EP 65: WTH ?!? All things Immune System, "The Pause," Pandemic with Drs. Greg Nigh and Daniel Chong

Greg Nye, Dr. Dan Chong, and we've got a timely discussion. I really want to appreciate and thank you guys for coming on really spur of the moment, but I felt it was necessary to get some information, get this dialogue. I have so appreciated what both of you guys are putting out around Covid and the pandemic and general health and well being for, for people in the country and around the globe. I do want to give an ample and proper introduction. I'm going to start with Dr. Nye. He's an ND specializing naturopathic oncology. Now in his 19th year of clinical practice. He's written and spoken a wide range of topics including the risk of glyphosate exposure, the role of sulfur in health. He's got a great book out on that. And now COVID 19. I've put his contact information in the show notes and he is one of the best commentaries on Covid that I've been reading. Plus I just, I love the man and his sense of humor. We got Dr. Dan Chong. North has been licensed naturopathic physician practicing in Portland, Oregon since 2000. We all went to school together. These days he works with people via telemedicine, specializing in risk assessment, prevention, drug free treatment strategies for cardiovascular disease and diabetes, as well as general healthy aging, including dementia prevention. Very appropriate for our discussion today. And I've got his contact information on the show notes as well. Welcome aboard.

Thank you.

And so we are gonna.

Good to be here.

Yeah, thank you. And we'll see how it goes with the dialogue and the discussion. You know, one of the components of why I wanted to do this though, last week, election week, I did a Dr. Greg diatribe on medical freedom and censorship along those lines. I know you guys have been putting a lot of information out, getting a lot of blowback as well. And so I'm curious on multiple fronts, we're talking Covid. I'm going to say it out loud because. Right. We're not supposed to be saying Covid on a radio station. But I'm saying it, I'm gonna say it a bunch of times. I hope you guys do as well. But we see in here in Oregon, we all three of us tend to be, we are all in the Portland metro area. We see this case Demic and we see our governor and our mayor talking about the cases going through the roof and boy, we're a bad population and we've gotta put things on pause. And so I want to talk numbers. What actually do they mean? What don't they mean? Reporting debacle. We've covered PCR testing. I think it's worthy to do it again. Let's start there. And I'm going to lob some of this out. I do want to hear Dr. Chong's approach here, too, with diabetes and cardiovascular disease being like two of the lead risk factors for folks with COVID and what maybe you're seeing in your practice or, you know, what you've been writing about there, too. So I'm going to open it up with that. Let's talk case Demic and numbers like we. Is it useful? I'm going to just lob some of these things at you guys. The numbers. Like, why. Why are we focused on one number? And is it valuable in any sense of the word?

I'll just say thank you. And Greg Nye, who's with us here, has been an inspiration to me, and his level of detail of looking at everything in terms of the numbers you're talking about, testing, what's the appropriate things we should be doing, et cetera, I think is as good as anything I've seen out there. So I'm taking the liberty of starting first by saying, go ahead, Greg. Nice.

Thank you, Dr. Chong.

I try to fill out any space, any spaces that you might need. So.

All right.

If I launch into it right quick, I mean, you know, we can spend another whole podcast on the problems with PCR. Dr. Echo, you and I have. I think we reviewed that a lot in the past. And so, you know, I encourage people to go back to that because it is the crux of everything. Everything hinges on PCR and what it's telling us. So there are two concurrent realities that are happening. One is that there is certainly a dramatic increase in the prevalence of positive tests. According to pcr, more tests are being done. We're finding more people positive, and by definition, that means we're finding more cases. That's one reality. And then a concurrent reality is that there are now, in some specific areas around the country, an increase in hospitalizations that are associated with COVID and intensive care. But we have a problem, and this is a problem that I've tried to tease it out in other states, and I have a really hard time finding the data. But in Oregon, by definition, if you've had a positive PCR test within 60 days of your admittance to the hospital, you are a Covid hospitalization. And so we're testing more and more people in Oregon, and every day I check the dashboard, and so more and more people are testing positive, and people are going into the hospital. And so we have this rise of COVID hospitalizations for sure. What we don't have a way of teasing out in, at least in Oregon is which percent of the people hospitalized with that COVID positive test are in the hospital because they have the disease of COVID We don't have a way of sussing that out. Another point that I would make here, and this is something like, you know, in the, in the medical research world, there are these two values that we confront a lot. One is called relative risk and one is called absolute risk. And I'm going to get to my point, but let me just talk this through right quick. So on a relative risk, if you have a treatment that if you give the treatment to 100 people and only, let's say four of them die, and then you have these people and you don't do any treatment and two of them die. So let's turn that away. Two die if you give the treatment and four die if you don't. Let's say that. So the headline can rightly say that the treatment, it reduced death by 50%. Right. And that sounds very impressive. Only half the people died when they got the treatment. That sounds great. That's a relative risk. The absolute risk is, is that it reduced death by 2%. 4 out of 100 down to 2 out of 100, it's a 2% drop. So I want to use that as a way of talking about what I'm seeing hospitalizations in Oregon. And so I looked at these numbers, and at the lowest point of hospitalizations in Oregon after that initial peak in April, the lowest point that it ever got down to on June 6, believe the number was 38. 38 or 39. That was the lowest. And now we are at the last I look was 217. Now we can call that a 420% rise in hospitalizations in Oregon. And it is. If you compare those. Just go by those two numbers. If we look at the, and this is what we used to look at, at the burden on hospital beds and how much it is, you know, because we're trying to not overburden the system, it's actually a 3.8% rise relative to the number of beds that we have available. It's a very, very small rise in terms of the burden on the system. But it's not very convincing to talk about a 3.8% rise, but it is to talk about a 420% rise. So it's not to say that there are not more people in the hospital. There are, but there's a story behind that fact.

