Derek talks with Dr. Ali Haider about being on the frontlines of COVID-19.Dr. Haider is an Assistant Professor of Medicine at Tufts University Medical School. He received his medical degree from Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York. Dr. Haider is board-certified in Internal Medicine, Cardiovascular Diseases, Echocardiography, Nuclear Cardiology, Interventional Cardiology, and vascular ultrasound. He is well versed in all aspects of cardiology, and his areas of interest include coronary angioplasty and interventions, and the treatment of peripheral vascular disease as well as structural heart disease.Show NotesDoctor Responds to COVID Over-Diagnosis Claims by White HouseAli Haider on YouTube and Instagram
-- -- --Support us on PatreonPre-order Conspirituality: How New Age Conspiracy Theories Became a Health Threat: America | Canada Follow us on Instagram | Twitter: Derek | Matthew | JulianOriginal music by EarthRise SoundSystem
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Hey everyone, welcome to Conspirituality's weekly bonus episode.
We found that we had so much material for our Thursday podcast that we've decided to save some of our interviews, insights, and ideas for this weekly transmission.
You can find links to our social media channels on Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube at Conspirituality.net, where we house all of our episodes, show notes, and resource pages as well.
We also have a lot of projects we'd like to get to, so if you appreciate the podcast, please consider supporting us at patreon.com slash conspirituality, where patrons get access to further bonus material every weekend.
And if you are so inclined, please give us a review or rating on your podcast player's page to help us appease the gods of analytics.
Thank you for listening, as well as your support.
What's up guys, this is Dr. Ali Haider and I wanted to quickly jump on here and talk about some of Donald Trump's recent comments that he made at a rally in Wisconsin regarding the reporting of COVID deaths in the United States and the insinuation that physicians and hospitals may be falsifying diagnoses and death certificates, insinuating that there was some sort of financial incentive for doing so.
Now, all of this is really a bunch of baloney, and it's not really backed by any sort of evidence.
Again, another reason why politics and science should never really mix, aside from policy.
That was Dr. Ali Haider from his YouTube channel, which is Your Heart Doc, from last week.
I also got a chance to speak with Ali last week as well, and thank you to Dr. Daniel Bilardo for Introducing us, as I've mentioned before, I've been wanting to chat with healthcare professionals about their experiences during the pandemic and what they've observed, how they feel about how we're handling COVID-19, and just dispelling some of the myths that have been out there, which you are probably aware have been many.
Dr. Hader, as with Dr. J. Mohan, who are also friends, he was featured recently on one of our episodes, are trying to dispel those myths on their YouTube and Instagram handles.
Ali is at YourHeartDoc on Instagram as well as YouTube.
A little bit of background, Dr. Hayter is an assistant professor of medicine at Tufts University Medical School.
He received his medical degree from Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York.
He has a board certified in internal medicine, cardiovascular diseases, echocardiography, nuclear cardiology, interventional cardiology, and vascular ultrasound.
He knows what he's doing with your heart and with hearts in general.
He's well-versed in all aspects of cardiology and his areas of interest include coronary angioplasty and interventions and the treatment of peripheral vascular disease as well as structural heart disease.
He is currently at the Cooley Dickinson Healthcare Institute at the Massachusetts General Hospital Affiliate, which is where I talked to him last week about these things.
As with Dr. J. Mohan, Ali has been on the front lines of COVID.
Massachusetts is one of the states that is doing very well at this time, but considering 47 out of 50 states are moving in the wrong direction, including now California, I mention in the podcast that we were going in the right direction, which we were, but this interview was recorded almost a week ago and we see how quickly things are changing.
Anyway, I want to thank Dr. Hayter for his time and I hope you enjoy and more importantly learn from this conversation that we had.
Again, the intention is to share what people who are dealing with COVID patients on a daily basis are experiencing.
I really recommend checking him out on social media.
I will link to the YouTube video in the show notes that you heard at the very beginning of this bonus episode.
And without further ado, here's my conversation with Dr. Ali Hayter.
