Weird Medicine: The Podcast - 434 - Vaccine News and The Indian "Mystery Illness"

Episode Date: December 9, 2020

Dr Steve and Tacie discuss Pfizer vaccine news, the "mysterious" illness in India (that's not so mysterious), why mRNA vaccines rule as few vaccines have ruled before, and more! Please check out: 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!) wine.doctorsteve.com (get the best deal on wine…delivered to your home!) simplyherbals.net (for all your StressLess and FatigueReprieve needs!) feals.com/fluid (lab-grade CBD delivered to your door!) Get get 10% off your first month at Better Help by visiting www.BetterHelp.com/medicine  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

If you just read the bio for Dr. Steve, host of weird medicine on Sirius XM103, and made popular by two really comedy shows, O'Bee and Anthony and Ron and Fez, you would have thought that this guy was a bit of, you know, a clown. Your show was better when he had medical questions. Hey! I've got diphtheria crushing my esophagus. I've got Ebola dripping from my nose. I've got the leprosy of the heartbound, exacerbating my impetable woe. I want to take my brain now I'm glassed with the wave

An ultrasonic, agographic and a pulsating shave I want a magic pill All my ailments, the health equivalent of citizen cane And if I don't get it now in the tablet I think I'm doomed then I'll have to go insane I want to Requiem for my disease So I'm aging Dr. Steve It's weird medicine

The first and still only uncensored medical show in the history of broadcast radio, now a podcast. I'm Dr. Steve with my wife Tacey, the professional WebEx attendee. Hello, Tacey. Hello. This is a show for people who would never listen to a medical show on the radio or the internet. If you have a question, you're embarrassed to take to your regular medical provider. If you can't find an answer anywhere else, give us a call at 347-76-4323.

That's 347 Poohead. Visit our website at Dr. Steve.com for podcast, medical news and stuff you can buy. or go to our merchandise store at cafepress.com slash weird medicine, where we make no money, but we do have Bristol stool scale mugs there that are quite humorous. Must-haves. And I just got my fletus flutes from fletis flute.com. Old, our friend, Dan Tech on Twitter, makes those. And he's a Canadian, but, you know, the shipping isn't too bad to send a few fletus flutes out.

So go to fletis flute.com to check those out. Most importantly, we are not your medical providers. Take everything here with a grain of salt. Don't act on anything you hear on the show without talking it over with your doctor, nurse, practitioner, physician, practical nurse, physician assistant, pharmacist, chiropractor, acupuncture, yoga master, physical therapist, clinical laboratory scientist, registered dietitian or whatever. All right, very good. Don't forget tis the season. Check out stuff.com. that's the biggest thing that helps us if we've ever entertained you even for a minute

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So it's fantastic. And tweakeda Audio.com for excellent stocking stuffers or Hanukkah gifts or Kwanza gifts or Boxing Day. Do they give gifts at Boxing Day? I don't even know in Canada. Who knows? But tweakedaadio.com has the best earbuds for the price on the market and the best customer service anywhere for real. Use offer code FLUID to get 33% off. And then if you want to lose weight with me and get to your ideal.

body weight, go to Noom, N-O-O-M dot Dr.steve.com psychology program, not a diet. It works. It's fantastic. I guess I'm going on my second year now, and it's become a lifestyle for me, and I love it. So you can just sign up for three months and just do the three-month program, and you'll get everything out of it that you really need to. So check it out at Noom.com.com. Get two weeks free and 20% off if you decide to to buy the three-month program, and it's not expensive. And check out Dr. Scott's website at simplyerbils.net. That's simplyerbils.net. Yeah, Mr. No Show today.

Yeah, that's true. I'm trying not to do as many ads, but the system that we're on now does like three ads before we start, and then five in the middle and then two at the end. It's a lot. So I'm really, on the ads that I'm reading, I'm trying to get them to under a minute. it. It's hard to do when you have this copy. I'm just telling everybody, I feel your pain.

But if you check out the ads, we're actually, you know, they ask me if I'm cool. And so if I'm reading it, it's something that I'm cool with. So check those things out if you don't mind. But I know it's intrusive, but it really, it's just the way things are in 2020. And I can't think of a, you know, a better platform to do it on. And I appreciate the fact people want to advertise on our show. Absolutely. Now, the ones that don't feature my voice, those are things that are put in by the network, and I don't have any control over those. But check them out, too.

But check for sure the ones that I'm reading, I have at least vetted to some extent. And there are a bunch of them that I turn down because they're goofy or they don't make sense. Okay. So how are you doing this week? I am okay. I mean, last week, I even call, I think I called the podcast coming undone because I had my spinal stenosis, I had shingles, I was cursing the shingricks vaccine, I was going to have to have dental implants, and this week, I'm fine, I'm totally fine. So how are your shingles? I've not heard you fuss about them lately. Well, that's because they completely went away after two days, which is, you know, I was jokingly cursing the Schingrichs vaccine last time because it did. When I got it, that's the vaccine for shingles for people in my age group. And it, you know, it hurt in my arm a little bit. That wasn't bad, but I just felt like crap for four days, you know, low grade fever, aches and pains all over. And my thing was it's worth doing that.

to not get shingles in your freaking eye. And then when I got shingles, because I'm so freakishly stressed out at work right now, that I was kind of pissed. But then, you know, even then, if you remember last week, I said, still get your shot. It's still, I still highly recommend it because it's 96% effective. I just happen to be in that 4%. But literally, within two days, it was done. Now, the skin had to still heal from where the least.

lesions were, but I had no pain, no itching, no nothing. So I am, once again, a huge proponent of the Schingrich's vaccine because I've been doing medicine for 35 years, never once seen a shingles outbreak act like this. So I'm going to give Shingricks a little applause. Well, good. Where's Scott? Oh, no. Why?

