Weird Medicine: The Podcast - 418 - Vaccine, Schmaxine

Episode Date: August 13, 2020

Dr Steve and Tacie speak with "Mike," an mRNA vaccine trial subject. Mike takes Dr Steve to task for missing the first scheduled interview and Dr Steve offers a lame excuse. Sputnik V, a centenarian COVID-19 survivor, "Cough CPR" and more. PLEASE VISIT: stuff.doctorsteve.com (for all your online shopping needs!) 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!) hellofresh.com/weird80 (America’s #1 meal kit and get $80 off!) feals.com/fluid (50% off your first order of premium CBD sent to your home!) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

I've got diphtheria crushing my esophagus. I've got Tobolivide stripping from my nose. I've got the leprosy of the heartbound, exacerbating my impetable woes. I want to take my brain out, plastic with the wave, an ultrasonic, ecographic, 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 template, I don't.

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It's terrible, but you should get one. You're terrible. Well. All right, very good. Hey, Tase. Don't forget Dr. Scott's website at simplyerbils. dot net. Someday Dr. Scott will return. I don't know when that's going to possibly be, but hopefully soon. He's working on rearranging his schedule, he told me. Oh, is he? Okay. Good.

All right. Well, good for him. All right. We have a guest today, and this is a very interesting guest. We've been talking about vaccines, and we have some vaccine news that we're going to talk about later today. We are recording this on Wednesday, August 12th, in case this gets replayed. and now we sound stupid because the vaccine caused I Am Legend. But right now we have with us Michael, Michael, who's a weird medicine listener, and he is a recipient of an experimental vaccine. So Michael, thanks for joining the show. No problem.

Before I go into that, I want to point something. I think this is worth a minute, Dr. Steve. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We had a little bit of a problem setting this up. In fact, the first time you had set the date in time, and then you didn't show, and then you had emailed me a few hours later, and you said, are you free now? And I said, four minutes later, I was free, and I gave my phone number again.

And then two hours later, you said, oh, I just got this. And at the time that you emailed me back and said, are you free now? And I promptly responded, you were also tweeting at the same time when you called me. And do you remember what you were tweeting? No, I have no idea. All right. Well, you're actually retweeting with a comment, a question. So you were helping someone medically.

The person had reached out to you for help, and they had reached out simply by saying at weird medicine, Chunky cum, any comments? That was way more important than talking to you. Yeah, coagulated cemento go in and advised him to clean his pipes maybe a little more often. But that's what I got bumped for. That's what I did instead. Sorry about that.

While you're off doing that. Well, at least get one thing. Let's get one thing straight. it's Semenagelan. That's what's properly pronounced. So anyway, but anyway, yeah, I'm sorry about that. Yeah, honestly, I've not been as good as staying on my schedule. And that's just because our schedules are so screwed up.

I mean, you know, for five months, my kids were just sitting here at home. We had no schedule going on. I was doing office visits from my house through, through telemedicine, which was really a treat doing 15 minutes to 20 minutes of, you know, of tech support with, you know, little old ladies up in the mountains of Virginia going, well, honey, I don't know if I got a tab. What am I supposed to swallow it? You know, so it was, you know, yeah, it's not been a good, my most shining moment as far as being organized, so I apologize for that. I'm a practicing attorney. I'm home right now in the middle of the day, working from home.

We have a lot of court appearances from home, and it is very difficult to even remember what day it is. Yeah, I did a court appearance from home. I got pulled before COVID-19 happened, and my court date happened to be right in, you know, the middle of the lockdown. And so it was fun going to court via Zoom. Are you in trouble? No, no, no, no. A little bit. Well, so I guess I can tell this story now.

I get to court, and the judge is. my best friend's nephew, he's also an attorney, but it's his nephew, and I took him to OzFest, like when he was 16, and when he was 17, he had a party at his house, and he couldn't get all the people that showed up that weren't supposed to be there at his house, and I went over and, you know, with his uncle and said, hey, the cops are coming, you know, to get everybody out of there. And then here's this, you know, this guy is my judge. And he said, well, you know, do you want to plead guilty and get driving school? I said, do I have a choice?

You know, and he just kind of laughed. He said, well, I mean, you can go to court if you want to. But, you know, so I got absolutely no consideration from him, given him, you know, I saved his ass a couple of times. But anyway. They usually err on the side of trying to, you know, so. Yeah, but anyway. Well, the vaccine, right? Yeah, it was all through Zoom.

So, yeah, so tell us how you got into this vaccine. So you're in a clinical trial. Is that right? I am. I'm in the Moderna clinical trial of their MRI vaccine. vaccine. And this is phase three or phase two now? I'm a phase three candidate. Okay, so let's explain to everybody. Phase three is when you give it to thousands and thousands of people. What you're trying to do is tease out any very small effects. So if you have an adverse effect

that only affects one in 10,000 people, testing 300 people isn't going to show that most of the time. So now they're looking at doing, you know, 30,000 or more patients. Do you know the number? Do you know the number? And I think also for efficacy, you need this many people out there in hot and outbreak times right now to get this data as fast as you can. Since you're not doing challenge trials where you give, like they could have given Michael the vaccine, and then a week later come in and sprayed SARS-C-O-V-2 up his nose, he's absolutely right. When you've got a penetrance at the worst of times, you know, if you're on a cruise ship of only 17 percent, it only penetrated the diamond prince of 17%.

