Dr. Chintu Sharma, front-line physician, discusses the frightening truth about COVID and best practices for health and safety during this pandemic and is accustomed to sickness.
In this compelling interview with John Malanca, he describes a virus unlike anything he has ever seen. Tune in and find out why.
Chintu Sharma, MD a well-respected, Medical Director discusses the challenges faced by hospitalized COVID patients. Just when he thought he had a grasp on the practice of medicine, the world was rocked by a pandemic and Dr. Chintu Sharma was humbled by an enemy he could not see.
Dr. Sharma has a robust practice and is well-versed in the practice of cannabis medicine. However, this front line hero, put it all on the line as he assisted his fellow physicians, nurses and all those who care for the critically ill in treating this dreaded virus.
While the majority of COVID patients recover or never experience the destructive potential of the virus, many have died. Dr. Sharma emotionally recalls the condition of the sickest patients who cling to life in the ICU, while worrying about what lies ahead for those who live to tell their tale of survival.
Transcript
Wear your Mask! COVID in 2020; the Truth. Dr. Chintu Sharma
John Malanca 0:00
Welcome back. This is John Malanca with the United patients group be informed and be well, I have a old dear friend Dr. Chintu Sharma out of Maryland, talking about well, actually, I was originally going to have you on doc talking about PTSD and cannabis. But he’s also a medical director for a hospital in the Maryland area specializing right now in COVID. And so I thought that would because it’s a hot topic for everyone. We’re in the middle of this pandemic. It’d be a topic to discuss, which can lead into PTSD as well. And we can get you on for another show. But great seeing you again, Dr. Sharma. Thanks for being on and love the gang as well. Thanks, john.
Dr. Chintu Sharma 0:44
The kite So long story. We’ll save that for another episode podcast. Oh, you know, just to introduce myself. I’m Dr. chintu. Sharma. I am a medical doctor out here in the state of Maryland. I’ve been practicing here for about 15 years. You know I work for a group called infinitus health. I’m the medical director at one of their facilities in Annapolis known as Anna Arundel Medical Center. So if I see you around, I see around a little bit of background. I grew up in Southern California in a small town. Well, there’s no such thing as a small town in Los Angeles, but that’s what we call it small town of Cerritos. From there I went to University of California Berkeley. So if you got any bears out there, I salute you. Thank you for your
Unknown Speaker 1:29
California.
Dr. Chintu Sharma 1:30
Yep, the University of California. From there, I went back to California, Southern California again, I was a teacher in East LA and the largest High School in Los Angeles at the time, it was the one in Boyle Heights. I’m blanking on the name. I don’t know why I’m forgetting but the largest High School in East Los Angeles in Boyle Heights. I spent a year as a science teacher there. The and then from there. I went to the University of Iowa for medical school and came out to use Los Angeles again to work in LA County, USC as a resident in internal medicine and pediatrics. From there, my wife said, we’re moving back east so I’m wearing her colors. The University of Maryland, University Maryland folks are pretty strong. So you know, I ended up out here on the East Coast for that reason. So I’ve been working on the out here in the east coast from you could say, the Upper Peninsula of Michigan all the way down to Virginia, Virginia Beach area for the past 15 years as a hospital doctor. Now I have hobbies and stuff that led to the development of a small marijuana practice. not growing marijuana but prescribing it for folks who would like to
John Malanca 2:47
recommend recommending
Dr. Chintu Sharma 2:49
recommending prescribing the wrong word. the right word is consulting recommending medical cannabis for for folks who need it and that came out of you know, a lot of interest in stuff on the side. So I’m here to talk about COVID. And I’ll start with one little, little tidbit none of us wanted to specialize or learn or deal with this. This is nature. And it came out of the blue. And the way it came on our shores and the way it’s traveled across our country and everything we’re witnessing is going to be part of history. Because of how wild and crazy and unusual this situation is, and the politics of what we have in the background, we’re in a very special time. And if you are feeling anxious, if you are feeling stressed if this is hitting every nerve in your body the wrong way. It’s just the way all of these things have collapsed together into a dumpster fire. That’s the only way I can call it john. This is a large dumpster fire. We are all part of it. And I’m going to be very honest, the audience life right now and our life before COVID. And our life after COVID may not be the same, the impact of what we’re seeing is accumulation of so many different factors. You know, you could tie into this overpopulation, you could tie into this meat consumption and the industry that brings me to our table, you could tie into this environmental causes all the way through global climate change. And you could tie into this all of these factors creating a situation where organisms and infections which shouldn’t jump to humans, which should remain in their species get
Unknown Speaker 4:39
pushed
Unknown Speaker 4:40
to just write into our system and into the population. The frequency of that is increasing with time and not decreasing. So there has to be a reason for that. And I and I hear a lot of good conspiracies. I hear a lot good stuff about this, but the honest answer is all about These factors and everything in motion. I don’t know how anyone could conspire to create a machine to push this to us this fast. And this many times because this isn’t the first swine flu.
Unknown Speaker 5:12
You know, bird flu,
Unknown Speaker 5:15
you know, Zika and here we are sitting now in a world of COVID. But before I rant rant or rave for forever, john, I’ll go ahead and let you break into some questions that you thought were
Unknown Speaker 5:27
right up there.
John Malanca 5:30
No, that isn’t, isn’t dumpster dumpster fire. I mean, everything and it’s not only just affecting us here in the States, it’s affecting us globally. And it’s that’s that’s, that’s pretty scary. When we saw this coming on. You know, I was over in Asia in January, and people started talking about it. And I made it back. And I went, you know, I and then I talked to talk to people over there and one by one, you started hearing these stories. Then I’ve talked to people, colleagues over here that were having the same symptoms back in December in January. You know, it really didn’t hit us here in the States publicly actually until March. When did it appear? When do you think it appeared here in America on our shores?
Unknown Speaker 6:21
You’re asking a very complicated question. And we have clues. Now we don’t have the exact date and time. But here are some clues. So there was a study done in France that said that their first patient case, their patient, zero was December like 25th or 27, somewhere in that ballpark. If the first case that hit France was somewhere in mid December, or late December, then, you know, how far are we from China? So the number one question is, and this is what are the portals of entry? I mean, we’re separated from China from with two large oceans. The Canadian border and the Mexican border, we’re isolated. We’re an isolated, you know, we’re isolated from so much how does stuff make it to us? And it comes down to a couple key things. So let’s look at the flu season. Our flu season starts on the West Coast spreads across the country ends on the east coast. And it goes in a cyclical pattern every year. So we know that whatever it is, starts on that side and translates over. So that’s our normal pattern. That pattern usually starts they say, up towards the University of Washington and for that reason, one of our top virologist, the guy who studies all this, the guy who tries to figure this out and track the new stuff when it comes sits right there at the University of Washington. So we’re sitting in a situation where we have a normal pattern. Now COVID came on to us I feel in a pattern which does not follow that. So I know that in the beginning, a lot of folks thought it touched the West Coast way early and Was there, you know, right from the beginning? But the honest answer is when we start looking at the way that cases came to our country, and I’m talking about the COVID, that’s a killer COVID. There, there are four normal variants of Coronavirus that come to our shores, they’re in the seasonal flu chain. And we see those every year. And, you know, the major consequence of that may be some bronchitis and wheezing stuff of that nature. A secondary consequence we sometimes see in those cases are heart related diseases. And that’s a normal pattern that we see. This killer covid that we saw in the killer COVID is the one we saw in New York devastate that entire city. The onset of that and the folks that traveled there came primarily from Europe. So the pattern of transmission across this country of that bad COVID if it hit France, you know, late December, there was plenty of travel between France and the United States. Especially in New York, and go from a time spot where we’re like, okay, maybe this was starting to brew in Europe, you know, late December, meaning it maybe even started earlier than China’s telling us. So, China’s timeline doesn’t match this at all, because they started reporting this in January. So if December is the time it started flowing across our country, and it started from the East Coast instead of the West Coast and a couple of those folks traveled to Seattle. We have a pattern that goes reverse or normal flu pattern. And right now if you look at the way it played out, it was New York and New England, all the way through Michigan. We were on the Pennsylvania, Maryland and Ohio. There’s another band that goes right below it. So we were in that’s that wave as it traveled down. As it went further south hitting Georgia, Florida, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and now hitting the coast of California. So the pattern of movement does not match our normal flow pattern. The transmission looks like it started on this coast. And it looks like it primarily started in New England. So my best guess, if I were to give you a guess, would be that it came on shore here. And it’s been brewing here a lot longer than we know. And possibly early January, was when it started to rear its head and to cause trouble.
Unknown Speaker 10:27
Now, how do we know that?
Unknown Speaker 10:30
And and the reason why I think it’s important to kind of realize this, we are not going to have perfect testing in the beginning. We’re not going to have a perfect way to detect this. And the only way we can, we can clearly see what’s going on, is the fact that the death rate for the entire world has risen. Yeah, so all cause mortality has gone up. If everything was exactly the same, we have a periodic kind of curve that just follows each year and that curb has been disrupted. And as it has been accelerated and lifted not only in this country but globally.