You're worried because now you have to talk? I have to pull my weight, and I don't like it. Sorry. Sorry. Well, you pull your weight very well. Actually, Tacey's one of the strongest women I've ever met, and it's not like she's some hulking bruiser. Thank you. Well, you're not. I mean, I guess that's a compliment. That you're not a hulking bruiser. It's like, you know, one of those backhand comments, well, you don't sweat much for fat girl.

Which I would, of course, would never say to you because, but you know what I mean? That's one of the, an example of one of those. You wouldn't say that because I do sweat a lot for a fat girl. Well, you're not a fat girl. Yes, I am. You are not. You're Zoftig. Zoftig is different.

What does that mean? Curvy. Oh, okay. Bucksum. You know, that's what I like. So now what the hell? Now I'm distracted. What was I talking about?

I don't know. Oh, wait. Yes, because Tacey. unbeknownst to most people works out four or five days a week with this guy that is a hulking bruiser and she is incredibly physically strong

and I remember one time I guess we were wrestling maybe it was foreplay I doubt it though statistically it probably wasn't foreplay and you beat the shit I couldn't get out of this whatever this damn grip you had I was very impressed

you were mad too. I wasn't mad. I was like, oh, my God, I can't get out of this. It's cool. You could have had your way with me, but of course, you chose not to, which is fine. I don't blame you. I wouldn't either. Well, I'm not a proponent of rape. No, no, no, no. It would have been consensual, though, so I would have been okay in that case. But anyway, yeah, I know you're like Bonnie's. We shouldn't talk about such things on the radio show.

but um so um anyway yeah i'm a proponent and why were we talking about that why i don't have oh because you're a proponent of shingrots because yes your shingles did not last they only lasted a couple of days that's right but i don't know how we veered into how strong you are i don't know stupid i don't know i you know i keep thinking well maybe i have dementia because but what it really is is its anxiety and stress that causes my brain to just derail. Well, I think we are all under stress that we've been under for, what, nine months now? And it just, we're living with it the best way we can and we don't even realize what's going on. You know, I got the eye twitches. You know, all kinds of crazy things. I'm too high functioning to have dementia at this point. But the, you know,

I do, you know, get distracted really, but that's my adult ADD. But with the stress and stuff, you know, I remember taking an IQ test once, and I did bad on one section. And the woman said, that's from anxiety. It was a memory section. And if you have anxiety or if you're stressed, what will happen is you'll have a train of thought, and then you'll start ruminating about what ever it is you're anxious about. And when you do that, it kicks that train of thought, you know, it derails it. And then it's hard to come back to it sometimes.

Some people's brains will allow them to be distracted and then come right back to where they were before. Mine doesn't do that. Mine doesn't either. So I always sound like I'm, you know, high on a, you know, I'm smoking a J, man, like the kids said in the 60s. Yeah. And, you know, it's like, what were we talking about again? I mean, that's what I feel like all the time. Anyway, don't forget to check out Dr. Scott's website at simplyerbils.net.

And check out Dr.steve.com. I guess I said that already. So you have some things. So, yeah, my spinal stenosis hadn't hurt me all week. I walk around. I get a little numbness in the top of my foot. That's it. No pain.

Good. And my tooth? Nothing. I'm not going to have that damn implant until. I have to have it. So I'm not having it removed. Everything's fine. Everything that was wrong with me last week is fine this week.

Okay, now that you said that. Totally fine. I'm knocking on one. Yeah. All right. So what do you got? Okay. So there's some mysterious illness in India.

Yeah. So people were freaking out. It's like, oh, this is just what we need. The COVID-19 vaccine is coming out. Our understanding is we're going to have our first doses for frontline people like December 18th. What about family members of frontliners? Don't know about that.

They'll be in there in the mix somewhere, but it's going to be the frontliners. Will they, though? Because at some point. Yeah. I mean, in your job, you're exposed to people, so you will get it and your company will get it. But, you know, I was talking to our friend, the friendly pharmacist, who we call Marcus, but that's not his real name. and he said that they've already gotten notification.

They're going to get a supply. They are? Yeah. And so I'm assuming that they'll just, hey, we got vaccine, come get it. And they'll give it until they don't have any. Really? Until they get their next batch. Yeah.

Now, I don't know when they're going to get it. I do know that my employer sent out an email saying if you're on the front line, you've been exposed to COVID people. And, you know, my team, we're in there every single day. matter of fact, we had one team member that is out with COVID-19 who got it at work. They said December 18th is when we're going to get our first dose. So when will you find out that you got the vaccine or not? Okay, so by the time people hear this, the FDA may have done the final approval for Pfizer's vaccine.

and my understanding is we will hear within a day after they approve it that they'll unblind the study so that people who got placebo will be notified so they can get the vaccine. So I already called the research. I said, look, you know, it's mandatory for me to get the vaccine. I need to know if I need to get it or not. So I'm waiting for a call back from them. Okay. I still feel like I got it. but, you know,

placebos can be a funny thing. And the antibody test was negative. My antibody test was negative, but then I've had other people say, well, this one generates different antibodies than they're testing for, so I don't know. I don't know what's true, and I can't, I've done, believe me, I've done a bunch of attempts to find out,

but I didn't want to do anything unethical to unblind the study, so I kind of just let it go because I knew pretty soon I'd know the real answer. Well, I want the vaccine. There are so many people who do not want it. There are so many people. We have a lot of questions about it coming.

