Weird Medicine: The Podcast - 420 - Going Viral with Covid-19

Episode Date: August 27, 2020

Dr Steve and Tacie discuss the evolutionary benefit of prune fingers, and answer the question, "can someone get a positive drug test from kissing a drug user?" Also coronavirus news. PLEASE VISIT: stuff.doctorsteve.com (for all your online shopping needs!) noom.doctorsteve.com (lose weight, gain you-know-what) Get Every Podcast on a Thumb Drive (all this can be yours!) ExpressVPN.com/weird (this is amazing!) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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I had something interesting. I thought we should talk about it. It was an experience we had this week. And I'm trying to figure out how to exactly... We picked apples. Tell this story. So let me just post this as a hypothetical for everybody out there. without talking about anything.

This is a completely different topic. Forget what I just said. This has nothing to do with us whatsoever. But I thought this is also an interesting thing. If you're going to harvest hot peppers like, let's say, jalapinos or ghost peppers or auboneros, even if you wash your hands thoroughly afterward, that oil, some of it is still on there.

And if you then put, say, I don't know, some sort of lubricant in your hand, and then, I don't know, accidentally or on purpose, touch an intimate part of your body and, you know, rub it all over that part of your body, and then I don't know, maybe have contact with, you know, another person or something. That's enough. Okay, so I'm just saying, speaking hypothetically, you're going, you're, you will regret it. That's all I can say. You will absolutely regret it.

And you, applying water to that area makes it worse because it's an oil. So let's talk a little bit about capsaicin, capsacin. And plants like that is kept in oil. And that's why if you eat it and you drink water, it kind of makes it worse. worse because oil and water don't mix, so the water just goes on by, and then the oil just sort of the molecules stand up to oppose the water molecules and just make it that much worse. So whole milk will do, or, you know, soap and water will help.

But it's an interesting, hypothetically speaking, for this case study that we're talking about the color of the, that, say, intimate skin changes, and it looks like it's from somebody else's body that's bright red. So anyway, we talked about a long time ago people that called in that had accidentally, you know, pleasureed themselves using VIX VAPO rub. And you get this sort of warm feeling that feels almost. kind of good, and then after you complete the transaction, for some reason, some switch goes off, and it's just like the skin that it touched has turned into molten magma

from under the crust of the earth. So don't recommend that, and this is like a thousand times worse than that. So that's all I had to say on that. So Tacey's being very quiet. That's enough of this show today. Was that okay? Did I do okay on that? It's probably still a little bit too much information, but perfectly hypothetical, though.

We're just trying to warn our listeners not to do something stupid like that, and then because they're going to regret it. Anyway, don't forget to check out Dr. Scott's website at simplyerbils.net. Check out Dr.steve.com. I had someone asking about the Ferber method of baby raising, and it's kind of an old, strict version of baby wise. Oh, wow. And I just said, I'm not cool with a real strict baby. So people that don't know, when you have a baby, one of the ways that you can get them to sleep all night is for them not to think that this world that they've just been born into is just nothing but chaos.

And when everything is chaotic, they're just going to scream all the time because that's the only way they can get any solace is to scream and then you pick them up. But if they know what's coming, right? When they wake up, they know they're going to get fed. They know that you're going to change their diaper right after, and then you're going to put them down for a nap. And then it's sleepy time. Then when they wake up, they're going to get fed again and lather, rinse, and repeat. And they know what to expect.

And when a kid knows what to expect, they know what's coming next, all of that stress and fear and anxiety from just the chaos of this noisy world when they spent nine months in the womb, which was nice and warm, sort of monotonous. All of that kind of goes away. So Tacey wrote all of this stuff up, and we have it on our website at Dr.steve.com. You go to the upper right-hand corner and click one-page baby manual,

and it kind of walks you through it. I just think the difference between her method, which is a distillation of baby-wise, and then I wrote a paragraph at the end distilling at a 130-page book, called Happiest Baby Bond the Block down to one paragraph. Because really, in that whole book, it was one concept, right? Yes. And really could have just been a one-page pamphlet.