One thing that we're trying to get across, this podcast has been about conspiracy theories in the wellness industry.
And there has been a long distrust among some people in what we call the wellness industry, yoga instructors and holistic therapists and such, It's terrible in and of itself, but there's been a serious uptick in the pandemic.
So we're just talking to different healthcare professionals and doctors about their experiences to try to get through to people's heads that this is serious.
Can you give just a brief background of some of your early experiences with COVID-19 treating patients and when you realized what it actually was?
Sure, absolutely.
So I'm in Massachusetts, Western Massachusetts area.
And you know, sort of like everybody else when, you know, the news, you know, we were obviously following this through the media when it was in China, and then we were hearing the things that folks were telling us from our government or administrations and then You know, then the reality sort of hit that we're seeing this blossoming situation first in New York and then that's when I think everybody started batting down the hatches and getting ready.
I don't think we, none of us really knew what to really expect.
We knew there was going to be a You know, it was going to spread and it was going to hit.
I don't think, I certainly didn't realize how quickly it would spread throughout the United States.
And, you know, I think every hospital, every state sort of had a different level of preparedness.
And I think that translated into What the on-the-ground experiences certainly were, and then of course, places like Hobbs, like New York and Seattle, places where, you know, the flights were coming in, which the epicenters were.
Obviously, folks in New York and those kinds of places had definitely more intense different experiences.
We, where I am in Western Massachusetts, we had a little bit of a benefit that it came, obviously, a little bit later than that initial surge, so I think we were able to get prepared better.
Our hospital in our area was very well prepared for any situation so I think that really helped at least the situations on the ground here and my own personal experiences because we were prepared for the absolute worst and it actually didn't even reach the capacity that luckily that we were able to hold.
That being said, When the wave finally hit, it's sort of like you're preparing for this hurricane, you know, you're here on the news, you're getting the windows closed up and you're, you know, getting your supplies ready.
And then when it actually hits, it's, it's, you know, it's still a bit of a shock, even though you're prepared for it.
Um, you know, my personal experience in, in our hospital, so I'm a cardiologist, sort of like Jay, who I know you spoke to in Danielle.
Um, generally I'm not taking care of, You know, infectious disease patients or regular medical ICU patients.
However, you know, we were unknowingly, not knowing exactly how bad the situation was, we were all sort of prepared for it.
You know, we were, they had the multiple ICUs were created at our hospital.
As a lot of other places were.
They obviously had all the ICU doctors, even the ones normally they'll have people on and off, they had everybody available.
And even like myself, a cardiologist, as a cardiologist attending, they got us prepared for the possibility.
Okay?
And I think that's when it really hit me.
I'm like, wow, there's a possibility I would have to be running an actual medical ICU as a cardiologist and not knowing what was happening.
Um, so when, when it first hit, I still remember, you know, I was actually off for a week and then I think March, April was when our peak was.
And when I walked into what used to be the cardiac critical care unit, which had been converted completely to a COVID ICU, I mean, it was a little bizarre.
I mean, you walked in and obviously everybody's, you know, by then everybody was mandatory masks in those areas where people were wearing all the N95s, nurses in paper hoods, and there are rooms filled with patients.
But I was surprised at, you know, there were old patients, but there were also middle-aged and young patients.
And everybody was on a ventilator.
Everybody was super sick.
And I remember doing rounds with the entire ICU team, and at that point it was sort of like, we didn't really know what worked at that point.
At that point, this was before steroids, this was before remdesivir, so we didn't really have much to do.
So it was sort of, It was sort of bizarre.
We have these patients on ventilators and we're giving supportive care, but we have zero treatment.
And it was upsetting.
People would die on a daily basis.
And we just didn't have room to room to room.
We were focusing on, how sick is this person?
Is this person going to die?
Should we have this patient talk to their family members in preparedness?
Because nobody was allowed in the hospital.
It was just a very bizarre, Scenario and seeing that you're not used to seeing and I take care of the sickest patients in cardiology.
