Dr Wes Ely enters the Fray. Highlights from the plague of Long COVID.

In an insightful interview, entrepreneur Alex Meshkin and Dr. Steven Murphy engage with Dr. Wes Ely, Director of SIBS at Vanderbilt University and a renowned long COVID critical care specialist. Driven by their shared mission to restore humanity to medical care, they delve into the pressing issues surrounding long COVID and the ICU Survivorship Program.

Dr. Wes Ely emphasizes the critical need for support and resources for long COVID patients. He sheds light on the ICU Survivorship Program, affectionately known as SIBS, which provides essential assistance to individuals facing the aftermath of critical illness and brain dysfunction. Through free support groups, disability services, and insurance guidance, the program aims to help patients overcome the challenges that often lead to financial instability, homelessness, and loss of livelihood.

The interview highlights the immense impact of long COVID, extending beyond severe cases to affect individuals who were never hospitalized. Dr. Ely shares compelling statistics, revealing that a significant percentage of non-hospitalized COVID patients develop long COVID symptoms, including cognitive deficits, heart problems, and extreme fatigue. The interview also addresses the misconceptions surrounding long COVID and the urgent need for recognition and support for the millions of individuals affected.

Dr. Ely emphasizes the importance of listening to patients and their firsthand experiences. He addresses the skepticism within the medical community and urges a shift in perspective, acknowledging that patients are experts in their own illnesses. By amplifying their voices and providing comprehensive care, we can address the public health catastrophe that long COVID has become.

Entrepreneur Alex Meshkin and Dr. Steven Murphy commend Dr. Ely's commitment to his patients and his dedication to transforming healthcare. Through their enlightening conversation, they advocate for increased awareness, support, and funding to address the long-term effects of COVID-19 and provide much-needed care for those suffering from long COVID.

Transcript

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6. Hard Truths and Convenient Lie...s (with Dr
7. Ely) mastered audio
8. Wed, May 31, 2023 12:19PM • 46:38
9. SUMMARY KEYWORDS
10. patients, people, long, called, ely, story, live, vaccine, medicine,
11. study, icu, disease, life, alex, day,
12. disability, virus, infections, ai, point
13. 00:09
14. hard truths and convenient lies this podcast dedicated to lifting the veil exposing the reality of our
15. dysfunctional government economy and health care system. The opinio
16. ns today expressed by Dr.
17. Stephen Murphy and entrepreneur Alex, Michigan are just that. Nothing we say today should be
18. considered medical, legal, financial, or tax advice. Go get your professional for that. We have potty
19. mouths, and we're here to lift the
20. veil and expose the hard truth and convenient life. What is up
21. everyone? Thanks for tuning in to another week of convenient lies and hard truths. Oh, no. It's hard
22. truths and convenient lies. That's right, guys. We are here today to review what's been goin
23. g on with
24. society what's been going on in the world. Today. We are going to talk a little bit about some of the
25. crazy things that have been going on. So Alex, what a week. What are weaker? Tell me about
26. 01:05
27. it? Well, you know, I guess this week is all a
28. bout really AI right? Stock markets hitting new highs. If
29. you're an AI stock, you suddenly press release out things are good.
30. 01:15
31. Magic is the magic money printer of the stock market. Right?
32. 01:20
33. So, I mean, listen, payers really adopt this right? And
34. they can just do generative AI to make up another
35. reason why they're gonna deny or test
36. 01:28
37. Hey, Alex are already doing Haven't you read the Cigna articles from PX dx that a Doc can deny 50
38. claims in a second because I don't know mid journey or I heard
39. of this new one called screw doctors.
40. over.ai. Right. You want to go to that website, and you're gonna find a lot of denials that way. So I want
41. to tell you with all of this artificial intelligence, I think we have to worry about our regular intelligence.