But anyway, so that's in there as well. But the difference is that we and Baby Wise and other people and Tacey's writing advocates that if you need to deviate from that for a good reason, just do it. it's not something that you have to be so strict that you it's like oh no we can't get in the car right now because in 20 minutes it's the baby's feeding time you just feed them then or get in the car and feed them or do whatever or if you're on an airplane and they're crying you can go ahead and feed them now even though their real feeding time isn't for an hour and so it's a little less strict a little more common sense in my opinion so what do you think I agree with you. Okay. That's all I have to say. Okay, very good. Well, that was easy. I wish the rest of our life was that easy. Mm-hmm. All right, did you have some topics for us today, Tate? Yes, I have a few, and then let's get to questions. Yes, we have a bunch of questions. I think that's what people like the most. Moderna says its coronavirus vaccine shows promising results

in a very small trial of elderly patients. Excellent. That includes me now. Now, so when I say small trial, I mean, 10 adults. Oh. Between the ages of 56 and 70. Now, this is on CNBC. Okay. Each participant received two doses of the vaccine about a month apart. Okay.

And it appeared to neutralize antibodies. Oh, okay. So it produced neutralizing antibodies. Yes. Okay. Yeah. Okay. So in a study that small, they can't really tell.

if it prevented anybody from getting the disease. So you get 10 people, and, well, none of them got it. Well, so what? So they think that it produced these antibodies that they believe are necessary to build immunity to the virus and T cells. Yeah, yeah, yeah, there you go. So, but 10 people, I guess, is better than zero, and it apparently is newsworthy. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. The importance of this is that even people my age can produce.

reduce the correct immune response. This isn't a study looking at, does this vaccine prevent people from getting coronavirus? Because to do that, you've got to treat thousands and thousands and thousands of people and then compare that group against a matched group that wasn't given the vaccine and see if there's a statistically significant difference in symptomatic cases or asymptomatic cases or whatever you happen to be studying for that. This is they gave them the vaccine, did they produce antibodies, so they're likely to produce an immune response that would be effective.

And that's good news. Because people in my age group, and I got to quit saying that, but I'm 65 in, what, 14, no, 20 days, and I'll be 65. And that sucks. I'm just going to give myself one of those. And the one thing that I hate about Turnin' Sixty-five is it makes me less likely to be alive to see Justice League 2 and the new Suicide Squad movie and all this new D.C. stuff that's coming out. It looks awesome. Everything, all of a sudden, D.C. is hitting on all cylinders. And I know you couldn't care less. Yes. I've been forced to watch all the trailers.

Yeah, but, God, didn't that Batman trailer look awesome, though? I mean, I'll watch it. I have said for years and years, and this is completely off topic, obviously, but that the riddler shouldn't be some goofy guy dressed in green tights with question marks all over the place. The riddler should be like seven. The David Fincher movie Seven was really kind of a version of the riddler in the way that what Todd Peterson's or Todd Phillips's Joker was, you know, a different sort of more gritty, real version of the Joker. And that's what this is looking like.

It looks like it's, you know, a lot of these superhero movies will have different genres. And one is the heist movie. So Ant Man is Heist movie. And then Captain America's Civil War, not Civil War, the Winter Soldier was sort of a spy drama, right? And then they've got romantic comedies and things. like that, which is sort of, you know, the teen romantic comedy, sort of the Spider-Man, the new Spider-Man movies.

This looks like a dang superhero serial killer movie, a David Fincher-like movie. And by the way, I'd love to see David Fincher do a superhero movie. So I could not be more excited about the Robert Pattinson Batman right now. That's good. Yeah, I know. You don't care. You know, I'm going to, I only drag you to the important ones. you see the Avengers ones.

Yes. And really, right now, those are the only ones I'm dragging you to. I quit dragging you to D.C. movies after Batman v. Superman, because I don't think I... Oh, that was terrible. Oh, I hear what you're saying, the theatrical version, and we were in an IMAX that the IMAX wasn't working right. And so that ruined it. I love Batman v. Superman. Matter of fact, the reason I came to bed so late last night was because I watched it again. Did you really?

Yeah, the ultimate version, though, is completely different and way better than the theatrical version. So now we have, so that's sort of the Snyder cut of Batman v. Superman, and now we've got the Snyder cut of Justice League coming out that I'm also very excited about. But anyway, nobody cares what I think about any of this stuff. But I am interested in seeing Seven as a Batman movie. So, why was I talking about all that? I have no idea, honestly. Did I just really do a quantum jump from talking about coronavirus to Batman? I don't know.

I don't know. Okay. All right. So where were we? Okay. Well, I have another article that the CDC is now saying healthy, asymptomatic people who come into contact with COVID-19 patients don't need a test. Okay. So what they are saying is, but they're not speaking to whether they need to be treated

because right now there is no treatment for outpatients. So they are saying we don't care about asymptomatic, the number of asymptomatic individuals right now. I kind of disagree with that. If we're not going to do the expensive saliva or up-the-nose tests, the polymerase chain reacts, tests, where you're actually looking for viral genetic material. Why not just test everybody for antibodies? There are a couple of these that are on the market that seem to be very specific that have been tested on blood that was drawn before this novel coronavirus emerged, and they

don't show any false positives in those tests. And just test everybody. Let's see what the prevalence of this thing really is. across the whole country. I think that would be fascinating. It wouldn't be that expensive compared to some of the stuff that they're spending right now. If it costs $10 a test, I think at that volume, you could probably get it down to $5 a test. So there's $5.5 times $350 million.