It was just, and then at that point I was just like, wow, this is, this is not good.
You know, and this is, this is terrible.
And you know, patients were had to make these difficult decisions of, I remember two of my patients were in the ICU, long-term patients of mine, sick people, and they were on the ventilator for seven, eight days.
And we were making decisions of just, we have to take these people off the ventilators.
We had to preserve ventilators.
Medicines were running out.
It was, at that time at least, it was sort of like literal wartime, warzone situation.
And that's because that's when the real brunt of the wave hit.
When we were not prepared, we had no treatment.
And it spread like wildfire because there was nobody with moon at that time, unlike now.
So it was spreading really rapidly.
It was just, that was my first, I remember, shock of realizing what was going on.
And at that point, I was like, wow.
And I didn't end up having to be an IACU rounder on my own.
But that shock and fear was, it kind of started the whole cascade afterwards of what I did, who I spoke to, the preparedness, and then all the stuff from social media.
That was like the central moment.
And then, obviously, downstream from that, there's a lot of the stuff that happened after that.
Yeah.
Now, as a cardiologist, have you noticed any effects, like what does it do to the heart?
Is there anything unique about it that concerns you?
It's a great question.
I mean, we theorize a lot of, you know, people who get bad viral infections can subsequently get different sequelae of that from the heart, right?
One example is something called myocarditis, which is inflammation of the heart.
And we know this disease obviously is a multi-organ disease.
If you've read up about it, a lot of people talk about how it infects the vascular system.
Basically, all the organs can be involved.
Some viruses tend to like to go to the heart, cause inflammation, which can lead to this myocarditis and congestive heart failure because it causes a weakness of the heart muscle.
It basically causes a heart dysfunction by weakening the heart muscle, and that can lead, obviously, to a multitude of problems.
Luckily, it wasn't a rampant myocarditis.
We didn't see this coming in left and right as much as we thought we would, right?
But we definitely saw that.
The other thing we saw was there was even patients who developed the virus who suffered run-of-the-mill heart attacks, right?
Because this is a hyper-inflammatory disease.
I would say we saw more of that than actual this inflammation of the heart muscle.
So, people were getting sick enough and they had run-of-the-mill heart attacks.
The sickness of the sick COVID patients who were in the ICU who developed kidney injury and as well as other multi-organ involvement also had a heart injury by, you know, we check a blood test and an echocardiogram, which is an ultrasound of the heart, and we can see damage to their heart.
Unfortunately, a lot of those patients, there's very little we could offer them because, you know, those kinds of patients we couldn't really bring and do anything invasive on.
Now, moving forward there was, there's a lot of theories on what could be, could there be any more effects of the heart that we're not realizing or potentially long-term effects of the heart.
In fact, there was this very widely circulated article that talked about possible myocarditis or inflammation or injury of the heart muscle in patients who had COVID, in healthy patients who had COVID, right?
So this looked at athletes, actually.
Interestingly, looked at a handful of athletes who had COVID infection and did MRIs of their hearts.
And what they found was that there was a possibility that the MRI showed inflammation or potential scarring of the heart muscle tissue, okay?
And, And then this, you know, this story is an example of how we still have to be diligent in science or things can get out of whack.
And this was a pre-print, it was not in a peer-reviewed journal and it was spread very widely.
Media picked up on it and everyone was like, oh my god, healthy people are going to have heart failure.
Athletes are getting cold.
We have to cancel all our sports.
People are getting heart failure.
This is terrible, right?
But, you know, everyone's like, well, we got to take a step back here.
And, you know, do we really know what we're talking about?
And the problem was, you know, they didn't really compare those groups to a control group.
And it turns out, other studies showed that similar type of findings can be seen in even healthier people.
Right, so that was sort of a false alarm red flag that occurred.
Luckily it, you know, and it's still a lot more research has to be done about it.
But, you know, this is another danger that we have to be really cautious and careful on what we read and what we evaluate in the world of COVID.
