Weird Medicine: The Podcast - 439 - Blood Puddin'

Episode Date: January 14, 2021

Dr Steve and Dr Scott discuss idiotic donor rules, whether SARS-CoV-2 was "manufactured", a guy's fall from grace, getting the second covid shot, threshold for hospitalization and more. 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!) roadie.com (OMG the coolest stringed instrument accessory EVER MADE) simplyherbals.net (for all your StressLess and FatigueReprieve needs!) 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, Ope 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 Tobolivir dripping from my nose. I've got the leprosy of the heartbound, exacerbating my incredible woes. I want to take my brain out and blasts with the wave, an ultrasonic, ecographic, and a pulsating shave.

I want a magic pill. All my ailments, the health equivalent of citizen cane. And if I don't get it now in the tablet, I think I'm doomed, then I'll have to go insane. I want to requiem for my disease. So I'm paging Dr. Steve. It's weird medicine, the first and still only uncensored medical show in the history broadcast radio now on podcast.

I'm Dr. Steve with my little pal. Dr. Scott, the traditional Chinese medical provider who gives street cred to me and keeps away the alternative medicine assholes. Hello, Dr. Scott. Hey, Dr. Steve. This is a show for people who would never listen to a medical show on the radio or the internet. If you've got a question, you're embarrassed to take to your regular medical provider. If you can't find an answer anywhere else, give us a call at 347-76-4-3-23. That's 347.

Ooh-head. Visit our website at Dr.steve.com for podcast, medical news and stuff you can buy. Most importantly, we are not your medical providers. Take everything you hear with a grain of salt. Don't act on anything you hear on this show without talking it over with your doctor, nurse practitioner, practical nurse, physician, assistant, pharmacist, chiropractor, acupuncturist, yoga master, physical therapist, clinical laboratory, scientist, registered dietitian or whatever. All right. Very good. Hello, Dr. Scott.

Hey, big boy. Don't forget stuff. dot, dr. steve.com for all of your, you know, Amazon needs. And we also have a link there to the Rodey computer, which we'll talk about in a minute. It's a computer that tunes your guitar, mandolin, or any stringed instrument. Maybe, probably not a violin, stringed, fretted instrument. And you can check that out at stuff.org.com. Go to tweakeda audio.com offer code fluid for 33% off the best earbuds for the price.

Check out wine. Dot, dr.steve.com. W-I-N-E-dottersteve.com for, I think, by far, the best wine club on the internet. And if you want to lose weight, now that the holidays are over, Noom. Dot-Steeve.com, I gained some weight over the holidays. I'm already on my way back to... You're fighting weight.

Yeah, I was... Boy, I gained a bunch. I went kind of crazy. But you can do that on Noom. If you go crazy, you just know that you've got to... got to get back on that horse again and ride it some more. So Noom, N-O-O-M dot Dr. Steve.com, not a diet. It is a psychology program that helps change your relationship with food.

I no longer fear gaining weight anymore because I know I can lose it again and keep it down. And I've kept it down basically from where I was, which is almost 200 pounds, down to 160-something for the last two years using Noom. Well, Dr. Scott, is your simplyerbils.net still up? It's up. I got an email from somebody saying that they couldn't get your famous sinus spray. So what's going on with that? We took it off. We took off the sinus spray.

The one thing that people wanted during it. But hell, we couldn't with this COVID. Should we get it in? Oh, really? We do have it in now. We're good. And you're putting it back up? Yep.

It should be up next week. And our friend that sent us the email, he should have two sinus sprays tomorrow. Yeah, he said you hooked him off. Yeah, it's good. Got to take care of it. So what is the, yeah, what's the major malfunction? It's just pipeline stuff? Yeah, just pipeline stuff.

How do you do this? So you have this proprietary, you can't just cook up some stuff in your kitchen and then put it in a bottle and put it on the Internet and sell it, right? Right. Well, you can make it in your garage. You can? No. No. Okay. But we have a...

Okay. Yeah, we have a manufacturer. And the problem is, is with the COVID and the restrictions and non-essential workers and transportation and stuff, it's just been a beast of a year. I wouldn't think people making medications would be essential workers. One would think. But... So what kind of place do you... Okay, so you have this idea.

Yeah. And I know I tried to come out with a hair tonic that actually had rogain and monoxidling because it works. Sure. But double vasectomy, a turd had an idea for some, he had a formula for conditioner. And I said, well, you know, a leave-in conditioner with rogain in it would probably sell pretty well. Sure. But what we found was we can sell the rogain and we can sell the conditioner, but you can't put them together. Like you couldn't mix them together.

You'd have to sell them separately. And it's like, well, shit. People can just buy their own. I don't want to sell stupid Todd's, you know, conditioner. I wanted to sell my mishmash of the two things. And that wasn't possible to do because rogane or monoxidil is actually. regulated by the FDA, so you would have to, I guess, put the two together, do the studies and then submit for FDA approval.

Right. But we could sell the already approved monoxidil, and then the conditioner doesn't need to be approved. Mm-hmm. But we couldn't put them together. But anyway. But even with that conditioner, there's still, you still have to have a lot of checks and balances for safety. Yeah.