You're going to have to treat thousands and thousands of people to see that also a small effect of preventing people from getting the disease or preventing them from going to the hospital if they do get it or preventing them from dying if they do go to the hospital. So anyway, you're right on all accounts. So in the very beginning, so I also own a business that I have a factory partner in China. And so I've been kind of following this from the get-go because we were affected over there. And then right as that was kind of getting resolved, we started having the lockdowns and outbreaks here. So I started kind of obsessing with COVID stuff, COVID data, emailing Dr. Steve, random stuff. Oh, did you really? And then which one of the early things I emailed you was speculation of a coronavirus crossover type of immunity type thing.

And this was probably in the end of March. And that looks to be starting to flesh out a little. Yep. So I took, I was taking an interest, but I've never taken a flu vaccine. I don't really get sick very often. I'm a 40-year-old male. And so I wasn't really afraid of it, but in the interest of curiosity and, you know, I was following the vaccine development.

I knew what they were doing in vaccines. So then one day I'm on Twitter and there was an update from a local news source that kind of had a daily COVID update. And then in the headline, it's that vaccine trial or local or something like that. Oh, okay. So I read it, and at the end, they said they were going to be doing a vaccine trial here, and it had a contact information. I emailed the contact, and the doctor who's running the study emailed me and called me the same night. This was probably, they started in end of July.

This was maybe a month prior. She said, we haven't started yet, but we're getting names. Okay. So then a few weeks prior to that, they called me to schedule. So they set up the appointment, and initially on the very first contact, that first day, she sent me an email with the consent form in it, just a generic consent. And at that point, I knew it was the Moderna vaccine. So I didn't know initially what it was. Did you have to sign an NDI at the same time?

No, the agreement discusses confidentiality, and it basically says you are free to talk to people about it. They don't really, it discourages, like, you know, public news things, but, you know, it doesn't out and out-now prohibit it and there's no confidentiality agreement. So then they have, I have the appointment. I go in and they basically do like a light physical kind of poke around on you, check your vitals, and then they take some blood, and then they do a COVID test, the very uncomfortable nasal pharyngeal test. And then they do the injection. And so the injection, I mean, I don't know what I got. Definitely something went in. I felt something going in.

And then 30 minutes to observe you after. So you sit there for 30 minutes at the same time. They're setting you up with this e-diary system. And it's a system that they basically, that first week or so thereafter of each injection, they really want to know what's going on. And so the e-diarie is an app on your phone. And that first week, you're getting prompts two, three times a day that basically have a series of questions. Okay.

They give you a thermometer. They give you a little tape measure. So if you do have any redness or anything around it, they would want you to measure it. So this is all kind of built in. And they give you a schedule that's for two years. And the two-year schedule has these E-Diary commitments in it, and it has seven visits that you have to go over two years. And obviously the first couple are for obvious reasons. and then the later ones are likely for continued blood testing and things like that.

So today I'm 15 days out. So at the time, no side effects at all, no redness. I actually expected, I usually do get redness and injections and a little bit of pain. They gave it to me in the muscle on the upper arm. And no redness, no swelling, nothing, not at the time and not after. No side effects, anything. I've had nothing. Okay, so I'm looking at their structure.

It says trial volunteers will receive two intramuscular injections 28 days apart. Participants will be randomly assigned one-to-one to receive either two 100-microgram injections of MRNA-1273 or two shots of a saline placebo. Okay, so it's possible you've got the placebo then. The trial is blinded so the investigators and the participants will not know who is assigned to which group. Okay. So you can't go running around going, who, you know, I'm, I'm immune because you don't know.

Like I said, I wasn't, I'm not particularly worried about it. This is more of an experiment for me. In fact, I emailed you an article Bloomberg did yesterday about Moderna and the MRNA vaccines and the history, and it's really, really interesting. And I think you should put it in the, if this goes on YouTube, put it in the description because it provides a lot of background and on just the last 10 years what they've learned and you kind of realize how little

we know when you read this stuff. Yes. And another interesting thing about the, so the NIH was saying the other day. Is that you or is that me? It's me. Sorry. That's you? Okay.

Sorry. Oh, yeah, it's okay. The NIH was discussing last week that in the next month they're going to be putting out a vaccine priority list and the quote was not everyone is going to like it. But the article had an interesting little fact in it that the, uh, the, uh, the, uh, the director said that of the people that would have priority, the people who got the placebo groups in any vaccine would be a priority because, quote, we owe them. I agree with that.