So, the long and short of it is, I guess, we don't really know if there's any long-term lingering effects for the heart.
Hopefully, that's not going to be the case, and the short-term effects, they exist, but I would not say that's the predominant thing we're seeing.
I've worked for about a decade in health and science journalism as well, and I've never seen in my life, up until COVID, preprints getting a lot of press.
Like, the fact that they're even released, I understand some of the reasons for it to spur further research and start a conversation, but now they're being taken as the golden standard when, until you're in phase three, it shouldn't even be discussed.
And you mentioned...
People being able to be literate, scientifically literate, let's say.
How do you teach that to a culture?
I mean, you're very active on Instagram, which is wonderful.
I've enjoyed following you.
But how do we get a society to understand that a pre-print should not be taken as truth?
You know, this has become a real challenge in COVID.
Maybe this is a little bit off topic, but it's dangerous.
You're right.
There's a reason we have peer-reviewed journals, right?
Because someone can publish data, it'll be submitted to a journal, and what happens is that Paper that's written will be reviewed by three independent and honest reviewers who obviously know what they're doing and they're robust in science and they'll pick up errors.
They'll pick up questions to a make sure it's valid validity make sure someone's not trying to sneak in you know I mean not that people are trying to falsify but errors can be made and erroneous comments can be made and so that's why there's these checks and balances because you know and that's why we talk about peer-reviewed journals.
Now in COVID as you as you discussed there is This preprint phenomenon, which nobody's probably even heard of before.
It existed, but nobody put much, you know, much into it because they're like, all right, it's a preprint.
All right, let's wait until we see, you know, we see this on the preprint journal.
And I think I remember the first thing that really started all this was this hydroxychloroquine article out of France that was a preprint.
When the media picked up on it, and I think that started this cascade.
And then, you know, there are a lot of people out there who decided that, you know, COVID's going on and this is an opportunity for research.
And, you know, a lot of academic scientists, they pride themselves on how many publications they can have.
And then things went out of control.
And not that a lot of these researchers are trying to do any harm, but everyone's trying to capitalize.
Everyone's trying to publish data, push out articles.
That group's doing it.
We got to do it.
Preprints went rampant.
And it becomes dangerous because that, as you know, probably led to the cascade of media picking up this.
One politician likes what he hears here, he's going to tout that.
One other media outlet is going to like what they see here, they're going to tout that.
And everything became chaotic.
You know, and all the people on Twitter were trying to criticizing it and, you know, it sort of became a wildfire that was unable to be controlled.
And the meat of it, as you discussed, is, you know, if you're not trained to analyze statistics, statistics is not easy, right?
To analyze, this is paper that's telling me this conclusion, but this could mean absolutely nothing and have no validity in real life compared to another paper.
But if you don't understand the nuances of science, it's really challenging to understand that.
How do we get laymen to understand that and people who are not scientists to understand it?
It's hard!
I mean, this is what I was trying to do on my Instagram, on my YouTube videos, to try to let people explain that, look, these are, just because somebody's published this paper, you know, does not mean that it's gospel, you know?
So it's been a real challenge.
One of my personal banes is the anti-vax movement.
I've written about them for years and it's, And even Wakefield's original study in the study said that there was not a proven link between vaccines and autism, and yet we know what happens.
We don't have to go over that.
But one of your posts, you write that this isn't a political issue.
You said as soon as Fauci says this vaccine works, you'll be first in line.
Right now though, between people who won't get one and then people who are skeptical, it's over 50% of Americans some polls show.
What do we do with that?
How do we work around that?
Yeah, it's a great question.
And I believe, you know, I don't think anybody would have, that number would have been a lot higher.
Let's say COVID never happened and someone said, Hey, if there was a pandemic and we developed the vaccine for it, would you take it?
I guarantee you that we weigh higher, right?
I think in part, this whole phenomenon of the confusion and the science, um, And, you know, a lot of the various politicians have been, you know, trying to, you know, diminuate the, you know, and call out the scientists for being wrong.
