Despite the fact that many critical care specialists are using treatment protocols that differ from standard of care, information about natural therapeutics in particular are still being suppressed by the media and is not received by critical care physicians
Five critical care physicians have formed the Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care Working Group (FLCCC). The group has developed a highly effective treatment protocol known as MATH+
Of the more than 100 hospitalized COVID-19 patients treated with the MATH+ protocol as of mid-April, only two died. Both were in their 80s and had advanced chronic medical conditions
The protocols call for the use of intravenous methylprednisolone, vitamin C and subcutaneous heparin within six hours of admission into the hospital, along with high-flow nasal oxygen. Optional additions include thiamine, zinc and vitamin D
COVID-19 kills by triggering hyperinflammation, hypercoagulation and hypoxia. The MATH+ protocol addresses these three core pathological processes
“Why is success in critical care being ignored?” the Alliance for Natural Health rightly asks.1 The organization claims “much more could be done to save lives” if critical care protocols were to take into account what critical care doctors are finding in practice. A May 14, 2020, article reads, in part:2
“After around 8 weeks in lockdown and 3 months since the spectre of Covid-19 loomed large in our media headlines, why is it that a team of frontline critical (intensive) care doctors in the USA who have delivered close to 100% survival with their unique protocol being roundly ignored?
Wouldn’t you think that hospitals and governments would be biting their hands off to get a hold of their protocol? Or clamoring for more information and training to understand why their own outcomes from standard care fall so far short, delivering around just 50% survival in most critical care settings? …
It’s now very clear that the outcomes among the very seriously ill patients in critical care units (also referred to as ICU [intensive care units]/ITU [intensive therapy units] in the UK) are being used to inform lockdown (or lock up!) strategy and keep the fear levels sufficiently high to ensure citizen compliance …
Why is there such widespread censorship of anything but the party line by online platforms which lack sufficient expertise to adjudicate on matters of science and medicine?
The public-facing narrative continues to profess that there is nothing you can do to support your immune system, there is nothing in the natural arsenal for Covid-19 … social distancing must be maintained at all times and that the only cure for this terrifying infection will magically come from a vaccine created at warp speed.
When you add these untruths to the plans being rolled out for ramping up citizen surveillance through test, track and trace, the erosion of our rights and freedoms through the emergency coronavirus legislation, the destruction of economies and the forced reliance of so many on the state for survival handouts, you realize how much we might lose whilst much of the world cowers behind closed doors in fear.”
Front-Line Critical Care Working Group
As noted by the Alliance for Natural Health, despite the fact that “the obstacle course posed by the peer review process to scientific publication has been removed,” and despite many critical care specialists using treatment protocols that differ from standard of care, information about natural therapeutics in particular are still being suppressed by the media and is not received by those who need it most — critical care physicians.
“We all need to be asking why. After all, people are dying. How would it make relatives feel if it was found that their loved one had died needlessly just because the doctors who were having greatest success were not being listened to and their innovative protocols had been systematically ignored?” Alliance for Natural Health states.3
According to the article, efforts by Dr. Pierre Kory — medical director at the Trauma & Life Support Center and a faculty member in the Division of Allergy, Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine in the Department of Medicine at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health — to share the Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care Working Group’s4 (FLCCC) successes with other health care professionals have so far come to naught.
Kory was one of five doctors participating in a May 6, 2020, roundtable discussion5 on COVID-19 with ranking senate committee member Gary Peters, D-Mich. In his testimony, Kory states, in part:6
“I want to start by saying that I am part of a group of physicians which include several of the most highly published and well-known critical care experts in the country and world (Drs. Paul Marik, Umberto Meduri, Joseph Varon and José Iglesias). In response to the COVID crisis we formed the Front-Line Critical Care Working group …
Members of our group have now treated in excess of 100 hospitalized patients with our treatment protocol. Nearly all survived. The two that died were in their 80s and had advanced chronic medical conditions.
None of the patients have had long stays on the ventilator nor become ventilator dependent. The patients generally have a short hospital stay and are discharged in good health …
Our protocol has been out over four weeks. It is not unique, in fact, we are not alone in what we propose or have been trying … In fact, we are seeing an increasing number of similar protocols with nearly identical therapeutics come out from various institutions and countries, including the Italian guidelines, Chinese guidelines, Yale protocol, Montefiore protocol and others.
We are doctors, trained to diagnose and treat illness, we are experts in our field with decades of experience and hundreds of publications … We have clearly devised an effective treatment for use, prior to the publication of randomized controlled trials.
Those trials are critical for sure, as they will help us further refine and/or perfect our treatment doses, durations, and indications, but waiting for the perfect is and will be the enemy of the good, which we are already achieving … We just want to save lives, and we know how to do it.”
COVID-19 Early Intervention Protocol
According to Kory, the FLCCCs MATH+ protocol has been delivered to the White House on four occasions, yet no interest has been shown. Worse, he says they continue to be stonewalled by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and the National Institute for Health. Why?
Isn’t saving lives, right now, and by any means possible, more important than pushing for a vaccine? If the MATH+ protocol works with near-100% effectiveness, a vaccine may not even be necessary. The MATH+ protocol gets its name from:
Intravenous Methylprednisolone
High-dose intravenous Ascorbic acid
Plus optional treatments Thiamine, zinc and vitamin D
Full dose low molecular weight Heparin
Kory’s testimony transcript reviews and summarizes the MATH+ protocol, and explains why the timing of the treatment is so important. As explained by Kory, there are two distinct yet overlapping phases of COVID-19 infection.
Phase 1 is the viral replication phase. Typically, patients will only experience mild symptoms, if any, during this phase. At this time, it’s important to focus on antiviral therapies.
In Phase 2, the hyperinflammatory immune response sets in, which can result in organ failures (lungs, brain, heart and kidneys). The MATH+ protocol is designed to treat this active phase, but it needs to be administered early enough.
The MATH+ Protocol
The MATH+ protocol7 calls for the use of three medicines, all of which need to be started within six hours of hospital admission:
Intravenous methylprednisolone, to suppress the immune system and prevent organ damage from cytokine storms — For mild hypoxia, 40 milligrams (mg) daily until off oxygen; moderate to severe illness, 80 mg bolus followed by 20 mg per day for seven days. On Day 8, switch to oral prednisone and taper down over the next six days.
Intravenous ascorbic acid (vitamin C), to control inflammation and prevent the development of leaky blood vessels in the lungs — 3 grams/100 ml every six hours for up to seven days.
Subcutaneous heparin (enoxaparin), to thin the blood and prevent blood clots — For mild to moderate illness, 40 mg to 60 mg daily until discharged.