Yeah, you don't want to put a lot. You don't want to put lie in there. We got no lie in there. We got the lie soap, and we put it in there, and their scalp fell off. Yes, and that would, and there's always going to be somebody that's going to happen to. Yeah. And they're going to say it's your fault, and, you know, it's just hard to, you know, especially when there's a full moon out. So what's the process?

Actually, you bring up an interesting point. People always say, well, there's more deliveries during the full moon. It's not true. It's not true. There's more insanity here in the full month. Well, okay. As far as behaviorally. I don't even think that turned out to be true because they did.

No, they did a study where they gauged admissions to, you know, to lunatic wards. Yes, yes. And they did not correlate with the phases of the moon. But the word lunacy comes from the full moon. Right. And it was thought that perhaps it caused that. What probably was is PMS because, you know, women's cycles are 28 days. The lunar cycle is 28 days.

So people back then thought that the two things somehow were connected. Pretty frequently connected, I'm sure. Well, not connected at all, but they are both 28 days cycles. But it appeared to, yeah, it appeared to be years ago and before you could do a lot of studies and research. And so if you've ever, you know, I don't, you know, no flies on any of their friends of the female gender who have PMS, but Lord, I can see where the word lunacy might have come from that if you associated that with the phases of the moon. No one hell have you got a couple of them in the same office together. That is interesting.

Yes, it is very interesting. That does seem to be an actual phenomenon. And that makes sense from an evolutionary standpoint. Yeah, and you and I both have a staff that's primarily made of females. Right. By design. By design, yes. Because, well, obvious reasons.

But there's a job. definitely there's definitely some kind of, it would be interesting to know how when they start to cycle and they all cycle at the same time, it's just the most bizarre thing. Well, think about it this way. There's, I have two hypotheses. Either women actually do cycle together, in which case I could come up with an evolutionary advantage to that. And the evolutionary advantage would be that if you're in a cave and saber, saber-toothed

tigers are stalking you you don't want you want people to be you know passing blood from their vagina and this is before the age of tampons and stuff sure of course and uh sanitary napkins so uh you want them to be bleeding the least amount of time is possible right so if you've got eight women in a cave and they're all just randomly bleed well they're going to be bleeding all the time every day yeah it'd be terrible but whereas if they sink up then they'll only be bleeding for three or four days together, and then the other, you know, 25 days, that saber-toothed tiger can't smell that, you know, that can't detect the blood emission. So that's now, the other side of it is, maybe it's bullshit, and they don't cycle, but

we only notice it when they do, so there's a selection bias. Right, sure. So if you have two, let's say you have a 29-day cycle and a 28-day cycle, well, once every, whatever, how many days it is, they'll coincide. And so if you have a bunch of women in an office and three or four of them have their cycles all of a sudden just coinciding, then you'll notice, oh, hey, we're all linked up, but they may not be. One might be 26 days, might be 29 days, but every once in a while, they'll link up. Yes.

Just like the conjunctions of the stars. Every once in a while they'll link up. We go, oh, look at that. And the rest of the time we don't pay any attention. So I don't know which one it is. As a matter of fact, that's interesting. Well, hell, let's look it up. I was going to do the same thing.

Do menstrual, because the question then becomes, how would they link up? It would have to be pheromonal, right? Mm-hmm. One would assume. Sink. There we go. Do menstrual cycle sync? Let's see if anybody has.

This is health line. Okay, here's PubMed. Now, PubMed. PubMed.gov is the searchable database of the National Library of Medicine is free to everybody to use. It has all kinds of peer-reviewed stuff in there. And your old buddy's got about 100 articles in there himself. This is from Human Nature 2006. It says it is widely believed. This is by Yang and Shank in the journal Human Nature. It says it's widely believed that women who live together or are close friends synchronized their menstrual cycles. We re-examine this

phenomenon in two ways. First, we collected data on menstrual cycles from 186 women living in dorms for over a year. That should be a pretty good thing. We found that women living in groups did not synchronize their cycles. Second, we reviewed the first study reporting menstrual synchrony. Okay, so there was a previous study. We found that group synchrony in that study was at the level of chance. Because remember, if you have 100 people, if you have...

I think it's 25 people in a... In a classroom. You ask them when their birthday. The birthday is you've got a 50-50 chance of having two people that have the same birthday. Which seems crazy, but you can work out the... It's a first-year probability question in college probability and statistics. So then that could happen if you have a large enough group of women. And it says, we found that group synchrony, and that's...

study was at the level of chance. We then show that cycle variability produces convergences and subsequent divergences of cycle. I'm going to give myself one of these. Give yourself a bill. And may explain perceptions of synchrony. So that was my second hypothesis. Because if the first hypothesis is true, then you have to postulate a mechanism. And there's no known mechanism for pheromones in humans. But that would be the only way that would happen. I mean, how would I transmit my cycle to you it would have to be through some mechanism if it were either visual but right now women don't see each other's periods running down their legs

and or it would have to be olfactory what else could it be god I don't know but it's got to be besides magic yeah well then okay so that would be olfactory where one woman is exuding some external hormone that the other people are in taking into their bodies through their nose. Yeah, that you don't recognize a register. That you wouldn't recognize it or register. That would be the only mechanism that I could come up with that would make any sense.

