is the human immune system. So the virus is mainly attached to ACE2 receptors in the respiratory tract. And that's how it works. So even if you were fully infected with COVID-19 at the worst case ever, and a mosquito, you know, bit you and sucked blood out, they wouldn't get any viral particles, even if it was transmitted that way.

where they would then go to you and then just sort of release some of those into your bloodstream and just did that one while that wouldn't work. Okay? Mm-hmm. All right. Oh, now, we've got,

remember last time we talked about wisdom teeth? Yes. And I said, I hope some dentists call in. So I've got one anecdote here and then we've got a dentist calling in to answer all of your questions. And maybe I can get my stupid voice back. Hey there, Dr. Steve.

You were talking about wisdom teeth removal this past week. Now, I'm not an oral surgeon, but I did have my wisdom teeth removed. They were all growing completely sideways instead of up and down, and I did not get put under. They essentially just took, like, pliers, and they squoes the tooth until it popped. And he pulled it out in pieces. Yeah, that's what it feels like. And it was a really awful noise right there in your head. I didn't like that.

Okay, that's what they did for me at least. All right. Thanks, Dr. Steve. This last one that our oral surgeon friend did that lives across the street who we still need to get in here. And maybe the dentist called in if they listened frequently can tell me what was going on there. It seemed like he took like a chisel or something, a real narrow chisel and put it in my mouth and then just put pressure on it, like to just push it sideways. like to push the tooth sideways. And I wondered, God, what if it slipped

and that thing went right through my cheek? You know, that's what it felt like. But I'm sure, you know, when someone's messing around in your mouth, it feels bigger than it is, and it feels more intense than it really is. So I just wonder what he was really doing there. But that's what it felt like.

It looked like he was using all his strength, you know, to push on this thing. It's crazy. All right, let's get the real answer. Okay. Well. Hey, Dr. Steve and hey, hey, Tacey, this is Dr. H. I'm a dentist. Hey, man.

Just wanted to help you guys out with a wisdom tooth question from last episode. Thank you. When removing a wisdom tooth or any tooth, it's done by a combination of two instruments, forceps and elevators. Elevators are instruments that are used to first gain mobility of the tooth. I bet that elevator is what I was talking about just now. I kind of wedge it between the tooth and the bone in the ligament space and apply pushing forces. Once enough mobility has been achieved, the foresep is used to luxate the

tooth and deliver it. So we're not really pulling a tooth, mostly just using the forceps to catch the tooth or roll the tooth out. Kind of like we're moving a fence post from the ground. You push on the post in all directions. So the ground expands around the post, then it's very easy to move the post out of the ground. I tell my non-sadated patients and I'm actually pushing her tooth out instead of pulling it. I hope that helps. I also wanted to say... It does help, but I wonder how when you're pushing on the tooth,

I mean, how does it... I guess you just have to be good at it. Does it ever slip, that elevator thing? Can you imagine? And then just poke right through your cheek? I don't like the thought of that. Okay. That people like Tacey, we're seeing more and more of

in the sense that they don't develop some or all of their wisdom teeth. She's further along in the evolutionary sense than someone like myself. You're a mutant tight, and your superpower is you didn't make wisdom to you. Oh, that's really sad, isn't it? Not very good superpower. As our diets progressed to more omnivore carnivore diets, the need for our molars to grind vegetables and herbivore type stuff has gone down. And, yeah, especially in the younger generation, it's not uncommon to see them without some

or all of their wisdom. Wait, I got to get him on here. I don't know how that is possible. If you take rats and you cut their tail off and you breed them, they still have children that have tails because cutting their tail off doesn't change their genetic makeup. Now, if you breed two rats who have shorter tails, and then you keep breeding them, selecting them for shorter tails, you can get a breed of rat that has no tails. Is that what he's saying, though?

I didn't take that as being. Well, he was saying that since we're not grinding vegetable matter like we used to, we're no longer, you know, we're evolving out of having to have wisdom teeth. Well, there has to be some natural selection involved there, right? People would have to be preferentially having intercourse with people that don't have wisdom teeth or have decreased formation of wisdom teeth for that. There would have to be some other survival advantage for that to happen, in my opinion. That's just really interesting.

Let me run that back and see if I understood him, right? The need for our molars to grind vegetables and herbivore type stuff has gone down. And, yeah, especially in the younger generation, it's not uncommon to see them without some or all of their wisdom to eat. Love the show. Hope you guys stay safe. I look forward to your next episode, y'all. Thanks, man. And one thing that dentists, we've got to give them some love because they are right in people's faces.

In their faces. They weren't able to work for a good period of time. Well, because they were getting it. Yeah. Let's see rate of COVID in dentists. This has been rough on them. Yeah, let me see. Okay, modeling the impact of COVID-19 on U.S. dental spending.

Well, you know, that's a joke. I'm just looking at if there was some rate. Okay, here's from the American Dental Association. Nothing interesting here. So I should have looked up this and look this up. Okay, CDC include both confirmed and probable cases and deaths, the agency. Okay. Eh, boo.

It's a terrible website. It's a terrible radio show. Yeah, this isn't good. Not good this time. That's okay. Well, we got the answer to the wisdom teeth thing. I think that's interesting. All right.

So we never did talk about... Hey, Dr. Steve, this is Tony. Yeah, go ahead. What COVID-19 means. We never did talk about it. Oh, that is so funny. We should tell that story. That is hilarious.

Okay, you tell it. Okay, so Cliff came to the house. Cliff Andrews, who's been on the show and is going to be doing the next two weeks' worth of shows. did two weeks of best-ofs. Which I won't be on any of it. But anyway. I don't know. So he was laughing because Trump said he didn't know what COVID-19 stood for.