Optional additions include thiamine, zinc and vitamin D. In addition to these medications, the protocol calls for high-flow nasal oxygen to avoid mechanical ventilation, “which itself damages the lungs and is associated with a mortality rate approaching nearly 90% in some centers,” Kory notes.8
Together, this approach addresses the three core pathological processes seen in COVID-19, namely hyperinflammation, hypercoagulability of the blood, and hypoxia (shortness of breath due to low oxygenation).
COVID-19 Should Not Be Treated as ARDS
In the video, Dr. Paul Marik points out that it’s crucial for doctors to treat each patient as an individual case, as COVID-19 is not conventional acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS).
If the patient is assumed to have ARDS and placed on a ventilator, you’re likely going to damage their lungs. Indeed, research has now shown that patients placed on mechanical ventilation have far higher mortality rates than patients who are not ventilated. While not discussed here, some doctors are also incorporating hyperbaric oxygen treatment in lieu of ventilation, with great success.
The reason for this is because the primary problem is inflammation, not fluid in the lungs. So, Marik says, they need anti-inflammatory drugs. “It’s not the virus that is hurting the host, it’s the acute inflammatory dysregulated response,” he says. “That’s why you need to use vitamin C and steroids.” He points out that steroids play a crucial role, as it creates synergy with vitamin C.
COVID-19 patients also have a hypercoagulation problem, so they need anticoagulants. In addition to using the proper medication, they must also be treated early. “You have to intervene early and aggressively to prevent them from deteriorating,” Marik says.
Methylprednisolone May Be a Crucial Component
Kory expresses concerns over the fact that health organizations around the world are warning doctors against the use of corticosteroids, calling this a “tragic error“9 as “COVID-19 is a steroid-responsive disease.”10 In his testimony, he points out:11
“Sorin Draghici, CEO of Advaita Bioinformatics, just reported12 that their incredibly sophisticated Artificial Intelligence platform called iPathwayGuide, using cultured human cell lines infected with COVID-19, is able to map all the human genes which are activated by this virus …
Note almost all the activated genes are those that express triggers of inflammation. With this knowledge of the specific COVID inflammatory gene activation combined with knowledge of the gene suppression activity of all known medicines they were able to match the most effective drug for COVID-19 human gene suppression, and that drug is methylprednisolone.
This must be recognized, as the ability of other corticosteroids to control inflammation in COVID-19 was much less impactful. This is, we believe, an absolutely critical and historic finding. Many centers are using similar but less effective agents such as dexamethasone or prednisone.”
As noted by Kory in his senate testimony, Marik, chief of pulmonary and critical care medicine at the Eastern Virginia Medical School in Norfolk, Virginia, is a member of the FLCCC.13 You may recall that Marik was the one who in 2017 announced he had developed an extraordinarily effective treatment against sepsis.
Marik’s sepsis protocol also calls for intravenous vitamin C and a steroid, in this case hydrocortisone, along with thiamine. I for one am not surprised that the two protocols are so similar, seeing how sepsis is also a major cause of death in severe COVID-19 cases.
Safe and Effective Treatments Must Not Be Ignored
As noted by Marik in the video, COVID-19 is not regular ARDS and should not be treated as such. What kills people with COVID-19 is the inflammation, and steroids in combination with vitamin C work synergistically together to control and regulate that inflammation. The heparin, meanwhile, addresses the hypercoagulation that causes blood clots, which is a unique feature of COVID-19. As for the “lack of studies” supporting their protocol, FLCCC notes:14
“A number of official guidelines, such as those of the WHO and several other U.S. agencies, recommend limiting treatment for … critically ill patients to ‘supportive care only’ — and to allow the therapies described here to be studied in randomized controlled trials where half of the patients would receive placebo and where the results would come in months or years.
Our physicians agree that while a randomized controlled trial (RCT), under normal circumstances, might be considered, the early provisions of MATH+, which must be given within hours of critical illness, would inevitably be delayed by such a study design, rendering the validity of the RCT questionable.
Furthermore, while the results of an RCT would not be available for months or more, well-designed observational studies of the protocol could yield timely feedback during this pandemic, to improve the treatment process much more quickly.”
I believe this information needs to be shared far and wide, if we are to prevent more people from dying unnecessarily. More and more, as doctors are starting to speak openly about their clinical findings, we’re seeing that there are quite a few different ways to tackle this illness without novel antivirals or vaccines, using older, inexpensive and readily available medications that are already known to be safe.
Recently, a Colossal study came out in the Lancet throwing cold water on Hydroxychlorquine (HCQ) and chloroquine as treatments for COVID-19. It seems the minute President Trump endorsed it, there has been a concerted effort to prove it causes harm, despite it being used safely – even over the counter for decades. According to the Lancet study, those receiving either drug were about twice as likely to die compared to controls.
This study didn’t surprise me. In fact, I was expecting it. The CDC will stop at nothing to malign any tests or treatments that compete with their own patented products. I’ve written about this also occurring with Lyme disease.
The CDC wants you to forget all about HCQ like yesterday’s stale bread – just like it wants doctors to fear using extended antibiotic therapy for Lyme patients.
Despite the full-press attack, Sixty five percent of surveyed U.S. doctors stated they would give these drugs to their own family for COVID-19. HCQ was chosen as the most effective therapy amongst COVID-19 treaters from a list of 15 options (37% of COVID-19 treaters) 75% in Spain, 53% Italy, 44% in China, 43% in Brazil, 29% in France, 23% in the U.S. and 13% in the U.K.
So what gives? Why the dissonance?
I posted this before but our health “authorities,” including most researchers, have severe conflicts of interest. Nine of the nineteen experts on the COVID-19 treatment panel have financial interests with Gilead Science, the manufacturer of the anti-viral Remdesivir which bombed for Ebola but now has been dug out of the drug graveyard and repurposed for COVID-19 to reclaim lost profits. Interestingly, due to Dr. Anthony Fauci announcing early results, prior to peer-review, of ONE clinical trial using remdesivir for COVID-19, it got rapid EUA, while HCQ required two months from reports of successful use in China and South Korea to get the March 28 FDA EUA for use in hospitalized COVID-19 patients.
See the overt favoritism here?
Word of the large HCQ study is getting out and doctors are writing in. In fact, one doctor has stated:
“I am concerned that more desperately needed clinical trials may be stopped as a result of this study.” Matthew Spinelli, MD, of University of California San Francisco
And, in fact, that’s exactly what has happened. The WHO just halted a HCQ study due to the Lancet article.
Just today the scientific journal issued a correction due to 10 major concerns about statistical analysis and data integrity raised by more than 100 scientists and medical professionals. The following quotes come from the open letter to the study authors and the editor of Lancet:
“A request to the authors for information on the contributing centres was denied. Data from Australia are not compatible with government reports. Surgisphere have since stated this was an error of classification of one hospital from Asia. This indicates the need for further error checking throughout the database,” they added.