And there's no evidence that that ever happens. And this study looks pretty good. And they looked at previous studies that said there is synchrony. And they said, hey, wait a minute. You know, statistical analysis shows this is chance. And then they looked at a cohort of their own and showed that there was no synchrony. So it looks like that's a myth that's busted, which would be a good one for medical myth busters if we ever decided to do that TV show. I think we better do it some before we get too old.

Yeah. Now, they like old doctors. They think that we give gravitas to these things. Old doctor. We'd have to have one young one that's like cool and hip. Nice hair and thin. Yeah. Yeah.

So anyway. All right. So that's interesting. So what the hell were we talking about, though? the lunar cycle too about I was reading this thing in the BBC they were talking about

the lunar cycle and there is increased criminal activity during the full moon but part of that may be because they can see better see better yeah

see better in the dark yeah so maybe it's that's interesting maybe all the freaks come out at night because they can see better well that's that old

joke about the drunk looking for his keys under the street light and they go well did you lose him here he's like no It's the only place I've got nothing like for one. You never, you never heard that.

I never heard that, no. All right, here we go. Number one thing. Don't take advice from some asshole on the radio. All right, we've got a lot of questions. Some COVID, some not. So, but mostly COVID. Uh-oh.

Hi, Dr. Steve. I sent you an email recently with a link to a story from New York Magazine that was written by the author Nicholson Baker. He recently was also interviewed by Penn Gillette, and he has a seemingly reasonable story about the possible origin of the coronavirus, and whether it was natural or if it was perhaps created in a lab

and accidentally leaked, not nefariously leaked, but just as an accident. Oh, go ahead and... Is this just more... I mean, why not postulate it's nefarious If you're going to come up with a theory like that, why not? Yep. But anyway.

Throw somebody in the list. Conspiracy theory nonsense or do you think it's likely? Also in the article, he went into some detail about... See, and people will say, oh, I don't think it was nefarious. I think it was an accident to keep from being labeled as a conspiracy theorist. But this is just, you know, it's as likely as anything else, but there is evidence on one side of this that I'll talk about in a second.

Gain of function research, which was pretty interesting to read about and also the ethics surrounding that and whether it's something that we should be doing for science or if it's just too much of a risk to the public. Okay. So let's answer the first one

about the coronavirus, whether it was manufactured. So for a long time, I thought maybe they were studying it in the lab. and it got out I think that's still possible sure now there was a team of biologists

infectious disease researchers and biosecurity experts did a report that was published in the journal Nature Medicine which is not some you know cockamamie yeah not online and did you know in England

they say nimbibbimbi and we say nambi pambi here not weird that kind of changed but I learned that from the Great British baking show, by the way. But they said, you know, we don't believe any type of laboratory-based scenario is possible. I don't care about their beliefs.

What's their evidence? So they drew on research that compared the genetic signatures of three sets of viral samples. The first were drawn from patients who became sick with SARS-COV-2 infection. and the second came from bats living near Wuhan, China, which were sometimes brought to an open-air market, and then the third was from pangolins, which are these mongoose-like animals from Malaysia, that were known to have been illegally imported into China.

So the analysis revealed a direct family relationship among the three. The bats were the likely origin of the coronavirus that appeared in Wuhan, but the virus needed to undergo some key genetic shifts to be able to infect humans. because, you know, something that can infect bats might not necessarily be able to infect us. Now, when an infection jumps from an animal to a human, it's called zoonotic transmission.

But anyway, so a lot of the key required changes were found in the more distantly related viruses from the pangolins. So you had the pangolins had a virus that could, you know, had the genetic mutations to infect humans. The bats had the SARS-C-O-V-2 precursor. And so there's, you know, luck involved. There always is with these transmissions from an animal to a human

that there has to be a quote-unquote lucky, in this case, bad luck, a mutation that allows it to jump from one to the other. But when you've got trillions and quadrillions of particles, all undergoing some natural selection in their hosts, this happens. I mean, it becomes way more probable at that point because of the huge numbers. But, you know, it could take on the mutations

needed to infect humans while being cultured in a lab. It's more likely that nature simply made that jump once in the pangolin. And somewhere in this, you know, diverse group of unsampled bats, it appeared to have done so again. So now I'm reading from an article. This is from the New York Times as a synopsis of the nature article. I thought it'd be a little less dense scientifically.

Researchers who sift through the genetic sequences of dozens of preserved viral samples found the new coronavirus is a distant cousin of the coronavirus that caused the SARS outbreak of 2002 and 2003 and the coronavirus that gave rise to Middle East respiratory syndrome or MERS, which, thank God, that one didn't become a pandemic. That's a bad one, 33% case for fatality, you know, compared to, you know, 3% for this one. The virus responsible for COVID-19 has distinctive features that separate it from its predecessors by many, many generations, according to a report in the journal of virology.