One of the questions that I talked about on Jim and Sam, I was on there for, I don't know, a half hour this week. And I'm sure it won't make the best of them, but go listen to it on demand, is this idea that this thing was rushed to market. This is not true. This thing made it to market in record time, but that doesn't mean that it was rushed. And the reason is that, number one, they've been working on MRNA vaccines for decades. Veterinarians been using them. This is just the first one for humans that's been approved for use. They've had other MRNA vaccines that were developed and never hit the market because MERS and SARS didn't turn into global pandemics.

Thank God. and it's so much easier to make an MRNA vaccine than it is to make a regular vaccine. So let's just talk for two seconds. Well, it's going to be longer than that for a couple of minutes about how they make a regular vaccine. So how do you do that? First you have to identify a protein that when you block it with an antibody, it will prevent the disease. on other viruses, this is not the easiest thing to do. So first you have to identify it.

Now you have to purify that protein because you have to sequence it. You've got to know the amino acid sequence so that you know how to make a DNA strand that will code for it. So a lot of times they'll use DNA. So now you have to painstakingly make a DNA strand that will code for that protein so that when it's, implanted in an organism, they will make that protein. And now you've got to take a stupid bacterium or some single cell organism and splice this into their DNA so that now they're going to, when they reproduce, they'll pass that down to the further generations so that when they're reproducing in the vat that you have them in, they will make tons of this protein. And as you feed them and they continue to reproduce, they will make more and more of this protein, right? And then you have to get a sample of that and make sure that it's making the right protein.

And then you have to take it and inject it into people and make sure that it's actually going to produce an immune response that you want to block this virus. Then you've got these giant vats that are full of bacterial food, bacterial shit, bacterial dead bodies, and all kinds of other just crap that you get whenever you have bacteria growing in a vat, and you have to find these proteins and purify them. And you have to purify them to the point where there's no antigens in there that could harm people. That's why when they grow these things in cell culture on egg protein, some people who are allergic to eggs will have an allergic reaction. Okay.

So anyway, so that's the process. That can take years to do. And it ain't easy. And that's just to get to the point where you could do a phase one, two, and three trial. You haven't even got there yet. All of this shit has to be done just to make the vaccine so that you can then do a trial on it. With the MRNA vaccine, I know you're too young, Tacey, because I did, you know, marry a woman who's quite a bit younger than me, but which, you know, is. Give yourself a bill.

Just give that to myself. That back in the day, we used to program computers using punch cards. And you'd have the stack of punch cards. And each punch card would have a single instruction to the computer on it. And MRNA is kind of like that. Or it's like a computer program in the sense that every three, there are these things called nucleotides. There are sugars with little other. pieces on them.

And there's four of them, and you can mix them up. So every three nucleotides codes for a different amino acid. Oh, you're getting in there deep now. Okay, sorry. So just think of it this way. Each three of these sugars, and you can do it in a bunch of different combinations, will code for a protein. It's like an instruction for the computer.

And that's all this is. It's just a string of instructions. Here's how you make this protein. And when you, a really cool video for people who are so inclined, go online and go to YouTube and Google or search for an animation of MRNA transcription or protein manufacture with MRNA or something like that. you will see these little miniature machines and there's these things called ribosomes and these two globes and the MRNA goes in there and then the ribosomes do some maneuvers on them and step the MRNA through there three, you know, three steps of the time to read these instructions on how to make these proteins and then the amino acids come in

and attach and it's the most, it's magic. This is a microscopic, well, a nanomachine that was designed way before, you know, millions of years ago, maybe even billions of years ago, before we even had any concept, before there was any concept in this universe about what a machine is, much less than a nanomachine. It's incredible to watch this happen. And then, so this MRA strand can be synthesized in the lab. You know it codes for the protein that you want, so you do have to still do that part. and you can just synthesize this and amplify it in a vat, and there's no impurities. It's just MRNA.

Then you stick it in some lipid, little lipid globs to keep it safe. And you inject that. The MRNA goes into your cells. And then the cells go, well, here's a piece of messenger RNA. I guess we better transcribe that. And then it makes the protein. And then the protein is then expressed on the surface of the cell. That's the vaccine.

So to make a, you know, too long didn't read type statement about this, the MRNA is instructions to your body on how to make the body make the vaccine. Yes. Okay. Okay. That is incredible. That is an incredible idea. When I first heard about it, it was like, of course, why weren't we doing this all along? The problem is keeping the MRNA from denaturing, which means.

just falling apart. And so they put it inside these globs of fat, little microscopic globs of fat. And you have to keep those stable. And that's where this temperature crap comes in, where the Pfizer vaccine has to be transported at this incredibly cold temperature. And the only reason that that's true is that they weren't effing around. Pfizer said, we're not even going to test it at higher temperatures. We know. No, they'll be stable at these. And once they committed to that, they couldn't then market it at a higher temperature. You're aware of that.

You know, whatever you, if you only test your drug on women, you can only market it to women. You can't say, yeah, this will work in guys, too. And that's just the way the FDA works. So their thing is coming to market at this low temperature. Moderna's vaccine is coming to market at a higher temperature. They're very similar technologies, and it may be that Pfizer down the road will do the second set of experiments to see what the lowest temperature they can keep this thing stable at.