42. And what's going to happen here because we've had what we have some serious issues in regards to
43. COVID, post COVID infections and lon COVID. So Alex had brought on today, amazing guest, Dr. Ely
44. has the grant little chair and medicine at Vanderbilt Univers
45. ity. But not only is he just a specialist in
46. pulmonary critical care, he actually does some serious research. He's the Associate Director for
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52. Research at the VA Tennessee Valley geriatric research and educational clinical center with a real
53. focus on improv
54. ing care and outcomes. In addition to that, he focuses on ICU acquired brain disease,
55. like we saw with COVID. So he co directs actually the critical illness, brain dysfunction and survivorship
56. Center, which we're talking has made some serious significant c
57. ontributions to post ICU dementia in
58. the field. He has you ready for this? He has over 550 peer reviewed articles and publications. And
59. guess what, Alex? That is more than the articles that have been withdrawn for shoddy public ship
60. related to COVID during
61. this pandemic, so he is literally the guy we need for the brain. He's a graduate
62. of Tulane, which I know you and I both love to Layne and his wife Kim specializes in head and neck
63. cancer pathology at Vanderbilt University, which is near and dear to my hea
64. rt, because I got a little spot
65. there and Sparta, which is not too far away. So Dr. Ely, thank you so much for coming on the show
66. today. We really appreciate having you.
67. 03:17
68. Oh, it's my privilege. And thank you so much for having me. It's a beautiful da
69. y here in Nashville,
70. Tennessee. And I come to you with all the energy and excitement about making medicine better. So the
71. patients are uplifted. So we magnify their dignity and we do the absolute best job we can going forward
72. to learn from what COVID rot a
73. nd improve and get rid of the things that were anti medicine during
74. COVID. You know, a lot of bad things happen during COVID that we were acting out of fear. We didn't
75. have a vaccine, we didn't have PPE, we made decisions to not have family, the bedside, p
76. atients
77. suffered and how many people are dead because they lost their why to live and did not have somebody
78. around them, showing them the love from their family that they needed to get through that illness. And
79. it's my privilege to be with you and I've got
80. some stories and some real huge the power of human story
81. to share with you today to kind of make some points.
82. 04:13
83. That's perfect with Alex, I think you're gonna love this guy. He is. He's the man right, he is the man. So
84. Dr. Ely First off, I just want
85. to say thank you for service, right, uh, knowing how critical care suffered and
86. languished in the beginning of this pandemic and how we had so many people trying to figure out what
87. was going on with low oxygen saturations. We just couldn't pick up their lu
88. ngs they ended up with
89. complications that we see in ICUs all the time. And we we had a really high rate of death, which began
90. to turn the corner. Why? Because the critical care illness Doctor started researching started
91. investigating and really doing a way
92. better job. But because the patients survived, they have to survive
93. the The outcomes afterwards and you really are an expert in this. So thank you so much
94. 05:03
95. talk about, you know, one of the things that happened during COVID Was that we, let's contras
96. t
97. benevolence and beneficence. You know, we all want to do good and but that's benevolence, but
98. actually doing good is beneficence. And I think medicine has to be about more than just benevolence or
99. wishing good, we actually actually have to achieve goodne
100. ss at the bedside in order to help people's
101. lives improve. And, and some of the things we did at the beginning of COVID. Were were not
102. beneficent, they were actually Maleficent. We didn't know how to optimize the viral therapies and
103. reduce inflammation. On
104. e of the things that I actually did at the very beginning of COVID Was I read an
105. article you mentioned artificial intelligence. At the beginning of COVID, a guy named Justin stebbing, in
106. London published a paper in the Lancet. You guys may not know this st
107. ory, but it's a really good one
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113. about AI. And he used AI to assess four to 600 drugs that might be useful against the virus, the SARS
114. cov, two virus and the the computer, the AI benevolent AI spit out that baricitinib would be the drug and
115. so I have no fin
116. ancial conflicts of interest with this. I've never received a single penny. I have no stock
117. and Lily. So I'm telling you this just as an investigator here, I had a guy named Vince Marconi, we
118. designed a randomized trial, that was called the cove barrier st
119. udy. And it worked. It was a double
120. blind, placebo controlled trial. We studied it in 12 countries, over 1200 patients, and it to date has the
121. largest survival advantage of any drug and COVID. And there's only two FDA approved drugs for
122. COVID. Did you know
123. that only two Radev severe which is an antiviral and baricitinib which is a Jak
124. one two inhibitor? It's an immunomodulator. So pack, so
125. 06:52
126. I think packs didn't get approved.
127. 06:55
128. Last week? No, no, no, that's fine. But Dr. Aelia? Shears question. Ex
129. cellent. Question. Early use
130. 07:01
131. I did not know last week it got full approval. Yeah,
132. 07:03
133. just got it just got magic. Magic is so seriously though, Dr. Ely. When you read that article, did people
134. think you were nuts at first when you tried to put it
135. out here and say, Hey, we need to research this.