But none of the genetic mutations look like one's a scientific genius would engineer in a lab to tweak a virus for better performance. We've been saying this for a long time. I read a paper at the beginning that said the genetic mutation that causes this thing to be able to stick to human ACE2 receptors is not something someone would predict. It looks crazy. It looks like it shouldn't work. And that's the main reason why it's unlikely that this thing was engineered for this. Because nature is weird. It just shit happens.

And these sort of random mutations and then one hits. and then it makes it more available for this virus to be, to multiply through the population. Right. And if it works, it works. Nature doesn't care if it looks weird to us. And anyway, yeah, instead they have all the harm marks of gradual accretion of changes that occurred over time as virus encounters new environments and the immune systems of new organisms because it's always trying to evade those.

And in other words, this team wrote in this article in nature medicine that SARS-COV-2 looks like a virus that has evolved. Now, other researchers examined the 30,000 pairs of RNA letters in the virus's genome and located the juncture where a mutation most probably changed its anatomic features. The authors of the analysis in another journal,

Nature Microbiology, also not a crappy journal, offered plausible natural circumstances to explain how it would have happened. For instance, they cited research showing that when chickens were reportedly exposed to a harmless virus from swans, the virus developed mutations that made it capable of killing every chicken and infected. Well, don't do that. I've got to have my chicken wings. Now, can you imagine if that got loose? Oh, no.

They cited lab experiments to show how the virus is. changing shape would have allowed the organism to latch on to infect and hijack human cells, and they detected biological strategies the virus had adopted, enabled it to spread from host to host, but just barely. The mechanism looked a lot more like the kind of hack that would evolve naturally in a coronavirus, not like the optimal solution a genetic engineer would choose. Finally, they looked for telltale signs of genetic tampering that would have been left behind by purposeful manipulation in a lab,

These so-called reverse genetic systems are used in making of coronavirus vaccines and treatments they've been described in detail in scientific reports. None are present in the SARS-COV-2. Because I said early on, I think back in February and March when I was on some show, and they said, how would you know? And I said, the only way you would really know is if some wag inserted their name in RNA coding or put a serial number or put a copyright message. because you could do that. If you knew how to decode it, you could put a message in this RNA of this virus because it's just three-letter codes for proteins.

And you could figure out a way to encode a message in that because you can encode instructions to make a damn enzyme. You can certainly encode a serial number or a message in there. So anyway, so there you go. So you know what? It's possible, but highly improbable. Right. And so as we are in this world now, if it's highly improbable,

it's probably, you know, people will assume it's true. Yeah, that's a stress. Isn't that true? There's a one in a million chance. Well, then there you go. There you go. You're saying there's a chance. You're saying there's a chance.

Right. Oh, my God. So I need to download that drop because we could use that from a dumb and dumber. That's pretty funny. So you're saying there's a chance. All right, very good. So, yeah, very interesting. I still think not impossible.

They were studying it and it was leaked. How would we ever know? We'd have to not just somebody saying it because we have people saying, well, that's what, you know, I was in the lab and that's what happened. We need real evidence and we'll never get it. someone's got to backtrack, you know, all these infections to the lab. Then we've got to find it in the lab in somebody's secure desktop, you know, whatever, incubator or the freezer somewhere and show that that's what happened. And we'll never get that. Pretty tough.

That'll never happen. Pretty tough call, yeah. That ship has sailed, my friend, so we can say that that's what happened. but we'll never get the evidence. Not saying there aren't people that they're thinking about it, but it's not, yes, not probable. Well, look at the ad on this. You know, people say, I don't like these ads.

I don't want Google knowing what I like. I love it. There was just an ad for a robot sweeper that also mops your floor at the same time. I want one of those. I like targeted ads. You know what? It's all cool shit.

If they just had that, I know what would sell it for you. If they had that, a hologram of a beautiful woman on top of this, riding this vacuum. Oh, for God's sake. You are the, it's for a hippie. You are the least politically correct person. Oh, that's not true. Well, no, you're like, I know how you are.

Check this out. I have this rowdy bass tuner. This is the coolest damn thing. Speaking of robots, that just what I made it. This is a robotic tuner, and we talked about it a little bit last time, but now I have it. I got it this week. And see if, check this out. I'm going to just, I'm going to tune up my bass, but it's already pretty tuned.

You hear that beep beep? That's it. It's tuned. Let me take it out of tune just a hair. Let me take it out of tune a little bit. Hang on. Because it'll make a big difference. Because it's funny hearing that thing crank it and cranking and cranking and crank.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Let me, I don't know how I can. Let me, let me put the mic down here. See if you can hear it. Okay, here we go. I don't know if you can hear it turning there you go it's hard to hear on that key let me on that string let me do the G string can I tell people it looks like a little bottle opener that you're putting on your

that you're putting on your it does kind of look like a bottle opener hang on here's the G string Come on, you bastard. Oh, it's still tuning. Oh, I've got it on, you know what? I've got it on high accuracy, so. Yep. It's still turning the key.

How is cool is that? And it will tune it. It will go low and then come up like it should. All right. There you go. Yeah. Good stuff. Robots.