You know, it would be what, $1.5 billion or something. No, that's not right. Is that right? I don't know. Five times. Sorry. Would you like me to do it on my calculator? Yeah, just five times three.

Let's not do all the kids. Let's just do the adults. So let's say five times two. Well, okay, so it would be a billion dollars. So it would be a billion dollar experiment to test 200 million people in this country. So maybe that's crazy. But I think test everybody. But what they're saying is if you come into contact with somebody and you don't have any symptoms, it's unlikely.

you're going to transmit it to anyone, and you don't need to be tested just because you came into contact with them. Now, if it's a close family contact, each state and each employer may have different rules on whether you need to quarantine yourself for some period of time. So the deal with asymptomatic transmission is you're less likely to transmit it if you're not coughing and snotting, but you're in contact with more people, lots and lots more people. If you're symptomatic, you're probably only coming into contact with very few people, health care, and then your immediate family, and that's it. And you should all be quarantined.

And so, yeah, you're more likely to transmit it if you're symptomatic, but you're more likely to come in contact with people if you're asymptomatic, so it kind of evens out. All right. Okay. What else you got? Good ones. Uh-oh.

What? Nothing. I thought she lost your window. Scientists find that citriol dial. What? It's an insect repellent can kill COVID-19. Is it like citronella? Can you spell it for me?

C-I-O-D-I-O-L. Citriodial. Okay. Okay. Yeah. So do you know anything else about this? Nope. Okay, so you're just reading me that.

That's okay. So you know what else? We'll kill, can kill COVID-19? Hydroch acid, sulfuric acid. Bleach? Bleach, heat, all these things. None of this is clinically relevant, you know? So let's look at this article.

Well, this says it's derived from the leaves and twigs of the eucalyptus citriodora. Right, right. So is that citronella? I don't know. I don't know. You could look up Citronella, see if it comes from the same place. I'm looking at this as insect repellents containing citriodial are not believed to be enough alone to protect people from the virus. Well, no kidding.

It says it just adds an extra layer. It can be used as an additional layer of defense along with face masks, handwashing, and other health route. Where do they want it? What do they want us to do with it? Citriodial, which has approval for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is derived from the leaves and twigs, eucalyptus. Citriodora. I may be wrong, but it doesn't seem to be the same. It says what we can say is that we do feel there's a good chance

that would work against this virus, but of course it needs to be thoroughly tested. Well, yes, but we're not going to be taking it orally. What are we going to spray it on ourselves? And somehow that's going to just because, okay, so let's talk about in vivo versus in vitro because this is frustrating. This is kind of clickbait. something that works in the test tube by no means is guaranteed that's going to work in the human body because the human body is infinitely more complex or so more complex it might as well be infinitely more

than a model that's in a test tube. So in the test tube you've got a bunch of cells and they're infected with SARS-COV-2. You dump in some citriodial and now the cells. die. Well, okay, I could heat them up to 200 degrees, too. That doesn't mean that we should all get in an oven, you know. So I don't like things like this because now there will be some people that will go out and get... Drink it or do whatever with it, thinking that they're doing something. Going it really hurt. Do not do that. This has not been studied in humans. This is just some pilot stuff, and it's not even newsworthy. And it could be that this company put out a press

release because they want to generate some buzz for their company. I don't know. But we will, okay, here's something from Sky News. Oh, they did, okay, so they did a, here it says a preliminary study. So let's just see what this is. Yeah, my article came from New York Post. Yeah, that's what I was looking at, too. So a product found on insect repellent can kill the strain of coronavirus.

Okay, the Britain's Defense Laboratory is shown. Okay, scientists at the Defense Science and Technology Laboratory are sharing preliminary findings, so others are able to conduct further research. Britain's armed forces were issued with an insect repellent that contains a product called Citriodial because it was believed it might offer a new layer of protection against COVID-19. Defense scientists subsequently conducted research to see whether it provide a protective layer against COVID.