Unknown Speaker 11:06
So, you know,
Unknown Speaker 11:08
the number one thing I see, and even today online knows I made a comment somewhere and I got all this flack from folks who don’t want to believe this still. If this were a conspiracy against our president, then why would we be killing the entire globe?
Unknown Speaker 11:29
There is, it just, you know,
Unknown Speaker 11:31
some of the stuff I kind of normally have to reason through. It’s, it’s abnormal, and it’s this time this dumpster fire we’re sitting in.
Unknown Speaker 11:39
So
Unknown Speaker 11:42
all cause mortality from the beginning of this year till now is has been up. We didn’t have a reason for it in the beginning. And there were all sorts of mysterious things that you know, were happening where people would develop a RDS or end up in ICU. And the good news is that early cases, a lot of survival was there because those cases were were young. And the old cases the folks who are elderly, it seemed to fall in the in within reason of their normal cardiovascular disease to pass away. So, you know, you can hide certain things for a period of time before it becomes obvious. But you know, sitting with some of my you know, the the benefit of being in a hospital is you get to talk to a lot of other Doc’s, you get to kind of sit and actively think through problems, you get to actively engage in issue and kind of look all across disciplines for Are you seeing this too? Or am I just illuminating? Wait, are you seeing this also? Or is this just me in this one case? And when you start to see that there’s this odd trend of death kind of happening from you know, starting early January in some parts of the country and then in February, we have a couple of cases that we retrospectively went back and said, Whoa, what would you call that now? We’re looking at x rays and CAT scans are like, well, I call that cobit. And in March, where we’re like, wow, how many of these do we have? And we’re cycling through this. You know, March here was awful. April here was even worse. And by the time, you know, may came, we finally saw things calm down. So this this was a cycle we went through, and it was unlike anything we’ve seen before.
John Malanca 13:27
You think a lot of these the death count, or do you think those are accurate? Because I mean, you had that?
Unknown Speaker 13:34
I think they’re under reported and reported. And this is a reason why. There are a lot of deaths that happened that we don’t know we probably. So let’s put it this way. Is our testing really decent? And do we have enough of it? And are we getting that testing back before the person dies? And the answer to that, in these scenarios, especially when this wave crashes in estate, the answer is all that lacks We lack all of that capacity. The minute a million people have a problem, we do not have the lab capacity to handle that. We do not have the capacity to have enough gowns for the doctors and nurses to turn through it the normal way we do, we don’t have the capacity to provide a mask a day for every person on the ground at the frontline just taking care of people who get respiratory stuff in your face. We don’t have the capacity for this. So my honest answer is, if we were to go back and retrospectively look, we’re probably under reporting on a large margin. And not only here globally. Do you think a poor country would have the means to test everyone that died or before they died? If we can’t do it, you know, they’re just mass burying people in these places. I mean, the mass burials, the satellite photos and the imagery you get from everywhere else is
Unknown Speaker 14:54
awful.
John Malanca 14:56
So you you talking about testing. In off camera, you’ve you mentioned that you think you’ve been I mean, I think every doctor is is putting their life at risk and every What do you call the workers? Sorry, blanket from
Unknown Speaker 15:16
frontline workers, all the workers, you know, for all our jellies, firemen, medics, you know.
Unknown Speaker 15:23
So
Unknown Speaker 15:24
let’s look at the numbers. Let’s look at the numbers, the number of firefighters in DC and Maryland that were affected when we hit this major,
John Malanca 15:31
how many how many sorry,
Unknown Speaker 15:33
we were we were well above 50% of the first line workers that are out there firefighters, police officers, you know, these guys were the first to be infected to be honest. And you know, thank god they’re in decent health and made it all out and seem to be doing okay. But a large large portion of the police force especially around DC
Unknown Speaker 15:54
Fire Department,
Unknown Speaker 15:56
you know, your ambulance crews, your EMT crews, a lot of them. Were in infected because who knew what was happening in March? We barely had enough supplies to supply us. Yeah. And New York had the greatest needs. So we were shipping what we could out to New York, most of the most of the states were doing that. So we’re sitting in a situation where a lot of frontline workers were exposed. Do I think I was exposed? And the answer, honestly, is I probably was. And I would, I wouldn’t be surprised if you know, years later, we find out what the consequences of that were, you know, somehow a lot of us made it through maybe the symptoms are big. So the actual published stuff from China only gives us so much information. And when we’re looking at our data here, we had so many more variants of things that we know that the information we got was mostly incomplete and had to have been in order to explain what we’re seeing. So we have a large portion of folks who are going to be affected. The symptoms vary. For some people, it’s severe, it’s fever, and the most common thing is fixed. The next most common thing which was was nowhere reported was loss of taste and smell, you know? So fatigue and inability to smell. I mean, that could be all sorts of stuff, but those two things, and fever, and then it could be there, there were two or three dominant ways that showed up there, the folks who had a lot of diarrhea, just all sorts of diarrhea. And you’re thinking this is a respiratory problem? Why are
Unknown Speaker 17:25
they having massive diarrhea,
Unknown Speaker 17:28
but there was a subset of population that just had abdominal issues and diarrhea, and then a little bit of respiratory and they went home. And there was another group of folks that their primary issue was coughing, shortness of breath. And, you know, some a lot of those guys really got pretty sick. Both groups could have, you know, folks who don’t do well, but this group seemed to do a little better than this group. When I look back and I think about it. There’s a third group then the third group is all sorts of other things that we didn’t expect. I mean, I’ve seen Folks who came in with what we thought was a stroke, and it turned out to be COVID. I’ve seen folks who we thought had just a blood clot and turned out to be COVID.
John Malanca 18:10
You know, how are you? How are you finding these tests? Is it blood tests urine test? So nasal swab nasal swab. And so can you explain the difference between a positive covid test and then a positive antibody test?
Unknown Speaker 18:27
It’s a good question.
Unknown Speaker 18:30
So it goes kind of like this. We’re doing the swab we’re doing the mRNA. We’re doing an RNA assay. So we’re taking a swab where we’re trying to get some active secretions and we’re trying to get a sample of that. And then with a reagent and a special plate that has the almost like an antibody to that RNA, if you have it in your on your swab or in any way, shape or form. You dab it on there. There’s a chemical reaction that lights it up on the plate. And so a lot of our tests Like that worry, we take a sample and we’re trying to detect that that sample is positive or negative, that lights up, it’s positive, it doesn’t light up, it’s negative. And it can be that simple. A lot of the home kits look like, like those pregnancy tags
John Malanca 19:12
you actually have I’ve had, how accurate of those because I’m hearing a lot of things. It gives a lot of false positives to
Unknown Speaker 19:19
Well, let’s just look at a little bit of data in history here. So I mean, what we’re seeing is historically, the FDA in the beginning, was trying to catch up on detecting what the optimal tests are. out on the market. There are hundreds of tests from all over Asia and Europe that were proposed as ways and methods to test for this. We didn’t know what the accuracy of these tests were in the beginning, but from what we saw in practice, if someone had a negative test and all the symptoms, we still were highly suspicious, it was COVID it most likely was COVID. And if we didn’t prove it on the first sample, definitely when we went back and look back at things and retested it was positive So our testing in the beginning was was not the best, and are testing now which is in a better
Unknown Speaker 20:07
shape
Unknown Speaker 20:09
and condition in that the FDA has tested and approved certain companies to deliver test to our shores.
Unknown Speaker 20:17
The stuff we have now is better. But there is the ability to have
Unknown Speaker 20:20
false negatives. And, you know, other false positives. We’re going to find out about that, but tiny, but the false negative rate is there. And the reason why is in order to get the sample, you have to take a swab, shove it in a person’s nose, and take a very deep sample. If you move your fidget or they’re unable to get quite back there and scratch the brain, the samples inadequate and if the samples inadequate, well the test is not going to be accurate either. So part of it is sampling. Part of it is the testing isn’t perfect and we don’t know how perfect imperfect it is well known the next couple months. And that’s just that’s just that Mr. assay, then you asked about antibodies testing? Yeah. antibody testing at this stage in the game? I my personal opinion is it’s faulty. I think we’re only going to be able to detect some of this. And this is a reason why
Unknown Speaker 21:17
antibody testing is looking at an antibody
Unknown Speaker 21:19
directed at part of this protein in this genome that’s out there, right? So you’re only going to be able to detect a small portion of that. And so which portion is the correct portion to detect whether someone had coronavirus and this deadly coronavirus? We’re talking about? And the answer is, we know a little bit about it. But I don’t think we’ve fleshed it out enough for us to have a test that’s highly accurate, and is going to be positive in 80 90% of the patients who’ve been exposed to this. So I think our tests may detect
Unknown Speaker 21:54
if you’ve had the antibody, but is that the right antibody
Unknown Speaker 21:57
that protects all the patients who have explosive coronavirus? The answer is we don’t know. So at this point in time the testing is semi faulty. So we’re going to detect some of the people who’ve been exposed to coronavirus. The same test will probably miss a portion. What portion? We don’t know yet because there might be other antibodies that we generate that are equally effective at staving off disease. Which is right antibodies a question and I don’t know if this has been fleshed out enough for us to say that with any accuracy. So our antibody testing in all shapes and form if we detect you have it, the good news is you’re your blood and your serum contains antibody that we know did fight it off in a healthy person and can then save another life. So if someone is antibody positive and had signs of the disease, they can then contribute their plasma to treat someone else. And that’s one of the life saving treatments out there that isn’t that’s been studied.