Robots are cool. Cool. Anyway. Yep. It's a robot. You can see it at stuff.com if you want to, but this isn't an end up. And by the way, that's what Dr. Steve got me for my Christmas president. I did.

I did. I got one for my guitar. And but you can use it for your mandolin. The mandolin, yep, preferably mandolin, yeah. It'll do a 12-string guitar. I saw one of the guys from Queen, I think. It was like, thanks a lot, you bloody bastards for coming out with this at the end of my career. Well, there you go.

Because he loved it. Anyway, all right, we need to do some more. What was her second question? Hey, Dr. Steve. What are the chances that a, me as an essential worker, what are the chances that I can spread to my patient being that I got the vaccine, but my family members did not? And they caught COVID-19, being that this disease is so contagious. Is it, though?

they'll spread it to my patients. That's an excellent question. So I think that families of essential health care workers should be able to get this as well. Agreed. Because what we don't know is when you get the vaccine, do you just have an asymptomatic infection, which means you could spread it. It's not easy. But like you're making out with your wife or something, you know, it'd be easy to do it if you're singing or something like that or yelling at a football game.

Or if you just have a spontaneous cough for whatever reason. or does it prevent infection? Right now, in the early days, particularly, it probably should prevent infection. Later on, because it's a damn coronavirus, you're going to lose that antibody immunity for whatever reason, and eventually, it might take a year.

But then when you get it again, you probably can spread it, but you'll have a very mild syndrome or asymptomatic syndrome. So we've still got to be careful to this thing is just eradicated. The other thing, though, is that I think that families should be able to get it just because you're at high risk, and they should be able to get the vaccine because easy for you to bring home.

What was the other part of his question, though? Wait a minute. There was something I wanted to say in there. Let me play it back. This disease is so contagious. Oh, yeah, that was it. Is it, though, really that contagious? It seems like it is because a lot of people have it.

But what's the one thing we haven't seen this year? Flu. Influenza. You know why? Because influenza's are not, or the effective reproduction number, is actually about half of COVID-19. So he's going, well, that that means it's really infectious, right? because influenza's infectious, yes and no.

Measles are not, is 12. So one person will give 12 people measles. One person will give 2.4 people SARS-C-O-V-2. And even with this new strain that's supposed to be 70% more transmissible, that just means it's 70% more than 2.4, so it'd be like four. So one person will give it to four people. and that's in a fully vulnerable population. If we go to RT. Live, which I'll let's go there now,

RT.org, we can look at what the actual reproduction rate of this virus is. And the highest in this country is Washington State, and that's 1.23. And then Georgia's 1.17, and then you get down, once you get down to Arizona, then the rest of the states, so there's five of them that are have a reproductive rate above 1.1, and then the rest of the other

47 are all 1.1 or below. And the number that are below 1 now is increasing again. At one point it was down to like a quarter or a fifth of the states, had an

effective reproduction reproduction rate of one or less, and now it's about a third. So that's good. So it's starting to, the green is starting to march back up again. And Dr. Steve, the last time we looked this up, was Tennessee was like in the top four, wasn't it? And now it's drop down. Yeah, where is Tennessee? We're in a bottom four now.

Oh, yeah, good. Which is great, yeah. Yeah. So our effective reproduction rate is about. 0.93 and remember if it's above 1.0 the virus will spread when it's below it will stop spreading and you'll see declining cases and we are starting to see a topping off and a tail a slowing down of the increase in cases right now and we should I'm predicting in the next couple of weeks we'll start to see a decrease in cases again so so well just going to show you the state of Tennessee because

we were two weeks ago we were a we were yeah we were up in the time That is true. And if you go down, you can see where that was. Tennessee was up to 1.2, 1.10 in November. Oh, yeah, there it is. And then we drop back down to 1.0 on December 15th. It's been declining ever since. But we've had increasing cases.

Well, why is that? Because the cases lag behind the transmission. Right. Do you think there's a correlation between, and I think we talked about before, but people wearing masks and social distancing and the flu, of course. Yeah. Because it seems to be working.

Well, because it's, influenza's R sub zero is 1.2. So influenza's R sub T right now is probably pretty dang low. Yeah. And I haven't seen a single case of influenza this year. Yeah. Clinically, not one. Yeah, I don't even know. And that's, but that's probably, if we would do all this mask wearing and social distancing,

if we just had a normal flu, which why would you do? do it for that? People do die from influenza, but it's at a pretty low rate in this country. So why would you do it? But we could just have no flu season if we wore masks and did social distancing. And what they see what there were, but I'm not advocating that, by the way. Don't start there. Hey, you sit. No, I'm just saying if we did. And I'm pretty sure I heard last night on the news that there were no reported deaths in Tennessee right now from the flu. I'm trying to find that right now. Okay, you look for that. All right.

Oh, this is the wrong. Let me start. This is this guy. Remember that we were talking about the person that fell from 23 feet? Oh, yeah. Hey, Dr. David's Brad again. The guy who fell 23 feet was looking at CBD. Thank you very much for all the information.