How does that compare to the peak in April with hospitalizations? Did you say that one too, or just from the low point in June to now?

Well, when I was looking at it, I was only looking at the low point in June. The peak in April was certainly higher than it is now. And I'm not sure the exact number. I don't recall the number it was higher than now, but it's. I forget.

And you could also say that that 3, 3.8% rise that you said, that's including the people that may not necessarily be hospitalized because they have COVID 19.

Absolutely. Yeah. And.

And then the only other thing I would add to that, and correct me if I'm wrong, I also understand that it's important to. It would be great if we could also see a daily number of discharges, hospital discharges. So people that are leaving the hospital as other people are being hospitalized or people. So we don't see any. So in other words, if you get 10 new people in a day into a hospital diagnosed with COVID but four left that same day, that's six new people, technically. Right. So. Or six people burdening the hospital system. And again, this all used to go back to keeping the curve flat and not overwhelming hospitals. This is never supposed to have been about eliminating Covid from the atmosphere or whatever, you know, so I just find when we're talking about what we're supposed to be talking about, which is hospital burden, and we don't ever talk about how many people are leaving the hospital or how many people are in beds actually being treated for COVID 19 versus in beds with something else. And testing positive with a PCR test for SARS CoV2. Those are very different things. We don't get any of that nuanced information from the media. And it's certainly not what decisions are being made based on, you know, by the governor.

So it is so on that I'm wondering, have you looked like the. Because we do not have a national standardization as far as testing goes. Right. So it basically got fractionated. States are up to their own, you know, demise or success. It's on the states. So what? I haven't been able to find any consistency of what a positive PCR test is like. You know, I am definitely going to put in the show. Notes are separate podcast of things that make Dr. Nye go where we really discuss the PCR testing. But you know, what we've seen in the New York Times finally came out with an article Saying it's on revolutions, on magnifying, and once you go above, what, 40 revolutions, we're not sure if that means infection or not.

I would say 35.

35, yeah, perfect. I was just trying to be conservative. Right, yeah, on that. So I'm wondering when we have the mainstream media talking about this ad nauseam, as if we're going to stop a virus from spreading. We're not even talking about that. We're just talking about positive tests. We have questions on what a positive test is. We have questions on whether those people are actually symptomatic and spreading a virus. We have questions on, you know, what, what, how many revolutions. Like it's not even apples to apples at this point. Is that. Am I gathering this properly?

Yeah, you're spot on. I mean, there. Yeah, there is no. We have conflated the idea of PCR positivity, positivity with being infected. And those two are, you know, they can overlap, but they're certainly not synonymous. Fauci recently said, and Dr. Chong, you might have been the one to send me this. Two important things that he acknowledged. One was that asymptomatic infection is never the driver of an epidemic. People that are not symptomatic, infected or not, do not. They are not the main vectors in an epidemic. Now, I wish he would say that on national tv because that is not the impression that most people have. And the other important thing which this I know, that Dr. Chung sent me was an interview he gave, and I think, am I right, that it was with a news organization overseas?

I don't remember who it was with. It was. It was like virology today or something like that. Not something that the average person wakes up and flips to on their Right.

But they asked them directly about the issue of cycle threshold and how, you know, it's that correspondence between when PCR becomes positive, which cycle does it become positive and how does that correspond to infection. And he stated very, very explicitly that he feels. I think he said. Did he say 30 or 34, 35?

Well, essentially he started out saying beyond 35. And then he said, you know, 36, 37, 38, 39. These are all possible levels of cycle threshold that some of the tests in the United States are running at. And essentially he said beyond 35 is dead nucleotide period is what he said.