“The authors have not adhered to standard practices in the machine learning and statistics community. They have not released their code or data,” the letter stated.
Another new article states that Hydroxychloroquine+azithromycin has been widely misrepresented in both clinical reports and public media. Five studies, including two controlled clinical trials, have demonstrated significant major outpatient treatment efficacy. The article states that HCQ and azithromycin
“has been used as standard-of-care in more than 300,000 older adults with multicomorbidities, with estimated proportion diagnosed with cardiac arrhythmias attributable to the medications 47/100,000 users, of which estimated mortality is <20%, 9/100,000 users, compared to the 10,000 Americans now dying each week. These medications need to be widely available and promoted immediately for physicians to prescribe.”
Chris Newton, Research Director CIMMBER (Center for Immuno-Metabolism, Microbiome and Bio-Energetic Research), did a brief analysis of the Lancet paper in comparison to the French study done in early May. Excerpt:
Comparing an aggregate of numerous centres around the world with one specialist treatment centre (Marseille) has given startlingly different results.
Whilst the Lancet paper suggests that the severity of cases on initial treatment was similar to the Marseille study, the fatality rate of 9.3% for the aggregate control group seems high for what one would conclude from baseline disease severity, as a low overall NEWS score. One might suspect these patients were rather more ill than these data suggest. Hydroxychloroquine and a macrolide will have most effect and be far less toxic in early disease before the phase of hyper-inflammation.
To cause cardiac arrhythmia to the extent indicated in the Lancet study, one can only assume that not nearly enough attention was paid to the fundamentals of electrolyte balance or, for some reason, the blood drug concentrations were considerably higher than in the Marseille study.
It would be absolutely imperative to know the outcomes for non-treated COVID-19 patients in centres from which treatment (chloroquine/HCQ/macrolide) results were obtained.
Newton then went further and wrote a longer opinion piece on the results that will hopefully be published soon: BMJOPINION_LancetStudy. In short, the Lancet study uses something called a qSOFAscore which has to do with disease severity utilizing criteria of low blood pressure, high respiratory rate, and altered mentation. The presence of 2 or more qSOFA points was associated with a greater risk of death.
Important excerpts:
Around 46% of the control group with a qSOFA score greater than 1 were on mechanical ventilation and all of the high risk patients in the treatment groups were on mechanical ventilation. Looking at deaths, in the treatment groups, these were largely accounted for by being in the category, ‘on mechanical ventilation’, independent of treatment status.
Which is what has been noted before about COVID-19 mortality. Nearly 90% of those on ventilators die.
Newton’s Conclusion:
From this archival study of patients from 671 hospital in 6 continents, it isnot possible to assign any firm conclusion regarding the effect of treatment as a sole variable, independent of the use of mechanical ventilation. Indeed these data for the control group indicate that there were some deaths not accounted for ‘by mechanical ventilation’. These may have been deaths of patients who unfortunately fell outside the criteria for mechanical ventilation, despite the extent of their symptoms.
So we cannot conclude that chloroquine, HCQ without or with a macrolide results in worse prognosis for COVID-19. All we can conclude is that severe disease progression has accounted for the majority of deaths.
We also cannot assign any significance for arrhythmia in association with the treatment groups for exactly the same reasons. The QT interval was not measured and so the arrhythmia remained non-specific and most probably disease-related.
And the most important point for clinicians:
From the growing number of laboratory and clinical studies, the medical profession and particularly those working in hospital setting, should take note that for HCQ to be effective, it should be administered early in the disease process. The information currently available is that HCQ blocks SARS-CoV-2 uptake by cells and by interfering with autophagy (lysosomal function), it may prevent the down-regulation of MHC-1 receptors, allowing better antiviral surveillance by cytotoxic T cells. It is not appropriate to use HCQ when the cytokine storm of hyperinflammation is in full flight. Here a powerful anti-inflammatory combination should be used, such as that described in the MATH+ protocol.
This crucial information about using HCQ early on when the COVID-19 virus is multiplying has also been given before, but obviously not considered in the Lancet study.
Another study on veterans has been used to malign HCQ as well, even though it hasn’t been peer-reviewed. The study also states HCQ causes increased mortality. There were also many problems with this study as well, and Dr. Ridier Raoult refutes it soundly.
There’s a reason why many doctors are supporting the usage of HCQ. Numerous studies show its effectiveness. Dr. Zelenko, a New York doctor, has successfully treated 1,450 COVID-19 patients with a 99% success rate using a cocktail of hydroxychloroquine, Zinc Sulfate and Azithromycin.
One thing’s for sure – HCQ is a political hot button. This has also been the case with Lyme/MSIDS treatment for over 40 years.
The reliance upon upon government funding for research has been tainting study outcomes for years, which is also a similar refrain between COVID-19 and Lyme disease.
Unless something changes, science has become little more than government propaganda.
Please remember that Dr. Fauci is behind the antibody testing fiasco, sits on the Gates’ Global Vaccine Action Plan council, is directly involved with the continuing denial of Lyme disease, and is in charge of doling out government research grants .Every researcher needing grants is essentially courting Dr. Fauci. All four study authors of the Lancet HCQ article have dealings with Dr. Fauci and receive NIH grants for their research.
In 2003, when the SARS-CoV virus was discovered, several institutions were quick to unilaterally file patent applications for the total or partial sequence of the coronavirus genome. Patent applications are published 18 months after they have been filed. During that period the application is confidential to the patent office. This means news of a Wuhan coronavirus patent will not be disclosed until after January 2021. More will become clear when that information becomes available. Here is what is currently known:
Sapan S Desai is Chief of NAID’s Laboratory of Malaria and Vector Research and has inventions and patents in connection with the U.S. government. He is the founder of Surgisphere Corporation. Surgisphere completed a statistical review of the HCQ manuscript.
Mandeep R Mehra receives significant funding from NIH.
Amit N Patel, also receives NIH funding and has numerous patents and inventions.
Unfortunately, science has been hijacked and patients and the doctors who treat them are the ones who suffer.
Those in public health should not be allowed to own patents and inventions, have conflicts of interest with pharmaceutical companies, and then turn around and set public health policy.
Dr. Popper, within the video, says there’s so much lying and misrepresentation going on that it takes a great amount of time to dig out the facts and separate fact from fiction.
This complete discordant information is confusing to the public and has caused a great deal of angst.
PAMELA A.POPPER, PhD, is President Wellness Forum Health,
serves on the Physician’s Steering Committee and the President’s Board for the Physicians’ Committee for Responsible Medicine in Washington D.C. Pam was one of the health care professionals involved in the famed Sacramento Food Bank Project, in which economically disadvantaged people were shown how to reverse their diseases and eliminate medications with diet.