I really appreciate it. And also for the other doctor. I've heard talks about coming in and the other stuff that he said, but I never really believed it. Now I do, but I heard you guys talk about my fall, and I was the luckiest that he'll be in the world, and I fell 23 feet. I fell into a six-foot chain-length fence, and I know it sounds bad, but that six-foot chain-link fence is now three feet tall. I used to pass by it all the time because they left

it that way, and I fell into the neighbor's backyard. But if I was a foot further back when I hit it, I would have landed on my stomach, and a foot further forward, I would have left. I would have to land it on my back. And my lead carpenter saw him fall. And he's done the same thing. 20 years earlier, he falls 15 feet. And he's been both of his heel bones through his poop. Oh, boogers.

And he was in a wheelchair for a year. Crutches for six months didn't work for two years. So when he came over to me, that time. Yeah, gravity is a real pain in the ass. Stuff to battle. And the fact that gravity is just extremely mighty. but measurable on, you know, nanosecond and picosecond changes in time when you get away from a gravity well. That's all gravity really is, ultimately, is that time is flowing differently from my head to my ass, and that's why I'm sitting able to sit on this chair.

That'll blow your mind. And the fact that you can just fall 10 feet, and it can kill you or break all, you know, the bones in your body is just outstanding in a bad way. Up his nail, this guy, I thought he was about to cry. I actually knew the pain I was going to be in. But I was definitely a lucky SOB when I fell that day. And also my whole entire career in construction, they always told me when you fall or like the ladder collapsed on me, the extension ladder, I just unhooked my harness and just got on the ladder and it collapsed on me.

And they always say, get down as fast as you can to your feet. I've seen what happens from a six-foot fall when a guy fell off called Mason's scaffold he broke his shoulder, his arm, the health is his hip, and they had the weeks for the shoot

inflammation to go down on his ankle before they could do surgery and one of our painters fell about 12 feet and he broke his back. So I just want to say thank you again, and I appreciate all the info. Well, thanks for filling us in on that. But he called back and had a part, too. I just didn't listen to this part.

Let's just see what it is. Shoot, one last thing. When I went to the hospital, I drove there. I drove my sick to pick up to the hospital. Get that hell out of the hospital. He does not believe that I fell 43 feet. No. And I sat there, and I went, I measured.

I took out my tape measure, my 30-foot tape measure, and I measured before I went there because I wanted to see how far I fell. And they did not believe it. What a nuts. I spent hours in the yard. This guy's a real man, by the last. He's a tough. And then when they finally did the x-ray, I think it was about six hours later, they figured out that I broke my talus. When they figured out there, I broke my talus, that's when all hell broke with me.

catscan, like, everything. I guess you can only break your towels from a high fall, and that's when they realized that I actually fell from 23 feet. But they didn't really believe me because I drove there. I parked on the truck in the parking box. And then I sort of hobbled into the hospital. So, you know, believe your patience sometimes thinking that they're lying and they're telling them a fish and they'll.

Well, I don't know why somebody would think you were lying, but it is, I mean, it's very illicit. usual you know as well as i do it in the r sometimes i just think everybody's a drug seeker yeah i'm guessing he was saying that he broke his talus is that that sound like that's what he was saying yeah yeah that's hard to break it's one of the bones that forms the ankle so you got the calcane is the actual one that you can feel under there and the the the talus sort of intercalates with that and there's only about one way to break that yeah it occurs during high energy events car collisions or fall from significant height right and um if you break your talus you're

going to lose loss of motion and function. And if you, if it doesn't heal properly, it leads to complications, including limp, arthritis, and chronic pain. So most talus fractures will require surgery. And sometimes fusions, yeah. Yeah, take a look. Just Google talus fractures, T-A-L-U-S, and you'll see why this is so difficult. Now, I've heard of people that fall in and just take their, if you fall and lock your knees, your hips will go up into your pelvis. Oh, yeah. You know, so don't do that.

No, don't do that. You don't want to break your pelvis. Have a slightly... Slightly bent knees. Slightly bent knees, that's right. All right. Let's see here. I've got a good one here that is a non-COVID related as well. Matt and Charleston, how you doing?

Hey, Matt. I'm doing okay, man. How are you? I'm doing great. Good. A quick follow-up on a few weeks ago about donating blood. Yeah. And I'm trying to get like a workplace blood donation event together, and I have a co-worker who cannot donate blood because he is gay. Oh. And I'm wondering why, you know, obviously, I understand the obvious concerns, but why haven't we alleviated those concerns yet? Because I don't.

Billy. What's holding that up? How come we can't let him? donating blood. It was obviously a sore issue for him. Yeah. As it should be, he's trying to do something good to help people. Yeah, and they're donating blood.

They're being stupid. Yeah, they're going, get out of here, you know. So, you know, I don't understand it. There was a time when it made sense because of HIV, we didn't know what it was. Sure. Back in the mid-80s. They knew it was, right in the mid-80s. They knew it was blood-borne, and they didn't know what it was, so they couldn't test for

it so they were like nope no gays can transmit or i mean can now uh can donate blood now there were plenty of heterosexual people that then donated blood that got into the blood supply so there were people that still even though that was the case that um got HIV from blood donations it was unusual but it happened you might look how many people in the 80s got got HIV from blood transfusions well anyway So the FDA has revised the recommendations for reducing the risk of HIV transmission by blood and blood products. It says defer for three months from the most recent sexual contact, a man who has had sex with another man during the past three months. All blood collection organizations in the U.S. must follow this federal requirement.