And so again, that needs to be like, why would he have that knowledge but not have that worked into our system of PCR testing? And in fact, I did a little looking around, and there is a really good summary article that looked at the correspondence between cycle threshold and infectivity. And I believe it's like between 13 and 15. When the CT is around 13 to 15, it is a very high correspondence, like 80%. I'm making a number up, but it's high to infectivity. By the time you get to 30 cycles or 30, 35. Forget 30 or 35, you're really. Actually you're not. You've lost quite a bit of infectious activity at that point. I'm some reason, I want to say 15% and then once you get above 35, it drops down to like 1 or 2%. So I mean, the fact is that if we really wanted PCR to be telling us about the high probability of infection, we would use a much lower number. Now the rationale is that, well, we can't risk letting somebody sneak through. And so we have to use these higher cycle thresholds so that we never let anybody think that they're not infected when they really are. That's understandable. But it also paints a very unfortunate picture of what's happening.

And especially when you have the primary virologist on the task force saying Beyond 35 is essentially dead, like not infectious anymore. And to go with what you were saying, I've seen two studies, one of which showed zero infectivity beyond 35. And the other one was around where you said around it started just dropping like exponentially after 30. And the other point, just to drive home that maybe some people aren't aware of who hadn't listened to your last discussion. When doctors get test results back, having run a PCR on a patient, they get a positive or a negative, they don't get told what the cycle threshold is. Apparently you can contact the lab and ask and might be able to get that information, but I don't know very many busy doctors that aren't thinking from this perspective that would go, that would do that. And that's everything to what we're trying to figure out. We want to know who's infectious. We want to know how many cycle thresholds it took to verify that they had any of this genetic material in their nasal passages or whatever. And none of that's being clarified. So all the cases, it's not to say that all the cases. I want to be clear about this because I'm very sensitive to anybody over taking, you know, taking beyond what I'm saying. I'm not saying that all these cases are fake or anything like that. It's just that we have zero idea how many of the cases we hear about on the news are truly infectious or not. And so transparency is like so necessary in the situation and we get zero of that.

That and the false positivity rate of the testing as well, which I've seen those numbers around 3 to 5%. I don't know if you guys have any clarity on that or I haven't seen three.

I've seen about 3%, 3%.

So you know, when you start then ramping up the testing, we've got all kinds of confusion. Okay. So that's one aspect that I really wanted to drive home for folks because there are major decisions being made around the globe on that test, which is right there. We've got rot full of issues, right? I mean, I went on the John Hopkins website just before the show just to kind of see, okay, what's conventional land talking about? I mean, they're saying when they look at the 50 states and I don't agree with everything that Johns Hopkins is putting out, but they're saying, you know, greater 25 to 39 states aren't collecting data in a usable fashion to make any rhyme or reason of the numbers.

That.

And it's like, what in the world is happening out there in that we're now talking about in Oregon we have this pause, a two week pause. So we're, you know, there are some consequences. This is not just like, oh, just two more weeks here folks, and you know, we can go kind of get stuff going again. There's like some serious significant health consequences for people that we're talking about beyond just the COVID crisis.

Right.

So I do want to bring those up. I want to look at first really some nuances on these numbers. So we've got it clear. Clear as mud, right? How about changing of definitions? This is something that I know that you both have written about over the last eight months around how they're just kind of changing the playing field. It kind of speaks to this Johns Hopkins data center as far as how they're analyzing the data. As you know, I just actually just recently saw the CDC is not going to report on annual flu cases this year because influenza, like illness mimics coronavirus. That was one of the threads that you all were writing on. And so I kind of chimed in with some of that data wondering on either of you any opinions on the testing? Basically definition changing on how we define the virus. What's this? You know, what is the positive kind of case? Like what actually is a coronavirus person versus a positive test?

Yeah, well, I mean, I'LL jump in right quick or I don't do anything right quick when I talk. But that's what we love about. So, you know, in saying, you know, the definition of the virus, it actually is quite shocking how we came to have this new virus identified. And just to briefly describe it, right. Once upon a time when you wanted to identify a virus, you had to isolate the virus. And there was a very, there's a very clear procedure for how that happened. So that ultimately you end up, after centrifuge and yada yada, you end up with a, you can take an electron microscope and see nothing but viral particles in the field. There are no cellular debris, no nothing else, just viral particles. That was viral isolation. So then if you were to sample nucleic acid out of that, you're only going to get viral nucleic acids. So they don't do that anymore. Since PCR came about and the way that this particular virus was identified as a novel virus was shocking to me because they had basically a soup of lots of different viruses from people that were sick. And they, they ran PCR and they subtracted out all the nucleic acid sequences that they could match up to something else. And then they were consistently having this 30,000 sequence strand showing up over and over. And it didn't match other stuff that they had. So they said, this is a new bio, this is the new viral sequence. They did not isolate that virus. It was never isolated. And in fact, when you read the initial publication on how they produced PCR as a test, as a diagnostic test when they first developed it, they say very explicitly in their write up that they developed that test without any access to the actual virus or viral isolate. They did not have a virus. They developed a test purely based on PCR sequences derived from non isolated anything. So when we're saying that people are PCR positive, it is a, it is, there's a little bit of an inferential ladder that you gotta climb in order to get from PCR positive to a particular coronavirus. Because that coronavirus was never isolated and to my knowledge has never been isolated. I've never seen an electron micrograph of only viral particles. Everyone that I've looked at has cellular debris in it. So if you extract nucleic acids from that, you cannot know where those nucleic acids came from.