John Malanca 22:57
He does one get amused. If they do have the positive antibodies?
Unknown Speaker 23:03
Another very good question. And there’s studies that go,
John Malanca 23:07
and Does that ever end? You know, I mean, half of
Unknown Speaker 23:09
the studies go this way. And there are a couple that go this way. Now, what do I mean by that? The studies that go this way, or the studies that say, Oh, you develop an antibody to it, and it lasts for X amount of time. So there’s studies that say two to three months are studies that say longer, there’s studies that say shorter. So there are studies that suggest that people develop these protective protective antibodies, but they don’t last, they last for a finite period of time. Then there’s studies on the other side that are saying, hey, those studies might be faulty because they’re not checking the right antibody. So there’s a subset that are saying that, then there’s gonna be a subset that says there are no antibodies that are predicted.
Unknown Speaker 23:47
We have three different thoughts right now.
Unknown Speaker 23:49
There isn’t a consensus on which is the right one.
Unknown Speaker 23:53
Now, we do have
Unknown Speaker 23:55
background knowledge because we have four strains of coronavirus that normally circulate through the public halation and from what we can see in the journals of neurology and what our ID Doc’s talk about, it goes kind of like this. You know, when we’re, we see young kids get the flu, yes, they can get coronavirus over and over and over again. But for whatever reason their parents over time can cope with it better with age. So there may be something protective about all those exposures and there may be some sort of antibody to it, but we really don’t know what that antibody is or looks like. So let’s say you know, all the vaccine development that’s happening now they’re targeting part of the coronavirus protein. It’s the most prominent part. It’s the reason why we call it Coronavirus. The thing that makes the crown on electron microscopy is a spike protein. And if that’s the right one to target, then we cure it. If that’s the wrong one to target, we make disease worse.
Unknown Speaker 24:56
So is that
Unknown Speaker 24:57
the right thing to target or is there’s something else we can hit that Maybe more unique to Coronavirus because the problem is
Unknown Speaker 25:05
that spike protein
Unknown Speaker 25:07
has a receptor on it that binds to a receptor site that’s found from our entire body. And the reason why there’s so many different symptoms and constellations of this is that spike protein can hit all sorts of different cellular targets. So if the target is from head to toe, and we put an antibody that killed that target and that targets already in us,
Unknown Speaker 25:31
could we accidentally make an antibody that kills us? Or hurts us? So this whole vaccine stuff
Unknown Speaker 25:38
is scary too, because we have the right stuff for the wrong stuff. We’d be doing this right we’ll be doing this completely wrong.
John Malanca 25:47
So what do you say like a buddy of mine? You know, he and his wife went down and got tested. Turns out, he tested positive and his wife did it. Okay. You know what, what do you say for that? I mean, like when you come home from work, is your wife scared? And how often do you test yourself? Because you have your your your dad as well. Your mom loves your mother in law who lives with you. I mean, is this just something that they put you down and hose you off before you walk in the house? I mean kind of joke about it. But you know, it’s a joke about it now.
Unknown Speaker 26:19
Yeah, but the protocol to enter the house has been the same since this whole
Unknown Speaker 26:24
started. And I’ll take your clothes off and just run, run for the shower, put everything in the wash and run for the shower. And it’s been the same the entire time and everything that comes in like a cell phone or all this other stuff. It has to be everything has to be cleanse with alcohol. So there’s a protocol to this. And it really does kind of stink because you think about it. You know, some of my colleagues, a lot of the nurses I work with a lot of the texts a lot of the janitorial staff. I mean, they have young kids, my kids are at least old enough for me to go Hey,
Unknown Speaker 26:59
back up.
Unknown Speaker 27:00
Put the dogs behind you, you know, just give us give me some space so I can run to the shower.
Unknown Speaker 27:05
But if you have a young, you know, like
Unknown Speaker 27:08
a little toddler or a baby. I mean, some of our staff members are so almost paralyzed by this, you know, how do I enter home? Do I need to do I need to say, a hotel? Like, can I even go home? And a lot of it stems from the, you know, we don’t know if we can kill our loved ones by just bringing it home to them.
Unknown Speaker 27:31
And
Unknown Speaker 27:33
you know, the,
Unknown Speaker 27:36
the funny the kicker of the whole story could be that, you know, here we are in the hospital doing everything we can, right. Yeah, and we’re protected and isolated, and we’re not spreading it amongst ourselves. We’re not getting it from the patient. And then one of our kids goes out and plays with a neighbor’s kid and they bring it back and kill us.
Unknown Speaker 27:54
You know what I mean?
Unknown Speaker 27:55
Here we are taking all these precautions, but the scenario where it might actually happen.
Unknown Speaker 28:00
Yeah,
Unknown Speaker 28:01
it may not be
Unknown Speaker 28:02
that I’m bringing it home because I’m taking all these precautions can actually be something like that.
Unknown Speaker 28:08
So,
Unknown Speaker 28:09
I mean, I’ll share with you a little story. And it’s this is this is in March. So March, everyone’s freaking out about everything.
Unknown Speaker 28:17
Everything. Are you
Unknown Speaker 28:18
coughing? Are you having fevers? I never had a temperature. In fact, my temperature was probably lower than it’s been for entire month. I think it was the stress of it all. Yeah, you know, every day I would check it say 97. Nine. There was one day it said 99 for on that day, it was unusual because everyone in the house was a little, you know, everyone was tired. And my daughter had a fever that day. She was hanging out with her cousin who was also in a medical family. So you know, we cohorted our kids together because if they’re going to get it, we know we’re going to get it because we’re in the same line of fire. We’re playing with a beast we don’t know about. So, you know, my niece got something Look like diarrhea and fevers and it went away for her in a day my daughter got something like that. Then all my kids got something like that. Then my wife could didn’t get out of bed for 24 hours. And this is a lady. Right? This is a woman who is so strong that she can. I could be, you know, normal flew knocks me out for a day, but she’ll be charging with the kids to like practices and doing stuff.
Unknown Speaker 29:22
It’s no wonder woman.
Unknown Speaker 29:25
It’s true.
Unknown Speaker 29:28
They’re their strongest, but this is the first time I’ve seen something knock her out. And that was the only time in that entire month I had. It wasn’t even a fever. It’s 99 four. So it wouldn’t even qualify as one at a headache and a temperature of 994 if that was it, that I hate to say it. We got it but not for me bringing it home likely from the kids. So, you know, this whole opening up the school thing and all this
John Malanca 29:54
and what’s happening la school district said they’re closing down you know, I have other friends and I always ask the question To my friends, if I had kids, I don’t know if I’d send them to school and they and then they look at the numbers on how many deaths are we with with the flu every year influenza? The Spanish flu, I mean, they’ve gone through all this you because we were seeing a decrease up in your area. Maryland you are seeing a decrease decrease. Right now it’s spiking, big time down there in Florida is spiking back here in California. It’s popping up in Montana. It’s popping up in different states. It really didn’t have any cases. And I think it’s because
Unknown Speaker 30:35
it didn’t go in the normal pattern. It went reverse. And I don’t think people I don’t think people were prepared because they thought Oh, if it passed, it probably just passed us. It remember the normal flu and viral pattern is West Coast, East Coast. Yeah. And this time it went east coast to West Coast.
John Malanca 30:54
Well, don’t they do and back before a bounce. I was asking about flu shots later, but now we’re here but don’t they usually do flu shot testing or come up with anybody in flu shots from East Coast to West Coast.
Unknown Speaker 31:06
Or,
Unknown Speaker 31:08
you know, when they University University of Washington. We’re our virologist are top dogs. It’s our number one, the crew that studies viruses as they enter the country.
Unknown Speaker 31:19
They study it on the west coast.
Unknown Speaker 31:21
On the east coast, we develop policy and we have the NIH and we have all the testing labs and the biology labs, Amgen. And all these big giants sitting here making, you know, making flu shots and all this other stuff for us. So you’re right, you’re actually right. You know, the, you know, some of the flu vaccines will come out of here, but they’re built on knowledge and data that comes from here.
Unknown Speaker 31:46
So from the year prior, so from the West Coast,
John Malanca 31:50
West Coast, West Coast, Washington, but aren’t they coming up with these these flu shots that were on the from the flu from prior the previous year.
Unknown Speaker 32:01
So I don’t know the definite answer on this. I don’t know about the different answer this but what I do know is they kind of predict they predictably model what may be coming
Unknown Speaker 32:08
next.
Unknown Speaker 32:10
That’s right. They’re right, probably 50% of the time, and they’ve been wrong some of the time too. So and we know that because I get the flu shot yearly.
Unknown Speaker 32:21
It’s part of
Unknown Speaker 32:24
the flu shot yearly. It’s just part of working in the hospital. They try to mitigate the risk a little bit. Some years it works really well. And I know that because I’m dealing with a lot of people coughing and sneezing in my face. I make it like, like I said, uh, not even a temperature but a cough for like, 24 hours and it’s gone. Yeah, that’s the year I know that the flu shot was perfect. But there have been years where we didn’t have a perfect shot. Like the years we got swine flu and bird flu. Yeah, and if you I still remember in 2008, getting that flu, that horrible nasty flu that came around And the reason why I remember it was five days of fevers. And one day I just, I was just like, I can’t get off the floor.