100%. I don't even know if I would take it because, again, I don't care, but I just never really occurred to me that there would be that viewpoint. So it was interesting to see that. Yeah, no, I think that's people who have stood up and taken the risk of helping us get to advance the science on this, I think they should get it first. So if they decode you and you were in the placebo group,

I absolutely would support you getting it first if you wanted it. If you don't want it, that's up to you, but at least offering it to you. I wonder, yeah, go ahead. Sorry. No, I was just going to say, I guess to finish up that process, that thought, then if I have any symptoms or I think I've been exposed,

I'm supposed to contact them, and then I would go down there, they would test me. And then what I don't know is, Dr. Steve, if I were in the placebo group, for example, and I tested positive, I wonder if at that point they would just terminate me from the study because I'm kind of useless. Well, that's interesting, isn't it? Yeah. Well, yeah, I think so. I think that your participation in the study would be complete. As far as the science is concerned, they may continue to monitor you for a year. But they won't know if you're in the placebo group until they decode it. Now, they will have an independent monitor that's watching this. And if they see a statistically significant difference, if they're still, administering doses, if they see a statistically significant difference that makes giving the placebo

now unethical, then they'll stop the trial. But I think the way they're going to do this is just vaccinate a whole bunch of people pretty much, you know, in the same very close time period, and then, you know, and then watch them over time. So that won't be an issue. What's your take on this? Because, so I read an article yesterday, so this study is supposed to be 30,000. And right now, as of the first two weeks, I guess they had 5,000 enrolled with the expectation that they would have $30,000 by September. So this article was saying that it would be impossible to have a vaccine by election day

because it used this September starting point, basically, not acknowledging you're building thousands of starting in mid-July. What do you think the numbers would have to be? Let's say we have 10,000 people by mid-August out there with this, and by the first of September, they have both doses. And then you have a month in, and let's say out of those 10,000, and you had 750 positives, and it's heavily slanted.

Let's say it's 90, 10, 95, 10. Right. Do you think they move? Yeah, maybe. Maybe. The thing is, you know, Russia skipped phase three for their vaccine. And then we've got a question about it in a minute. I think it is a large phase three in disguise, though, if you kind of...

Well, that's what it is. You're exactly right. They're just giving it to people, and, yes, they'll follow them. So you could look at it that way, but it's really... you know been approved for use so it's kind of a phase three slash phase four and if people don't remember these things that they don't listen every week you know phase one's where you make sure it doesn't kill people you give it to 10 15 people or 40 people and then phase two you give it to maybe 300 to see if it seems to work and doesn't kill people then phase three is

thousands of people up to you know 30,000 people and then phase four is post-marketing so what Russia's doing is, you know, basically phase three slash four. I'm just curious what, you know, because Dr. Fauci has said that they would accept the vaccine with as low as 50% efficacy. So if you got early data that was like,

let's say in the 90 where you thought, well, this could shake out a little more, but there's such a gap. I just wonder at that point if that would just be something. That's a policy question, but yeah, I mean, if the science is there, I wouldn't be against it, particularly if the independent monitor saw

that it was highly statistically significant in favor of the vaccine. But I just wonder if we need to explain to people what this Moderna vaccine is because we've been talking about it a little bit on the show. It's fascinating. It's not like any other vaccine that I've ever encountered, although I do understand that the veterinarians use some RNA vaccines. But what they were looking at is this spike immunodest. So the spike immunogen is the protein that the SARS-CoV-2 virus uses to attach itself to human cells,

and it uses this ACE2 receptor. Really, that's not apropos to this discussion so much. And normally what you would do is you would synthesize that protein and then just inject it into people, and their bodies would make immune responses to it. The problem with doing it that way is you get this huge load of, of antigen, and then it just goes away. And one of the hypotheses is that that's the reason why you don't get lifelong immunity because it doesn't act like an infection because, you know, infection starts low and then

grows, and then the immune system hits it, and it takes time, and then it shrinks over time. And the immune system may actually have a mechanism to sort of see that bell curve. And it may help it develop longer-lasting immunity. So this Moderna, their real name is Mode RNA. You know, their name isn't Moderna. We call them Moderna now, but they started out as Mode RNA. And their vaccine is actually a piece of messenger RNA, which is instructions to the human cells on how to make the spike protein itself. So you inject the messenger RNA, it inculcates itself into the cell.

the cells mechanisms then turn around and make this spike immunogen, called S2P, and then the body recognizes it as a foreign protein and then mounts an immune response. And when you do it that way, it acts more like an actual infection. And it may give us better immunity, so it's very interesting. Now, you could spam this study, by the way, by going and getting an antibody test, yeah. I've considered it. Did they tell you not to do that?

No, no, I don't think so. There's a lot of paperwork they gave me at the end, and I didn't read it all. Lawyers are the worst at reading things. Doctors aren't any better. I look at it like a computer code, like if the virus is a complete code, and then there's this part of that code

that kind of tells your body what to do, that part of that code tells your body how to make the thing to interact with that. Well, there's no need to send the whole. whole code, and they're just sending in, like, a piece of this code to say, make that thing. Oh, God, you don't want to send the whole code in because then you'd be making viruses. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And what's interesting, that Bloomberg article, I really recommend it because all this technology

has really been identified and studied in the last 10 years and really, really much in the last five years. And Moderna and the principles involved in them, they identified the potential in these MRNA vaccines and the technology to be able to scale up. quickly because you're not using live virus you can do things it's it's synthetic they can fabricate it and they identified that this could be a pandemic solution and they actually came up with a pandemic plan and then in january when they learned dr steve about this they activated that plan and it said that when they saw the china sequence on january 10th they met for a week straight in a week

they identified the basically the code that they felt would do the trick that's amazing I have to give them this. We'll give him one of these, too. Give yourself a bill. So anyway, yeah, no, I'm very impressed by this. And, yeah, it really is easier to make strands of MRNA than it is to make a bunch of proteins. And, but anyway, yeah, this is awesome. And, yeah, we hope you're okay and you don't have any adverse effects.