And I would add to that, to me, there are two primary problems with that. Number one, you can have somebody with a different coronavirus in their respiratory passages. And what most people don't realize is that coronaviruses are the Second most common cause of the common cold in the human species these days, as far as I understand it. And so if you have enough overlap there with genetic material, there's a theoretical possibility that a PCR test could pick up on person with a different type of coronavirus and diagnose them with this coronavirus. And then secondly, again, the last I've read, people can have enough viral fragments left over after a true SARS CoV2 infection to test positive on a PCR for 90 days after being infective. So to me, the false positive question is a totally separate and very important issue. But even when you have somebody that legitimately tests like the test is accurate, so to speak, and it picks up on SARS CoV2 viral particles and amplifies them enough, my biggest problem is that many people can be properly diagnosed as having SARS CoV2 genetic material in their body, but improperly called a case or an infectious person. And that's, I mean, I'm sure you guys have seen the data on these college outbreaks, which I, you know, that drives me crazy that they use the term outbreak, which makes it sound like there's all these. I picture, you know, a movie in my mind of all these people sick all over the street. And these are not outbreaks. These are clusters of cases partially derived from literal pop up testing of healthy people who could have any mix of the two things I just said. So another type of virus or fragments of an old virus that they were infected with before that are no longer infectious or a false positive, any of those people get added to that case number that we see coming out of these colleges where people are being tested all over the place.

So was that the, like Brown University did that like 26,000 positive PCR tests, no hospitalizations.

I saw the data, I saw that somebody compiled of all the college cases that we've heard about was over 69,000.

Okay.

Cases. There was three hospitalizations from that and no deaths.

Yeah. Wow.

So, yeah, I just today was looking at a graph where it was showing the percent within each age group, the percent of positive cases, hospitalizations and deaths. And there was one other thing there, I forget, but basically almost all the new case, or the large majority of new cases are in young, which is of course is a headline. But the percent of deaths in, in fact, the median age of death continues to be. What did I see? It was 82 years old. I think that's the median age, meaning there are as many people under 82 as there are above 82 who have died, which is just a shocking number. And so the number of. It's like this complete. We were just saying there's like this use of the idea of a case to just give us all the impression that this is something very different than it actually is. It really? Yeah.

And it's important to always make note that none of us are saying this is a hoax or anything close to that. We just want clarity on what we're actually dealing with. And, and then we want a clarification that the response that we're having is appropriate to what we're dealing with. And I struggle to find any evidence of that, at least at this point in the whole process. Maybe early on when things were more severe.

No.

And unknown. It was unknown at the beginning, but there's a load of data coming in. It's what drives me nuts, is like, okay, now in science, somehow science, if you're pro science, you're now unquestioning. And it's like, I know you guys are reading these studies like you're going into the data sets, into how they formulated it. It's not just headline reading, which is, it's like mind numbing or boggling of how is this information not getting out, not getting to the decision makers to. So which gives me a good reminder to put a plug in for you all watching this. What the health. This is why I do this show. I get to talk to these brilliant guys here that are actually really being very responsible with reporting what they're seeing and reading. And it looks like we just lost our main guy. So my producer is gone. So yeah, we were just actually talking about censorship before this show. So perhaps the censors got on it. So there you go, Cameron. So on this, it really does make me think like, okay, what do we do with this information? There was a bit like at the beginning of the whole thing was like, okay, we kind of got censored as a community. And I know, Dr. Nye, you've moved on to new platforms. I've been encouraging folks to do the same thing. It is a real issue that is happening right now around censorship, which is very dangerous. So here it is. We've got two experts reading the data, sharing what they're finding. And we're not really finding the evidence for the draconian lockdowns, shutdowns, masks, social distancing, which I didn't even cover. Those two, they're such hot button topics. And we're gonna talk, I'd love in the kind of the last second half of our show, talk about the, you know, okay, so there is so much fear out there. What can we do about it? Like, we're calling into question the numbers. Like, yes, it's a real thing, it's a real virus. We all agree on that. But these numbers of, you know, the median age of death, like to lock down preschoolers and high schoolers and college kids, like, and even the elderly for that matter of, you know, really getting segmented and isolated. They're dying of loneliness at this point. Like we're seeing an acceleration of dementia states and I would say the death rate for all cause mortality. Now, I don't have that study. I was hoping that maybe you guys have come across some of those data points to suggest, like, hey, just by doing this shutdown, lockdown, like divide. I've got patients coming in, they're like in tears. Their Thanksgivings have been canceled because the whole family is afraid. Like, they don't want to kill grandma type of thing. And so there's like, they're not able to, you know, be in contact with their grandkids. They're not. You know, the whole social fabric of the nation is really so fragmented. So I'm wondering, like, what other numbers should we be looking at? Number one, like, how are you all framing this? Like, Dr. Nye, you've shared a couple of them and Dr. Chong as well, around there's hospitalization rate, there's I guess the death rate. Now this is with a big, big asterisk around. Like we're not.