136. What happened? How was the barrier to be able to get that study done? There
137. 07:20
138. was a lot of a lot of barrier. A lot of people say no, it won't work. That's crazy. And also, why should we
139. listen to a comp
140. uter, you know, is a computer let's we know more than that. We're smart. But if you
141. remember back where we were, we were kind of clamoring for answers right about them, though the
142. recovery study came out showing that steroids worked. So that's an anti infl
143. ammatory drug and
144. immunomodulator drug, but steroids, corticosteroids, dexamethasone, very, very broad action,
145. obviously. And the Jak inhibitors are more specific and more focused. So we went to Lilly and we said,
146. look, let's do this, and to Lily's credit.
147. And again, I have no financial conflicts with Eli Lilly at all. But to
148. their credit, they have a beautiful team of professionals, and they came to the table. In fact, after we
149. said if the drug works, let's make it available free of charge to anyone in the
150. world, in a lower middle
151. income country and lmsc. And that is exactly what Lily did. And millions of people have received very
152. for free in Africa, Sub Saharan Africa, India, Dominican Republic, Haiti, etc. So I think this is a good
153. story of humanitarian e
154. ffort combined with science to bring us forward in time.
155. 08:36
156. So you were able to go through that because you read peer reviewed literature, you read articles, you
157. kept up to date with these things. And you had the background of critical care illness and
158. and all the
159. inflammatory problems that come with critical care. Right. So what do you see as the biggest barrier to
160. taking that next?
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166. 09:00
167. Yeah, so let's talk about that. So we talked you talked earlier about for, I got to live through this injury.
168. And
169. before we get to long COVID, which I think for the listeners, we want to note, we want you to know
170. we're gonna get to long COVID A minute because there's a big thing going on societally kind of
171. cataclysmically with epsilon COVID that I want to talk about.
172. But let me read you this since I'm reading
173. from every deep drawn breath. This is a book that I wrote, during COVID Actually, every deep drawn
174. breath I call it Ed dB, but it's if you didn't use AI
175. 09:31
176. to write the book, did you doctor
177. 09:36
178. right, full
179. disclosure, and not ever write a book about people in life, I used digital recorders to record all
180. these people's stories and and get their, you know, get their direct quotes transcribed. But I had a
181. patient who suffered from critical illness. And back whe
182. n I didn't know about post intensive care
183. syndrome, which is a huge piece of what COVID survivors deal with. That means PSCs post intensive
184. care syndrome, that's the rapid acquisition of dementia, PTSD, depression, muscle and nerve disease.
185. It's a syndrome
186. that disables a person from a body and brain perspective. And back when I didn't know
187. about it, and I speak to this because we are still ignorant of a lot of things that happened to COVID
188. patients, I wrote this amazingly callous sentence about one of my p
189. atients, she she went through
190. critical illness, she survived. And I found while I was writing this, my old medical records where I had
191. handwritten note pre computerized medical records, and I said, however, we really have are, amazingly
192. enough, the patient
193. s still Manifest only single organ lungs damage, with good renal GI and
194. cardiovascular function, how naive I was, I wrote, and how far from the truth the statement was, as I
195. would say, a few weeks later with Teresa returned to me with her body and brain ir
196. retrievably broken.
197. And when I think about in the story, the reason I share that with you is that this person had so much
198. more damage that I was not aware of, it was invisible to, to me to some degree, not only because I was
199. ignorant of the pics, but it wa
200. s back then we didn't have this defined, but don't people that you know,
201. walk around with disabilities that are invisible to you. And isn't it hard and harder on them when we
202. don't acknowledge their disabilities and or validate that they are living with th
203. ese disabilities. And so I
204. have lived that I've carried around the shame and the guilt as a physician, of not doing the best by my
205. patients. And I before as I close this comment, I want to say that sometimes we think, and I'll just go
206. and finish reading he
207. re as physicians, we generally think we're most likely to harm our patients with an
208. errant scalpel, a central line placement gone awry, or a medication error. But sometimes we cause
209. more harm by blindly accepting usual practice, as best practice. Familiari
210. ty breeds complacency. And I
211. believe this happened in critical care. And it happened in COVID. And this is called what I call
212. malignant normality. It's a phrase that that that has been coined by others. But in medicine, what I refer
213. to malignant normality
214. is, I will change my way of thinking to improve the status quo. So what's
215. happening in your brain is I bring this up in regard to COVID care and long COVID care, we have to
216. change the status quo.