And they may come out later and say, well, yeah, minus 10 degrees is perfectly fine. We just weren't screwing around when we did this. So bottom line, not rushed. Absolutely not rushed. It's different. It's different. If you didn't understand any of the last, I don't know, 45 minutes of what he said, I'm sorry.

Bottom line, it's different. It's just different. Yeah, yeah. And it's much easier to make these. It's way easier to just make a strand of MRNA, inject it into your body and make your body make the vaccine, instead of trying to make some other organism, make the vaccine, purify it, and stick it in you. It's just so much simpler. You're cutting out the middleman, the stupid one-celled creature. Well, you could have just said that.

Well, I know, but I know. Our audience is pretty sophisticated, but I just want people to understand the beauty of the science. behind this, and that we're not bullshitting. This was not rushed to market. Now, do we have long-term data on this? No, we do not. And so could it become I am legend? It's possible, highly unlikely. One of the things I talked to Jim and Sam about was they've only tested this in 20,000 people because the phase three trial was 20,000 placebo's 20,000 vaccine patients, right? So you can, if you have an illness or an adverse event that's serious that is in one in ten people, then you would have picked that up pretty quickly.

But what if it's one in a thousand people? Well, that's interesting because they're now saying to not take the vaccine if you do have serious allergic reactions to things. Okay. Yeah. So there's that on the news today. There are people with illnesses like Parsonage Turner syndrome. That's what they're talking about. Those are people that get some really wild adverse reactions,

usually first time to maybe a vaccine or something like that. And then they're counseled not to take vaccines. But if you just have, you know, allergic rhinitis like I do, that wouldn't stop you from doing it. But they – so if you have something that causes one and a thousand people to have an adverse reaction, you might only see 20 people when you're only doing 20,000. Are you there?

Yes. Sorry. That's okay. So when you would only have maybe 20 cases and it could be more or less because that's just statistics. But what if it's one in 10,000? Now maybe you're only going to have two. Maybe you won't have any.

It's possible if you rolled a 10,000-sided dice that, you know, a certain number would not come up twice. So there's a possibility we wouldn't see those. So we will see those in post-marketing when we start treating a million people or, you know, and now 100 million people and then a billion people. What if it's one in a million? Then we would not have expected to see it at all in this episode. But if we do 350 million people in this country, we'd expect to see around 300 cases,

is 3 to 100 to 350 cases of whatever it is. Still very rare, the risk to the person is very low. The risk to society is not trivial. So that's the caveat to this is we don't know what the long-term effects of this is going to be. There's no way we could know. We do know what the long-term effect of not doing it is, is more of this bullshit. More of this bullshit. So if we get 55% of people, 55, 56% of people to take the vaccine, we will be at the threshold of herd immunity.

And we talked about this a little bit last week. So if you are one of those ones, if you are one of the people who takes the vaccine, then you don't have to necessarily worry about it anymore? Pretty much. I mean, it's 94% of the vaccine. effective in the clinical trial, and it was 100% effective against people going to the ICU and dying. Okay. So you wouldn't, I mean, of course, you would still wear your mask and things until the herd immunity is decided, but, you know, just, just to be polite, but you don't have to necessarily worry about it. Right. You would worry about it a lot less. Absolutely. I mean, you remember that year I got influenza, I had the vaccine, and I had gotten exposed to the flu-mist. vaccine that year too because of the boys and still got it but I'm I didn't die I was fine in a day

you know a sick as crap for a day but then I was okay so people may still get it and so you still want to be careful and we want to be careful anyway but yeah you're right and but listen just hitting the threshold of herd immunity isn't going to be enough because then we're at that point where one person's going to infect 0.9 people. That's what herd immunity means when we're at the threshold. So, a thousand people would infect 900, which would affect 810, which would affect 720, multiply that times, you know, a million. And you've still got some large numbers. Plus, each one of those generations is at least 21 days long, so it would take forever. But if we could get 90% of people to be immune, either because they had it already,

or because they took the vaccine, this thing could really be over in a couple of months. I haven't run the actual numbers to see. But the more people we get to do it, and the higher percentage, the quicker this will be over. That's just pure math. So what about these poor people in India who got sick and they didn't know what it was? Yeah. So the headlines said 500 people sickened by a mysterious illness and we're all going, oh, hell, here we go again. We're just finishing up with this one thing, and now there's another one.

Well, when I read the adverse effects, it was like nausea, vomiting. Let me see. Do you have something that has the symptoms? Let me see. Weakness. I think nausea vomiting. Yeah, seizures, dizziness, loss of consciousness. The seizures is what tipped me off.

This seemed like organophosphate poisoning to me. And over there, apparently they use organo-chloride. So this would be mosquito fogging. And when I was a kid, we used to run behind the mosquito fogger, go through our neighborhoods spraying DDT, and we would just run through it because it was cool. It smelled interesting, which was probably just the kerosene that they used. We got lung full of kerosene and DDT.

But so this sounded more like a poisoning, to me, where you had one person died and 500 people got sick. They've all gotten better from what I understand. And they all had nickel and lead in their blood. Right. And we found that out just today, that they had traces of nickel in their blood. And they found it in the blood samples of 10 patients, but they still don't know what the source of the contamination is. But most of them have already turned the corner and are getting better except for the one person who died.