You can't.

We just called in to question all of the numbers. But if we're just going to look at other numbers as well to show like, hey, this is a case demic. The case numbers are going up. This is not the pandemic that we did experience back in April.

I'll say two things and then let Greg say all the smart things. There's two things that I find really fascinating. One is what I do a lot is I do a lot of comparison of cases. Daily cases versus daily deaths in different locations around the world, different geographical areas and places that have been hit hard versus not so hard, places that lock down hard, places that didn't, etc. And one thing I see zero discussion with out there is if you. The ones I looked at today specifically were Sweden, New York, New Jersey, maybe one other place, I can't remember. But those we know are three places that got hammered at the beginning and had incredibly high rates of like, deaths per million of the population. And when you compare the graphs of their cases and their deaths per day. At the beginning, you know, back in April versus now, we see for cases, you see two humps, like the big hump and then this new big growth of cases. And then when you look at deaths, we see a big, like literally parallel hump of deaths per day that parallels the cases per day in April and then now, nothing like crickets. And still and early on, people were saying, oh, just wait for two more weeks when we're talking about Europe was exploding with cases, et cetera, and you're seeing cases go up in Spain, you're seeing cases go up in France as well as deaths. And yet in Sweden, still nothing is happening in the realm of deaths per day. That's beyond anything out of the ordinary. And, and so it's beyond the amount of time that could, that could, that you could use like a lag in reporting of deaths to explain that. It's just they. There's no increase in excess deaths happening there. And yet Spain, France locked down super hard and there's this big difference that nobody's talking about. And how can you explain that and what's going on? So I think that that's a huge part of all of this. As we're trying to explain things that we need to be looking at what's happening that's different in those places. I think there was a second thing, but I don't remember now, so. Go ahead, Greg, it'll come to you.

Let's see. Well, there's a. No, I. That's the point that you're making is one that I've noted as well. I mean, I've been watching this increasing disconnect between, between cases and deaths, and the graphs make it really evident. Another interesting point, I think is that is the sort of when you juxtapose initial hotspots back in April with what are now hotspots, they're really, it's quite telling. The places that had hot spots in April are not hot spotting. Now, if you talk about it by country. Well, Italy, well, they were hotspot then and now they are. But if you look at Italy, back then it was northern Italy and now it's southern Italy. So it kind of speaks to that idea that once you get it disseminated into a population, they have enhanced immunity. They're not getting double hotspotted. Now. I'm not saying that there are no repeat hotspots, but it is a pretty uncanny. When you look at what was hot then and what's hot now, they don't overlap very well. In fact, they're kind of mirror images in a lot of ways. So that's one thing that I would say. Dr. Adker, you brought up a couple of questions. You know, just things like masking and distancing and whatever. And two brief things that I would say about that. A very important study that just came out in Nature, which pointed, which found that people who wear cloth masks, meaning cotton, whether single or double layer, are producing more aerosolized particles than wearing no mask at all. Which is. That's kind of a big deal because pretty much everybody on the street or, you know, 80% of people are wearing cloth masks. So that was an important finding in that study. And the second important finding I thought was that if you just breathe through your nose, you admit the same amount of particles as if you're wearing an N95 mask. So just. Now say that again.

Say that again.

Yeah, so wearing, if. So just breathing through your nose. No mask, just nose breathing has the same amount of particles coming out of you as if you're wearing an N95 mask and talking or something, you know.

So like to add to that real quick, the ones with the cloth masks have more coming out of them than if you don't have a mask on.

Then no mask at all. Yeah. So anyway, those are kind of interesting things to know. Like if I'm standing in an elevator just with my mouth closed, because that's how I do things.

You don't just walk around with your mouth open.