Pam is also a public policy expert, and continually works toward changing laws that interfere with patients’ right to choose their health provider and method of care. She has testified in front of legislative committees on numerous occasions, and has testified twice in front of the USDA’s Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee.
Pam is a straight-talking professional who is not afraid to criticize national health organizations, government agencies, medical professionals, pharmaceutical companies, agricultural organizations and manufacturing companies, many of whom have agendas and priorities that interfere with distributing truthful information and promoting public health.
The dangerousness of Covid-19 was overestimated: probably at no point did the danger posed by the new virus go beyond the normal level.
The people who die from Corona are essentially those who would statistically die this year, because they have reached the end of their lives and their weakened bodies can no longer cope with any random everyday stress (including the approximately 150 viruses currently in circulation).
Worldwide, within a quarter of a year, there has been no more than 250,000 deaths from Covid-19, compared to 1.5 million deaths [25,100 in Germany] during the influenza wave 2017/18.
The danger is obviously no greater than that of many other viruses. There is no evidence that this was more than a false alarm.
A reproach could go along these lines: During the Corona crisis the State has proved itself as one of the biggest producers of Fake News.
If you find yourself getting really upset and stressed out with others who have a different stance on issues surrounding COVID-19 than you do, this will really help. ZDoggMD talks about psychologist Jonathan Haidt’s work presented in his book, “Elephant and Rider.” In it, there are four moral taste buds that depending upon your inner leaning will direct your decision making. They are:
Care vs Harm
Fairness vs Cheating
Loyalty vs Betrayal
Liberty vs Oppression
Authority vs Subversion
Sanctity vs Degradation
Understanding these taste buds is the first step in rising above conflict. This does not mean you won’t have strong opinions on subjects. It doesn’t mean you are even going to change your mind on an issue. What it means is it will help you understand others better to be able to have civilized discussions about important topics and not take it personally. He particularly points out that the media, including social media, is geared to weaponize our differences and purposely stir them up. Our goals need to change from “getting points” or “likes” to having meaningful dialogue and relationships.
BTW: I disagree with him on the best way to get immunity. Considering there are serious side-effects to vaccines that can cause serious harm, I fully believe that acquiring immunity naturally by being exposed to germs and viruses is best.
The Moral Matrix: Why We Are So Divided Over COVID-19
Transcript:
So, how many of you guys have just fricking had it with the amount of conflict that is going on because of COVID-19?
So, recall: COVID-19 becomes a thing. The next thing you know, within seconds it’s deeply politicized. So, family members are at each other’s throats. Everyone online is hating everyone else. Are masks good or are they the devil? Is lockdown good? Is it a disaster? Does the economy matter? Do people matter? Is there a difference? All these questions we see all the time, it’s polarized across the cable news networks, which are designed to polarize us, and in social media, which is designed to polarize us.
And so what I wanna talk about today is — why is it that good people on different sides of these issues can continue to be good people doing what they think is right while hating the other side and villainizing them? And how we can transcend this to actually be better citizens, more productive, less angry, and actually have debates instead of shutting down debates saying, OK, let’s actually talk about this. Because we’re all gonna assume that we’re coming from a place where we wanna do good in the world.
Now, there are always exceptions on the fringes to that. So, I’ll just put that out there right now that you’ll have psychopaths, you’ll have extremists who are so entrenched that you cannot reach them.
But in general, most Americans just really want what’s best for their families, their communities, and their country, right? Can we agree on that?
So, if we believe that, let’s start with a basic premise.
Jonathan Haidt, who’s a psychologist, quite a famous guy, recently did another Sam Harris podcast episode. I cite his work of “Elephant and Rider,” elephant being our unconscious emotional mind and rider being our conscious strategizing, planning mind that’s much smaller and newer to the scene.
Well, it turns out humans are not rational creatures. We are emotional, moralizing creatures. What that means is there’s lots of evidence, and he lays this out in his book, “The Righteous Mind,” that humans are actually born with a kind of moral sense, a moral matrix. And he posits that actually all humans pretty much have a similar palette or taste buds for morality that are like five or six different things. And I’m just going to pull up your comments here and on my laptop so I have them while we’re talking. Excellent, there we go.
And these are the following, so, one sense of morality that we have is around care versus harm. So, do we care and show compassion for fellow people? And how far does that compassion extend? Is it just me? Is it my family? Is it my tribe? Is it my state? Is it my community? Is it the globe? Is it all conscious creatures? So, that’s one particular taste bud, care versus harm. And that’s very, very important. And when you look at how people think about this pandemic, it really kind of stratifies a lot on care versus harm.
So, on the left, people who tend to have a more left-leaning elephant tend to really value care versus harm in a certain way. Like how compassionate can we be to immigrants, to the poor, to people who are disadvantaged, other races, others, in general, right? So, that’s a particular thing.
When you look at what’s happening with COVID-19, when you look at masks for example, or lockdowns for example, you really weaponize care versus harm and you really jazz it up because people start, their moral sense gets really outraged if they feel that people are behaving in a way that is gonna harm others.
So, we can talk about masks in a second because we wanna fill in the moral palette so that we can understand why it is people go so nuts about the whole mask thing.
So, the second moral taste bud that we’ll talk about is fairness versus cheating. So this is another sense that everybody’s born with and everybody has different flavors of these taste buds. Like some people like sweet, some people like salt, we can taste all the flavors, but we value some more than others. Savory versus … you know, that’s the analogy you make. But in morality and in how our elephant works, our unconscious mind, right — that is conditioned and somewhat genetic, but can be trained with a lot of work and it’s a lot of work. We have this sort of matrix of morality.
So, fairness versus cheating is one that is very acutely felt both on the left and the right. The left sees fairness versus cheating in the terms of how a rich guy like Trump not wear a mask and everyone else has to wear a mask? Or how is it that the rich keep getting richer and the poor keep getting poor? This isn’t fair. How is it the rich can cut in line at Disneyland, whatever it is, fairness versus cheating.
But on the right, that same moral sense is valued quite highly, but it’s seen as, how is it that someone doesn’t work and gets welfare? How is it that someone who hasn’t built a business and isn’t employing people can tell us what to do with jobs? You see what I’m saying?
So, how you sort of interpret that is kind of your own personal spin on how you taste that morality. Now each of these, each of these senses, none is more right than the other in an absolute sense. They’re different emphases and different flavors of morality.
So, we have a care versus harm, fairness versus cheating. So what’s next? If you think about… Sorry, I’m just making sure your comments are coming. Here we go. Ashley Stewart’s here, “I really need to listen “to that podcast with John Haidt. “I keep getting distracted.” Exactly, it’s great. He’s fantastic. I’ve invited him on the podcast multiple times. He has directly blown me off because he goes on much bigger podcasts and good for him because he does such a great job. He’s a personal intellectual hero of mine. If anyone knows him, tell him he needs to come on my show.