I really appreciate you. Oh, I have to go, Mike, because I have to take a call. on a guy that's got chunky C-Money call he's calling in. Much more important. I'll keep you informed, Dr. Steve, and if anything changes, I'll let you know, I'll keep you in the loop, all right?

Okay, man. No, that was fascinating. Please do let us know if anything changes, okay? Or if you hear anything cool. Thanks. Okay, see, Mike. All right. Well, there's Mike.

How about that? Very interesting. How about that? Cool guy. Yeah, I did. He was supposed to be on last week, and I just blew it. what he doesn't know is I forgot

I forgot to put him on the agenda and if it's not on the agenda in here I just don't do it and so and then he's like hey I waited around for you I'm a busy attorney and I said well okay well let me just go in the studio right now and record it and I said are you busy are you free now just like he said

he says four minutes I didn't get that in four minutes I hung around for a little bit, didn't see him, and then went off and did something else, and then I got back that night and saw him say, yeah, here's my phone number. So we just kind of played tag for a while. But I'm glad that worked out. I did have him on the agenda this time. Very interesting. Yeah.

Yep. So there you go. Do you have some things to talk about, right, Tase? Yeah, just a few. I guess this is a good segue into Putin and his new coronavirus. Yes. And how his daughter got it. Yep.

Got the, not coronavirus, coronavirus vaccine and how his daughter has received it. But, oh, and how it's called Sputnik 5. That's pretty cool name. Yeah, that's pretty cool. Okay, so, yeah, they were, it was developed by the Moscow-based, I don't know how to pronounce this in Russian Gamalaya Institute or Jamalia, I don't know. Russian is not one of the languages I know anything about. And they did use some Russian investment money, and they did a bunch of human trials but didn't publish data and didn't even begin the phase three stage, which usually precedes, you know, approval until they announced it on Tuesday. And they announced that a phase three trial involving more than 2,000 people in Russia and several Middle Eastern Latin American countries had begun.

and usually they do that in tens of thousands of people. And then they, let me see, what did they do? Then they went ahead and approved it. They approved the vaccine for public use. So what do we know about it? I don't know much about it. I know that it uses an adenavirus, and I wish that we could get my buddy,

Greg Poland on the phone right now, but we'll get him to talk about it. I'm trying to see if I can find anything online about this. This is from CNN.com. How did Russia pull this off so quickly? They enacted a law, which eliminated the needs for phase three vaccine trial before approval. So that was how they pulled it off so quickly. They did phase one and phase two and then went, okay, we're putting this out there. because Russia was third in the world for a while.

It's now fourth. But I can't seem to find how this vaccine works on this article. Nice job, CNN. Well, nobody really cares about that. I mean... What? No, nobody cares about that. but I think it's I think what's more important is yeah yeah I think what's more important is what are you what are you missing out on if you miss out on phase three lots of stuff right okay why don't you talk about that because you know something about phase three trials I mean well do I mean well yeah I mean you said that with so much conviction that you miss out on lots of stuff you have to otherwise they wouldn't be there I mean you miss out on side effects

and efficacy and all kinds of things like that. Yeah. I guess you've got nothing to say. All right. No, no, no, no. You're funny. I was hoping you would talk while I was trying to find some information on what this vaccine is based on. But yes, you're right.

Phase three is there for a reason. It's there to determine overall efficacy, which, as Mike talked about, it's hard to do in a virus. when you've only got, you know, one percent of your population that's got it. It may be as high as 15, but some of those are a vast majority of those may be asymptomatic. So as far as cases, you're looking at one to two percent of the population. So how many do you have to treat before you can prove that one to two percent of your test subjects didn't get it? You know, you've got to treat a craplow to people. So I am, I'm striking out on this.

I know that it's based on some adenovirus structure, and that's all I know. So, all right. We'll find out more for next week. How about that? Because I'm sure this will be in the news for quite some time. Okay. All right. What else you got?

107-year-old New Jersey woman who beat Spanish flu survives COVID-19. So she's 107. So when was she born, Taze? Let me see. Oh, what would say, what was, oh, 1913, right? I mean, I don't know, sure. So she was born and we're saying. Well, 1913, okay, so 1913, I'll do Howard Stern math, plus seven is 1920, plus 100 would be 20.

Okay. Right? So, yeah, so she was born in 13, so she would have been five when the Spanish flu hit. So she was probably old enough to remember it. My dad survived at two, but he was only two. So back then, by the way, it was terrifying for parents because the kids were really vulnerable to this one. You know, the pandemic of 1918. So go ahead.