I mean, the thing, you know, it's actually, it made me occur to me that actually there are lots of people now, because of obesity and just congestion and all that, who don't nose breathe anymore, who actually are people, have become mouth breather. And so anyway, so regarding masks, that seems interesting to me regarding social distancing. It was the center for Evidence Based Medicine out of Oxford that actually did a review on that, looked at all the evidence they could find about whether or not social distancing reduces spread of epidemics. They couldn't find it. They could not find any scientific justification for social distancing. Essentially all of the studies that are used to justify that are based on pcr, they're based on particulate in the air, and they can collect particulate and pcr, those particulates and PCR positive and therefore infectious. But the actual studies on it, there are no studies showing that social distancing is an effective way of reducing epidemic spread. Now that said, it's very well established that being in close contact with a symptomatic person for over 15 minutes is a high risk event. Stay social distance in that situation. But in terms of just, you know, being out and about there, it's not scientific to say that we should all be six feet away. You know, it's tragic. Now walking down the sidewalk and you can't even like smiling and say good morning to people because everybody's crossing the street and, oh, they're looking away.

I mean, it's shielding their kids.

Yes.

Yeah, totally.

It's really fascinating and sad actually to see that, like, even out hiking, I'm like, you're not just gonna walk into a plume of virus. Like, it just doesn't work that way. You're saying it's 15 minutes in close contact.

If I see somebody when I'm hiking, literally dive into the bushes, they're more likely to get poison oak, I think, than they are to get coronavirus.

I would agree with you.

And I have been denied more scratching of dogs ears walking on the sidewalk than ever in my life. It's tragic. Like, I love to say hi to dogs and everybody's like yanking their dog out of the way. Like, I'm gonna give it to their dog.

It could be on your hand, Dr. Chong. And like, give it to the dog. And then they lick their dog's ear.

Yeah.

And it's not even to make light of it. It's just using common sense and like. And not. It's so concerning to me to see how psychologically damaged we're getting, especially children, because, yeah, I know you guys know this. Below the age of seven, that's locked in their subconscious for life potentially, you.

Know, so, yeah, let's talk about that. So on some of the other repercussions of lockdown, you know what, what else are we seeing? I mean, there's some, like, suicide rates are going through the roof, depression, anxiety. I'm seeing acceleration in my elderly population with mild cognitive impairment, dementia. What have you come across?

I'll just go real quick. Most of what I see is more looking at research that other people are doing. And to me, the most concerning things I've seen are suicides, increased rate of death from Alzheimer's and cognitive decline, and then definitely delayed cancer Diagnosis and treatment is something that's come up a number of times in different discussions, studies I've seen, et cetera. I know that cardiovascular disease rates went up temporarily, but they seem to have normalized the last I heard. But, but the expanding effect, especially of the problem with cancer diagnoses and delayed screenings and things like that, is massive and is predicted to just continue to grow for a period of time. And it's unstoppable because we already sort of started this snowball effect. And then aside from all that, the starvation that's going up around the world is unfathomable as a result of countries locking down and changing and shipping food and different things like that, and scarcity that pops up and populations of people that have, you know, they're on the cusp of being going hungry already. It's. It's hard to really process.

Yeah. So my, you know, my. My comment on this again, and I'm in the same place that really, this is all just reading, you know, reading the various studies and research that I can find on it at a global level. You know, the most shocking that I read, and I've posted about this a few times for people that have read that stuff, the World bank, their. Their best estimate is that in 2020 alone, globally, there will be an additional 74 million deaths due to lockdown. So that's surplus due to lockdown. And their worst case scenario is that there will be an additional 124 million deaths due to lockdown in 2020 alone. That's the World Bank's estimate, which is. I mean, we just can't really fathom those numbers and the human misery that is associated with those numbers.

No, that's the. Like, the cure is so much worse than the illness.

Yeah, I mean. Yeah, that's exactly right. And then there was another. Was there another study that said, I'm gonna mess it up, but it was a study about how many people are being shifted into extreme poverty. And it was another shocking. That one shocking number.

It was 8 million people in the last three months in the United States.

In the United States, yeah. And I mean, extreme poverty, line of poverty, extreme. It's really shocking. And I was thinking there was a one on a global level, it was some hundred million. Something globally shifted into extreme poverty. And the definition of extreme poverty that was used, this is, I think, a UN study that is a buying power of less than $1.90 a day, the equivalent of $1.90 per day. And so, I mean, it was just. I know it was over 100 million people who were being pushed into that level of poverty just by what's happening, by the lockdown, by the response to what, you know, to Covid. So, I mean, on so many different levels, globally, it really is exactly that. It is. The treatment is so much worse than the disease process itself. And to then segue into, well, what are our Options for not becoming ill. And that's actually quite well established at this point. I was really psyched to see that in England. They actually made it a national thing that they're going to supplement the elderly people in assisted care and the critically ill with vitamin D, which is brilliant. Of course.