The third moral taste bud I wanna talk about, and then we’re gonna tie this into COVID-19, okay is… And again, this is a way you can understand that crazy uncle that you disagree with his politics. Understand that this comes from a sense of his moral matrix, his moral taste buds and how he values them. So, the third one is loyalty versus betrayal. Now this is a fascinating one because a lot of times we think of loyalty as in-group versus out-group. So, a more right leaning version of that is, Hey, it’s our community versus immigrants and others who would come in and disrupt our tradition and that sort of thing, right? On the left it’s more, hey, are you loyal to these sort of the ideology and the dogma of the left? And this is where dogma comes into it.
It’s true on the right too. Are you a party line person? And if you’re not, what happens to you now on Twitter? You get canceled. So, social media has weaponized loyalty versus subversion. If you say something out of sync, you are gonna get sunk by your own people. It’s happened to me, it’s happened to Sam Harris, it’s happened to John Haidt. They all get attacked for saying things that are outside of the orthodoxy of whatever their sub-group they’re supposed to be in. And generally with intellectual elites, it’s often on the left.
And that’s where I lived for a long time until I escaped from the matrix and was able to see all of it and go, “Wait, there’s validity everywhere.” And not only that, but now I can speak a language and connect with people that otherwise I had villainized out of ignorance, right? So, this idea of loyalty versus subversion is gonna come back because now if you’re talking about COVID, when we talk about anything that deviates from the orthodoxy of your side. Like if you’re in healthcare, if you say, “You know what? “I think masks don’t have a lot of evidence behind them. “I’m not sure why we’re pushing them so hard.” Oh, good luck to you. You are gonna get devastated, right? Or if you’re on the right and you say, “I think aggressive lockdowns are gonna probably “save a lot of lives. “Maybe will do those and we should mask up.” The right’s gonna be like, “What’s wrong with you?”
Right, and I’ll turn and say, and I’ll tell you why, because of the next taste bud, Liberty versus oppression. This is one of my favorites because this is very, it’s a very strong sense in me. And it’s something that I value. So, I always see the world slightly biased through Liberty versus oppression. So, this idea that we’re free to make decisions. That people aren’t telling us what to do versus whether it’s a state, whether it’s a family member, whether it’s part of your own tribe pushing back on you and telling you how to live your life, or how to think. People rebel against that, who value this particular thing. Now, this is where the mask controversy really lights up because if you talk about masks, right?
Okay, let’s assume that there’s good science for masks, which there isn’t. Let’s assume that there is, in other words, the science hasn’t been decided yet. It’s still evolving as is all of this. There’s some data supporting it, and then there’s a lot of absence of data so we don’t really know. And there’s some data saying people touch their face more if you wear a mask. Now, which data you pick depends on where your moral matrix sit. You will pick data to support what your elephant already believes morally. So, if Liberty versus oppression is an important one for you, what that says is, “I am not gonna let anyone tell me that I have “to wear a mask on a outdoor trail system or in a store.” Forget the fact that if it’s a store’s policy, they’re a private business, and they have the Liberty to behave how they like.
But the point is people will really, really push back against masks if they have a strong Liberty versus oppression. And this goes for guns and this goes for anti-vaxxers. You can’t tell me what to put in my body, right? Now, I’m not painting this as a negative. I’m saying this is a moral palette. So, with masks, and this tends to… again, it’s across the political spectrum, but on the right there’s more of this, “Hey, you don’t tell me how to behave. “This is a free country. “I’m gonna do what I want to do.” But then you have the left really valuing this care versus harm and looking at that and going, “But you’re harming people “because you’re not wearing a mask. “You’re getting up in people’s face. You’re protesting in a state Capitol “and getting in people’s face without a mask. “You’re harming others, and that’s where your Liberty ends.”
Now, this is where everybody… If you think of it like a one of those little graphic equalizers, these different moral flavors are bouncing up and down and people are feeling them in different ways. And you have to understand that the way that Joe feels that moral palette is gonna be very different than the way Jane over here feels that moral palette. And the fact is, since they’re not thinking about the other person’s moral palette, by default they’re in battle mode. This person is immoral in my mind, therefore an enemy and other, and they need to be demonized. Loyalty versus betrayal.
Now, when we’re thinking about this, let’s think about another moral taste bud, authority versus subversion. So authority, meaning you listen to the law, you respect the hierarchy, right? And people who don’t respect the hierarchy are subverting it. Well , so this is interesting. So both political sides have hierarchies. The left likes to say that they’re subversive and they do this, but the right has its own conspiratorial subversion arm. So, conspiracy theorists are trying to subvert the authority structure. They find that moral taste bud to swing towards subversion. It’s more important to fear authority and subvert it because Liberty versus oppression is higher, right?
So, now you start to see, okay, how could it be that really people who are trying to be good, who are conditioned a certain way, have a different moral matrix than you could see the same piece of news and the same newscast completely differently, and entirely differently based on what their moral palette is. By the way, the last moral taste bud per se, is sanctity versus degradation. Now, this is an interesting one. Sanctity meaning it can mean many different things, but it’s a kind of a disgust reaction to certain behaviors. Uncleanliness, certain beliefs, certain foods, right? And that disgust reaction is built into us because it keeps us safe from poison and things that are harmful. But it can be applied to other aspects.
So, a sanctity versus degradation may be a religious thing. It could be that people who really don’t like masks could have this feeling that, “The mask is gross. “I don’t like it on my face. “I’m breathing in my own CO2.” Whereas someone who feels masks are very helpful, there’s a disgust reaction to breathing in someone else’s germs or accidentally harming someone else with their own germs. And that disgust reaction causes them to wear a mask. So, you can actually have different actions, different beliefs based on the same moral taste bud, but how you value it and how you interpret it. And this is why people are so politically divided because they don’t realize that the other side is just as moral. They just have a different taste palette, different matrix than you do.
And the problem is when we wall ourselves off into our own moral matrix and ignore the other side, don’t listen to them and then start to treat them as others, start to demonize them and then weaponize what we’ve evolved to do, which is attacks on our beliefs or those of our tribe are felt, verbal attacks are felt as physical. If you look at fMRI, the same parts of the brain that light up if you’re physically attacked, light up if your beliefs are attacked. Well, now you weaponize that with social media which creates echo chambers. Facebook is the worst for this by the way. But Twitter, YouTube , it doesn’t matter, it will send you down your own echo chamber and the other side is villainized.
And look, I learned this myself when I was in the echo chamber. I was in the liberal echo chamber coming from the Bay Area, moved to Las Vegas, started doing a lot of ZDoggMD stuff and would say things that I thought everyone must agree with because I’m in this bubble. And people would push back and be like, “What do you mean? “That’s completely stupid? “Why would you say that you’re an a-hole?” And I’m like, “What?” And I started to realize because my own moral bubble was not challenged by outside belief, even though I grew up in a very conservative part of the country, central Valley of California, and my parents are quite conservative. And so it took me understanding John Haidt sort of premise to wake up and go, “Oh, wait.”