Unknown Speaker 33:08
And that’s never happened to me.
Unknown Speaker 33:10
Till then knock knock your ass data
Unknown Speaker 33:13
not to be out. I was wheezing for a good week after
Unknown Speaker 33:16
that. So I don’t understand, you know,
Unknown Speaker 33:20
what, what the variations are that’s for the the neurologists and the scientists to determine. But that flu vaccine didn’t do anything for me. And that virus definitely knocked me out. And that was a year that we were off. Obviously, it was a it was a shift. You know, it was an epidemic that spread and we experienced it. So we had a small shift in the genome and it got us. But for the most part, they predictively model and we treat. Yeah, but what happened this time wasn’t the same as all those. This is not the flu. This is a lot nastier. I mean, I could let me let me get into what acute respiratory distress syndrome is.
Unknown Speaker 34:02
So
Unknown Speaker 34:04
when we say SARS, we’re talking about a syndrome. We’re not just talking about a regular virus when we say this virus causes SARS. It causes severe acute
Unknown Speaker 34:17
respiratory
Unknown Speaker 34:18
distress syndrome. It’s a constellation of reactions that have led to what we call a cytokine. Storm. So the biology on this, I’m a microbiologist, by the way, that’s what I did at Berkeley. So the biology on this I find fascinating. It’s beyond where if I remember where I left in college, and where we are now is a complete leap, beautiful world of intracellular communication that we didn’t know before. But your body when it fights an infection goes through a whole bunch of defenses. There’s one line of Defense’s, there’s a B cell defensive T cell defense, the key moral defense three lines of defense. So you have one army that’s out there detecting bad guys and just passively killing it off.
Unknown Speaker 35:09
macrophages and stuff of that nature. That’s that moral defense with this roams around your body.
Unknown Speaker 35:15
And you have a set that’s targeted and they have they have two armies, one to detect and one to kind of store the information and kind of go back and get it again, that DNS T cell army that sits on the side is what’s responsible for antibody mediated responses. So you have a passive response that happens at all times to all foreign bodies and you have an active response. For people who develop SARS, you’re actively engaged part of the system is so heavily engaged and so entrenched in this battle, that it gets close to killing you, and it creates this syndrome. So the syndrome starts with a storm. We call it a cytokine storm, and that storm rubs up The whole system of the system becomes leaky, permeable, so all these cells can move around and attack bad guys, and it starts attacking everything. And that’s where everything is lost. And that’s what leads to this syndrome where the lungs become so leaky, impermeable, that floods with inflammatory inflammation in fluids and a person can’t breathe because the lung tissues is become a sponge instead of a sponge for gas exchanges become a wet sponge. So what do we have to do in that scenario? That’s a scenario where we need a ventilator. That’s a scenario where we need to do positive pressure ventilation. So
Unknown Speaker 36:43
it’s a whole different monster.
John Malanca 36:44
So with the ventilator Why are they what’s the purpose of putting putting the patient into a coma? Are they are they manually doing that or how does that work? I mean, you normally laters and coma putting together you saw that in Italy. I’m assuming you see it here as well.
Unknown Speaker 37:03
So there’s, there’s standard approaches to this, you know, and a lot of it comes from old data at ICS. And the way we do this have existed for many, many, many years. So, if you take a person and you were just to shove a tube in them and put them on a machine, yes, you can breathe through them. But the trauma, that whole experience will, in itself generate PTSD, that’s been shown over and over again. So you can actually induce trauma by saving people without appropriate sedation. So the sedation is set up for to two issues. One is, okay, if you’re conscious, and during this process, and you saw a tube in your mouth and you saw all the stuff happening around you, there’s going to be a realm of panic that’s going to make you do a couple things. One is want to run out of there and two is want to pull that tube out, which in itself will pose a danger. So keeping people sedated is part of the protocol
Unknown Speaker 37:56
mostly for their safety. The other issue Is there going to be scenarios
John Malanca 38:01
like safety?
Unknown Speaker 38:03
Yeah, it’s to it’s to, you know, psychologically save the body and also to physically save it from harm.
Unknown Speaker 38:13
The other issue is some of that sedation and that comatose state is must muscle related comatose illness, you have to turn the muscles off. So, you know, there isn’t any extra polar push. And that’s when someone really needs a special type of ventilation. They’ll use muscular locking as part of that coma. So you know that coma state is to treat different disorders and our ICU Doc’s are very, very
Unknown Speaker 38:37
adept at making sure they select the right type. So
Unknown Speaker 38:43
you know, when is, you
Unknown Speaker 38:44
know, when ICU medications are used in the wrong setting, we see things happen, like how did Michael Jackson die? You know, the Michael Jackson scenario was he was using what we use normally and to put people in a comatose state Dipper ban and he was using that in his home state. To get sleep at home, which, you know, is very unusual.
Unknown Speaker 39:03
Is that profile or is it? Yeah to prevent is the trade name for purple phone? Gotcha is the same thing.
Unknown Speaker 39:11
So the generic name for purple falls to prevent.
Unknown Speaker 39:15
So the
Unknown Speaker 39:17
scenario we’re running isn’t pretty. You know you have a virus, the viruses, not that nice guy is like a normal flu is. And you have the syndrome that happens to a small percentage, a significant though but small percentage of the population. And it causes a mild, a moderate and severe disorder. The mild one is temporarily needing oxygen and having trouble breathing that goes away.
Unknown Speaker 39:44
Those are the mild cases. That’s probably
Unknown Speaker 39:48
god man. That was a it’s definitely not the mortality portion. So you multiply the mortality times 10 because there were 10 people we sent out the door for every one to two that time That’d be the estimate. So multiply that number by, say 10. To keep it easy, you know, easy to remember. Then if you take the next cohort, it’s a cohort that really, really struggled with it. So they had moderate disease, but they never got to the point where they needed a ventilator. This is where we made the biggest breakthroughs as far as conditions. And why? Because we learned how to use oxygen, we learned how to use a technique called pronation. We learned how to try to dodge the ice by using steroids. We had medications we didn’t have before like remdesivir. an antiviral, if given early sometimes makes the disease a little milder. So for this group that’s in a moderate category, we had probably an improved survival. Then we had the group that crashed and,
Unknown Speaker 40:49
you know, out of that group, some of them make it some of them don’t, the numbers are horrible.
John Malanca 40:55
And is that in groups too? Are you seeing more in and they elderly population. It’s all ages.
Unknown Speaker 41:03
Yeah, it’s all ages. And are your beds full right
John Malanca 41:07
now? Cuz A lot of you I have friends that are nurses and doctors throughout the country and they say, you know, we’ve been empty. We’ve been fortunate. Our wave or curve looks just like a bell.
Unknown Speaker 41:19
Yeah. So this would have been March, and then we hit April. And then we hit May. And now we’re out here where, you know, are utilisation right now is at 20 beds, which, you know, when we hit that peak that was above 100 in the middle. This is this is manageable, you know, and it’s not a lot of new cases. So maybe one every couple days, which at one point in time, it was it was handfuls a day, just flooding in. So our numbers are good. And if you know if we stay lucky and people keep doing their, their duty because I heard the public health guy say this, and it rings in my ears public health, when it works, right? You don’t even know what’s happening. It’s just seamless. It’s just hand washing, you know, good handwashing preventing diarrhea on cruise ships, you know, it’s, it’s all those, it’s all those little things that are out there that that just kind of happened. It’s, it’s the kids at the playground washing their hands before they, you know, II come into to the, you know, cafeteria. I mean all these kind of little things that get implemented in this is public health. And what we have right now is what it called public health, catastrophe and failure. And the reason in America compared to the rest of the world isn’t really the public health system as much as the population
Unknown Speaker 42:47
It’s a strange scenario.
Unknown Speaker 42:49
I mean, look at the guys that are in Europe and look at the guys and all these other places. They isolated watch their numbers hit a critical low and then the opened up society. Here, we’re like,
Unknown Speaker 42:59
let’s open it. it up. We need our bars, you know, my Afro, it’s huge. I need to get this haircut. They don’t
Unknown Speaker 43:09
care.
Unknown Speaker 43:14
Like a lot of
Unknown Speaker 43:16
like, I’m trying to think of the excuse that we failed in the public health spectrum. You know, was it a lack of education about masks?
Unknown Speaker 43:25
I don’t know, if you know, radio wasn’t politics and everything hitting the wrong way. That’s part of the problem. There are people out there and I see this on my feet all the time, we think by saying what I’m saying I’m attacking the president. And I’m like sitting there holding my head going. I did not even use the word Trump anywhere in this statement. I’m not even trying to point fingers that maybe he could have done it, but I’m not doing any of that. I’m just talking about the facts. And when people come at you like, duck, you’re wrong. You must you’ve drank the Kool Aid. I’m always like,
Unknown Speaker 44:06
This is a public health catastrophe. And it’s been spun out of control, because it’s an election year. And if you add to that, all the partisan politics and if you add to that, the fact that everyone’s looking for a reason to, you know, the people that support our president, they’re looking for a reason to reelect him at all costs necessary. You could have the whole country die, but he needs to be our president. And I’m
Unknown Speaker 44:29
like, looking at the world going.