I think that sane public policy, I mean, that's kind of what we have been saying from the beginning. Like this is absurd. Like you're saying there's nothing to do but wait at home for a vaccine that is not about public health or safety or saving lives. And that this is the part, like folks out there listening, viewing this. This is what the health. Please share this information. Like this is the game changer, like it's time to get the information out to us all. Like vitamin D. I mean. Yeah, so what do you got? Other. Other things or more on vitamin D? Because there is a lot to say there.

Well, I mean, I'll make a brief comment. Yeah, Vitamin D. There have been a handful of intervention studies and they're all extremely promising. Another intervention study that was shocking to me was, and I'm forgetting the number of people that were involved. 50 something. But basically it was COVID patients. Every one of them, upon entry into the hospital, they gave them a supplement that contained three nutrients. It contained vitamin D at. What was it, like 400 IU. Some very small. It was very small. They gave them a vitamin B12 at 50 micrograms, which is like homeopathic vitamin B12. And they gave them. What was the other one?

Magnesium.

Magnesium, yeah. And magnesium. The dose on that was like 150 milligrams.

Under the RDA.

Yeah. Basically trivial amounts of these nutrients. But even those trivial amounts of nutrients dropped the rate of people becoming critically ill and dying by. I wish I remember the exact number, but it dropped.

92. 92%.

Thank you.

92%.

And all they did was a single dose of these free nutrients and that was it. I mean, it's shocking, shocking, shocking stuff.

Not only are they not doing that, people didn't even know. Nobody's ever even heard of that study. That should have been front page news everywhere. You don't have to die of COVID Take some nutrients. Yeah. And I will also add. You know the thing I keep hearing time and again from true experts discussing this. Not. No offense to you guys, but like the people whose jobs it is.

Yeah.

The decision makers, high level epidemiology, these people. What, what is most shocking to people like that is that this is not how public health is done. We never Ever go after an illness in a vacuum without any consideration for any other aspects of public health? It's never been done before and it's not, it's not. Public health is not designed to work that way. They don't make, they're not supposed to. Supposed to make any decisions, especially major ones like we're making, without a full assessment and consideration of all of the different ramifications that could possibly come of that. And that's not being done at all. It wasn't done the first time around. We've now had eight months to look at all of the things, and now we're looking at making similar decisions again, in spite of the growing evidence that we have of all of the ramifications out there. Then the other thing I find fascinating. I'm not sure if I talked to you about this or not, Greg, but I saw a report that was created in 2015 or so, and it was a pandemic response report, I believe, from the cdc, essentially guidelines going over different degrees of severity of a pandemic and then what type of policy responses we would have based on that degree of severity. And it was five levels of severity. And the fifth most intense severe level of severity was comparative to the numbers that we saw with the Spanish flu. So people dying at the rates that we saw with the Spanish flu, which is obviously, no one would argue, way higher than we were getting with COVID 19. And the policy responses to that were less stringent than we are doing with COVID 19. And that it's like that. It's like they just took that guideline and just tossed it out the window and went. And I, you know, I don't know how else to explain something like that. Like, what is the reason behind that? That is the thing that's driving me personally crazy each day is why. Why is this happening? There's enough evidence to show that we are making some apparently insane decisions. And I don't see any explanation as to why we're doing these things. People out there have all of their own conspiratorial things that they might come up with. And I don't like to get into things like that. I like to just clarify things and trust in the goodness of people. And I just don't. I can't come up with logical reasons for that. So I wanted to get that in because I couldn't believe it when I was reading that type of information.

So, yeah, I think, you know, I think it seems to me, and I haven't done any kind of historical look at this, but this is so much is being driven by projections in this versus what I recall in the past. And the example that is most prominent for me, which I had just been reading about, I made a mental note, actually a physical note back on September 23rd, because that's when it was announced that we crossed that grim mile mark of 200,000 cases. And at that time there were multiple news sources saying that experts predict that we will have an additional 150,000 cases in three months. So we had just crossed 200,000, so we were going to be at 350,000 in three months. That was the projection. And in fact, Biden at the Democratic. The first debate, maybe the second one. Yeah, it must have been the second one. He said there will be additional 200,000 cases by the end of the year. I think he kind of made that number up. But anyway, so I just recently. So we're now more than halfway to the three month mark from when we had 200,000 cases. And which means that we should be somewhere around 75,000 cases because we're halfway there. Actually, we have 40,000 cases, which is tragic, but it's 35,000 cases less than were predicted by this point, which is.

Just to clarify, you're talking deaths.

I'm talking about. Oh, deaths, yeah. Have I been saying cases? Crap. Yeah, I meant to. I meant to be saying deaths. And so once again, a project, you know, like there was all this remorse about, oh, the projections were so wrong at the beginning and we're still doing it, just like you were just saying, like, we're doing the same thing, we're making the same mistakes. Again, why would we. Why are we doing that? Like there's something ain't right about it all.