217. 12:33
218. So Dr. Ely, man, what a story, right? And I find that
219. what's remarkable about this is the continuity of
220. care, right? So a lot of these patients, they went into hospitals, they went into ICUs. And then who they
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226. follow up with, well, either they're a they're whoever on the outside. And I don't know about you i
227. n
228. Tennessee, there has been a great aggregation of clinical specialists in university systems and in big
229. academic centers, because private practice really can't make it. And that's due to a whole bunch of
230. payer issues that we can talk about another time. B
231. ut more importantly, the fractured care and the
232. fractured system is leading to my interpretation is leading to a bunch of last follow up. So it can you tell
233. me a little bit about
234. 13:27
235. temperature of medicine quite a bit. In order to prove this. We call i
236. t our ICU survivorship program, or
237. our sibs, critical illness, brain dysfunction survivorship centers survivorship program, and what we're
238. doing is we've actually hired a social worker to provide free of charge support groups and Disability
239. Services and in
240. surance services. Because these patients, they have no way to work through the
241. morass of reimbursements insurance, find their disability services, and then that losing their jobs, they
242. can't pay their electricity bills, they lose their homes. We've got lot
243. s of long COVID patients now in our
244. Sibbes survivorship program, who have had to be homeless. And so we provide daily support support
245. groups with a sick with a psychologist, and a social worker. You know, in the hospital people have have
246. a social worker, t
247. hat's the hospital provides them but when they leave the hospital, they don't have that
248. anymore. And so they're they fall through the cracks. They also need a clinic to go to to be cared for in
249. their long COVID world and in their post intensive care syndro
250. me world. So we provide both virtual and
251. in person visits to patients as well. And we have you know, people are clamoring to get into these
252. clinics and support groups. We actually have a waiting list but what we're going to do is we are applying
253. for federa
254. l dollars. We're establishing this endowment, in fact, every penny from every deep drawn
255. breath, the book I was just reading from every penny goes into this endowment for the patients and
256. families. We're trying to pick up the pieces of their life. So we're
257. working hard to create a new model of
258. care, on the back end of diseases like ICU care, or COVID, where people get what I call a rapidly
259. acquired disability that they didn't have before. And then those people with these rapidly acquired
260. disabilities, not l
261. ike Alzheimer's disease, or a stroke, okay, those people, the government knows about
262. them. And we have programs for them. These other people, long COVID, and pigs patients, there's
263. nothing for these people, they completely fall through the cracks. And we'r
264. e talking millions of people,
265. there are estimated to be over 15 million Americans alone with long COVID disability. And there are
266. way more than that. I see survivors who, because there's like 75,000 people on a ventilator right now
267. as we speak in the US. A
268. nd if 50% of those people get picks, then think about how many millions of
269. people throughout the years are developing this disability and having those systems so that's what
270. we're doing to try and fix it for them.
271. 16:03
272. Okay, so you know, of course, your
273. clinical background, work in ICU, you know, the patients that follow
274. up with you to have long COVID work on the more severe scale of a COVID. Patient. So how about the
275. mild cases? How about the people that had, you know, a cold for a couple of days that ar
276. e showing up
277. with long COVID? Are you seeing any patients like that?
278. 16:27
279. Absolutely. I just actually published a thread yesterday, on Twitter. I'm on I'm at West Ely, MD on
280. Twitter. Now the reason I bring that up is that I just published this thread yes
281. terday, it's already got well
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287. over 1500 retweets, because what I shared in there was that mild COVID is creating these problems.
288. It's shocking, really, and this is kind of a new day in medical thinking. And this is why I think we have to
289. rejigger what stat
290. us quo is, you think, oh, Wes is caring for people in the ICU. Clearly those people are
291. gonna have pics and problems with our COVID down the line. But we have tons of people in our sub
292. centers survivorship program, who never were hospitalized at all. And t
293. here was just a study published
294. last that I included in my thread, where 90% of the people were never hospitalized. And the majority of
295. those people overwhelmed 40% of the of that 90% ended up with long COVID. The best estimates of
296. long COVID Are that 10 t
297. o 12% of all people with COVID end up with long COVID symptoms that six to
298. nine months. And what we have to get out of our head is that this virus is only causing problems for
299. people who are hospitalized. That is completely untrue. The virus is getting in
300. the respiratory
301. epithelium. It's causing some viral shedding and then getting into the bloodstream. And then once it
302. gets in the bloodstream, it attacks the endothelial which is the lining of the blood vessels. And it stays
303. around for months. In some patie
304. nts, not in everybody. Now, you know, if you've had COVID, you're
305. fine, then that's great. I'm glad. But
306. 18:03
307. are you really fine, though, was like Dr. Ely. Are you really fine? How are you going to be aware of your
308. cognitive deficits?