Unknown Speaker 44:32
I’m not gonna fight. That’s your battle, but we’re a max.
Unknown Speaker 44:37
Man, for God’s sake.
Unknown Speaker 44:41
Protect your fellow citizen. I’m not asking you to cut off your arm and give it to me so I can give it to someone else. I am not asking for your kidney. I am asking for your liver. I’m not asking for your eyeball.
Unknown Speaker 44:59
Just the mask
Unknown Speaker 45:01
Well, good hand washing in the mask, hey, I’m gonna meet somebody, and you don’t want to wear a mask, maintain that distance more than six feet. So that if that person’s breathing passively the organism, it’s not in your oral pharynx and cousin and your new person to spread it on further, you know, these are just measures. These measures are called safety, public health interventions, Ph. I, we do public health interventions when we don’t have a cure. All right, I want everyone that doesn’t want to wear a mask, and everyone that doesn’t want to wash their hands. And everyone that doesn’t want to space out to tell me what’s the cure to this disease. And if you’re going to tell me, well, 98% of the population is going to survive, then do you really realize that there may be a quarter of the population that’s going to have long standing lung disease, some former heart disease, complications of a stroke, they’re going to live Yeah, where’s 90% live. But the ongoing morbidity and mortality, morbidity and mortality means the ongoing consequences of this disease are beyond how many die. The ones that live aren’t going to live normal, they’re going to have some sort of trouble. They’re going to feel this. What How long is that going to last? What does that entail for the economy? And then I keep seeing economic arguments, because yes, you shut down the economy. And I hate to say this, more people would die of starvation than have this disorder. That’s absolutely right. If we shut everything down, and there are so many people living paycheck to paycheck, and we had no way to feed them, house them and clothe them, they’re going to be so many kids, so many elderly and so many folks just on the street dying. And that’s, that’s a reality of having a pandemic. That was the reason to isolate and test and figure this out, and stop from spreading, and we did not do that in this country. We have not done that in this country. We’ve continued to fail at that in this country.
John Malanca 47:10
But we don’t I mean, just this week, you know, they closed everything down again. The bars, the gyms, the
Unknown Speaker 47:17
numbers are through the roof. How many cases per day?
John Malanca 47:21
I don’t know why they even opened up in the first place. I know we need to get an economy going. But I just think safe safety is first and it’s not friends in the restaurant business. Do I got to work today? Do I not go to work today? Am I do I have a job? Do I not have a job? You know, my brother is in the wine business for the past 27 years, you know, and he’s like, everything. Everything is shut down. It is affected by mumbo jumbo. What do you mean when I go to the store? Like, I have my gloves on? I have my mask on and you know, and I was already that guy, even in our wedding vows. krynn talked about, you know, Clint talked about about hand sanitizer. You know, That’s that’s that’s just been me forever so I was ahead of this game on on, on being extra cautious I get on a plane I wipe everything down and people look at him like, bleach wipes you out and they said, You know what? Never thought about it. But yes, you know, so you would not you know it’s the truth though. The one that gets me in not to make a joke about this, but they go to the store with the gloves, the mask, they get the cart, they get all the stuff, they get in the car, and then they put everything in the car and then they drive away with their gloves and mask on and now they’ve contaminated the whole inside of the car. You know, I just think I don’t understand that or they’re driving by themselves in the cars with their mask and gloves on. Is that Is that helpful? And maybe it’s from the air because what about prior this conversation you were talking about? Someone asked. Cana kind of FARC what would you say did get infarct spread coronavirus, and the truth is Yes, right.
Unknown Speaker 48:57
So I’ll share that. So, so Part One, the gloves. The gloves got
Unknown Speaker 49:02
to go. People don’t need to wear gloves around town. I think it promotes a couple bad habits a we’re going to waste waste away a bunch of resources. Okay, we’re gonna I see gloves, littering parking lots turned into a nuisance, you’re better off with hand sanitizer and good hand washing, you know, before you enter before you exit, that’s one way. So we call it swipe in swipe out.
Unknown Speaker 49:25
Or, you know,
Unknown Speaker 49:27
you know, the other way is if you really want to conserve the amount of hand sanitizer you use. So anytime you use is right before you eat anything that enters the space, that’s when your hands have to be clean. So if you’re going to feed you’re going to clean you’re going to touch
Unknown Speaker 49:40
this, these hands better be sterile.
Unknown Speaker 49:43
So, you know, they’re different. They’re different approaches. But the main thing is,
John Malanca 49:48
I mean this thing is one of the dirtiest things around I mean, I’m constantly
Unknown Speaker 49:52
that and I we there are some funny dollar bills stories where people sent dollar bills to bankers, even after they microwave them. The fourth thing is interesting because you know, in the midst of this whole march april chaos there were a couple articles I read that really got me laughing and got me going okay, at least we can laugh about it a little bit. But there was a study in Australia and these guys are crazy because they said, put a fart
Unknown Speaker 50:18
pass Coronavirus on and the surprising answer is yes. So then they studied it and they were studying
Unknown Speaker 50:26
you know, you know, does it flow does can it How does it move and they’re like yes, effort could definitely pass Coronavirus on was a conclusion. Because I hate to say this in poor countries when they’re testing to figure out if coronas spreading through population. They have
Unknown Speaker 50:41
to do a pool study.
Unknown Speaker 50:43
So some people will test sewage. And if the sewage is positive, they know that there are people with coronavirus in that community. They’ll test pool blood samples because you can test thousands of people with one sample and if it turns out positive, they know they have to start screening that population.
Unknown Speaker 51:00
So food studies so we know that it’s in poop. It’s in the air.
Unknown Speaker 51:05
If you’re in a small space and someone farts
Unknown Speaker 51:07
they’re sharing with you. So,
Unknown Speaker 51:10
the conclusion is what was the recommendation from these Australian doctors?
Unknown Speaker 51:14
So they said no one should ride bare bottom.
Unknown Speaker 51:22
They said the layers at least keep it from spreading all over the place. You know someone that gets caught.
Unknown Speaker 51:28
No one should travel bare bottom.
John Malanca 51:30
No one should travel barebone I think we have that covered here that speaking about traveling, you know, I travelled non stop for work. And I’m kind of enjoying the break of not being on a plane. I mean, there are days I used to. I work used to work for a travel website and magazine. And there are days I’d wake up. Where am I? You know, what city Am I in? I mean, the old Southwest, Southwest airline commercial mirror the guys rock stars up there and he says good night Detroit when you’re not in a not industry. He says what it says got to get away that was their campaign got to get away. Take Southwest airline but I was like that I’d wake up what city Am I in right now and so but this topic comes up with with people all the time about traveling you think it’s safe to go on a vacation or safe to go over here they’re offering airlines are offering cheap cheap flights. I’m not I’m I’m not into I wouldn’t travel right now. I would I would maybe drive somewhere but I wouldn’t get on a plane. I don’t think I’d get on a train.
Unknown Speaker 52:32
A very, very important question. And this is why it’s important. We’re human. Yeah. And as humans if we’re in a safe and a caged environment. I think part of the craziness also isn’t just the economy, the politics. We’re
Unknown Speaker 52:45
kind of we’ve been caged. You know, we are used to exploring and finding
Unknown Speaker 52:52
seed stuff. You know, my summer.
Unknown Speaker 52:53
It’s summer you and I are looking at each other on a screen man. There are no waves in the back. Here, I’m pretending there’s an ocean right here.
Unknown Speaker 53:04
And you’re flying a kite. Right? Here’s your right.
Unknown Speaker 53:07
Oh, here I am. So. So, you know, the answer is we need to find ways to get away that are safe. We need to get away, we need to find ways that are safe. Otherwise, our mental health will take a toll. During this whole pandemic, were there places we could go and isolate and go? The answers. Most cities, yes. You know, New York City a little bit harder, you know, San Francisco a little bit harder. But, you know, I saw I saw places where they put grid marks on the floor, so everyone knows where to stand, you know, in concentrated places. But the answer is we need to find healthy ways to get away that are safe. So in parts of the, you know, you could track everyone’s public health, you know, department and places where they’re at the lower end of that curve, in places where they have precautions in place, places where they’ve thought about seating and how people are going to sit at that in that dining room. How Are people going to travel to this hotel? What is their cleaning procedure? by their staff were in mass Do they have a way to kind of separate everything out? There are places that have already thought about this, like, you know, the Jersey Shore is one that residents easy getaway, you just go up the highway. If you get up there, you find that they have all these arrangements in place, because they’ve already gone through the worst of the pandemic. They’re taking every precaution they can not to see it again. And they understand that they need to have an economy. And they need to figure out ways to innovate and make a new economy for their, for their state. Yeah. And places that innovate are going to survive in places that don’t innovate or not. And so while everyone’s fighting about mass, I want them to ever want to take a step back. You want your economy to come back. You have to find ways to make it safe for everyone. That’s number one. The economy will search once we have a safe way to live and travel and do all these things to
Unknown Speaker 55:01
Are there places you can go that don’t have a lot of people? The answer is yes,
Unknown Speaker 55:03
we have all these natural parks and places that are now open again,
John Malanca 55:07
I’m hearing hikers a friend of mine, their kids went hiking with another another couple and all four of them came back with it, you know, and so when when will I go down the street and I’m an avid cyclist and a runner and I see people just panicking you know, grabbing you know, mask when you see it coming around the corner and it’s it’s sad you see the grocery store and it’s like that movie outbreak. I you know, I watched that movie outbreak with Dustin Hoffman and Rene Russo. I think
Unknown Speaker 55:36
back in you are on something scary though. I’m going to share something scary. You brought up something you brought running France in the beginning band all the running in their city. You know why? Why
Unknown Speaker 55:46
the ideas? Because you hear well, well there’s a a, a they called a slipstream. So as
Unknown Speaker 55:54
you’re running, you’re generating like a halo around you of everything. you’re breathing.