I would agree. I mean, it sounds very naturopathic of actually asking the question why? And unfortunately, as we know in medicine, sometimes we never get that answer. But it is very valid to ask it.

Right.

So we've got to be asking why? And none of the regulations make any rational sense. I know there's like the choir that has bought on to the mandates and like self policing and, you know, like you walk in line here and it just goes to show what propaganda machine will do as far as you utter the same words over and over again and then you start to believe it as truth. And we're saying we're reading the research and the data isn't supporting what reality is showing us.

Right.

I mean, I think we can all agree on that.

Yeah.

And so, you know, I remember on Our first podcast Dr. Nye, we talked about hydrochloroquinolone as a, as a treatment.

Yeah.

And I got a lot of blowback from my listeners and folks on my email list of saying, when did you become a Trump supporter? And it was the first time that it really dawned on me, like this thing has become so politicized in that I said, I don't know what you're talking about. We're reading the research. We're looking in a pandemic of helping people now. And I've seen you have recently posted. There's more and more evidence to support it as a treatment even to this day. You bring it up and people say that's been disproven. You're a Trumper. And it's like, you know, what happened to critical thinking here in this country and this nation? And, you know, I think a component is the algorithms and censorship and, you know, we kind of get put into these echo chambers and manipulated. Now, I'm not saying everybody is in that case, but what I'm looking for is an actual discussion on helping people. I mean, that's why the three of us got into medicine. That's why I called you guys in on talking about this because you have been putting out some of the most educated discussions around the topic. One, I'm wondering if you all have experienced some blowback on your posting on this topic because it is so politicized. And then two, I want to end with some hope on there. I mean, you did really drop that big one there on the hospitalization, on really micronutrients causing a 92% reduction of the death rate of people with COVID positive symptomatic cases. But so one curious on what your experiences have been with posting being very vocal around this information because it's not. This is not popular belief, but it is the science.

Yeah.

I'll say. I've had an interesting combination of two extremes where I've had a lot of debates, more than I, much more than I would prefer to have with, you know, and I will start by just saying everybody on every angle of this I know is a caring person that just wants everybody to be healthy and safe and whatever. But they, for whatever their own personal reasons, they come at it from different angles. And so I've had some, some pretty harsh debates. And, you know, I think I might have been asked about being a Trump supporter at least once or twice just for questioning any of this, as if that's like the worst insult you can have, but whatever. And then, but at the same Time. On the other end of the spectrum, I've also had the pleasure of having multiple people reach out to me directly to say how much they appreciate the information that I'm helping provide as much as little as I can, you know, and just helping them sort of keep a more logical and broad perspective on things, not go crazy and be able to feel safe and discussing things and that type of thing. So it's been an interesting experience. Awesome.

Yeah, my, Well, I mean when I was over on that other platform, it was, I mean that, I mean I had a lot of good conversations and but it is much, I mean Facebook is just dramatically more combative and insulting and all that. And so I'm now all my social media is on MeWe and I have found the discussions, even with people that are disagreeing with me are so much more respectful. And it's just a, it really, I like it much better. I have had a few people, you know, come at me with, you know, I'm, you know, accusing me all kinds of like beliefs that I don't have. So yes, it has like the science and the politics have become so intertwined that for many people they can't, they can't untangle them. And you know, I don't really care who is endorsing any given scientific opinion. That's not my interest. Like if, if Trump happens to be promoting something that is a good idea, then it's like a coincidence. Yeah. Then I am all behind Trump. I'm not, I don't give a crap who endorsing good ideas.

Well, what you are, is you're behind the idea, whoever it's coming.

Right? Yeah, that's, I mean it's just idea.

It's the pro idea platform.

Yes.

And I will say the classic thing I've seen as well is people, if I share something, people instantly start to tear down the platform that I'm that it's coming from versus the information that I'm actually sharing. And so apparently to this day I still don't know what QAnon is, but apparently I'm a card carrying member according to some people or they think I am.

Right.

Right.

So it's, and it's all based. And I made the mistake early on sometimes of sharing something from a website or whatever that I never normally might have looked at ever and didn't even know it was like a hardcore this or that politicized website. But they were, for whatever reason that side of things has had the more, more willingness to question some of these things. And so now I always do my best to just go to the study that they're talking about or whatever and just keep that whole issue out of it. Because it's not an issue for me, but it is for some people.

You guys, thank you so much for coming on to the show. I really appreciate it. There is so much more to unpack, but we gotta go. Everybody out there listening. This is what the health we are here Tuesdays from 2 to 3 Pacific Standard Time. Please write us a review. Share this with two or three people that you know need to get this information because you're not getting it anywhere else. Thank you all for tuning in. Awesome. Thank you, guys.

Thanks.

Yeah, man.