I don't know. What layer the company, I'm going to see this study. I'll tell you what taste. if you would leave a note for us to look and see if we can find a study that's been published on this because this journalism this is the problem with medical journalism they're not what layer we don't absorb this stuff through our skin now if they're saying if you put spray it on your hands it gives you longer lasting protection than just washing your hands because washing your hands just washes it off, that it kills it after you touch it and you don't have to wash

your hands as frequently, I'm all in on that. That would be cool. We've got some hand sanitizer downstairs that supposedly kills things on your hands for up to six hours. No clue if it really does would be very easy to test, but that may be what this is taught, what they're talking about here. But the journalism on this on both sky.com and the New York Post is so bad that I can't make heads or tails out of this research. So, all right. Okay. Okay. The last thing I have is from NBC

News. Yay! I know. Being six feet away may not always be enough distance to protect from COVID-19. Oh, really? Of course. Of course. Exactly. It says you should pay attention to things

such as if you're indoors, house of ventilation, large crowds, prolonged contact time with no face coverings. Well, okay. Yeah, the longer you're in contact with someone that's infected, of course, the more likely it is that you're going to be infected.

And it says six feet apart, inside and outside. Yeah. Oh, okay. I don't disagree with any of that. Here's the thing. We talked about this before as well. This is a bell curve. So the six feet thing cuts down transmission significantly. If we

want to stop all transmission, all of us right now need to get into hermetically sealed containers and stay there. And that's everyone in the world until every person that's infected either dies or clears the infection and no one is shedding virus. So we know we can't do that. So our goal is to mitigate risk, to decrease transmission. And yes, some people will get it through aerosols. Very few people, but some will. Some will get it from phomites, meaning touching things. Very few, but some will.

Some will get it even if they're six feet away from somebody. Very few, but some will. Especially that says if people are shouting or singing. So like at church, where people think they're being careful. Yep. They're singing. Quires really should be wearing masks, particularly if they are close to the congregation.

There have been several cases. There was one in South Korea, I believe, where one person in the choir transmitted it to a whole lot of people, but they were very closely in, you know, closely crowded in together. So, but all of these things are true. All of those things can happen. Reducing all of this to zero is impossible unless we just, as I said, hermetically seal ourselves from the world.

So our goal is to decrease transmission to the point, where the virus will naturally fade away. And to do that, we have to get that R sub-T below one. And we're getting very close to, or we're at a simple majority of states right now. Let's go to R-T.Live. That's RT.Live, and that will give you the effective reproduction number. And wow. Okay, so two-thirds of states have an R-Sub-T of less than one right now,

which means that if they continue like this, they, whatever they're doing, they will have declining numbers. Okay. Now, I've had people say, well, it's just burning out. Okay. I hear that you're saying that. I don't see evidence that it's just burning out because you've got places like South Dakota, Hawaii, and Iowa, North Carolina, where it isn't burning out.

They've got an R sub-T that's greater than one, and they're having increasing cases. And then you have places like Spain where all of a sudden they've got these huge spikes. And so I don't think it's burning out on it. own. We are doing this, and this is a concerted effort by a lot of people. I do think that it is problematic when you lock down so strictly and do try to hermetically seal everything. Yes, you'll have very few cases and very few people dying from it, which is a good thing, but your economy will be destroyed. So we have to find some balance there. And there's no single life if it's worth this, but there's people are losing their lives through losing their jobs

and becoming bankrupt and losing their homes and suicide and depression and all those things as well. So, you know, yes, there you go. All right, that's what you got. Wasn't that an interesting psychiatry appointment? Steve sat in on it with me today. I had my psychiatry appointment. And just for a med check.

And he sat in on with me, and you would never even think that I was at the doctor. Isn't that interesting? Yeah, he's, well, he's like, oh, well, what Steve doing home? I wish I had a job brought me at home. It's like, and I said, I'm on an administrative day. I'm working. He's like, whoa, that must be nice. I said, well, every day for a shrink is an administrative day.

And he's like, whoa. And so I was like, wow, that's some psychiatry appointment. How much did he charge you for that? Well, the insurance covered it, but that's just pretty much how they are. And I think the only clinical question was... How you doing? How you doing? Med's the same. Hey, taste.

How are you doing? I'm good. All right, then. And there was a student in on that... And he's doing telemedicine. He is working from home. Yeah. No, he's in his office. Oh, yes. Because you have the option now. And he had a student with him. I wonder what that student learned.

Oh, yeah. Day one, ask patients how they're doing. Structured psychiatric interview, number one. How are you doing? And I'm not ashamed to say that I go to a psychiatrist because I need my Xanax. That's just all there is to it. Oh, wow. Yeah.