309. 18:10
310. Of course,
311. I talked about this a lot. You know, I I had mild COVID in March of what 21 Or two, I guess
312. two? Yeah, ba two as one of our people get ba two and first COVID only COVID. And I had extremely
313. high blood pressure and a high heart rate for going on about eight
314. months. And I have you know, very
315. low blood pressure fit person exercise all the time. And you know that there was a lot of triggers, like a
316. little bit of wine like that much. Boom, you know, my heart rate would shoot to about 95 My resting
317. normally 50. A
318. nd you know, it would be like violent palpitations just laying in bed. And you know, I had a
319. fever for 12 hours with COPD. Yeah,
320. 19:02
321. you most certainly had a version of lung COVID. I hope I'm sorry that you suffered through that. And I
322. hope that you're
323. getting the rest you need and the recovery that you need, for sure. But that is
324. absolutely part of the autonomic dysfunction that occurs after COVID and the so called pots, Postural
325. Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome. So I suspect you had pots if not have it
326. . And what goes along with
327. that is a tremendous amount of post exertional malaise. We think that people like you ended up having
328. mitochondrial dysfunction and the mitochondria give you your oxidative phosphorylation so they
329. process your oxygen. If they are
330. n't working normally, like if you get all sudden your mitochondria get
331. geriatric sized, they get aged, then they can't process the oxygen and so your heart rate is going to pick
332. up because it's not transporting otoo the way your body wanted it so that's pr
333. obably what was going on
334. with you.
335. 19:50
336. Dr. Dr. Ely way, way, way, way. You sure you're not a Lyme Kook? Right No, no, I seriously, I have to
337. have to make a really important point. Oh, We and you've nailed it already. I'm here in Connecticut, the
338. Infectious Disease Society of America very prestigious established our colleagues in other fields, and
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344. even our field I my field internal medicine. We have said, What is this long Lyme disease? What is his
345. chronic Lyme? What is craziness, what you're talki
346. ng about puck now. So I trained also as a clinical
347. geneticist where I saw real mitochondrial disease, right, like I trained and saw. So a part of my clinic
348. was mitochondrial disease. So I appreciate it a little bit of these Lyme specialists. But most docto
349. rs,
350. right, and I think you nailed this, most doctors looked down their nose on this complementary field that
351. was trying to fumble around in the darkness to understand what is now present, just like you said, in
352. millions of people. Right, it's such it's suc
353. h
354. 20:55
355. a great and important point. And, and I stand guilty, I'm convicted for you know, if you if you are an
356. investigative scientist, a physician scientist, like I am, and I've been doing this for 25 years, and I've
357. been NIH funded for the full 25 years
358. , we have probably $40 million dollars in NIH funding, I will
359. disclose that we I consider myself as a steward of the people. This is the people's money. And we I am
360. here to do hardcore science, randomized controlled trials, a court studies, for example, we
361. 're collecting
362. the brains of COVID patients when they die and ICU patients when they die right now, to determine
363. what kind of dementia do they get. So this is real science. I thought that long line and that MECFS were
364. totally bogus, because randomised cont
365. rolled trials have been largely negative. Well, that doesn't mean
366. that the disease doesn't exist. Let's talk about zero negative disease. You know, somebody comes to
367. me they have complaints, and they have rheumatoid arthritis, but they're zero negative, th
368. ey do not
369. have rheumatoid factor. There is an entity called zero negative rA. And we know that's real well, these
370. other people who come in with long COVID, there's no test for long COVID. So essentially, they're all
371. seronegative. And if we as medicine deny
372. people who are sick or negative of having disease, then
373. we're going to say all these 15 20 million people don't have a problem. No, they are the experts of their
374. own illness, and we have to listen to them. Oastler said, if you listen to your patient, he o
375. r she will tell
376. you what is wrong.