And you know what happens, something magical, you listen to the other side and you go, “You know what? “They have good points on a lot of things.” “They’re coming from a good place “and these are good people. “How was I villainizing them? You would judge someone based on their politics or whatever they post on Facebook or whatever, and that’s the normal default reaction. But we’re better than that, It’s the 21st century. We can’t get beyond this. We’ve gotten worse because of social media. We’ve gotten worse because the game on social media is not to find truth, is to score points against the enemy. So you, your own tribe, loyalty versus betrayal, your own tribe rallies around and you score points. You get more followers of your own kind. I’m guilty of this, every time I attack the anti-vaccine people, I’m growing my own tribe and outraging the other side. Now, I’ve gave reasons for why I do that and we do plenty of stuff where we’re talking to people who are more on the fence and we’re trying to rationally discuss it.
And I’ve always made the statement that I actually understand the average anti-vaxxers moral palette, Liberty versus oppression, sanctity versus degradation. “My body is a temple. “How dare you inject toxins in it?” Right? Care versus harm. The pro-vaxxers will say, “You’re harming people “that have nothing to do with you through your actions.” Whereas the anti-vaxxers will take care versus harm and say, “You’re harming my child with your “one size fits all.” So, if you can understand the other side, then you can more effectively actually accept them as human beings and then persuade. If you think you’re right, we’ll then persuade them in a way that’s respectful. It’s very hard to do, but it’s not impossible.
Now, let’s tie this back in to COVID. Since, this thing began, it’s been politically polarized and let’s just look at masks, and you guys know that my elephant is like very high on the Liberty versus oppression, but also high on care versus harm. And I’ve actually done personality tests where I’ve looked at this. I’m extremely disagreeable, but also very high in compassion. So, these things stress me out when they’re in tension, right?
So, with masks it’s interesting like I think if everyone had a surgical mask, even though we don’t have great data that it helps, there’s some anecdote, there’s some correlation. There’s not a lot of, if people are using them correctly and they’re good masks. Okay, compassion says, “You’re gonna harm less people.” Liberty versus oppression says, “Okay, but now you’re “gonna ask me to wear a dumb bandana “that I have no idea how to use. I could potentially harm myself from using it wrong, “touching myself, having false sense of security, “not great data showing that works.” “Well, now you’re infringing on my ability “to go out in the world.” I’m not talking about going into a grocery store. I’m talking about like on public trails and not have to wear a constricting mask when I think the risk is low. But if I even discuss it online, I’m villainized as some kind of anti-science person. Why? Because the majority of healthcare professionals have that care versus harm as a very powerful thing. And they don’t see the Liberty, their Liberty versus oppression is secondary to that.
So, you can’t even have a conversation without being villainized. Loyalty versus betrayal, right? And if you question the dogma, authority versus subversion, you’re branded as an outlier or a renegade or whatever. And actually the conspiracy guys will say, “Well, this is what you’re doing to us. “You’re not letting us speak, “and you’re branding us as some outlier, “but we’re just challenging the dogma.” Well, okay, that’s great. That’s why I think they should have free speech. I don’t think you should censor them, but I think you should counter with good rational, critical thinking, which we’ve talked about. And when you do that…
See, critical thinking should transcend all of this. That’s what we’re trying to grow. Understand we’re humans and we have these values, they’re different across different humans. But you can actually overcome that by growing the rider, the part of your neocortex and frontal cortex that does rational thinking, can appreciate all sides of the story, can weigh the evidence, can recognize its own biases, and can make decisions. So with masks, let’s not shut down good scientific debate. I know really smart scientists who are being shouted down for questioning that dogma. And it’s the same with lockdown stuff, right? So you can say, okay the lockdowns work, they didn’t work. Listen, let’s be honest, we don’t know entirely. Anybody who says they know is trying to sell you something and you shouldn’t trust them. We don’t know. What we do know is we’ve thrown out a lot of critical thinking here and we’re thinking with our elephants. That’s what’s really happening in this COVID crisis. Our elephants have run a muck on both sides of the aisle and down the center, and the critical rational thinking has disappeared.
So this video today is a way of trying to create a structure in our mind of how we can love our fellow Americans who don’t agree with us. How, if you’re a Biden supporter, how can you love a Trump supporter and go, “man, I see their moral matrix. “This is how they feel about the world. “I see it totally differently.” I mean, and that, that’s the thing. You can have the same piece of evidence, the same news cast, the same show, and people with different moral matrices will pull out of them completely different conclusions. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if each could sit down and go, “Hey Bob, Hey Joe. “Hey Bob, I know my moral palette really values “this and this and this. And when I see this, I just get so outraged that people “are dying because these individuals aren’t willing “to wear a mask or to stay at home or whatever.’` And then Bob can say, “I totally get it. “I can understand why you’d feel that way. ”
As someone who really values liberty versus oppression “and authority versus subversion “and sanctity versus degradation. “I feel like we’ve degraded our sense of tradition, “our culture in America of open freedom and our economy, “which is going to harm lives. “And I feel like that’s why lockdowns aren’t a good idea. “And that’s why I resonate with whatever “Trump is saying right now or “whatever who is ever saying right now?” And they could go, “Oh, I totally get that. “So, I wonder if there’s either a comfortable middle “or there’s any data that we can see that might persuade us “one way or the other regardless “of what our emotion is telling us.” I mean, this is real. Is it a pipe dream?
No, because this is how we used to have conversations on college campuses and in our civil discourse. We don’t have it anymore because that’s not the game anymore. The game now is to score points against an enemy. We are our own worst enemy here in the U.S. we really are. Could you imagine if we could just sit down and have that conversation? This is something that many people don’t… They think I’m crazy when I say this. I love to sit at a dinner table or meet a new person, and immediately talk about religion and politics but those are the two taboos. Why? It’s because I’ve really gotten decent at understanding moral matrices and whatever they say to me, I can actually respond with compassion instead of reactively and with emotion. And it took a lot of practice to do that.
I’m overjoyed when people tell me their stories. Even if I disagree, I pull some wisdom out of it, and I understand who they are from a moral matrix standpoint, a lot of which is beyond their control, by the way. We often don’t choose our moral matrix. It’s conditioned or genetic. There’s a lot of it that is beyond our control. So, we have to love people for who they are. Now, if they’re causing harm in the world, then you push back and you argue, but you do it from a place of love. It’s a huge challenge. I struggle with it a lot. You guys have seen me lose my ish on this show, but in a way, sometimes you have to let your elephant rage and then rein it back in, and talk about why you let it rage, how you let it rage, what was wrong with letting it rage and why you feel better for letting it rage.