So they think that there's heavy metal poisoning, but that's interesting. Usually that causes more chronic problems and longer lasting problems than this. So one of their federal lawmakers tweeted out organochlorines, but he may have been reading my Twitter feed. I don't know. Maybe he got it from me. And now I'm reporting it back. but I think other people would have seen the same thing that I did in the symptom complex. And, you know, this article, this is Time Magazine, says if it's proved true,

this won't be the first instance of mass pesticide poisoning in India. Three years back, more than 700 farmers in the western state of Maharashtra were hospitalized after exposure to toxic pesticides. In other case, at least 22 children died in a school in eastern India. 2013 after being served contaminated food, oh my lord, can you imagine? No. Heavy metal contamination is also common with the 2019 report, finding more than 40 million Indians in rural areas consume water contaminated with metals, arsenic, and nitrate. I understand that.

That's why I wonder if the heavy metal poisoning is just a red herring because this really, to me, still, this was an acute illness. They got sick. One person died. 500 people got sick, but then they're getting better. sounds to me like some toxic exposure. Well, other state officials had suggested that an organic chlorine substance was found in the pesticide. Okay, there you go.

So with this remains to be seen, our hearts go out to, you know, these people who just got sick into the person who died. Mysterious illness in the middle of a pandemic. Right, but does not sound infectious, so we can at least relax as far as that's concern, but we need to, they probably need to work on some quality control. But, you know, there's malaria in parts of India, and I understand mosquitoes. We need to, I don't see that mosquitoes serve any purpose except to feed bats. So maybe we could breed a type of mosquito that bats could eat.

I hate them. But get rid of the friggin mosquitoes as far as their stupid proboscis or concern, which, by the way, is that thing that they stick you with. and then inject you with all these horrible diseases. Let's just go to war on, okay, viruses, then mosquitoes. Probably mosquitoes first. I bet they cause more illness and death in this world than viruses do. I don't know the statistic. I'm just guessing.

But mosquitoes are a big enemy of ours, and I think enough's enough with the stupid mosquitoes. I agree. All right. Okay, doke. Anything else you got? Nope. Should we answer questions? Yeah.

Except for let's, I mean, I think we've talked enough about the vaccine. Oh, well, okay. Because that's what all of our questions were about this week. Well, I know, but I mean, you may have answered a good bit of them. I just, I'm just so dang excited that it's here and that we are coming out of this because I'm over it. Yeah, me too. Me too. There are a couple of good things that came out of it.

One, no meetings, I like that. Number two, it's an excuse for anything. If you don't finish something, it's like, well, COVID, you know. But the third thing is that telemedicine has become a thing, and I'm very happy about that. All right. Hey, Dr. Steve, it's St. Chuck from Twitter. Hey, man. Oh, before we do that.

Number one thing, don't take advice from some asshole on the radio. Thank you, Ronnie B, exactly right. So this may be a dumb question, but do vaccines cause viruses to become stronger over time, similar to antibiotics? Give yourself a bill? I'm going to give you a bell just for an awesome question because, so what he's asking is when you give vaccines, do the viruses get resistant to it and end up being. stronger than they were before. And you have to kind of define stronger. It could be more infectious, but they could be more infectious and not cause symptoms.

That would be the perfect virus, one that you would give to other people readily, but it really didn't do anything to the host. And then it could just reproduce it will, and we wouldn't do anything. We wouldn't care, and we wouldn't go after it with a vaccine. So that would be a perfect virus. they're in in theory when you vaccinate against a virus if it is a virus that can easily mutate and you know they can only mutate within a certain range because if they mutate too far you they can't reproduce or they can't attach to this host and they jump to a different host so but within

that range if they can easily mutate then it is possible that they could mutate to the point where the specific antibodies that you're making with the vaccine no longer work. And the way to explain that is if there's random mutation in these things and you vaccinate against one population, one strain of the virus, then that strain will die out eventually if the vaccine, if enough people get vaccinated and the vaccine is effective enough. but the other one will go unimpeded. So we will be selecting for this other strain. Now, if it is more deadly or more easily transmitted, then that's what happens. You get a virus that's more deadly and more easily transmitted.

Kind of interesting, though, things like measles, that's never been the case. Measles really hasn't mutated in that way. And if it has mutated, it hasn't changed the efficacy of the vaccine. the vaccine is extremely effective. And in this country, we had eradicated measles. The only cases that we had were cases that came here from elsewhere until people stopped vaccinating their kids for measles. But anyway, that's a whole other story.

But there is a study that showed that maybe they could make the pathogens become more dangerous. And it was a controversial study because it was done in chickens. and a lot of people say it doesn't have any relevance for human vaccination. But, you know, natural selection just makes sense. And this was a vaccine for a chicken disease called Merrick's disease. Let me see if I can find something on this. They published a paper showing this seems to have happened with Merrick's disease,

a viral infection in chickens. It spreads when infected birds shed the virus from their feather follicles, which is then inhaled with. dust by other chickens. Poultry farmers routinely vaccinate against the disease, which keeps their flocks healthy, but does not stop chickens from becoming infected and spreading the virus. Over the past few decades, Merrick's disease has become much more virulent, which some researchers believe is the result of vaccination.

Now, they may be right. They may not be. So they did this study. They infected chickens with Merrick's disease virus of different strains, known to kind of span the spectrum from low to high virulent. and when the birds weren't vaccinated infection with highly virulent strains killed them so fast they shed very little virus. Orders of magnitude less. And we talk about this with Ebola.