377. 22:25
378. Okay, so one area I really want to dig in here is so in my experience in working with physicians as on
379. the Medical Laboratory side and just in the industry. The people that are so to speak diagnosed with
380. lung COVID
381. Are the people that come in, and basically feel they have Mancha. Um, are you seeing
382. patients coming through from it's a cardiologist, we're just talking about my issue, or pulmonologists,
383. that are being referred over to you because a another specialty ac
384. tually is identifying that COVID could
385. be the cause of this systematic disease that the patient has presented with.
386. 23:08
387. Yes, your question is excellent. What I heard you ask me is, am I getting referrals from specialists who
388. think that these patients ha
389. ve COVID induced organ dysfunction? Yes. And in fact, don't forget, I am a
390. pulmonologist and I am an intensivist. And I also did not believe in those diseases before and during
391. COVID. Over the last three years, I have converted my thought process into one
392. of this is clearly real. I
393. have no question in my mind, that this can be real. Now are there people who feign it and don't have it?
394. Yeah, I'm sure that can be true in anywhere. But let's let's focus on the masses and not on those
395. exceptions. For example, I
396. wrote a piece in The Boston Globe of a guy named Alec shell permission
397. use a story. He was here's just one anecdote, Alec shell training for the Olympics, running 90 miles a
398. week, running for 15 miles. And a world class runner gets COVID Never has been si
399. ck. Basically, they
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405. just live other than the flu or, you know, codes, colds in the past, but always totally healthy. And all of a
406. sudden for the next two years cannot run. Now, that is true. That's true, true and related, not true, true
407. and unrelated. This
408. , he has had to completely give up his running career. He gave up his entire identity.
409. This makes people think about suicide. And there are many people who have committed suicide over
410. this circumstance. It's so sad. I have a woman up here who was a school
411. teacher. She was a beautiful
412. mind she she helped all these students learn complex math. She now stutters She cannot do math
413. anymore. She had to retire early, all after a documented PCR positive about with COVID and this is
414. going on to three years later. Do
415. n't forget we also have data. We now we have this paper from the lab It
416. was just came out looking at hundreds of patients who had PCR documented COVID had long COVID
417. symptomatology four months later, and then were retested at two years. And 85% of the pati
418. ents who
419. had problems, new problems after COVID At four months, still had problems that two years and half of
420. those people who were unable to go back to work months after COVID Were still unable to go back to
421. work because of their long COVID symptomatology
422. at two years. So we have to just acknowledge this
423. is very real.
424. 25:34
425. Yeah, so it's a mass disabling event. Doctor it
426. 25:36
427. is. And that's what these I had in the Boston Globe this week said, in fact, I've got it right here. I just got
428. it and somebody s
429. ent me a hard copy. But as long COVID turns three Americans play disability
430. roulette. I just published this piece in The Boston Globe last week. And then they highlighted this quote,
431. was this every seven days 25,000 more people join the millions in our cou
432. ntry suffering memory loss,
433. heart problems, dizziness, extreme fatigue, and more owing to the long term effects of their acute viral
434. infection.
435. 26:09
436. So what's the hard truth here? Dr. Ely, what's gonna happen?
437. 26:12
438. Yeah, the hard truth is that we have
439. we actually have now a public health, catastrophe hiding in plain
440. sight, which the public is largely unaware of, and yawning about yawning, because thank goodness, I
441. don't have to wear a mask anymore. But the people who are, and I'm not, you know, I think
442. people
443. have the right to not wear a mask. I'm not sitting here, you know, coming down on them for that. But
444. what I want them to say what us to know is, there are people in our lives all of our lives, family
445. members, good friends, who have had a life changi
446. ng event occur for them, which was that they got a
447. virus, or Lyme disease. And months and years later, their body was not returning to normal. They
448. looked fine. But they aren't fine. And it's kind of like think of a young kid who gets three concussions on
449. a soccer field. And they look totally fine, but they can no longer do their homework. They have they
450. have traumatic brain injury, but they're not in a wheelchair, they haven't had a stroke. They have TBI
451. long term, it changes the trajectory of their life.
452. We know that those chronic TBI people that look
453. normal, have problems holding jobs, they have increased suicidality, they have depression, they have
454. problems with interpersonal relationships, the same type of thing is going on and going to happen for
455. the n
456. ext 20 to 30 years. For people who have long COVID.