We’re human beings in the end, guys. That’s really the bottom line. I hope this was useful. I don’t know. Let’s read some comments. “Preach it,” says Doug Wilson. “Me too, Oh my God, you’re amazing. “Thank you,” Jonny Edwards. I know, right? Talking about religion and politics and that’s the thing, religion is a fascinating one because if you really get to the heart of why people have that, whatever belief they have, you really have to love them. You really do, because they are coming from a place… It took me years to come to this. I used to really look down on people with religious beliefs because again, I was in that same bubble, that atheistic scientific coastal elite bubble. And which by the way is a great bubble to be in. I highly recommended it as your first bubble, but then I think we should transcend whatever bubble we’re in. Having grown up in a very different bubble early on, and chafing against it because my inborn moral palette was a little more care versus harm, fairness versus cheating. And so it was really interesting to just from my own journey to kind of now look back on it and go, “Oh, this is interesting “how this moral palette, “this moral matrix has influenced who I am.” Let’s read some more comments.
Pinned comment, Jesse Truvia, “I watched a man ride his motorcycle down the highway “with his mask on, shaking my head, but no helmet. “So, I guess the possibility “of a crushed skull, not that important.” Right, so what does he value? Right, what does he value? He’s wearing a mask, so he values some degree of care versus harm for others, some degree of maybe for himself, maybe he’s obeying the law about the masks but not the helmet. So, and there can be cognitive and emotional dissonance within an individual for any given thing. It’s really, really interesting. ”
Pinned me some more, Logan, these are great. “Maybe you should go to Washington “and teach them how to work together.” Oh, good luck, Sherry. Washington derives on polarity. We have to transcend it. It’s how are we going to get anything done? It’s it’s not gonna be possible. “What masks studies been well-designed,” Mary Laparod. Not many. And people will share a lot of articles depending on what their biases on masks. And every time I read them, I’m like, I’m not convinced one way or the other. What convinces me about masks more is a more communitarian argument because I do tend to understand that a little bit. I say, okay, let’s say we don’t know, and the precautionary principle says, but it’s safer to use the masks than not. Now we don’t a hundred percent know that’s true because mask can cause harm if done incorrectly. False sense of security, get too close to people, don’t wash your hands, touch the mask, touch your eyes. But let’s say it doesn’t, if that’s true, if we had the resources, everyone should have a couple surgical masks and when they go out to crowded places where social distancing is impossible, if they wore masks, we would bend the reproductive number down and we could really control the virus. So I understand that theoretically, we don’t really have a lot of great data beyond correlation data, looking at what Asia does, and some, you know, little bit of dah, dah, dah, looking at how droplets are spread and that sort of thing. So again, I have to check my own bias, which is, I think the cloth mask thing is a real oppressively bad idea. Now again, and I’ve said some of that may be irrational based on my own elephant, but some of it is just talking to very smart people who understand this stuff and they’re not… Again, if you’re going to do masks, we should’ve done it very early with real masks. We didn’t have real masks, and that’s I think part of the problem. I think the powers that be would have said everybody should wear a mask if we had enough PPE, but they did not want to deprive frontline healthcare professionals, which absolutely is appropriate not to do. So again, you can imagine the difficult situations these public health officials are in. And that’s another thing we should have compassion for these guys. It’s easy to take a dump on them, right? Because we get to hear different things all the time. This is a brand new thing, we don’t understand what’s going on.
And you know, when John Haidt was talking with Sam Harris, Sam Harris has a moral palette that is very, “I need to be right.” I’ve noticed this. And John Haidt’s moral palette is more, “Hey, I kind of understand moral palettes.” And so they were talking about this and Sam said, “Well, you know, if people just realize that if you stay home.” And John said, “But Sam, the thing is we don’t really know. “Let’s be honest, the data is still forthcoming. “We’re not sure how to handle this.” And that’s why people will look at, well, is it Sweden? Is it Denmark? Is it the U.S? Is the great Britain? Is it Taiwan? Who’s got the right model? And we just don’t know, and so we have to admit that and understand, okay, let’s try to get more data. Good, quality evidence that is agnostic to moral palette.
Okay, Donna Wofford has a pin comment. “Are we missing acquired immunity by isolating?” Okay, so this is a great question. And again, this is a question that you should be able to ask no matter what side your elephant is on. acquired immunity or herd immunity or community immunity means that you’ve been exposed naturally to something, have developed immunity in the form of antibodies typically and are now resistant to that re-infection. Which means you’re not gonna pass it to somebody who’s vulnerable. Now this is the mechanism to develop an end of a pandemic because people end up becoming immune, and the virus has no hosts and it just peters out.
So this could happen one of two ways. You can naturally be exposed to the pathogen, say measles, or you can be vaccinated against it. Well, if given a choice, vaccination, which is safe and effective if you do the trials correctly, which we have for the existing vaccines, but we hope to do for a new vaccine, if they’re safe and effective, it’s much better to have it community immunity obtained through vaccines because you don’t suffer the downside of natural immunity, which is getting the disease potentially being injured or dying. And with COVID-19 the vulnerable population, particularly older people, although younger people can get it and people with comorbidities, although healthy people can get it, can die or be very, very sick from this. So, just letting it run through the population. We should be able to ask that question, should we do that? But then you have to then weigh care versus harm. You’re gonna kill a lot of older people. And the early models were really saying that something like 5% of everyone over 65 would die if we let this thing run. While now we have no idea if that was a true model because we changed our behavior, and so we don’t know. There’s a lot of unknowns. These are all guesses and predictions based on maps that may not represent the actual territory they’re trying to map. But that’s a good question to ask.
With this disease we don’t know, and that’s why this whole Stanford seroprevalence study was so controversial because if what they were saying was true, then it was 80 times more prevalent in the community, it means people are already developing herd immunity. We ought to just let it go because it’s not as fatal as we thought. Well, it turns out there are a lot of problems with that trial including who was funding it, which was, one of the CEOs of JetBlue I think. And so there’s controversy there, which we talked about in the original video, but it’s come out even more lately. And again, even that controversy, if you look who’s pushing it, it’s always the more liberal leaning news outlets. Because again, moral palette, wealthy entrepreneur wants to fudge data so that economy will reopen, right? So, that’s that care versus harm. Whereas the rights like, Hey, wealthy entrepreneur makes jobs, saves lives by keeping people from dying by suicide because they don’t have jobs, we should let him go. Understand both sides instead of villainizing them. And you can question the data and you can also question when people are behaving purely elephant and go, “Hey, I see what’s happening there. “That’s not good. “Please don’t do that. “And I can’t take you seriously “when you’re that lost in your elephant, “you’re not being mindful of what’s going on.” And that’s why I think the best communicators of this stuff are very rational. And they put their biases out on the table and they say, “Oh, this is what I feel. “But the data seems to suggest.” it’s very, very important to be able to recognize that.