That's scary. So that's all I have to say about that. Well, okay. So she beat the 1918 pandemic and she is still alive during this one. There's still time for it to get her, right? Well, it says she survived it. Oh, she had it? Yeah, she had it.

Oh, my God. Also, it says that she beat the Spanish flu. So she had it as well? Oh, my God. So she's tough. Give yourself a bill. Goodness. Okay.

And then bad news for New Zealand. Everybody really thought that they had beaten it. Yeah. They reinstate restrictions after first locally transmitted case happens in 102 days. They were so, they had it. You know, they were going out, going to movies and going to concerts and congregating because they had beaten it. So some dumb ass brought it into the country. Yeah.

Because, yeah, oh, well. There you go. Well, they're going to lock it down again. So this is what you do when you're in a small island country like that, and you've only got a couple of cases, is you contract trace the crap out of them. You can put all your resources on contact tracing those two or three cases, figure out who they met, isolate everybody. You just have to do micro-martial law for those people and make them isolate themselves for two weeks, and then you can pretty much knock this thing out of your wheelhouse and then go back to having fun again. So good for them, though.

This will be a lot easier for them. For us, when you have 4 million total cases and however many active cases, let's say it's half that or even a quarter of that, it's really hard to contact trace that many people. So we would have limited resources trying to contact trace an overwhelming number of people, they have overwhelming number of people that can contact trace a small number, so they should be able to beat this. quickly. And then on today's show, I saw. You in the Today Show. I mean, yeah, well, I mean, you pick one, right? And you stick with it. That's right. So if you use e-sigs and conventional cigarettes in the last 30 days, you are seven times more likely to be diagnosed with COVID. If you vape, you are five times more likely to be diagnosed with COVID. What in the hell is that

about part of what they said was um and it they're more likely to develop symptoms well they looked at a lot of young people and how people like to share their devices and things like that well stop doing that yeah stop doing that that's interesting uh yeah they're saying here i'm looking at stanford school of medicines uh news website not just a small increase in risk that young people may believe their age protects them from contracting the virus that they will not experience symptoms of COVID-19. The data show this isn't true among those who vape. The study tells us pretty clearly that youth are using vapes

or are dual-using, i.e. cigarettes and e-cigarettes. Or elevated risk, it's not just a small increase in risk. It's a big one. So let's look how they did this. They collected data via online surveys, so not the greatest data. and they were completed by 4,351 participants, aged 13 to 24. If our kids, if I found them vaping, there would be a problem. Military school.

For sure. The researchers recruited a sample of participants that were evenly divided between those who had used e-sigs and those who had never used nicotine products. Also included approximately equal number of people in different age groups. And they answered questions about whether they had ever used a vaping device, as well as whether they had vaped or smoked the last 30 days, then they were asked if they had experienced COVID-19 symptoms, received a test for COVID-19, or received a positive diagnosis.

Now, what were the symptoms they asked for? Because if you're smoking, you're more likely to be coughing. And if they counted that, then I cry BS on that. Okay, well, okay, it says results were adjusted for confounding factors such as age, sex, LGBTQ status, race, ethnicity, mother's level of education body mass index, compliance with shelter in place orders, rate of COVID diagnosis in the states. Okay, so I would like to see the survey just to see if there was a chance that bias could have crept in. But it could be that if you're vaping, you're less likely to develop asymptomatic COVID-19 that you're going to end up having symptoms because you already have some inflammation in your lungs.

That would be my guess. And today's show is not big on giving limitations of studies that they talk about. Yeah, of course. So that would be a hypothesis, and it would be testable, that if you vape, you're less likely, you're, you have the same chances of getting it as anybody else, but you're less likely to develop asymptomatic. And so you could do that with a nice prospective cohort of teenagers and you follow them over time. and doing antibody tests and continually testing them and see. And if the number of people that actually get it, let's say both groups have 15% of the groups get SARS-COV-2 infections. But in this vaping group, only 5% of them were asymptomatic.

And in the other group, the 99% were asymptomatic. Then that's your answer. That's how you would have to test that particular hypothesis. Another article that I've found on Facebook, so it's true. You know it's right. It's from the Washington Examiner. And they did a poll, which shows that Americans have a wildly overstated view of COVID-19's impact with respect to what's really going on. Okay.

I don't know the Washington Examiner. I'm going to Google their political leaning and see just for fun. Okay. I believe it's right, but I may be wrong. Okay, yeah, widely described as conservative. Okay, so that makes sense, given this sort of... Well, and it comes from a source on Facebook that it does make sense. So the poll question they asked was, how many people in your country have had COVID-19?

Americans answered 20%, but in reality, it's 1%. Yeah, right, that's right. So another question... So they were overstating the severity of disease. Yes. Okay, gotcha. How many people in your country have died from it? Americans answered 9%.

Reality is 0.04%. So are we blowing all of this out of proportion? Yes and no. Here's the thing, that 1% is still bad. You know, if you have 350 million people, then you're looking at 3.5 million people. That's a lot of people. So 1% is still bad.