Huh, I didn't know you did that. What? I'm just kidding. All right. Well, you want to take some questions? Yes, I do. Do we have anything else to talk about? Okay, so we talked about don't put lube on your hands after you've cut hot peppers and then touch intimate parts of your body.

We've talked about the bell curve of human transition. Oh, well, the other thing I was going to say is, yes, all those things will happen, and we can't make them zero. But the vast majority of people are caused by droplets within six feet of somebody else, and neither one is wearing a mask. So I've heard this role that the virus is more or less contained if you have less than five cases per 100,000 people. Okay. And, okay, this is just what I've heard, so good luck looking it up. So how do you, like I was trying to do math with somebody that I work with. And it went horribly wrong.

We couldn't figure it out. How would you figure that out? Or is that even interesting enough to talk about? Should this be a one-off? No, it's very interesting. Okay. Everybody else is like, no, it's not. I'm sorry, everybody.

You have five per hundred thousand. Well, if they're all in the same household and they are contained and you quarantine those five, then nobody else can get it. So that's New Zealand. Okay. And it's not anywhere else. It can't just pop up at random. It has to be transmitted from one person to another.

But do you take the population and divide it by, like, how do you find out where you are in your state or in your region? Okay. Well, I can tell you exactly because you go to COVID. Dotlabs.com. And that's our friend Daniel Stout. You know him. He's our webmaster and he's also a genius. Yes. And he just whipped this up in an afternoon, and you go to U.S. data. And what do you want to do? You want to just do it by state?

I want to see where we are. Where we are. Okay. So what I'm going to do is do cases per 100,000. And let's do the lowest number of cases per 100,000. So U.S. total is 17 cases per 100,000. Okay. And I'm wondering if this math could be possibly right. Let me see here. Well, we tried to figure it out and we couldn't, but I mean, I really didn't try that hard. Okay, so Vermont had 1,572, and that gives them 250 per 100,000.

So the lowest one is 250 per 100,000, so I don't know where that number is coming from. Now, if you're talking about active cases. Yes, active cases. Okay. So let's see here. Let's do new cases. Yeah. So basically what you do is you take your population and you divide it by 100,000.

So what's the population of Tennessee? Let's do the – you got your calculator out. Get your calculator out. Population of Tennessee. 6.89 million? Okay, 6.89 million. Now we want to know – so how many blocks of 100,000s do we? we have. So do 6.83 million divided by 100,000.

Okay, I'm just going to do, oh, crap. I can't think I can work the damn calculator. Don't worry about it. Don't worry about it. Don't do it. Don't do it. Don't do it. Does it make sense to do 6.833 million? Yeah, you can do that or, you know, times 10 to the six or whatever. Let's do it this way. I used to be able to ask Alexa this stuff, but I don't have a hooked up. So let's go to Tennessee and let's see where we are. This is fascinating for everybody, by the way. So we had 145,417 total cases, right? So now take 145-417. You got your calculator? Yes. 145-417. 417. And then divide it by 6-829-0-000.

0.0219.4. Okay, now that's per, that's just the fraction of cases. So if you want to know how many it is per hundred people. 100,000. I know. So you would multiply it. So if you want to know, like per hundred, you would multiply it times 100, right?

And that'll give you the percentage. So for you to know per 100,000, you would multiply it times 100,000. And see what you get, and we'll see if it's close to this. Because I have a number here. I have 2,129. There you go. And that's the right number. So that's what I've gotten here, too.

So somebody's not going to work for a while. 2100 cases per 100,000. And all the math nerds. are yelling at us because we probably did it wrong. Well, I'm trying to do it on the fly, and whenever I have to deal with decimal points on the fly, it's always difficult. But anyway, that's high.

But if you go to stout labs at COVID.stoutlabs.com, you will, he'll do all the math for you. And you can graph it, too, and you can see how your state's doing. So the thing about five people per 100,000 or whatever, that's a ridiculously low number. I believe so. So, but remember, at one point in this country, we probably had five per 100,000 in just Washington State. The next thing we know, we've got a, you know, five million in this country.

So five people, if they infect, if each one of them infects two people. So you get five to 10 to 20 to 40, 80. And do you remember that old trick that you could pull on your dad where you say, give me a penny the first day and two people? pennies the next day and then four and double it every time, then eight, 16, 32. And it seems like, oh, that's no big deal. By the end of a month, it's millions of dollars because that's what doubling does. And that's that so-called exponential increase. So when you have an R sub T and an R sub zero of two or greater, you will get doubling of

your numbers each time that you test it. And then that, you can go to infinity with that very quick. So how quickly are our numbers falling? Like, not just us, in general, how quickly can the numbers fall? Like, is it a slow process? It depends, again. So if we hermetically sealed everyone in a room, it would take about 55 days for all the people who are seriously ill to be either discharged from the hospital or dead, and everybody

else would be done with it. So if we did it today, somehow we could magically put everyone. in their own dome and we could feed them and water them and just keep them there for you know for 21 to 55 days we could be done with it so when we hit herd immunity all herd immunity is going to do of course is make that r sub t and if people don't remember what that is just go to r to eat dot live that's the number of people in practice one person is going to infect so if we can reduce it to point nine Then 1,000 people will affect 900 people, which will infect 810 people, which will infect 720.

