this may be one of the more important
podcasts we've done
we all know we're living in
extraordinarily intense times the most
intense most of us have experienced at
least in our adult lives
the challenge that we're experiencing
today are as intense as we've ever seen
and the challenge is not only people are
dying but people are dying alone
families can't visit with their family
members because of
understanding of the virus and our
concerns about how it could spread
and we're living in a world where quite
frankly we've made decisions that are
also affecting
not just the people that have already
passed away but also are going to affect
people in the future
and also there are ways we've responded
to this virus
are having gigantic effects around the
world
there are people all over the world that
are having
all kinds of challenges ninety percent
of brain surgeries haven't happened i go
through a whole list but the
feeding problem is one of the things i'm
most concerned about
and people moving into poverty which
leads to deaths as well
[Music]
the world food organization that the un
sponsors is saying maybe 265 million
people might
go hungry this year almost double what
normally happens
[Music]
i wanted today to see if we could go on
a um
kind of an exploration if you will a
journey not a trip a trip's predictable
a journey you might be surprised and
i've been on a journey because
i care so much and i know you do too
what does this mean i have my own
um parents they're my mother and
father-in-law but then in their 70s i
adore them and
obviously extreme concern so i started
to immerse myself in every detail i
could find on the science of this
and as i did i came across
a set of doctors nobel prize winners uh
professors of epidemiology some of the
most qualified people in the world that
we're bringing up
new facts that we have today that are
very different than we made the
decisions to shut down the world economy
and science is about as new facts come
forward make new decisions but sometimes
the momentum
of the story and the fear takes us over
i think cases become a big issue for
political reasons
um unfortunately there's a huge amount
of politics
in all of this everywhere you know i
think that unfortunately
science is difficult and you can't be
partisan
and uh i think that there was a dynamic
here
and a dynamic which i found very
anti-scientific that led to decisions
being made
the world health organization has a
record of exaggerating and i think they
do this deliberately
because they feel that the public won't
pay attention the total number of
excess deaths reported by a website
called euro momo up till today
is a hundred and sixty thousand maybe
170 000
basically that's about the same number
of people who died in an excess way
in the flu season of 2017-18
so basically my guess is it's going to
be maybe one and a half times more
excess death
x is just very important because if i
if i'm very sick and then i'm labeled as
a corona death that's
fine except i won't die again next month
so basically if you look at the total
deaths
each person is only counted once whereas
if you assume that
everyone who dies with corona is extra
you're over counting
one of the challenges is that when
people were looking at all the numbers
that were coming out of the tv
and they were doing the death rate the
case fatality rates they were looking
really and this is a
i'll call it a rookie 101 mistake in
epidemiology
and that you don't take the incident
rate to figure out case fatality you
look at the prevalence
and it was stunning to me that all the
media would put on
these so-called experts and not raise
this issue
as to why the case fatality rate is just
completely and absolutely overstated yes
we
we as citizens need to be responsible
and we need to be
think about what we do and how it
impacts those around us
but we shouldn't be so fearful that we
um
decide to live in a bubble and
hermetically sell our home in hopes that
we never get any more diseases ever
again that's just nonsense
i would submit that we're pivoting
towards a time now where
we have to ask ourselves our questions
about who are we
what is our country are we losing
personal liberties
if we're going to use contact tracing
what does that look like
does that look like voluntary use of our
form
or is it going to be involuntary are
there going to be
drones that swoop and watch us
we need to be very careful because in
the end when we're all said and done
we're looking
at a respiratory virus a single stranded
rna virus we've dealt with these before
and
we know that forty to fifty percent of
people who get it may not even know they
had it
we know another forty fifty percent that
get it we'll skate through it
we know that we're probably gonna at the
end of the day end up somewhere between
one out of a thousand patients dying
from it
it's interesting because when i was
doing the research originally i remember
in late february i was watching every
day because i'm concerned
that the death rate shot up 600 percent
in one day and i'm now epidemiologist
but that didn't make any sense i'm
talking about the world death rate and
then i dug in and finally found little
astrakhan said they changed the
diagnostic procedure
to no longer having to do a test this is
as late as february
and that that's why the number of deaths
shot through the roof because anything
they suspected is
coped they listed at govit and then a
few weeks ago i know you know and the
cdc
made it formal in the us that you don't
need to do a test
just if you suspect it but there's
actually even as i understand from you
economic incentives by the hospitals and
some have been reclassified as copic 19
deaths after the fact
and what is that a financial incentive
if you'll share with us
we were basically being advised as
physicians as to how to correctly
complete
a death certificate if covet 19 was
involved directly or perhaps even
presumptively or probably or
peripherally involved i was coached and
massaged to
utilize covet 19 as a factor in the
causation of death even if i hadn't
checked a coba 19 test even if i hadn't
had an interest in one
and right around that time dr burks uh
from washington dc was saying that
nobody's going to die with copenhagen if
they have it they're dying of it and
that was about as silly a thing as i had
heard because if a person
gets hit by a bus and over the first two
hours of examination in an emergency
room
we learn that both of their lungs are
collapsed but also some baseline
laboratory works
addressed the fact that there was a low
hemoglobin but also
a copin 19 test happened to be positive
in the pcr form of it
it would be absolutely ridiculous to put
down covet 19.