If we had 1% of people who got this virus die, right, and 60 million people get it, then you're looking at, well, let me see, 1% would be 600 million people, or no, 600,000 people dead, right? So it's a lot, a lot of people. So even though the percentage is small, the absolute numbers are still mind-bogglingly large. So the original poster's point was why are we restricting? That's why. That's why because 1%. So, yes, because of, I think, media coverage and general fear and anxiety, people are amplifying the number.

Because people are generally bad at statistics. But they're also bad the other way where you go, well, it's only 1%. Well, it's only 1%. Yes, 99% of people. who get this won't die. But the fact that 1% will, if we allowed this to just run out freely, because people who get influenza will be, you know, 30 to 60 million a year will get influenza. So, and that's only, you know, yeah, only one-fifth of the population, right? Mm-hmm.

So that means four-fifths aren't getting it. Yeah. But still, influenza is nothing to be laughed about. And then we're talking about something that is maybe 10 times more deadly because the mortality rate for influenza about 0.1% usually. There are certain strains that can be much higher than that, but on general, so even if this is as low as 1% case mortality, it's 10 times worse than influenza. So we're talking about 10 times more hospitalizations, 10 times more people. dying. Oversressing the health community.

That's why. Yes. So. I mean, we're, I can't say a lot about it, but in our general area where we are, the hospital beds that are designated for coronavirus patients is dwindling. It's not, you know, they're not gone, but I've watched that number march down. Now, I'm also seeing the number of cases start to drop again. And so we should see as the cases drop, overall, the hospitalizations will lag by about two weeks.

Then you'll see the hospitalizations dropping. But the number of people in the hospital, some of those people are in the hospital for up to 50 days. So that takes a long time. It takes a couple of months before you can totally clear the hospitals out. Does that make sense? It absolutely does. So anyway, that's all I have. Okay, good.

Those were good, Tase. Well, we have a bunch of regular medical questions out there, so you want to answer some? No, one thing. Don't take advice from some asshole on the radio. That's your buddy, Ron Bennington, Tase. Let's see what we've got here. And he know, Ron, he never says anything incorrect. In my opinion, anyway, and the funniest thing, and the most profound thing he ever said was,

and we were talking about that this week, and he says, I don't see color. I only see things in black and black. Absolutely. It's genius. The funniest thing I think he's ever said. All right. Here we go. Casey, can I talk to your husband?

I was listening to the Bennington show. It's one of those once every six. Speaking of Bennington, and speaking of Stacey Deloach, everybody, here's the problem with Stacy, and it's not really a problem. I have to play his calls. He's got like three of them this week, but they're all stellar calls. ones that I actually, you know, I pick them based on ones that I want to answer, and they're all good calls. So anyway, you're going to get a Stacey Deloche day today.

They were talking to Fess Watley. Fessie was complaining about his cardiologist wearing a Ohio State mask. And they got to thinking. You hear people leaving, quitting doctors because of personality conflicts or different reasons all the time, complaining about their medical care professionals. Is it ethically okay? for a doctor to stop seeing a patient because of a personality conflict. I've always wondered about that.

Thank you. Bye, Tasey. Maniac. So the answer is not really. My responsibility is to my patient. And if we don't get along, I need to try to do what I can to get that, to forward a functional doctor-patient relationship. Now, if we can't truly get along, then that's going to be impossible.

They're not going to have – it's because they don't have confidence in me or there's some other – there's a conflict there that is impeding my ability to care for them. I can't just fire them, fire them, but I can say, look, I don't think this is working. I really think that, you know, this might be better for you if you found another provider. And I'll be happy to care for you for the next 30 days. And in a situation like that, I don't see why they wouldn't agree. But if they said, oh, hell no, I'm on a stay here. And that's like, we got to work together to figure out a way that we can communicate

so that you're not getting angry at me or that we can get things done. Okay. If the patient is a danger to the community, I can fire them, or dismiss them from my practice, that's usually because they're diverting their drugs. or they're selling them or something like that. And if they're non-adherent, you can do it for that. You know, someone that just is killing themselves, despite all of the things that you've tried to do,

you can, although I think that just because they don't do what you tell them to do, that's not a reason to get rid of, you know, to dismiss somebody from your practice. I think that's actually unethical. But, you know, ethics isn't calculus. So what we're commanded to, do is to do no harm and to have beneficence, in other words, do good. So we're supposed to do good and also do no harm. And if you can do both of those things, even though you've got a patient you don't particularly

like very much, then no, you can't really fire them for that reason. Yeah. Okay. Exactly. If you've done a good job, and that means you've done a good job, you know? Yeah. Exactly. Yeah.

Okay. Very good. All right. And some people, you just can't get along. with. Yeah, and most of the time, they'll drift away on their own. You know, they'll just find somebody else. But you have to do your best to take care of your patients at all times.