Okay, Jessie Yang in a pinned comment. “How do you generate compassion for those who are racist or sexist and cause harm based on those beliefs?” What a great question, Jess. So, we talk about seeing another side. Now, racism and sexism are really fascinating because, and this is another reason this is another thing I talk about with people the minute I meet them often, and people are just like, “Huh.” is race. So, I will try to figure out what’s your background? I may even take a guess, and when I’m wrong I’ll go see what an idiot I am. So, tell me, you know what? And you get into someone’s sort of a little bit more about who they are. It’s such a taboo thing to talk about. It helps that I’m a little off white. So, for some reason people give me a license to just ask anything. Whereas I have friends who are white, they’re like, “I would never ask that, people think I was a racist.” And that’s part of it. So, short of Frank, open racism and sexism, a lot of people have implicit bias that comes out in ways that people who are sensitive to it will recognize.
But people who are not will not. And again, it will be perceived through your own moral palette if you’re talking about care versus harm, Fairness versus cheating, race is an important part of that. Like it’s not fair that African Americans were enslaved in this country. But then the right will say, but now it’s not fair that a Caucasian person is discriminated against just for being Caucasian because they have privileged or whatever. So there’s different ways of looking at this. Now racist and sexist in a open way where it’s just clear that it’s happening, at that point, the only way to deal with that is to disengage or to say, “Listen what happened to you?” Not what’s wrong with you? “What happened to you that made you this way?”` Because this is not a productive way to be in the world. And so something happened to you. Was it your upbringing? Were your parents racist? What is it? It’s very rare that someone was just born a racist. There’s a lot that goes into it. And so you can have some compassion for them even in the setting of that while not condoning for a second what they’re saying, what their belief structure is or the harm that they’re doing. Let’s read some more. It’s a great question. Tom Erickson, “People need to be educated “on research designs and limitations.” That’s so important because people, and you got to understand not only that people, people share articles to back what their moral matrix says or their elephant says, but they don’t have the ability to critically look at that article. And whether it’s anti-vaccine people or pro mask people or pro whatever people, it doesn’t matter, the antilock down people will pull articles out and say, Hey, this is what it shows pro locked down people. You have to be able to look at, okay, what’s a case control trial? What’s a retrospective trial? What’s a prospective trial? What’s a randomized control trial?
And we need to have that understanding. Also, what are the biases in this study? Who’s funding this study? What journal does it appear in? Because there are predatory journals that will publish you that have no scruples. The peer review is a sham and peer review is imperfect. And this is why science has to be grown, not feared or shunned, it needs to be grown so that we can have better tools in the public to understand this. Now, not everyone’s capable of this. It’s kind of tough, critical thinking sometimes, and not everybody’s has that gift to do that, but most people do and you can train them. And the ones that don’t, you can at least make them an emotional argument and say, “Okay, well I understand what your palate is, “your moral matrix. “Let’s speak in the same language about it.” Let’s read some more. Oh, here’s a good one. Amanda Johnson, “How do you balance care versus harm “when it comes to kids returning to school?” What a tremendous conflict that is, right? Really, really feel that for a second. Okay, kids are stuck at home. They may not be getting as good an education. If they’re disadvantaged or poor, they are potentially living with a single parent who is getting very frustrated. There could be people living in abusive households where now they’re with the abuser all day. These kids are not getting their regular vaccinations because the parents are afraid to take them to the doctor. So, they could get sick from a measles outbreak or mumps, whooping cough. The harm of not going to school is tremendous. But then you look at do kids get really sick from COVID? Mostly not. There are these cases of this auto-immune, Kawasaki-like multi-system inflammatory syndrome of children MIS-C, but they’re very rare still. So the danger directly to children isn’t great.
But then if the children get infected and come home and infect grandpa, that’s a problem. So you can see how there isn’t a black or white. So what do? You have to weigh all of this and different, good people have good intent, will have different solutions. Is it social distancing at school? Is it let it run through the child age population, and protect older people from them? So continue to distance with older people. And that’s easy for rich people to say, but hard for multi-generational families living in a small space who are economically impoverished to do. And that’s where you get into care versus harm. Fairness versus cheating. It’s really tough. Sanctity versus degradation. Really, really tough. Great questions. And Joe Scavo is sending 200 stars for a Doc Vader rant. We have a goal. If we make our a hundred thousand star goal, Doc Vader we’ll do a crazy rant. So thanks for the stars, everybody who sent them. All right, I think we did a thing here today. This is what I want you guys to do, I want you to think about your moral matrix around COVID and why it might influence how you’re seeing this, what news you watch, what stations you tuned to, what echo chambers you’re in. And I want you to try to reach out and look at some other echo chambers from a standpoint of pretending that you have a different moral matrix that values slightly different things. And, and you’ll start to understand and have compassion for people that you thought were beyond hope. Now again, there will always be people on the extremes where it’s just tough and you have to disengage because it’s too exhausting for anyone’s elephant. And that’s okay. They’re rare, you guys. I know it doesn’t feel that way because social media amps it up, but those people are rare.
It’s more likely that people wanna do good in the world, wanna be good citizens and help each other and help themselves in their families. They just have different ways of doing it, different ways of feeling it. So share this episode, leave a comment. Thank you to all the supporters who make all this show possible. I couldn’t do this stuff without you, especially during these difficult economic times. I’m so happy that you choose to spend 499 supporting us when I know it’s hard. And if you can’t do it, please unsubscribe. It’s actually very easy to do. I keep forgetting to tell you how to do this “cause it’s not in my best interest. I have to override my elephant going, “Don’t tell them.” If you need to unsubscribe from the show, go to Manage Supporter Benefits on my Facebook page and click that. And then you can click Manage Subscription and you can unsubscribe. So I don’t want to take your support if you’re having trouble or you’re unemployed or you’ve been furloughed, okay, that would not be good. So, we will all survive this, but it’s gonna have to be working together. All right, share this video. I’ll put it up on YouTube as well. And I love you guys. We are out. Listen to that elephant, listen to it, but don’t get lost in the sauce.
Dr. Bransfield discusses the similarities and differences between the two pandemics of Lyme Disease and COVID-19, with a particular emphasis on their neuropsychiatric manifestations. Viral infections have been associated with mood changes, psychosis, changes in neuromuscular function and even demyelinating processes, as has Lyme Disease, particularly neuroborreliosis. He examins the connections, such as they are known to date, and answers questions live during the webinar.
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If you are unfamiliar with Dr. Bransfield, you are in for a treat. He is one of the few psychiatrists who studies the psychiatric effects of Lyme/MSIDS.
Madison Area Lyme Support Group 