457. -
458. 9
459. -
460. Transcribed by
461. https://otter.ai
462. 27:42
463. So doctor is in the problem, here are the reason why we have the problem. Like you said, people are
464. yawning. You know, it's, it's, you know, COVID over it's out there, you're gonna get it some doct
465. ors and
466. experts saying and get 50 times in your lifetime, which I find that to be absolutely insane. With my own
467. experience, but don't you think like, as you talked about, you know, doctors want to do the right thing,
468. but don't always do the right thing. Y
469. ou started our talk that way. Don't you think that's a lot of the
470. problems that happen from public health. I mean, public health called, um, the Crown mild. You know,
471. to me, the BA one surge changed everything in my personal my professional network watchin
472. g people
473. that were careful, then they got the mild cold. Many of them have long term problems, but they're still in
474. their mind, because the acute phase what not ending up in the hospital. Um, they've gone on to be
475. serial infections of COVID.
476. 28:52
477. Not
478. serial entrepreneurs.
479. 28:56
480. where the data are clear now that several things you can get long COVID With Omicron 100%
481. Absolutely no happen. That about 10% of people with any variant can get long COVID The vaccine
482. definitely reduces your likelihood of COVI
483. D and multiple infections definitely increases your likelihood of
484. COVID. Now, I mentioned the word the V word, the vaccine word. So I want to say for those out there
485. who have vaccine injury, that is real, there are absolutely people who get a vaccine injur
486. y syndrome
487. that looks basically like long COVID Yeah.
488. 29:31
489. I my first vaccine, I had the same a very similar experience of what COVID did to me.
490. 29:36
491. Yeah. And I
492. 29:39
493. got I got myocarditis Cedars Sinai in Los Angeles, I've never actually publicly nam
494. ed them, you know,
495. absolutely fucking denied. Sorry that I had a vaccine issue and they made up all this other shit. It's in
496. my head and everything else. And it's like I'm extremely healthy. And you know, my heart rate is like it's
497. pounding It's like the c
498. hief of good. You can relax, you're at the doctor yet the hospital that's why your
499. heart is gone. It's like, oh, my
500. 30:12
501. white coat syndrome. No. So today was actually this makes great sense. Now, you got a vaccine
502. induced injury and then you got COVID.
503. That's simply like getting COVID twice. Now, let's make sure
504. we say this. The number of people who get Vaccine Injury is is real but vanishingly small compared to
505. the number of people with COVID injury.
506. 30:32
507. -
508. 10
509. -
510. Transcribed by
511. https://otter.ai
512. So I take care of long COVID patients on both
513. sides. And I concur with you Dr. Ely. There are a lot
514. more people that have long COVID from COVID. Yeah, absolutely.
515. 30:41
516. And and it still is in the vast majority of people's best interest to go with the vaccine recommendations.
517. 30:50
518. That's why I wante
519. d to ask you about what data are you pointing to that you see that there's a
520. substantial decrease in long COVID In vaccinated versus unvaccinated? And where does that line?
521. You know, where, you know, at what point in time do you see are the benefits of the
522. vaccination versus
523. the booster? What? What is kind of the magic protection that you're seeing?
524. 31:17
525. Sure, absolutely. That's, that's a great, that's a great word there. For example, there was a study in
526. JAMA that that showed there's a date in 2500 peopl
527. e that showed that versus no vaccines, and
528. adjusting for patient differences. Two or three doses, the vaccine reduced blood COVID by 75. To 85%.
529. That's a that's a big difference. And it's an important awareness. That's just one of the many studies
530. that inv
531. estigation was was one of the first really well documented ones that came out in July of 2022.
532. The first author's name if people want to look it up as as aleni azz o l i n i and those dates
533. 32:01
534. are real. For a second, if temper centipede are getting
535. long COVID Right now, that is accurate. Not
536. saying it is but it's just exactly what most people have had at least two shots, the vaccine vast majority
537. of people, what what's the numbers? It's 80 plus percent? I think,
538. 32:20
539. I think about I think about 50%
540. have had multiple shots and only about 85% of had. I mean, she's the
541. only like, 25%, who had the full vaccine, you know, go at all the boosters and everything.