It kills people so fast it's hard for it to spread. But the vaccinated birds, the opposite was true. Those infected with the most virulent strains shed more virus than birds infected with the least virulent strain, which is the definition of virulence, right? So that does kind of make sense. This is a weird vaccine where they still become infected and they could still shed virus. The vaccine just keeps them from getting sick. So anyway, so yes, maybe, but we haven't really seen that in humans yet. And we're still looking for that universal influenza vaccine, which I understand breakthroughs have been made so that you don't have to get a flu shot every year.

You can just get one shot and that'll be it. And then flu can kiss my ass. All right. All right. Uh-oh. Cool. Great. Well, my question about COVID.

Oh, no, we missed the humorous intro. Wait a minute. Here we go. Vaccine trial. Damn it, damn, damn it. Oh, that's not going to. Okay, here we go. Sorry.

Hey, Dr. Steve. How's it going? Hey, good, man. How are you doing? Cool. Great. Well, my question was about COVID vaccine trials. Yes.

And they are two years long. And I'm wondering about if you get a placebo, are you able to drop out of the trial when the vaccine actually comes ready like six months from now or something? We've already talked about that. Well, we have talked about it. We didn't really talk about this episode, though, did we? Yes. That was part of your monologue. Oh, that's true.

Okay. Yes. So, yes. But his point is that the trial is two years long. I have to put stuff into this app for two years. That's what I contracted to do. So I'm curious as well if I got placebo. Do they still want me to put in here what happens to me if, you know, if I get sick or not?

Because every week, I mean, I'm going to do it now. Let me just do it now. And I'll show you how easy it is because I have this diary. It's called Trial Max. And I have to put in my pin code. I'm doing that now. And I was surprised at how simple this is because I thought they'd ask, do you have this symptom? Do you have that symptom?

It's no. It's just, are you sick or not? And if you say no, they're like, okay, thanks, see you next week. And then they put five bucks in your account. So it says, please fill in your COVID illness diary. So I click the button. Have you experienced any of the following? A diagnosis of COVID-19.

Fever, newer, increased cough, newer increased shortness of breath, chills, et cetera. muscle pain, spasm, loss of taste of smell, and I click no, click next, and click save, and that's it. That's the whole thing. I'm done. I just made five bucks while you were talking. That's sweet. It's actually more than serious X-M is going to pay me. The thing is that I, yes, I'm contracted to do this for two years, so I don't really know the answer to this.

If I got placebo and then I get the vaccine because I got placebo, are they still going to want me to do that for two years, which I will be happy to do it. when we were at the beach, I used all my COVID trial money to pay for drinks for everybody at the bar. Oh, that was lovely. It was lovely, wasn't it? Just whipped out my COVID card. So anyway, that's a great question. Don't know the answer. But they will unblind the studies so that, because it's not ethical.

If you have something that's 94% effective, that then you've got a whole population of people who got a placebo and they don't know which one they got, when you know you've got a drug that's effective, you have to on. blind the study and at least inform the people, if not give them the treatment. Okay. Hey, Dr. Steve. This is Steve. Hello, Steve. I'm calling because I have a stupid question. Okay.

No such thing. A few years ago, maybe back in 2012, I was in a hospital and received 29 units of blood. Oh, God. 29 units of blood plus two of the FFP. Fresh frozen plasma. My question is, since I had that blood transfused, it was a lot, right? 29 is a lot. That's a lot.

We're getting more than normal, but I don't know. But do I? Well, if you have seven units in your body and they did 29 units. That's a lot. It's a lot. They redid his blood volume four whole times, right? A little bit more than that. It's crazy.

Is that those people that gave me blood? Does their DNA show up in my DNA? So if I do like a 21 of a meetup right now or is it going to show up part of somebody else's, like their history, like their family history, like, you know, like they're American. Oh, I know what he's asking. So like if he does, he got 29 units, he's asking, is that those people's DNA is he got 29 people's DNA in there? So if he does 23 and me, it's going to show him all over the world. And if he had drawn, number one, if 23 and me used blood instead of saliva and they had drawn it the day after he got the transfusion, then absolutely there would be a small amount of other people's DNA in there.

But blood is mostly red blood cells and plasma, and red blood cells don't have DNA. So the only where you're going to get DNA is if there's a little bit of strands floating around, but also in your white blood cells and then any other cells that shouldn't be in there, like skin cells and stuff, you know, when they puncture you. So it would be totally diluted and very minute and would really only last about a day or two. And then you're back to your own DNA because you don't become a chimera, which is a person that has two different persons' DNA in their system. just from getting a blood transfusion.

So that's the good news. You couldn't, for example, give yourself a blood transfusion, then go commit a crime. And when they do the DNA, they'd go arrest the person whose blood you stole because that would be a cool way to, you know, that would be a cool, you know, mystery novel. I do know that there was a case or it was on a TV show, I'm not sure which it was, where someone was an actual. Shamara where they had two, they had a twin whose body was reabsorbed by theirs in the womb. And so they reabsorbed their twin, and the twin was a fraternal twin, so they had different DNA than they did. And they committed a crime, and when they did their DNA, it showed up different because

somehow what was left at the scene was from the twin, just kind of weird. So, and one of those maybe once in a, you know, once in the age of the universe type situations that would ever happen. But that is not the case here that you cannot use that to get out of a crime if that's what you're trying to do. Stop trying to make me an accessory in your crimes. All right. Yo, it's me again. I got another question about DNA. You get to do one, two.

Why are the religious freaks saying that the new vaccine, for COVID, either Pfizer and old Moderna, change your DNA. Oh, my God. What kind of nonsense is that? I haven't heard that yet. Have you heard that one? Let's see. Can it really change the DNA?