And, you know, you know, remember, science is a fluid thing, especially in a pandemic.
Things are going to, it's a moving target, right?
You're going to have to evaluate, constantly re-evaluate and give new recommendations.
But it's been twisted to show that, oh, it's, Again, if you don't understand science, you can twist it to make people think that, oh, they don't know what they're talking about, right?
They tell us one thing, then they tell us another.
This data is not telling us anything, right?
But science, it doesn't work like that.
Science takes time.
There's a reason we do repetitive numbers and trials and to get large numbers to, you know, get the statistical significance to show that something works, you know?
Um, but it's just become, I believe, through the media, all aspects of media, through the politics and through social media, it's just gotten a bad rap.
You know, people have seen this pandemic and I think they would imagine and have faith in our doctors and scientists to, you know, show results.
But, you know, when you, I think when the politics has melded into it, everything has become sort of this, You know, chaotic situation and people have lost trust, you know, and I don't completely blame them because there's so much confusion out there, you know, combining that with a whole preprinting, mixed messages, people are confused.
And again, I don't blame them because again, they don't understand the nuance of science and no one's ever had to leave that to the scientists and doctors.
Now that's been uprooted and people, everyone's, you know, an expert now and, you know, there's a lot of, um, There's uncertainty and unknowns out there.
And the anti-vaxxers have been pushing hard through all this.
So there's a lot of damage control to be done.
And those numbers are telling me, concern me significantly.
Because if that's really the case, the vaccines aren't going to work to achieve herd immunity unless we have a big chunk of our population take it.
So I'm worried.
I've been around medicine my entire life just because I got injured so much and I lived in a hospital for a month.
I had testicular cancer.
I've been I worked in an emergency room for two years of monitoring suicidal patients.
So I've been around health care.
And I agree that there should be some levels of skepticism.
I'm particularly skeptical of the psychiatry industry and some of their practices, for example.
But that's one thing.
But as someone who has devoted your life I'm sure with the number of followers you've had, you've had some trolls and you know the misinformation.
and you saw the people, I'm sure with the number of followers you've had, you've had some trolls and you know the misinformation.
As a human being, how does that make you feel when you see people say, you don't know what you're talking about? - I mean, it saddens me.
I'm glad I solved it.
Like you said, when I posted a lot about COVID and so many trolls, especially on YouTube, and I just took a second like, wow, this is such a problem.
You would think that before this, it was just the anti-vaxxers, small groups, but there's so many people out there with strong opinions.
Because they're getting their information from specific subjective sources that are pulling out crappy studies to twist it and make them... You can find anything to feed your argument.
It doesn't matter what side, what camp you're on.
These days, you can find a preprint that's going to support that.
And the problem is now every Joe Schmo is capitalizing that for their own agendas and people are being, you know, through Facebook and, you know, Aunt Sally is showing this thing and that thing and, you know, people go down to Rabbit Host and it's just become chaotic, you know, and it hurts me and concerns Which is why I admire all these people trying to get together and create these collaborative... Those anti-vaxxers and these folks, they're very organized, right?
The anti-science folks, very organized.
The pro-science groups, not as much.
Individually, we try to throw out stuff.
I think more organization is needed.
I think we need to get together and fight fire with fire a little bit to just basically show them, no, this is not wrong, but this is why.
And I, but again, you have to sort of give them a little bit of insight into the reasons for that, you know, correlation is not causation and these sorts of things, but I think we need more organization and I think we need to fight fire with fire a little bit just to educate our folks.
Yeah, agreed.
I mean, that's, that's pretty much the origins of the podcast was just seeing all of the craziness with the people that the three of us.
I have known for decades going into QAnon territory and anti-vax and all of that.
And I think, I believe, I'm in Los Angeles here in Western Mass, and I think both of our states are doing pretty well right now.
Very well.
I know we're, you know, we're still pretty much in lockdown for the most part, and you have some rallies or whatever, but for the most part we're doing well, but obviously the country isn't right now.