Unknown Speaker 55:58
Yeah. Now if there’s no breeze
Unknown Speaker 56:00
And it’s not very warm. There’s nothing to kind of prevent that from lingering. If you have heat, you have humidity and you have a breeze, it’s not staying over you and following you. The physics of it changes.
Unknown Speaker 56:14
So these people running
Unknown Speaker 56:17
and behind them as a stream of their air, just kind of.
Unknown Speaker 56:22
So, in France, they said, Okay,
Unknown Speaker 56:26
that’s a danger too. And they stopped all of that. I mean, the reason why these guys were successful in Europe is probably more to do with they recognize their population, what they’re doing on a day to day basis, and they took measures to go if we stopped that, that will cut off this percentage.
Unknown Speaker 56:42
I don’t know about this percentage. If they took a scientific approach. I don’t know what we’re doing, man.
John Malanca 56:49
I say thing in Belgium. I used to live in Belgium and I was talking to my friends and you know, they’re not able to go you know, bite. Don’t they bite a lot. They can only I was talking to him. They can only go for a daily walk with that same individual. So it’s either the husband wife go, or the husband goes with one kid, and the wife goes with one kid. And they’re even being stopped to go across town and they could be stopped and they say, wait a minute, you don’t live in this area. What are you doing over? What are you doing over here? And they would they would be confined. You’re talking about the air stream behind? I haven’t heard any truth behind this that some of this has been brought over by through Asia through Europe to here or vice versa, through the air stream of a jet stream. Is there any truth behind that?
Unknown Speaker 57:39
jet stream is hot? That’ll be kind of, it’d be very difficult to do.
Unknown Speaker 57:47
What do you say about all the
Unknown Speaker 57:49
areas that are out there
Unknown Speaker 57:49
viruses, I mean, viruses aren’t built to survive outside of the body for too long. So you know you we can come up with all sorts of hypotheses like HIV only last nine minutes. on a surface, it’s not gonna last much longer than that. You know, like, a lot of these viruses have. They’re not like their own living organism, they need another organism to live. The reason why these organisms are living is because we’re passing them on. We’re a human human vector. We are spreading the virus. It needs us to spread. You could come we could come up with all sorts of theories. I buy spit on the floor, and then you know, I didn’t clean it for this. It’s not gonna live forever, man. It’s it needs the body to live. You know, I was on a doorknob. Well, how did that doorknob end up in your nostril?
John Malanca 58:44
Do you think you’ll ever ever shake again, shake hands hug me there any of that.
Unknown Speaker 58:49
I’m back to the old Asian way right now.
John Malanca 58:53
We do elbow bumps here or foot bumps.
Unknown Speaker 58:56
I must say it’s good to know you and your soul. Be healthy. You’d be a great person.
John Malanca 59:03
And back to the the old way is probably safer the long distance high five. Earlier you’re talking about SARS, which made made into the news a few years ago. And then there was also h one and one. What’s the difference between Are they the same thing, just a different name? Because there’s there’s 19 stages of COVID. are that the way you describe it as well as the COVID-19? Or is it because it initiated? I mean, in 2019 are we going to see? I mean, which definitely, if I were to
Unknown Speaker 59:33
be blunt, the President said it right when he called it Wu Han 2019. The way we’re probably going to name it is location. It started in the year it started. So as far as we know, it started in Busan, China. 2019. So Whoo, Han flew Chinese flew is a valid way to look at this 2019 is the year it started. Yeah, stars. Stars. One is what you’re asking about in 2003 that’s spread across the planet with a 35 5% incidence of death, it was very hard to miss. There were a lot of learning points from that. But it did cause respiratory distress syndrome. A lot of people didn’t survive that it was lievable. The countries that it hit were mostly in Asia. And then as far as close to it got to us here was Toronto, Canada. So the Canadians have experienced SARS before. And one one little point that we should all notice countries that have had SARS did far better than countries that did it when it came to how to handle this whole pandemic. What’s happening? Yeah, those are the countries that said, Oh, we saw this before. We saw a lot of people die. And this is what we’re going to do. Should you want to get it Go
Unknown Speaker 1:00:47
ahead, but the rest of us don’t want to die.
Unknown Speaker 1:00:52
Now that differs. So that’s SARS. Right? Remember SARS. 1003 2004. This is the world Han flu or COVID-19, whatever name we’re going to give it in the future. And it sits right here as the second stars that we’ve seen as in this one spread because it has asymptomatic spread and, and there are a lot of people that survived. If a lot of people didn’t survive this, it wouldn’t have spread this bad. If most of your population that gets it dies, it doesn’t make it to the next person.
Unknown Speaker 1:01:24
This one is easily transmitted. Then you said h one n one. Yeah, so h one n one is a flu species and flu doesn’t get and become SARS, except for very rarely. So,
Unknown Speaker 1:01:40
you know, and the only reason I know this is I did see a couple of cases when it came out. I actually treated and actively worked on saving a young adult who had fever and and right before things went bad. We had her in the ICU and she survived. But it didn’t look like this. It was a lot easier. It was just five days on events. He was off and doing fine. That’s all I’m going to say I won’t give any details but, you know, but it was a simpler, easier to treat beast, this ours compared to that each one and one cytokine storm, which is rare, not going to happen very common at all.
Unknown Speaker 1:02:21
This is very easy to treat.
Unknown Speaker 1:02:24
And this one is so
Unknown Speaker 1:02:26
elusive and difficult. I mean, some of the stuff we’re discovering doesn’t make any sense megakaryocyte driven inflammation, stuffing, blood clots, and, you know, increased risk of heart disease. And so this, this beast we’re dealing with is a nasty, nasty, evil piece of work. Each one and one when I compare it mentally I’m like, that was so easy. Yeah, it sucked having the flu but most of us are going to live and those who get a bed. There was no demand for ICU and ventilators then because you might see One in a million or one in a couple hundred thousand that fall off the edge
Unknown Speaker 1:03:05
2% of the population of America 7 million people
Unknown Speaker 1:03:13
I’m not talking about a small number. It’s 7 million people multiply that times tend to get maybe how many of you the hospital 70 million need a hospital?
John Malanca 1:03:23
And not everyone goes to the hospital because a lot of a lot of people I talked to I don’t want to go to hospital because something could be there as well. And so did you see that in your hospital that people?
Unknown Speaker 1:03:35
We saw some crazy stuff when when, when COVID went like this, the amount of people that entered the ER went like this? Yeah,
Unknown Speaker 1:03:42
yeah. No, they’re like, if I’m having a heart attack, I’m gonna die at home.
Unknown Speaker 1:03:48
I’m like thinking to myself having a heart attack. You still have all the resources to take care of you and save you should be here not at home dying. But the population naturally was fearful. And should they have been the honest answer is no, we have no repercussion in the world, you’re more likely to get COVID walked out there than you are inside a place that’s taking all these precautions, you know, HIPAA filters, negative pressure areas, I mean,
Unknown Speaker 1:04:17
our ability to survive in that hospital is going to be pretty good. But if you’re in a closed space, you know, and it’s floating around,
Unknown Speaker 1:04:25
your chances are better out there to get it. So if you’re having a stroke, or
Unknown Speaker 1:04:28
a heart attack,
Unknown Speaker 1:04:30
or a life threatening emergency, and there’s COVID president in that community, you should still go to that emergency room and get help your stroke can be treated, your heart disease can be treated COVID right now we can find a way to help you through it. But untreated, all of this is deadly. Hmm.
John Malanca 1:04:49
As you mentioned a RDS earlier. Can you describe what that is and it affects the lungs right?
Unknown Speaker 1:04:56
So SARS and air DS have a relationship so Severe the severes version of RDS looks like SARS. Okay. Okay. RDS is a reaction that’s just limited, mostly we think about is a lung problem. And it’s a respiratory problem that requires event. That’s a respiratory problem where you have sepsis or or or viral issue or major infection causing the lungs to become leaky, they flood with fluid. And just like that SARS, you’re putting them on a ventilator and for a smaller period of time, and then they come off.
Unknown Speaker 1:05:31
The pressure modes and stuff used here are used in SARS to this is the severe form of,
Unknown Speaker 1:05:38
Okay, this is the, you know, the form that we always see, and this is the one that we worry about, you know, 28 days on a ventilator doesn’t happen. in ages one and one. It didn’t happen in any of our flu pandemics and epidemics and stuff in history of time. People did not need 28 days. Why does this one require 28? I don’t know.