No. No. And also, how bad does it hurt getting something that's 170 degrees below zero put into your thing? That's an awesome question. That's an awesome question. I'm glad I listened to the red. It doesn't because it has to be transported at that, but it can be warmed up, just

before you give it. All you're trying to do is keep those lipid particles intact. And, you know, lipid is fat, and fat just turns into an oil at the right temperature. And these things really are just kind of little oil droplets, and you don't want them to just, you know, turn into a fat layer at the top part of the thing and all the MRNA falls to the bottom and then just is no good. So you're trying to keep those little lipid particles together. And for a little while, you can warm them up to, you know, it was refrigerator cold when they gave me mine.

Okay, that's a great question. He's got more to go and see if he came up with some other stuff. This guy's got three questions in so far. Excellent question. Oh, that's it. Well, hey, one more. Are you going to get the, are you and Casey going to get the vaccine? Oh, yeah.

We already answered that. Hell yeah. Tacey can't wait to get it. And I probably already had it. But we'll find out today or tomorrow, and I'll let you know. This is affecting my life too much. I've had to cancel two things that I've really looked forward to just in the next five days. That you were looking forward to, that pajama party with all your hot friends.

They were going to come over and hang out in their lingerie and watch movies. No, okay, that is not. It was we were going to wear Christmas T-shirts or Christmas PJs, and that's not the same thing. And we were going to watch Hallmark movies. Flannel? flannel lingerie is still lingerie. So anyway, they're going to hang around in their lingerie. Let me have my fantasies.

And then I was going to cook for them. And then they were going to be so grateful that, you know. And then we were going to have a Christmas lunch with another set of friends that I never get to see. And we're going to probably have to postpone that. And I'm sick of it. Yeah. But listen, the parties we're going to have when this is all over are going to be epic. Yeah.

I'm going to go to jail. It'll probably kill me. That's what's going to kill me. The stupid virus won't kill me. All right. Excellent questions. Dude, whoever you are. You know what I ought to do is see if his other question had a coda on it, too.

But, yeah, we're going to take it. We can't wait to take it. All right. How about a more weird medicine type question? Okay. Dr. Steve, this is Steve, not the doctor. Okay, man. I just turned 16.

I'm in pretty decent shape. I run quite a bit, go to the gym. But it seems like the last couple years, when my wife and I have sex and I ejaculate in her, it has such a feeling it's almost painful. And she thinks I'm in pain, and I guess it is kind of in pain, but it's really, really, really good pain. It's beyond belief. Hmm.

Is it because of my age or I finally learned how to come like a decent dude? Like a normal person, yeah. Or what? I don't know. But she thinks I need to see a doctor and I don't know how to explain it to a doctor I can't talk to on the phone like you. Yeah, man. So anyway, thank you very much. Here's the thing that, I mean, there are things that hurt good, right?

when I used to pleasure myself using Vick's Vapo rub because that's all I had. Oh, God. And somebody asked me, doesn't it hurt? And it's like, yeah. Now, I don't recommend it because after there's a switch that goes off in your brain

and after you complete the transaction, it doesn't hurt good anymore. Now it just hurts. And it's sort of like, you know, if you have sex right after chopping up. Peppers? Red peppers. And it feels kind of interesting while you're doing it.

But the second you complete the transaction, now it's just abject pain. And it's like, oh, my God, oh, my God, oh, my God, make it stop. And so that's different, though, but that's uncomfortable. He doesn't sound uncomfortable. He says it's kind of pain, but it hurts good. I would want to ask him a lot more questions, you know, because pain with ejaculation can be a sign of medical conditions. It could be a prostate infection.

It could be a stenosis or narrowing of the urethra, which is the tube that is between the prostate and the outside world. You could have stones in your urethra. You could have stones in the bladder. Well, bladder really wouldn't be a problem, but prostate stones possibly. and some medications can cause that, so I'd ask it for a medication history. I would still, look, if you haven't had your prostate checked in a while, I'd get it checked. And tell your primary care, listen, I kind of like it, but it's different because it's new. And any time you get something new like that that's that intense, you probably should get it checked out.

And just say pain during ejaculation. He doesn't have to go into it any other than that. Well, I think he has to go into it a little. bit deeper than that because he's saying it's not it's sort of pain and so now i want that intrigues me it's like what what do you mean sort of pain i mean does it hurt or does it not and if it just is pain but he kind of likes pain well okay then it's pain and we need to look into it okay okay that makes sense um the ejaculation itself is not usually described as being painful most people describe it as a sneeze that feeling that you get just right as you start to sneeze, but it goes on and on and on for a while,

and then you get that feeling of that sort of great emptying, which is pretty awesome. You can't explain it. If you're not a guy, it's really hard to explain. But I think it would be difficult for women to explain what their kind of orgasm is, too. If you try to put it into words, how do you do that? Yeah, I'm not interested in. Yeah, maybe you wouldn't be interested in doing that anyway. Maybe you could get Diane to come in.

Was that some sort of snarky-ass comment? I'm sure she would hate that. I'm sure she would say no. We have a friend who probably would come in and try to explain it. You know exactly who I'm talking about. And matter of fact, she wants to do dial a date on this show, and that would be pretty fun to do. We have an extremely attractive friend who is looking to have kind of a boyfriend or a friend with benefits in a jack-off. And that's not a weirdo.