And you do, you do touch upon pandemic fatigue, and I get that.
I'm a very social person.
It's hard.
But what do you think we need to be doing?
Because obviously, we have no organization from the top.
So we have to do it.
But in your best case scenario, how would you manage?
What are some of the best practices we can do right now?
I mean, number one, I think we all need to calm down and come together and realize we're all on the same page in the middle ground.
The problem is, I mean, I think, unfortunately, the political climate in whatever side of the aisle you're on right now has fueled this, right?
It's just a matter of fact.
And that's pushed people to one side or another.
It doesn't have to be that way, you know?
For example, nobody wants lockdowns.
I mean, nobody wants lockdowns, right?
But people are saying, oh, they want lockdowns and they're associating things like mask wearing, social distancing, being careful as the same as lockdowns, right?
People have to realize There's different things here.
Look, there's countries that succeeded, right?
New Zealand, there's places that really did a good job.
The way it's going to work To not have lockdowns, to keep our kids in school, to make sure everything's okay, and for us to continue to have somewhat of a normalcy, be able to go, you know, at least sit outside in a restaurant and things like that safely, is everybody has to at least follow some basic rules, right?
Do their best, right, to wear a mask, to socially distance, and again, we're saying the same stuff and stuff, but it's the simple things, you know, practice hygiene, don't Put yourself up for super spreader events in these groups, you know?
I mean, if we could all do that, we're not going to be able to stop it, yes, but we can slow it enough, right?
And we can minimize it enough.
And I do believe that.
I strongly believe that, right?
But if you're going to be in a protest, not wearing masks, not socially distancing, saying this is a hoax and this is BS, you're just going to feed the cycle and then we're never going to get to a point, and God forbid we do get to a point where there has to be some more intense quarantines, Then nobody wins, right?
I think, I wish everyone should listen to each other.
We actually want the same thing, right?
And convincing folks that, you know, socially distancing, wearing a mask is not a big deal, especially when you can still go to your restaurant, you can still go shopping, you can still have a small gathering.
That can happen, but not if people are, you know, there are enough people that are just completely against that concept and think it's a hoax.
You have to admit it's real to fight it sensibly.
One of the most baffling aspects of this entire thing was, is the association between mask wearing and freedom.
I just, I don't understand how that got into our consciousness because it's just as simple and it shows a complete lack of empathy more than anything else.
Yeah.
Because you're caring about other people.
I have a genetic, I have a, I have a low white blood cell count.
So, I tend to get sicker and take longer, so it is a concern for me.
But people, it's been extremely frustrating on that end.
Now, just yesterday, or I read the article this morning, Trump passed an executive order that basically allows him to fire anyone that's disloyal in any department to him.
And it's one of the more frightening things that have happened.
And again, it just flies under the radar with so much noise at the top.
And you wrote, do you know what's on the ballot in November?
Science is on the ballot, which very much is.
What are your hopes?
Do you think we can get back to a place where other countries respect the CDC, which was the gold standard for a long time?
What kind of repair work are we going to need to do here?
Yeah.
I mean, I do believe it can be repaired.
The only reason it exists is because people like Trump and certain politicians were pointing fingers and saying they screwed up, they did wrong, because they don't understand the science.
They're saying, oh, first they're saying don't wear masks, then they're saying masks, then they're saying this drug, then that drug.
I'm like, Dude, you have to first embrace, if our leadership can try to understand, you know, the motives of certain groups like the CDC and understand the science, and then relay that to the people and tell them, look, we are working on it, and recognize, okay, we went from point A to point B, we changed some things around, but this is why.
Keep people together.
Give people the confidence that, you know what, allow the scientists to do what they are experts at, and no one's saying it's going to be perfect, but that's what has to happen.
The leadership has to Give confidence to our citizens that things are going to be okay.
Otherwise, this is what happened.
You feel the divide and all these conspiracy theories.
It all started, I think, from the lack of our leadership putting confidence in our citizens that, you know what, these agencies, we're going to take care of them.