Right. He said, maybe I can find that on YouTube. Hang on a second because it was funny. Trump, COVID-19, what does? Let's see if I can find it. 19 mean. Okay, let's just see if I can get it from that real quick. Because it was funny, but he was making fun.

Oh, here it is. Okay, here we go. I think I found it. Come on now. What I said the other night, there's never been anything where they have so many names. I could give you 19 or 20 names for that, right? It's got all different names. Wuhan.

All right, let's skip forward to the 19. COVID. 19. COVID-19. I said, what's the 19? COVID-19. Some people can't explain what the 19. Give me the COVID-19. I said, that's an odd name. Okay, so, so anyway, so that's where that came from. So go ahead. So he was laughing about it, and I was just being honest and said, well, wait a minute, I don't know what it means either. Yeah. And I've never thought about it. So, anyway. That made me feel better in a way.

I think you weren't the only one. Really? I mean, I... Well, it was like, you remember Gary Johnson. He was the libertarian guy, and he got hammered by the press because he didn't know where Aleppo was. I would warrant that even if you're a politician, when you have to answer all these questions, they go, what about the Aleppo situation?

It's like, what do you talk? Let me do some research, and I'll get back to you and tell you about the Aleppo situation. You know, it's in Syria. I know that, but, you know, I think most people don't know that. Yeah, there you go. Find it on a map. So I did think that was funny, though.

I could have just acted like I knew what it's... Sure. No, that's one thing that I like about you is that you're very honest. Did we tell the people what it stood for just in case there are... Oh, yeah, in case there's somebody out there that's laughing, but they don't know why they're laughing because they're just trying to fit in. Yeah, it's because it's COVID-19 is coronavirus disease 2019. There you go. Give yourself a bill.

So everybody now, those same people are going, oh, I'm not. I knew that. Yeah. Can you believe Tacey didn't know that? Glad he saw it and said what it really was. All right. Oh, wait. We're going to take Tony's call.

Hey, Dr. Steve. This is Tony from Southwest Virginia. Big fan. Hey, thanks, man. My question is about these brain supplements, like Nereva and Trev. I don't know what the name of the other one. Deriva was one that I saw advertised. Did these things help?

Well, whenever you're talking about things like this, you've got to say, help for what? So some of these nootropics have some data behind them that shows that they improve executive reasoning or something like. You've got to define, well, what is that? You know, if it's people ordering blocks together, I know that when I was in a nootropic study in college, no in medical school, they gave me. dexhamphetamine as one of the arms of the study. And when the guy came in, all of a sudden, I could do groups of ten numbers forward and backward, you know? And that's kind of, you know, it's a real improvement over my baseline, but is it

youth's worth anything? Is it worth having all the issues that you get when you take amphetamines to just be able to say numbers backwards, you know? So we've only got 57 seconds. Go ahead to say what you're going to say. So just like doing duolingo every day, does that help your brain? Yeah, I don't know. I don't know.

I mean, you can't hurt it. You wouldn't think it would. It's supposed to, and there is some data out there that says that you can fend off some severity of dementia by doing things like that, like learning a new language or doing those brain puzzles and stuff like that. We'll talk more about nootropics next time. Will you make a note? And when we come back in three weeks, I don't know how to spell it. N-O-O-T-R-O-P-I-C. And then we'll talk about that because one of them is ProVigil.

And I know there's some data on performance enhancement with that medication. Yes. And ProVigil is kind of interesting because it is crazy expensive. It's generic name is Modafinil. And it is, I mean, it's really, really expensive. I think it's like $800 a month, even. Is it generic yet? Do you know, is there a site that you can look at to see if it's generic?

Or if it's gone off patent, I mean, is modafinil generic? Let's see what it says. Well, I don't know. So I can't, oh, it is available as a generic medication. Okay, so let's say generic. modafanil cost and it is still

yah dang $667 a month that's crazy so it's a lot of money there is a pro drug called adraffanil that actually is you can buy it over the counter but I don't have good data

on whether what the dose you would have to take to get an equivalent dose of modafinil. I'm not advocating that anybody fiddle around with this. But it's a pro-drug, meaning that when you take it, the liver converts it into modafinil. But it's a tenth of the price. But we'll do some research on that if you'll remind me. And we'll look into all of these nootropics for next show.

I think that'd be a good one to do because Joe Rogan talks about it all the time. I have a lot of respect for Joe, but not necessarily as a scientific researcher. So, you know, we'll look into it and see. And if there's something there, then we'll bring that information to you. Didn't New Vigil come out after ProVigil? That is correct. Okay. So ProVigil probably is generic.

Yeah. And so New Vigil was basically, I think it may be either a pro-drug or another. We'll find out. I'm not an expert on New Vigil by any means, but I will be by next time. So we can't forget Rob Sprantz, Bob Kelly, Greg Hughes, Anthony, Kimia, Jim Norton, Travis Teft, Louis Johnson, Paul O'Charsky, Eric Nagel, Roland Campo, Sam, Roberts, Duffy, Dennis Falcone, Matt, from the syndicate, Ron Bennington, and Fizz Watley, whose support of this show has never gone unappreciated. 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. And by the way, Tase, if we ever want to embed a message,

Just for the hardcore listeners, we put it in this, because most people, when they hear me say we can't forget Rob Sprant's click, they go to the next point. I would. Myrtle and Ermeline had a little discussion at the end of, I guess, last podcast. Oh, no. And like, two people actually heard it. So I know who the hardcore listeners are. So if we ever want to embed something in. Oh, we don't have to whisper.

We just say it because the only hardcore people will hear it. Okay. I can't think of anything interesting to say right now, but if we have something like that. No, we're not doing anything interesting today. We've already proven that. We're just phoning it in. 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, 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. Thanks, taste. Goodbye, everybody. Let's go on vacation. Yeah, let's do it.