And she's not a weirdo. Oh, then he's not a weird. Well, she's weird. She's not a weirdo either. She's extremely attractive, very smart, has a good job looking for a guy that fits those criteria also. And that isn't a freaking nutbag because she attracts them. So if you're interested, email me and maybe we can talk, maybe we can work something out. We'll see.

I'm not so sure about this because my track record with matchmaking is not good. It couldn't be worse. It's not good. The times when it's actually worked out, somebody had a girlfriend or was married or something, and we didn't know it. And then the other times it just has been a disaster, even when I think that it should be, it would be perfect. But I'm willing to try this because she asked us to do it. Well, we can't all get in this studio right now because we're kids. Right, right, right, right.

Well, we wouldn't have the guys in the studio. We'd have them on the phone. But we can't do her in the studio. Right. Right, but then we would have a prize But yeah, because she's exposed to this public without PPE too much But we would have a prize, you know, that we would send them to some place like Primland or something for a night I mean, with what money?

Well, we have a budget for that stuff. We haven't spent it on anything because we haven't. Why don't we spend it on? It would be weird medicine money. Our date to Primland. Well, I mean, I guess we could. It's really sort of earmarked for weird medicine stuff. We could call it a retreat.

We could do a live broadcast from there. Primland, by the way, I just want to put a plug out for Primland. It is a place most people don't know about it. I'm not sure that I want a lot of people finding out about it. Nope. But it is incredible. It's like, what, 40,000 acres? When you look at the website, it doesn't do it justice.

It just looks like a sort of a building plopped in the middle of a field. But it is beautiful. The website picture is beautiful. It is, but it doesn't even do it justice. I think it does. You think it does? You have to drive. It takes 20 minutes just for perspective.

Yes, once you get to the gate, it takes 20 minutes to get to the manor house or the hotel part. Right. It's lovely. It is. And there's all kinds of outdoor activities, which also like, but this is, no, this is high class. As a matter of fact, they had a, we were out teaching the boys how to shoot Skeet, right? And that's one of the things that they do down there. And they were talking about they have this pheasant hunt.

And our guide said, yeah, it's $12,000. And it's 10 people. And you get all your food. You get lodging. And they vacuum seal the birds and they do all this stuff. you get free drinks. And I'm like, wow, I could get 10 people together to put up $1,200, you know, to get up the $12,000. He's like, no, no, no, no, no.

It's $12,000 a person. They even dress like Downton Abbey. Did you say that already? No. They even dress like they're living in. That's what they do. They have Downton Abbey hunts. Oh, oh, oh, really?

I didn't know that. Okay. Yeah. So there's that side of it, but you can just go there and hang out and eat and drink, too. And they've got a saloon with bluegrass music on one night, and they've got a carriage that'll take you there, or you can

go by, you know, by they've got a little van that'll take you there. You can just drive there. They have a sommelier who's been on this show. Carl Kazax was on this show. And he is an incredible sommelier, and

now he's in charge of all the food and wine stuff. And the food is impeccable. The place is It's the most relaxing place on earth for me. Mm-hmm. Me too. That we can just go there and you can just relax. They've got a spa.

We've never used it because we didn't need to. Well, I've never used it because I am with boys. Yeah. Well, true. I would like to use it at some point. Okay. Well, next time we go, you use that. Okay.

And then the boys and I'll go do something else. But you can fish, you can walk, you can just walk in the woods, or you can do nothing. Horseback ride. A lot of people just go there and do nothing. So they're not a sponsor. We just love it. Oh, and then they have an observatory? Yes.

Yeah, great point. If you look at that picture online at primland.com, what looks like a grain silo is actually an observatory. They've got a big old 16-inch Schmid Casagrain telescope in there. Plus they've got some littler, you know, six- and eight-inch schmits that they'll take out and you can look at stuff and then they take you into the big observatory. It is really, really cool. So check out primland.com. Our buddy Dave Cecil plays up there. That's where we met him,

even though we had connections through music, through the people that I used to play music with in Greensboro, which was also weirdly coincidental. That's why we started talking. So anyway, it's awesome. And check it out. We can't wait until the pandemic is over so that Primland can come back to its former glory.

Because it's like everything else, It's affected everything. All right. Well, don't forget all of the people at Serious XM who have, you know,

been fans of our show, or a fan is probably a bigger word. Supporters of our show. I've always said we don't have fans. Tolerate our show. We can't forget. Rob Spranson, Bob Kelly, Greg Hughes, Anthony Coomia, Jim Norton,

Travis Teff, that Gould Girl. Lewis Johnson, Paul Ophcharsky, Chowdy 1008, Eric Nagel, Roland Campos, Chris's sister, Sam Roberts, Pat Duffy, Dennis Falcone, Matt Kleinschmidt, Dale Dudley, Holly from the Gulf, the great Rob Bartlett, Bernie and Sid, Martha from Arkansas's daughter, Ron Bennington, and Fiz Watley,

whose support of this show has never gone unappreciated. Listen to our SiriusXM show on the Faction Talk channel, Sirius XM, Channel 103, Saturdays at 7 p.m. Eastern, Sunday at 6 p.m. Eastern on demand and other times at Jim McClure's pleasure. Many thanks to our listeners whose voicemail and topic ideas make this job very easy. Go to our website at Dr. Steve.com for schedules and podcasts and other crap. Until next time, check your stupid nuts for lumps, quit smoking, get off your asses and get some exercise. We'll see you in one week for the next additional weird medicine. Thanks, thanks, taste. You know what I'm going to do.