We're going to work on this and we're going to work on this together.
Let's listen to them.
Let's listen to each other.
That just didn't happen.
So, two days ago, I think Mark Meadows came out and said something to the effect of, we can't control it, so we're just going to wait for a vaccine, essentially.
And that's basically been the line.
As someone involved in health, but also thinking from a public health perspective, how dangerous is that?
It's very dangerous, you know, on many levels, you know.
It's basically, they're throwing the white flag, you know.
He's basically exuding that our administration has said, you know, and that makes sense.
You know, the rhetoric that we're hearing, it sort of makes sense from what Meadows is saying.
Maybe he slipped something that was discussed in a boardroom, but they said, you know what, keep this hush-hush, but this is reality.
And he's like, oh, we can't control it.
And they're planning around that, you know?
But, I mean, look what's going on in the last couple of days.
Look at the numbers.
I mean, we had record daily numbers.
I mean, that's not good.
And people have to stop focusing on, you know, oh, the death rate, the case fatality rate.
I mean, that's not the only important thing.
Not to mention that if enough people are infected, you know, a lot of people are still going to die.
And that should be important to you.
You know, people are foo-fooing it at 1%.
1% of a million is what, right?
So, um, but it's, it just gives you a glimmer that, you know, a sense that, you know, some people have maybe decided that there's nothing we can do, which is really worrisome.
You know, if that oozes out into people's minds, they're like, Oh, screw it.
We can't do anything anyway.
So I'm going to just further not follow the rules.
And then we're really going to be screwed.
Yeah.
Well, let's perhaps end on a hopeful note if there is one, but I'm sure in your experiences, I mean, we have made some advancements.
You've probably been around some important scenes on a personal level with people.
So what have you learned as a doctor during this time that you can carry forward that brings you some hope personally?
Look, number one, first of all, I don't think we're going to see the wave of deaths that we saw in the past for multiple reasons, right?
Number one, we know about this thing now, all right?
We know this virus.
The entire world has dissected this virus.
We're having real-time communications with scientists across the globe, different experiences.
You know, this is one of the great things about social media is all the communication we're able to acquire in real time.
And so the exponential growth of our knowledge has never been better for any other disease, I think.
All right, so that's one positive thing.
We know how it acts.
We know things we didn't know back then.
We have drugs that work.
Steroids, the cheapest thing out there, works very well to reduce mortality.
Some other drugs that are being used and developed.
Strategies that we use.
Infrastructure preparedness.
So, we are way better at handling this thing than we were before, okay?
So, I think that's important to understand.
It's not like, and I say this because I don't want people to have too much fear at the same time either.
You're seeing the media is, I mean, putting, media puts too much fear on it.
There's counters, there's all this stuff.
Every media, I don't like that.
It's putting too much fear into people, but I will tell people, look, we are better.
I mean, first of all, if you get it, you're right.
You're most likely not going to die, right?
You're most likely not going to get really sick.
And there are, but there's a faction of people that will, but we, we have better ways to treat it.
Our debt, it's going to be lower.
Okay.
And this vaccine is around the corner.
And I would much rather have COVID now than six months ago, right?
And I think that matters for something.
The problem is, when the virus is so virulent, it's going to affect so many people, right?
Even if you're talking about a death rate of less than 1%, if so many people get infected, there's going to be a large number of people who die, and there's going to be a large number of people who get sick and recover, but have long-term problems.
I think that is also important to know.
And a lot of these people are going to be our parents, our grandparents, our uncles, our aunts.
And I really don't like people just kind of discounting that population of people, right?
The people, you know, oh, they're immunosuppressed.
So what?
They could be president of the United States and be immunosuppressed.
Oh, that person has heart disease.
Do you know how many people have heart disease and are completely normal?
You know, so don't stop saying that, oh, those are the people that are going to die from this and it's going to be a small percentage of people.
No, because people who are sick encompass a lot of people in our society and the sheer number could be higher than we really want.
But we have some control over that and doctors are much better at it.