Unknown Speaker 1:06:00
It’s that severe. He is.
John Malanca 1:06:03
And we still don’t know, because you even talked about the repercussions this even 20 years down the road, right, that something may come about just like we saw at 911. You know, a lot of a lot of people are having lung cancer after after 911 1012 years later. And so are we going to see this? Hopefully not, but are you predict this?
Unknown Speaker 1:06:30
If I were to predict the future, a couple things, a couple things. First, there’s, is there going to be a general change in the way we operate as a global community? Yeah, because we had a respiratory virus spread and spread so rapidly across the globe that there was no barrier to protect groups and groups of people. So there is going to be some changes that are going to have to be there just structurally going to have to happen operationally to protect the entire lobe of you Billions of people. So that’s one thing, just package on the side. So I think that what we’re going to look like 10 or 20 years from now, hopefully is a cleaner while operating, you know, global, international community of folks who recognize, if I don’t wash my hands here, then that guy on the other side of the globe is not washing his hands too. we’re eventually going to trade something.
Unknown Speaker 1:07:23
All this global trade, we’re going to trade something back and forth.
John Malanca 1:07:26
Ah, that is one thing excuse me from traveling as much as I did it. That’s one of my biggest pet peeves and the one they get me in sorry, from grossing it will hurt listeners out but seeing pilots walk out of the bathroom without washing their hands and things kind of doing this thing. They’re not even doing that. I mean, I’m thinking, excuse my language, I’d say you got to be shitting me really your pilot and you’re not going to wash your hands after coming out of the stall. You know, and it that type of thing is so exactly talking about you’re walking through there. So that’s that’s the part that crinoid this allows me
Unknown Speaker 1:08:00
He didn’t fart to
John Malanca 1:08:04
me double whammy is right but I mean, I wipe everything down. I have my little portable air filter here I wipe everything with bleach wipes. And you know and so so but you are right, someone else
Unknown Speaker 1:08:15
hurt one that’s that’s changing. Number one that’s global International. However one operates as a public health globe. It public health has to go, you know, if Ebola were to spread, what would we have done?
Unknown Speaker 1:08:29
We would have all sorts of crap we would have done, we would do everything in our power to some people.
Unknown Speaker 1:08:35
It shouldn’t leave from that port, enter our port. All those precautions would have also helped prevent this too. If we were temperature checking people as they traveled, we have good hand hygiene. We limit Ebola but we also limit this guy. So there’s something global that has to happen to stop that. That’s one
Unknown Speaker 1:08:52
then there’s 270 million
Unknown Speaker 1:08:54
people had the infection or had an infection that got them into the hospital or into Some poor form of healthcare, this Sunday million people, you know, as they go through life, what are the consequences? You know, their lungs even after they recover look pretty awful. You know, some of these guys have had strokes. Some of these guys have had blood clots. Some of these guys are going to have limb amputations. Some of these guys are going to, you know, have all sorts of consequences of this disorder that we’re still figuring out. And the way to treat it is is controversial because I’ve seen people go aggressive and light on anticoagulation. And if you go aggressive with anticoagulation, people bleed. If you go light on anticoagulation, they come back with blood clots. What’s the right way to do that?
Unknown Speaker 1:09:39
We don’t know. So what I know is, this is us now a cluster of people who’ve got it, we have 3 million now. That’s a large number of people that have it. The mortality
Unknown Speaker 1:09:52
of that we know is 133 right now probably going to rise. And out of this group that survives, we know that they’re going to have Trouble periodically. Does that mean that their life expectancy went like this? Does that mean that the complications disabled a larger portion of our American society? And just the effects of that, you know, just the loss of life, the loss of intelligent folks out there that, you know, probably we’re dedicating their lives to saving everyone, the folks that I’ve lost my brothers and sisters in battle.
Unknown Speaker 1:10:29
It’s, uh, the consequences of that alone are severe. And, you know, five or 10 or 20 years from now, the consequences of just having the disorder. A lot of us are going to find out, but
Unknown Speaker 1:10:44
I would, I would, I’m under the one to kind of look at it scientifically.
Unknown Speaker 1:10:47
We had a bunch of disorders that we classify as idiopathic.
Unknown Speaker 1:10:51
And when we talk about them, I used to jokingly say, idiot duck, we just don’t know what causes it.
Unknown Speaker 1:10:58
And we have a constellation of these
Unknown Speaker 1:11:00
disorders out there that were like, We don’t know what causes it, but it happens. people develop lung fibrosis, some people get out of the blue. We don’t know why they were not even smokers. How did they get it? And the answer is, we’re probably seeing that now. We might be seeing a virus, inflame the lungs and damage it. And years later, this might be somebody with pulmonary fibrosis. And so it’s going to go back in history in time, and we might be able to reclassify these guys is really, you know, viral related, you know, subtle SARS related pulmonary fibrosis, it’s going to get a name somewhere. But what we’re seeing now is definitely going to be related to disease later. And what we’re seeing now and the people that we’ve lost, we’ve lost some really good people.
Unknown Speaker 1:11:49
And
John Malanca 1:11:50
it all ages, you know, at all all different types of lifestyles, healthy, unhealthy, and then so it’s not, you’re not,
Unknown Speaker 1:11:56
it’s no, no, some of the nurses we lost were only in their 30s. So
Unknown Speaker 1:12:00
Some of them barely made it into their 40s. Some of the respiratory therapists we’re talking about. We’re not talking about 18 year olds, you know, you know, trying to you know, resuscitate people. I mean,
Unknown Speaker 1:12:11
you know, we have lost a lot of people. So it’s one of the reasons why
Unknown Speaker 1:12:21
it’s one of the reasons why it’s really hard to talk about this. And it goes kind of like this. I anything I post about how bad that is, disorder is I get hit with lots of bad flack from people. Oh, you’re, you’re just a doctor. Oh, you drank the Kool Aid. Oh, you’re crazy. Oh, this is in and this is all part of a bigger conspiracy. And you’re part of that wheel now. And I’m like sitting there going.
Unknown Speaker 1:12:44
What I lose my best friend in a conspiracy. What I want to see
Unknown Speaker 1:12:50
2000 years of medical knowledge and all these professionals disappear off the face of the earth.
Unknown Speaker 1:12:55
Would I go out of my way to call something evil when it really is Evil, this virus is the nastiest thing we have right now. And we don’t have a way to stop it.
Unknown Speaker 1:13:06
And to see people just spread it, you know, and spread it openly. Oh, let’s have a party. Let’s invite everyone over and see who gets it first.
John Malanca 1:13:18
That that, you know, I’ve heard that people are having pools money pools, I see who gets it first and whoever gets it get gets gets gets the pot. I mean,
Unknown Speaker 1:13:26
that’s the mental disorder there, there has to be a mental disorder is that it’s reckless. And that recklessness could make us lose someone else that’s very near and dear to us. And how many
Unknown Speaker 1:13:38
losses later we’re going to realize that was not a good idea. Let’s grow up people. Let’s work our adult pants. Let’s put on our adult responsibility to each other as part of a society and start thinking about that.
Unknown Speaker 1:13:53
You know, I
Unknown Speaker 1:13:56
you know, you save people’s lives and you work on everything you can to save them. And then you see this
Unknown Speaker 1:14:01
and you’re just like, What? What is this? We’re in. So the only way I’ve been able to label it is
Unknown Speaker 1:14:09
I’m sitting in a dumpster fire john.
Unknown Speaker 1:14:11
It’s a smelly fart, Phil,
Unknown Speaker 1:14:14
you know, cloud filled dumpster fire. And I’ve been able to laugh about it more in the last couple weeks. But it’s really hard for healthcare workers out
Unknown Speaker 1:14:25
there, aspiring nurses.
Unknown Speaker 1:14:28
It was really hard to get to understand how we can go from you know, watching people die and then everyone telling us No, they didn’t die. You’re over reporting that death that death was you’re not seeing them dying. I’m like,
Unknown Speaker 1:14:43
Oh, I’m, I guess. I guess this is how I should practice medicine.
Unknown Speaker 1:14:52
Chun really.
John Malanca 1:14:54
It’s tougher. You know, we’re we all live in a society now. You’re damned if you do, you’re damned. You don’t and it’s you. disappointing. You know, I personally don’t watch any news because it’s just, you know, it was just bad news over and over and over and over and over and it’s just like goodness gracious. You know, and it’s tough long term chronic pain with this, you know, because we have a lot of patients that are going through a lot of different different things. PTSD is one of them, you know, I got rear ended yesterday driving back home. I had PTSD watching all the cars, you know, getting too close coming off the freeway, are they going to stop, you know, coming up to a stop sign? Are they going to stop so I can see. And that was me, you know, I didn’t think you know, I’m like, how did this affect me so little things like this affect people.