Well, remember, each one of those generations of infection can be anywhere from 7 to 55 days. But let's just take an average of 21 days. So every 21 days, you'll see that continue to decrease. So in a state where you only have 1,000 cases, it's going to still take, you know, 10, 21 day. So that's 210 days. before it's completely gone, doing it that way. That's why we want to vaccinate people because we can induce herd immunity overnight.

And then we can be done with this very quickly. Let's see. I'm bored. You're bored? Yeah. With the show? Oh, yeah, that too. But mostly just in general.

Yeah, you want to get back out there. Well, that's why we need a therapeutic, or we need a vaccine. And then we can be mostly done with this. We can go back to being normal again. So the United States, right now I'm looking at it, it looks pretty damn good. If you go to COVID.com and put in new cases and just do U.S. total, you can isolate that, and you can do a 20-day smooth moving average, simple moving average.

You can even do what we call Bollinger Bands, which was really kind of, I was the, To my knowledge, I was the first person out there using Bollinger bands to track COVID data. But, and you can see that it's absolutely as trending downward. 30 days ago, we had 60,000 new cases, and now we're down to 50,000, you know, a day. And it's trending downward. So if that keeps up, we will be very close to zero in some. period of time. If it was to say, if we just go $10,000 a month, that would be six months and we'd be

done just with that. You know, nobody wants to go six more months with this. Nope. But we could. So, all right? All right. Anything else? Sorry, everybody.

No, no, no, no. I apologize for my stupid stories. No, no, no. And when I look at health stories, though, Steve, they're all about acquisitions and mergers. And I just don't think that that's what we really want to talk about. No. Well, a lot of people are going out of business and they're selling their health systems for pennies on the dollar. That kind of stuff is happening. And people are merging with other health systems to protect both sides from bad things happening to them. So we're going to have

more corporate health care. And that'll be a challenge for the next, you know, few Congresses and presence and presidents and populations to deal with. No question about that. All right. Well, let's do it. Number one thing. Don't take advice from some asshole on the radio. Oh, I will not.

And now the show starts. And what do you know? Hey, Dr. Steve. I have a question for you. If about 10 to 20% of COVID tests are positive, what do the other 80% of people have? It's not a good season. Why are they getting tested? Thanks.

Yeah, because there's other viruses. there are corona-like illnesses out there. And you know what? Some of them are actually caused by the four or five other endemic coronavirus that are out there. I mean, a lot of these people are quarantining, but they're still getting sick. And then they're negative. Oh, no, I'm going somewhere with that. Or say they're quarantining, my friend Julie.

And then they end up getting sick or getting something. And then go get tested and it's negative. Right. So you wonder, I mean, I'm trying to link what I'm saying to what you say. No, you're right. Anytime somebody gets an upper respiratory. It comes from somewhere, right? They assume that right now they've got COVID-19.

Okay. I love you anyway. I'm still coming to see you. It's a good assumption that for right now, it's a safe assumption. And I don't mean that that means that you're right. It means that you're being safe. if you get an upper respiratory infection, you've got fever, cough, chills, running nose, that kind of stuff, muscle aches and pains, that you assume for right now it's COVID-19, isolate yourself, get tested. If it's negative, there's a 20% false negative rate on some of these tests too, where you actually have it, but then they test negative.

Get tested again. If you got two in a row, then you don't have it. So I hear that it's really hard to actually perform the test correctly. Is that true? I don't think that's true. You have to do it properly, but you brought up one last time where they're doing the saliva test now. And Yale's got a new saliva test that can be done just about any lab, and it should be even more accurate, hopefully. And you won't have any inaccuracies that will in it will be inherent.

to the test itself, not due to the way that they collected it, right? Because if you've got a test, and let's say it's not perfectly sensitive, meaning that it'll miss some positive cases. And you have to do a complicated, which is not really that complicated, but you've got to do a precise method of collecting, which means shoving that thing way farther into somebody's nose than they want you to shove it. Just sort of like doing a gonorrhea test. You've got to shove that swab way farther into the,

urethra than the person wants you to do it. I hear it's so painful. That's not fun from what I hear. That one I can say I've not had. No, no, not that one. But, well, I guess both. Yeah. Well, the urethra is pretty sensitive. Well, yes, but the coronavirus is less. Yeah, sticking it up and you feel like they're sticking the thing into your brain. And if you don't do that properly, then you're inducing an increased level of error into that test, where if it had a 15% false negative rate now you've maybe run it up to 40% or higher. So the saliva test is a nice breakthrough, and hopefully that'll make things easier for everybody to get tested and be more accurate about it.