And the Red Cross says that they recognize the hurt this policy is caused to many in the LGBTQ plus community. and believes that blood donation eligibility should not be determined by methods that are based upon sexual orientation, should be risk, not sexual orientation. That's my editorial comment. We are committing toward working toward achieving this goal. It says, as a regulated organization, we cannot unilaterally enact changes concerning the MSM deferral policy, MSM men having sex with men. The Red Cross has a history of advocating for the FDA to revise their policies regarding men who have sex with men. Over the past several years, the Red Cross in collaboration with other U.S. blood providers has collected data regarding the safety of the current three-month MSM deferral. Additionally, we continue to assist in evaluating alternative donor eligibility criteria and expanded use of new technologies to work toward an elimination of donor eligibility questions based on sexual orientation that would no longer be necessary.

So anyway, so there you go. Now, let's, what do you say? What about women who have sex with women? there's no deferral for a woman who has sex with another woman. That's because the transmission from woman to woman with HIV is, you know, it's very, very, very low. So there you go. So isn't that something? So they're working on it.

It used to be six months. Now they're saying three. But for you to do the right thing, if you're a gay man, you have to not have sex for three months or lie about it. And you know back in the 80s and early 90s, if you had acupuncture, you were not allowed to do that anymore. Oh, is that right? Yep. Because they thought you guys were nasty. They thought for some reason we were dirty and sticking needles in people's veins and giving them hep C and HIV.

Dr. Steve, real quick, in the early 80s, I found this on PubMed, the best, and I'm trying to read quickly, but it looks like half for HIV infection transmitted fatal illness is approximately half of the 16,000 hemophiliacs. Oh, yeah, I remember that. And half of a 12,000 blood transfusion recipient. So that's why they became so steadfast, which lower, in poor Arthur Ash, remember? The tennis crate. Yep. And that's, and sadly, that's how he got HIV. How did he get it?

Blood transfusion. I think, I think, really? I want to say. Are we sure about that? Yeah, yeah. No, he had HIV. But I want to say he had. Because Ryan White got it from a blood transfusion.

Yep. If you remember, people may or may not remember Ryan White. It was a big deal at the time. It was 1984. He got a blood transfusion. He was diagnosed at age 13 with AIDS. And I was given six months to live at that time, which is, you know, crazy to think about now that with antiretroviral cocktails, we can, you know, almost eliminate the virus completely from people's bloodstreams. I think people can live a normal lifespan.

But Ryan White tried to return to school, and he fought AIDS-related discrimination as Indiana community. And he rallied for his right to attend school, which gained national attention. And he became the face of public education about the disease. Surprising these doctors, Ryan White lived five years longer than predicted. He died in April of 1991 month before his high school graduation. I can't read anymore.

I'm going to have to stop. Poor little feller, but yeah, he was a tough kid. He's one of the first children with hemophilia to be diagnosed with AIDS. Yep. All right. Hey, Dr. Steve, how's it going? Hey, good man. How are you?

Cool. That's great. So my question was about COVID vaccine, the Moderna one specifically. Okay. It's a two shot. And my question was, if the shots are, identical. Yeah.

And I'm asking because I can already sort of foresee scheduling problems, scheduling problems with the first one, but even with the second one, and I'm wondering what kind of notification you'd want to give the provider if it's the second one or if it doesn't matter. Huh. And so, yeah, thanks. Okay. I don't know.

I think what he's wondering is, since they're both identical, could you schedule it two different providers in case the first one? but you can't get the second one and just say, well, I'm here for my first one, and now you've got two, and you're sort of finagling the system. I'm not 100% sure I understand this question. Now, when I got mine, they shipped both doses at once, and then they stored the second one. But I was at a place for a Pfizer vaccine that had the crazy, you know, freezer that kept it at the right temperature for the three weeks that had to go between doses. So that's the way they should do it. And that way, if you get one, you're guaranteed to get the second one because it'll have your name on it.

Now, with the Moderna vaccine, it doesn't have to be stored at those crazy low temperatures. So I don't know, I have to be honest with you. I don't know how they're doing that. The way I would do it is to ship it in pairs. Maybe we should just look that up, too. I probably should have looked this up before the show. Are the vaccines shipped in pairs? And you know what?

Google will know which vaccine I'm talking about. Okay, the COVID cold chain, how a vaccine will get to you. All right. So vaccine logistics expert explains how millions of frozen vials will be widely distributed. And it says both Moderna and Pfizer use the same genetically engineered vaccine approach, which involves messenger RNA molecules. And let's see here. Oh, come on.

They're manufactured in Moderna's. manufacturing its vaccine in New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Indiana. Eh, well, shit. Well, I don't know. I don't know the answer to that. Just get it wherever you can freaking get it. That's the thing.