Unknown Speaker 1:15:46
You know, it took the
John Malanca 1:15:49
you know, my lifestyle is home office, afternoon, I get on my bike or go for a run,
Unknown Speaker 1:15:55
john, you know, and I’m between me and you. Yeah,
Unknown Speaker 1:15:59
every help. A care worker that had to watch someone die without their family is going to go through
Unknown Speaker 1:16:03
PTSD. And every healthcare worker out
Unknown Speaker 1:16:06
there that you know, what participated in trying to save the life during a period of time where they couldn’t see their family very well is going to go through some sort of psychologic catastrophe from this. The ER doctor that committed suicide. That was this is a well known renowned, you know, state of the art genius that and ended her life. I mean, young to beautiful, young, healthy, you know, everything that you would want out of your professional taking care of you if you ended her life and the honest answer is, you saw that after a fender bender, we’re seeing a fender bender. During that peak, we were seeing a fender bender every single day. And
Unknown Speaker 1:16:53
there’s only so much you can do.
Unknown Speaker 1:16:55
And
Unknown Speaker 1:16:58
what’s secure, we don’t have a cure.
John Malanca 1:17:01
That’s the thing when will this end? My brother’s best friend lives down in Santa Barbara, his his mom and his dad got it back in March. I think he was in Simi Valley down that way. Married for 50 plus years and his his wife could not was not allowed into the hospital and he had the path he passed alone. And I’m thinking back, you know, what, if that was kirrin in that hospital, and they wouldn’t let me in there, you better believe I would have made it that hospital. I would have been by her side. I would, you know, I would have kissed her and said, scoot over. I’ll be with you in two weeks. If that was if it was, if that was a reason, but you know that those are the stories that really hit home to me, it’s like, you have a beautiful life. Doesn’t matter if your two year old or 92 years old, and have to pass alone. Sorry, we’re in quarantine. You can’t come in here and Do you see that in your hospital? Were you I mean, are you guys that strict where
Unknown Speaker 1:18:04
you’re not allowing when we first started, every hospital in our area was a quarantine site. So you can only come in if you had a reason to be there. So chest pain, you know, stroke. You know all the standard reasons once he came in, you weren’t allowed any visitors unless you were dying. And it wasn’t we kind of fought for this. All of us fought for this, the nurses, the text, everyone, because if someone’s dying alone, who’s going to hold their hand that’s us. Well, you know what,
John Malanca 1:18:32
that’s what exactly happened. My mom and I were on a walk and we saw this lady, she had a cute puppy dog. We started talking and I said to you that I didn’t need any more dogs. I said, we’ll take it and she was actually it’s my sister. And she worked for the airlines. And she passed. I said when she just recently from COVID. And I was like, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. So she said. I said we were there she was they wouldn’t let me in there. But the nurse stood by her side. She said I want to let you know hell I was with I’ll get emotional now too. I was with your sister to the very end and I just want to let you know we had there was a lot of love there and so you you going into that, that you were the loved one holding the hand you
Unknown Speaker 1:19:13
that’s all of us, man. All of us, everyone, everyone. We can’t.
Unknown Speaker 1:19:22
This is where it’s really hard. How can humanity fall apart into this chaos that you and I are seeing right now. We are human.
Unknown Speaker 1:19:34
We love We care. We are human.
Unknown Speaker 1:19:46
The first
Unknown Speaker 1:19:55
first couple weeks of this remember competed, lose sleep in
Unknown Speaker 1:20:04
I cannot sleep.
John Malanca 1:20:12
It’s real life.
Unknown Speaker 1:20:31
And the reason why I like you is when we first met you shared your story and your life and all you’ve been through. And since then I knew you are a honest, hard working. Man Who cares deeply about what you do.
Unknown Speaker 1:20:53
You want to see this world get better.
Unknown Speaker 1:20:59
I do too.
Unknown Speaker 1:21:01
That’s why I feel like we’re in this fight together. By sharing the truth. By sharing what we’ve been through, we will uplift more people. And we will save them.
Unknown Speaker 1:21:16
When this pandemic started, and I wasn’t sleeping, I shared a video. And that video went out to thousands of people and it was just meant for my family and friends. And it basically told them that this is real, that this is dangerous, and that I want them to protect themselves by wearing at least a mask.
Unknown Speaker 1:21:35
And that this is a fecal oral transmitted beast. And I don’t want to see anyone else die.
Unknown Speaker 1:21:42
And I shared it it’s the ugliest video of me you’ll ever see. It’s in my little office hiding away bunkered away.
Unknown Speaker 1:21:51
That three weeks of no sleep just realizing that there is no one saving the population and there’s no one educating everybody upon Why.
Unknown Speaker 1:22:02
So if we are able to help a few more people take a few more precautions so that more people can survive and not get this disorder. We did something.
Unknown Speaker 1:22:16
And, you know, as a doc, we’ll keep trying to find a way to make this livable
Unknown Speaker 1:22:26
to help more people survive with every piece of technology and resource we have.
Unknown Speaker 1:22:31
But
Unknown Speaker 1:22:33
you know, we do this together. And we do this because that’s what we do. We signed up for this, whether we like it or not, and sharing the truth and sharing these experiences.
Unknown Speaker 1:22:47
Watching
Unknown Speaker 1:22:50
you know, really nice, hardworking people put themselves into that fire.
Unknown Speaker 1:22:55
All the way down to our janitorial staff. I mean, they’re panic
Unknown Speaker 1:22:58
just like everyone else. To make sure everyone was protected and had the right gear, to make sure everyone knew what they were doing, and took every precaution they could to protect their families and themselves.
Unknown Speaker 1:23:10
That is our responsibility
Unknown Speaker 1:23:13
as people as part of a greater society, and as part of now a globe. So if there’s any global conspiracy, I’ll tell you, it’s this, that whatever disease hits us here is going to hit people everywhere. And if that’s a global conspiracy or a global issue, god damn is and there is nothing that you and I can do to change that. We live in a society that transacts and trades and pushes stuff from one end of the globe to the other. As long as that exist, soul disease and transmission. If you don’t want Ebola to come to your doorstep, then you should do your part. If you don’t want, you know, dengue fever to come to this place or Zika or Any of these other disorders, the hundreds of disorders out there that don’t make it to mature and you do your part. And that’s the important part. You know, we as humans are sharing this space together, you know, you’re sharing your time with me, john, I’m sharing my thoughts with you. And we grow every time we do this, we learn we grow, we become better people.
Unknown Speaker 1:24:24
And
Unknown Speaker 1:24:27
that’s valuable.
John Malanca 1:24:31
You know, I thank you. I have a bunch more questions, but I think that’s a perfect way to ended right now. But how you mentioned, do your part, do your part. And that’s, that’s heavy, you know, because I’d see it on the on the Yeah, the digital signs on the freeway, do your part, wash your hands, stay six feet, and there’s a reason they’re saying that and you’re seeing it being on the front line. You see a lot more than a lot of people see, you know, I’d say 99% of the population. So I was going to go into other thing and I’d love to get back on the show too. But let’s Can you share it because I want you know, I like having people come on the show and be able to share what they do and how to how to how to find you. And so I know you do a lot for your patients. Not a not only in on the medical side in the hospital, but also in the medical cannabis side. And so can you share how people our followers can can find you and I’ll definitely put these these links down for you as well.
Unknown Speaker 1:25:42
So the easiest way to find us is Aria wellness calm. So that’s a try a wellness calm, that’ll link up to our main page and our scheduling and emails and places to submit questions, all that stuff. We have a Facebook page Feel free to leave comments or message me through there. We have an Instagram page. Those are the three dominant ways to send messages to me if you don’t, we don’t have any other options. We also have our our central phone number that’s 877-862-0303. And, you know, our main email address is still Aria wellness at Green Lotus that center. That goofy
Unknown Speaker 1:26:24
name stuck with me. I don’t know why, john, I’ll tell you later.
Unknown Speaker 1:26:29
But those are those are the main ways to get ahold of us.
John Malanca 1:26:37
Any closing words for our audience?
Unknown Speaker 1:26:42
in these difficult times.
Unknown Speaker 1:26:45
It’s very important to come together.
Unknown Speaker 1:26:49
We see so many people tearing people apart. We see the media doing what the media does. We even see a president who wants to win an election to the point where he’s ripping the population apart, we see all sorts of stuff ripping us apart. And this isn’t the time for that. When we’re losing lives and when we’re losing loved ones,
Unknown Speaker 1:27:10
this is the last time I want someone to be alone.
Unknown Speaker 1:27:15
We need to come together as people.
Unknown Speaker 1:27:17
When you isolate, that doesn’t mean socially isolate. That means you physically isolate six feet, you could still talk to people, you could still meet with people. We were never meant to socially isolate, physically get that right, folks. So we need to come together as people, maintain your distance, maintain your safety fine, but we need to come together as people. We need to help each other through this. because no one’s going to be able to make it if we try to do this alone.
Unknown Speaker 1:27:48
The scars and the
Unknown Speaker 1:27:51
psychological scars and then the issues that we’re going to go through are so deep
Unknown Speaker 1:27:57
that there’s no way to do this alone.
John Malanca 1:28:06
Thank you for that. And Dr. Shara always appreciate our friendship. And thanks for coming on the show and always being supportive and for your knowledge so we’ll see here again, I know that everyone this is John Malanca, with United patients group being formed and be well, and thank you again Dr. Sharma. Thank you, john. you all soon in stay healthy please.
Unknown Speaker 1:28:34
Absolutely friend