I'm a silly question for you. Oh, well, here you go. Stacey Deloge, everybody. Not official reporter. Coughing CPR, I know it's floated around the Internet for 20 years, about if you think you you were having a heart attack, can you cough, make yourself cough very hard, very vigorously to kind of up the pressure in your heart to keep oxygen supplied to your brain. Now, obviously, if somebody's falling over from a heart attack and they're unconscious,

it won't do any good. Is there any truth to that or is there any facts behind it? Like all things like this, there's some truth. You ever heard this one? No, that's a really good question. Yeah. So it's been going around. It's not a heart attack.

It's an arrhythmia. So if you had, if you were conscious and you were having an arrhythmia, it is possible that you could cough. You know how they tell you if you got somebody that's got an arrhythmia and you're doing CPR and you can't shock them to do the chest thump? That actually can stimulate electrical activity in the heart and can cause it to beat. So if you had an arrhythmia, you could cough over and over again to an attempt to get enough blood flow to the brain. And it may even, it's not impossible if you did it exactly right, that you could terminate certain arrhythmia. But coughs CPR, which is what he's talking about, is where people, a conscious, responsive person coughs forcefully and repetitively to maintain enough blood flow to the brain, remain conscious for a few seconds. This is from the American Heart Association until the

arrhythmia is treated. Blood flow is maintained by increased pressure in the chest that occurs during forceful coughs. This has been mislabeled cough CPR. It's not a form of traditional resuscitation. It's not taught in CPR courses because it's not useful in the pre-hospital setting because it really is only going to work for a couple of seconds. Yeah, exactly. Now, what I think is more interesting is we have successfully in the hospital, particularly back in the 80s before we had a lot of different medications, stopped certain arrhythmias, you know, abnormal rhythms of the heart using a type of coughing. And this is where you have someone do a Val Salva maneuver, which is where, like, you're taking a dump, right? And you're pushing it out real hard.

And you push, and you're increasing the intrathorac pressure, right? The pressure inside the thorax. You're increasing it. And then you have the person release it explosively. So I will do it now for your amusement. I like that, okay? And when you do that every once in a while, their arrhythmia will terminate. Okay. And we also, this is goofy.

There's a thing called the diving reflex. And you can terminate some arrhythmias that way as well. The diving reflex is this mammalian reflex. that whales use when they go underwater and they go deep, it slows their heart down, right? So their heart will only beat like one or two times a minute when they're deep, deep, deep in the water, but they don't die from it because their whole metabolism slows down. And you can induce that in humans, too. Humans have a diving reflex. That may be why some people can survive like falling under the ice for 40 minutes.

You know, it's usually kids that do that because their body. temperature will decrease fast enough. But anyway, so I, let's say I heard about a case where an intern and their senior resident went in and saw someone that was sitting up, but it had an arrhythmia. They were very stable. So let's try a diving reflex. So they took a bucket of like a big basin, filled it up with ice water. The guy hold his breath and then pushed his head into the.

the ice water and had him hold it there as long as he could, right? And then when he came up, his arrhythmia went away. And they successfully used the diving reflex to terminate this guy's arrhythmia without using any drugs. How crazy is that? Now, I would not do that in a place where you have access to drugs and other equipment that will successfully stop an arrhythmia, but it is just sort of a cool. maybe wilderness thing for you to do if you're out in the, if you're on a loan.

On alone, our new favorite show. Oh, my God, that show, that is the, I've never been, okay, so completely taking a left turn, so tense watching a reality show. But Alone, season six, and now we're on season seven, where they put people in the Arctic, just say, see you later. and the last one to survive gets wins. What about the guy who killed a moose and still ended up starving? Yep.

No spoilers. We won't say what happened. He did okay. But yeah, he was starving because he was only eating moose meat and doesn't have any fat in it or carbohydrate. So he was on an ultra-low-carb diet, and he wasn't getting enough nutrients out of that. He was getting enough calories, but not enough nutrients. and he kept losing weight, and he was really going downhill. So it's really interesting.

You have to get enough fat. And he finally caught a fish, and it had all kinds of fat in it. But he was fighting two Wolverines that were stealing his food. Stole all his stuff all the time. Little spoiler alert, he killed one of them with a hatchet, which I'm going to allow because he was that or be killed. I mean, nothing but bad asses on this show. Yeah. It's incredible.

It's incredible. Well, I'm not a, I would never publicly say that I watch any reality show, but alone. But we so do. We so do. Right, right. We do. It's true. It's true.

And, uh, but alone, I can recommend. We got to watch that one on Netflix, too. Which one is that? The one where, um, if they have any sexual encounters, it takes down the amount of money they win. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I hope they just end up at zero and they're all just screwing. Yeah, we've got to watch them.

Because they have to. Oh, there we go. I shouldn't have bought that out. I'm sorry. That's all right. Okedoke. Let's see here. All right.

Let's do this one. We've got a little bit of time left. Hey, Doc. This is Zach from Oaky City. Love your show. You already have a great show, but I just wanted to say that your wife has just added another level of greatness. Oh. Oh, wow.

You're very funny. And I hope that Dr. receive there can talk you into staying on after all this coronavirus. He did not listen to last week's show, obviously. What? Why? Because it was so boring. It just went on and on and on.