And just when you go to get the first one, ask them about your second one. How are they going to do that? Are they shipping them in pairs so you've already got your name on it? Because what happens if you go back for your three-week thing and they don't have it? So, you know,

Okay, let me see. The place doing immunization adds a diluent, creating five doses at that point. The solution is good for six hours, so a clinic has to figure out how many health care workers and customers will be vaccinated as it starts the dilution process for the day. Look up how they're given the second one, will you? That's what I'm doing right now. Because I'm just bullshitting at this point, you know. Can you please stop bullshitting and get to the question? I'm sorry.

I'm trying. Yeah, Scott's going to look up how they do the second shot. If they're shipped in pairs or if they are, you just have to hope that they're going to have a second one. But ask at the time, how am I going to get my second one? How do I know you're going to have it? Okay. All right. Hey, Dr. Steve.

This is Ryan from Raleigh, North Carolina. Hey, man. I posted a question on your Twitter that mentioned this might be better for the show. So I'm hoping you might be able to explain this in a little bit of detail. but over the past nine, ten months with everything that's going on, and especially over the past three or four months with the rise in hospitalizations. It got me thinking, what is the threshold for going to the hospital if you have COVID? It seems to me that there hasn't been much public health direction on this, or if there has.

I've missed out on it. there's there's such a rise in capacity and it got me thinking maybe there's a lot of people who don't even need to go right um that could treat this from home but are just really scared understandably um but if you can explain that that would be fantastic and thank you for everything that you do on the front lines there as a doctor we greatly appreciate that i don't think you get enough thanks yeah um it's that's that's my job but thank you for saying that um so December of 2020 the Boston university updated their admission criteria they're pretty good institution and every place may have their own admission criteria

if you have a place that is overwhelmed with COVID-19 they may be treating people at home that otherwise they would have admitted so any patient with oxygen saturated oxygen saturation less than 94% at rest on room error or if they decrease to 90% when they walk or if there's any overall clinical concern by the attending physician that this patient is going to fail at home based on high risk for complications so you say well what are high risk for complications so there's this thing called a clinical risk score and you get the jama network dot com has this this clinical risk score on their on their website and it basically looks at things like what does their do they have an x-ray abnormality is there a change in the

x-ray right how old are they are they greater than 65 do they have bleeding when they cough are they at other risk because of diabetes of immune compromise and other things like that any history of cancer, those kinds of things. So those are the people that really need to be admitted or to make it short, people who are at high risk for complications ending up on the ventilator or death. So that helps once you get to the emergency room. But how do you know if you should go to the emergency room? So it's mostly if you just feel like crap and you feel bad enough to go,

it's okay to call and say, hey, I think I have COVID-19, or I tested positive a week ago, and now I'm short of breath, or I can't stop coughing, or, you know, it doesn't feel right and talk to the triage people. Or you've got a really elevated fever that won't come down or something. Yeah, any of those things. And talk to them, particularly if you have risk factors. Let's go over them again, right, age over 65. body mass index greater than 35.

So let's get a body mass calculator out and figure out what that is. So BMI calculator. Let's go to, let's say someone is six, or let's say five, ten. That's pretty average, right? Yep, 5'10 is average. And they weigh 250 pounds. Their BMI is, where's the, damn number oh 35 okay so there you go 35 almost 36 so anywhere between 240 and 250 if you weigh 510

that's someone that's in an increased risk if you have type 2 diabetes if you have immune compromise all of those things we used to say hypertension not so much anymore that's that's that's hypertension everybody kind of calmed down on that one and narrowed down on these major ones. Do you have anything else on those? Oh, for me, no. I've got a couple of risk factors. Do you?

Old age. Well, you're not 65. I feel like I'm 65. You're not. No. So, yeah, that's the big ones. And then there are these risk factors, depending if you are you know if your ancestors of African descent it looks like those folks

are at increased risk as well and poverty and crowding what no matter what your race is it also is a risk factor and then certain occupations and then pregnancy pregnant women are at increased risk from all respiratory viruses for whatever reason so So anyway, so if you have any of those and you feel like crap, then definitely call. Or if you are, you know, acutely short of breath, you may need to go to the, call the rescue squad. But let them know that you think this is what's going on because the front line first responders are really at the highest. Really high risk. Sure.

Police fire rescue squad. And I would step as, I've already had the vaccine because I participated in the trial. so that you all don't have to or didn't have to. But I would, if I hadn't been vaccinated, I would definitely step aside for someone like Woodflore Liquor, who is, you know, a friend of the show who is, you know, a paramedic. Right. And I would step aside to let him or someone like him get their vaccine before me

or, you know, a cop or a fire person because really they're at higher risk than I am. I can be fully in my hazmat suit. They can't and do some of the stuff that they do. Right on. All right. Very good. Well, listen, I don't know. You got anything else?

No, gosh. Everybody stay safe. Simplyherbles.net. Thanks always. Go to Dr. Scott. Tacey will be back next week. She's in training for her job right now. We can't forget Rob Sprantz, Bob Kelly, Greg Hughes, Anthony Coomia, Jim Norton.

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