on the one hand part of my life is in
the trenches practicing primary care
and then i come down to the capitol
where i see this partisan battle for
power
and and the best way to power it
sometimes is to keep people
frightened and then tell them who to
blame and after you've done enough of
that then
sort of step up and raise your hand and
say but follow me i'll take care of you
that's sort of a typical formula in the
world of politics
and i think sometimes when these things
happen we don't recognize them at the
time it's
it's when we looked at it through the
retrospective scope so i really think
the crisis is pivoting
if you look at the case fatality rate
the number of people who die
who get it it's over three percent
when you get to 70 and over that's a
real risk
yes you look at 60 and under
it's less than two-tenths of one percent
or about
less than twice the flu but really what
you need to do is protect people who are
over the age of 70
protect them from the risk they would
have if they
were exposed to the virus because
they're in that three to five percent
death rate from from getting the disease
on the other hand most of the economy
is in driven by younger people
95 to 97 and they don't need to be
protected
we made that mistake early on in looking
at the
the data from china and we will probably
come back and regret it but you could
really open up the whole economy
and not have much increase
in the risk the problem is without the
economy open
we're having more deaths of despair than
we are
deaths from the covent virus now now
what we're seeing is the collateral
damage of cobit is way outweighing the
disease itself
i can tell you about suicide cases
personally 23 year old
i can tell you about anxiety depression
alcoholism all in my community that are
skyrocketing now because
of covet so i think the conversation has
to to switch now to
how do we get the economy going again
because the collateral damage
of the the economy shutdown is becoming
far worse than the virus itself
we we took a hippocratic oath to do no
harm
and to um to tell the truth and we
looked at our numbers and we had
some of stanford's preliminary data was
out we're looking at these different
studies and we're saying well this
the epidemiology of this disease
is similar to flu and have we ever shut
down for flu before
we haven't it does it make sense to
shut down the economy to have folks you
know
not have work not be able to support
their families
um the influenza is a very dangerous
disease i've had folks in their 30s and
40s die from influenza when i used to
work in the er so it was dr erickson
influenza is very serious but we we are
familiar with influenza so we say it's
just the flu
so whenever you have something that
you're unfamiliar with you have lots of
fear
and then trying to change people's
narrative their their their their
mindset with new data is very very
difficult because they have that old
mindset
i'm an infectious disease physician and
um
you know my you know my use of
understanding of of uh and i also
disease modeling and my understanding is
you know this you know a disease like
this or spreads
you know quite widely and and you know
and so the numbers didn't you know
didn't quite add up and so that's why we
uh we put that study together and um
uh and you know we you know we sampled
a group of uh well over three thousand
people we used a test kit that by now
has been
uh you know vetted very carefully and we
know exactly what
you know what it tells us one thing that
i was hoping that our study would do is
is
reduce that uncertainty you know we were
living with such an enormous amount of
uncertainty and i think that uncertainty
was really getting you know
getting people work work out and you
know i like like many here i wish you
know
i wish this were not a political issue i
wish this were um
you know an area where we could come
together and say okay we need to count
all cost deaths because
you know the coding is not something
that is reliable um
you know we need we need to understand
the issue about immunity we need to
understand the issue about uh you know
but
the age distribution and and the
differences across ages
um and these are you know these are some
of the very key priorities that will
help us really know learn how to deal
with that
we have to start putting wrapping our
head around and making decisions in a
more informed way
the whole purpose of this is to honor
those that
have already put their lives on the line
for so many doctors and nurses
um i cried just thinking about it so
many police officers first responders
you know
people driving trucks so that we can
still have our livelihood in our life
and be with our families they get taken
for granted
i know most you don't take them for
granted but i hope in the midst of this
we don't lose track of all that they've
done for us
please remember we human beings are
pretty damn resilient
we've been around 200 000 years we've
experienced every kind of change in the
environment
every kind of microbe every kind of
challenge you could imagine here we
still stand
for better or worse hopefully for better
and just remember life it's meant to be
lived
and sometimes we can get overcome by the
drama by
what we see in here every moment and by
dealing with real challenges that we
forget
that this life is still meant to be live
so whether it be winter spring summer or
fall whether it be in tough times or
good times
i hope you'll find gratitude and joy and
love with the people that you love
and you'll continue to grow and continue
to expand so no matter what happens
economically what happens in the
environment there's a quality of life
waiting to be lived and enjoyed by you
by just finding things to be grateful
for
in the midst of challenge that's i think
how we stay resilient
that's how we keep going with the ball
forward that's how we serve our children
our family and our friends
so live fully live with passion
and hopefully until we meet again god
[Music]
bless
you