Well, this one's better. I hope it is. We've got to talk about alone. Thanks, guys. Thanks for the last. I appreciate it. My first question is, how was your vacation? You guys talked a lot about going on it, and then you came back, and I didn't really hear anything about

it. Did we not talk about our vacation? I don't know. We may not have. We only have a couple of minutes left, and he actually has a question, so if we don't get to it, we'll do it first next time. It was so great. COVID-19 vacation was awesome. We'd go to the beach. We didn't have to go, well, it's 4.30. We need to go back and get cleaned up because we've got to get to the restaurant by six.

We just stayed out there until we felt like coming in, and then I cooked, or, you know, or, well, I'll say we cooked. And it was fantastic. It was so fantastic that I had decided I was going to work 10 more years. I'm not going to. That vacation made me decide that when my youngest son Beck, who has a better radio voice than me, by the way, when he graduates from high school, I'm done. And we're going to retire. And that's three years from now. And the clock is ticking, Tays.

Clock is ticking. And you're going to be stuck with me. That means I get to quit, too, right? Yeah, of course. I'm not going to retire by myself. That sounds awesome. Awesome. All right.

But anyway, let's see what the rest of his question is. Let's see here. Uh-oh. Uh-oh. A show on faction, but I didn't hear it on the podcast. So just wondered about that. My medical question, Dr. Steve, is I suffer from chronic acid reflux and heartburn. I've been taking an over-the-counter acid reducer for a few years now.

And I'm just wondering if scientists and doctors know of any adverse effects of long-term use for acid reducers. So thanks again, guys. Love your show. Yeah, yeah, this is an excellent question. So I emailed him back or I texted him back because there are different acid reducers. And he is using omeprosol, which is a proton pump inhibitor, which is really interesting because Because proton pump inhibitors inhibit protons, obviously, hence the name. But protons are quantum objects, right?

It's three quarks bound together, and it obeys quantum physics rules. And how in the hell natural systems figured out how to manipulate protons before humans even knew what protons were? We can barely manipulate them now. It is quite incredible when you think about it. you know so protons and naked protons are hydrogen ions which are you know that's where acid comes from you've got hydrogen or hydrochloric acid is hydrogen which is positively charged and chlorine which is negatively charged and that naked proton is what causes acidity and so they have I'm going to read from Mayo Clinic proceedings

because this is the definitive answer as far as I'm concerned, that PPI's, proton pump inhibitors, have had an encouraging safety profile. And then there were some recent studies regarding, well, let me stop paraphrasing. Let me just read what it says. Recent studies regarding the long-term use of PPI medications have noted potential adverse effects, including risk of factors, pneumonia, Clustridium difficile, diarrhea, which is a, Infectious diarrhea causes pseudomemirinous colitis, hypomagnosemia, which is low magnesium, vitamin B-12 deficiency, chronic kidney disease, and dementia.

These emerging data have led to subsequent investigations to assess these potential risks in patients receiving long-term PPI therapy. However, most of the published evidence is inadequate to establish a definite association between PPI use and the risk for development of serious adverse effects. Hence, when clinically indicated, PPI can be prescribed at the lowest effective dose for symptom control, and that would include long-term. So I'm on long-term PPI.

I'm aware of these things. I'm on the lowest effective dose right now. I've got myself down to 15 milligrams of Dexland soapazal or one of those. And, you know, it's doing very well, and the safety profile is adequate for me to feel comfortable that I can take this long term. And there isn't, as Mayo Clinic Proceedings is not a crummy journal. This is a journal of record for not only thought leaders, but top researchers to publish

in. So I feel pretty good about that statement as far as PPI are concerned. So talk to your provider. See if you're on the lowest effective dose. So a lot of people are on 60 milligrams of stuff or 30 milligrams of stuff that could maybe even get down to a lower dose, cut it in half, from 60 to 30. I went from 60 to 30 to 15, so when I'm feeling pretty good. So there you go.

All right. So anyway, I hope that answers your question. But as always, talk with your health care provider. Tase has been a delight being here with you today, as always, and I hope you'll be here forever now. We can't forget Rob Sprague That was Not a

Oh boy Steve I hope I can Can I? We can't forget Rob Sprantz Bob Kelly Greg Hughes That was more like a

Well that's interesting That you feel that way Kind of answer Bob Kelly Greg Hughes Anthony Coomia Jim Norton Travis Teft Louis Johnson Paul

Off Charsky Eric Nagel Roland Campo Sam Roberts Pat Duffy Dennis Valcon Matt Klein Schmidt, Dale Dudley, the great

Rob Bartlett, Ron Bennington and Fez Watley, whose support of this show has never gone unappreciated. Listen to our Sirius X-M show on the Faction Talk Channel 103, Saturdays at 8 p.m. Eastern, Sunday at 5 p.m. Eastern On-demand, and other times at Jim McClure's pleasure. A big

shout-out to my niece, Holly, who enjoyed her shout-out the other day. Many thanks to our listeners whose voicemail and topic ideas make this job very easy. Shout out to Martha from Arkansas. 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. Thanks, Tyson. Thank you. Thank you.