So, yeah, so the other 80% of people, either they were false negative or they've got para influenza, which is another non-influenza-like illness. There's four or five other endemic coronaviruses, which this one probably will join that group in a generation. And there are just other things that you can get allergies. My allergies will mimic an upper respiratory infection. They do, absolutely. I used to think I got sick every April and every October. Well, I got that damn virus again.

And I'm a physician I should know better. It took a while for it to strike me that this is really allergies, because it was more than just sort of a runny nose or itchy eyes. You know, I was sick, but treating it with regular allergy stuff makes it better. So that's really, you know, indicated that's what it was. And I got allergy test and they sort of proved it. But anyway, so, yep, that's what's going on there. Hey, Dr. Steve, let me try this again.

Okay. I am a 60-year-old man with a 56-year-old sweetheart. We're kind of freaky and kinky, and we like to bring men into our bedroom. Oh. We also grow our own weed and smokes a lot. Okay. So here's my question. I've recently read about the saliva tests that are relatively new, I guess.

What he's talking about is a saliva drug test now, The reason we have those is it's just too easy when you've got somebody that you call them in because you're suspicious that something's going on. You call them in for a pill count and a urine drug screen for them to go, oh, I peed before I came in. You know what? That's okay. Just spit in the cup. That's what that's for. Or, oh, let me get a hair test. Oh, Doc, I just shaved my head. You can't. Oh, no, that's fine. I'll take some off of your arm, you know. Yeah. So there's ways that we can get around that. And this is one of those. this saliva test.

Concern is I have recently become aware that you can transmit T.HC. via saliva. It's my understanding from everything I've read that it's a minuscule amount and lasts. Yeah. A very, doesn't last very long. So I'm asking you as a medical doctor, I know you're pro, marijuana, all that. I love you. Dude, I've been listening to you forever. Well, I'm pro-legalization, yes.

I think it should be legal and regulated, just like alcohol is. But that's my libertarian bent. My concern is whether or not she can have enough T.A. in her saliva to transmit it to him via kissing, oral sex, whatever. I don't want to put him in jeopardy of failing in military. urinalysis. There's a good guy. I care about him. Don't want to,

you know, put him in care. I got it. So tell me what you think. Well, I don't, don't take my word for this, you know, adjust at face value. My understanding of the saliva tests is they're not as sensitive as the urine test. and that, for example, heavy marijuana use will show up in the urine for up to 30 days, whereas it will only be a matter of a week or less in saliva.

So that's my understanding. Now, every test is different, every lab is different. But I think in general, if this person is not doing drugs, if there's no way that she's transmitting enough saliva to him where they may be able to detect it with the really sensitive machine, but it will not rise to the level of being a positive test. So it should be something where they maybe see it a little bit and then say, well, we need to retest you because...

No, I don't even think they'll even see it. Oh. What I'm saying is in theory, if there's one molecule in theory, in theory, you could maybe detect it with a sensitive, sensitive enough detector, but that's not how these things work. You have to have a certain level. There has to be a cutoff. And once you hit that cutoff, then it's considered positive.

There's no way in hell this guy is getting a positive test from that. Really, sort of the rule of thumb with pot, particularly, is if you're not ingesting enough to get high, it's unlikely you're going to have a positive drug screen. Now, let me just throw out one caveat is that, Some places have a zero tolerance for everything, and even CBD, if you're buying CBD at a place and you don't know what the percentage of CBD, the ratio between CBD and THC is in that particular batch that you've got, you run the risk of getting a batch that's got a little bit too much THC in it and then peeing a positive blood test or a positive urine screen. And we have an employer here that sent out a letter and said, you all can do CBD if you want. But if it causes you to have a positive urine blood screen for THC, you're fired. So if you're going to be doing CBD, you want to do it from a reputable manufacturer or somebody that you know the numbers, someone like Fields or something like that. Okay.

Because there's all kinds of CBD oil everywhere from all these farms, especially where we live. And the FDA has said, we've pulled some from the shelves, and some of it's got way too much THC in it, or some of it doesn't have CBD in it at all. I'm sure a lot of people are like, well, it's the stuff that works. I bet you it is. Yeah. Well, Virginia just passed legal prescription strength, CBD, and THC oil, as long as the THC, I think, is less than 10 milligrams. And you have to, the physician has to, or the provider has to have a license. to do it, which is $50, and they fill something out, and the patient has to have one as well.

They can't go to a pharmacy. They've got to go to a certified state manufacturer, and it's all crazy. Just make it legal. Particularly for hospice patients or cancer pain patients or for just generalized prescription use, why should we deprive our patients from something we know is effective? For example, hospice patients eat better, they feel better, they have a better quality of life when they're using marijuana products than if they aren't. So why would we deprive them of that? I don't understand that.

Why is it that that would be illegal for them to have when we know that it's not harmful to them and it's beneficial? And what is harmful to them is right now we're seeing people have fentanyl and other drugs. in their urine drug screens, and these are people that you pretty much believe have only done marijuana, but that's being laced with stuff. So if it's manufactured and it goes through that whole process, you know

it's going to be what you think is in it. You know? Interesting question. Very interesting. It's very kind of him to care. Yeah. No, it is. No, it is. He doesn't want to get the guy in trouble. I think that's cool.

If we were going to have somebody else, in here, it's not going to be some dude. I'm just telling you right now. That doesn't make you a bad person. Oh, damn. There goes my conversation tonight. Well, we're going to have a different conversation tonight.

Hey, Dr. Steve. I, Tacey. I've been soaking in the tub a lot more lately and I noticed that my fingers prune up. I remember that for my childhood. And I was just wondering why. What's so special about the skin on

fingers and toes that makes them prune up. I'm guessing it's probably an instinct to like a fight or flight, but I don't know. Thanks, Dr. Steve. This is a fascinating question because if you think about it, why is it just the fingers and the toes that get pruny? You were thought about that? Why didn't your elbow get pruning? Never thought about it.

But you've noticed that effect, right? So I used to think that it was because the fingers somehow got waterlogged. You're in the water for a long time and water soaks in. and somehow swells up the tissues, and then there's fibrous tissue that can't swell, and so it makes this prune look completely wrong. Completely wrong. The skin is pretty impervious to water, which is a good thing,

and it turns out that prune fingers occur when the nervous system sends a message to the blood vessels to become narrower. And then those narrowed blood vessels reduce the volume of the fingertips just slightly, just enough, causing the folds of skin to appear that make these wrinkles. And for the longest time, and I'm looking at an article from medical news today to give them credit,

for the longest time, I didn't understand what the purpose of this was, but they did a study in 2013 that suggested it's easier to grip objects in water with wrinkled fingers, meaning that the phenomena may be an evolutionary advantage for our ancestors. So if they were spending a lot of time in the water,

and then they got pruny fingers. They were more able to, they had more surface area, and it's sort of like treads on a tire. And they were more able to have a, to grip things underwater and maybe to stand up and move around in the water without falling down. And that tiny advantage that that gave to them is enough for that gene to be passed down.

from generation to generation until here we are sitting here talking about. That's cool. So what do you think of that? I always thought it was just waterlogue. Yeah, I did too. That makes the most sense, right? But if you think about it, well, then why isn't the rest of your body get all pruning? All right.

Well, thank you, Tase. We will reconvene next week. We can't forget, Rob Sprantz, Bob Kelly, Greg Hughes, Anthony Coombeah, Jim Norton. Travis Teft, Louis Johnson, Paulov, Charsky, Eric Nagel Rowland, Campos, Sam Roberts, Pat Duffy, Dennis Falcone, Matt Kleinshmidt, Dale Dudley, the great Rob Bartlett, Ron Bennington, and Fez Watley, who supported this show has never gone on and appreciated. By the way, next week we've got some news on my voice, and we had a guy that called in, and we didn't get to his call this week, that had exactly the same thing,

and us talking about it on the show helped him to understand what was going on with him. so we'll play that next week. Okay, good. Listen to our Sirius XM show on the Faction Talk channel, Sirius XM, Channel 103, Saturdays at 8 p.m. Eastern, and Sunday at 5 p.m. Eastern, on demand, and other times at Jim McClure's pleasure.

Many thanks. Go to our listeners whose voicemail and topic ideas. Make this job very easy. And go to our website at Dr.steve.com for schedules and podcasts and merch 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 in one week.

for the next edition of Weird Medicine. Goodbye everyone. Tacey, put your clothes back on. What are you doing? Thank you.