542. 32:31
543. No, forget what I'm saying just to shut Yeah, yeah. Okay, so fully vaccinated, the wonde
544. rful term. Um,
545. and so I don't see how the math adds up. I'll be point blank, I don't see how that story adds up, that
546. there's a 70% reduction, if 10% of people are getting long COVID That would be saying that if you're
547. unvaccinated, almost 100% of people a
548. re getting long COVID? Well,
549. 32:57
550. the epidemiology you're trying to do is is limited by the fact that I cited for you one study. That's just one
551. study, the different studies have different math on that. So let's not get into the weeds on this. The
552. bottom
553. line is that multiple studies have shown that vaccination reduces your likelihood getting long
554. COVID. And that Multiple studies have shown that that you're more likely to get it if you get hit with a
555. virus 334 times.
556. 33:22
557. Yeah, no doubt. It's really roc
558. k
559. -
560. 11
561. -
562. Transcribed by
563. https://otter.ai
564. 33:24
565. solid, but the percentage it brings you down, I don't want to sit here and argue about that. I don't know
566. the truth of that. Yep.
567. 33:30
568. I think that it's gonna be a long time before you even really sort that out. Right? I mean, look, we, you
569. had
570. to wait 15 years before you go.
571. 33:37
572. But let me get to something that we that we hit on a minute ago, and I don't want us to leave it. This is
573. about cultural empathy. Meaning that the people who are most vulnerable to get affected and have their
574. life cha
575. nged by this are people of color people with lower socioeconomic class, people who can't afford
576. to not go to work. And, and this is a big deal. I you know, one more story I was gonna share with you
577. from ADB is that I had the privilege of caring for Maya An
578. gelou. When I was years ago, she was having
579. some lung problems. I had permission to tell that story. And her son, and I met during when I was
580. writing every deep breath, and his name is Guy Johnson. And I was talking to him and I said, guy, what
581. did your mo
582. m teach you about, you know, her blackness and her writing and, and her ability to see the
583. suffering of other people? And he said, he said, That's really, the only place in the world is this Maya
584. Angelou, quote, exist in every direction. And he said, My mo
585. m said, Son, I write from the black
586. perspective, but I aim for the human heart. And that conversation led me down the road with him about
587. discussing cultural empathy. And as he spoke to me, I was really intrigued by the things they pointed
588. out. What if I w
589. ere to be more empathetic about the cultural differences that all my patients are bringing
590. in to the clinic. And to my SIP survivorship world, where did they come from? You know, if they miss
591. work, are they going to lose their electricity? Are they going t
592. o lose their house? How much more
593. heavily will that weigh on them, because they can't supply food for their children. And so sort of thing.
594. So let's talk for just a second, about how this whole pandemic has disproportionately affected different
595. segments of
596. the population. And how we have to be aware that long COVID is likewise affecting such
597. patients, for example, you're much more likely to get long COVID. If you have a high body mass index,
598. obesity affects that now we know that 40% of our country's obese,
599. but the people who are more at risk
600. for this are people who eat white bread, and they eat white bread because they don't have money and
601. white breads, cheap. White bread consumption goes up when unemployment goes up. Things like this.
602. And I just want us to
603. what's happening in your mind is I bring these topics up because you guys are so
604. 36:03
605. I can tell you. So Dr. Ely out. I'll tell you right now, right. So we opened our centers. And we knew I was
606. aware that I live in a place where the average homes $1.1 mi
607. llion. I knew immediately that we would
608. have to go into our cities. I ran into Stanford, and we help them there. I ran into Bridgeport and help
609. them there. We rented in New Haven. And we ran into Canarsie. In fact, Mayor Adams, and I had a
610. great relationsh
611. ip back when he was borough president. It is crystal clear from what we saw in
612. Greenwich, Connecticut, in Stamford, Connecticut, in New Canaan, Connecticut, that the underserved
613. in those communities. And let's, let's face it, that they are there, they're i
614. n those communities, they're
615. taking care of homes, they're taking care of their families, they're taking care of your your members,
616. your family in a nursing home, they're taking care of your family in a hospital, the the underserved
617. -
618. 12
619. -
620. Transcribed by
621. https://otter.ai
622. community, just like yo
623. u said, they cannot afford to not work. And so they carried a massive burden of
624. COVID. And I can tell you, they spread it to their families. Why? Because they didn't live in the 7000
625. square foot home where they can isolate little Buffy.
626. 37:20
627. Yeah, Maria,
628. if you bring that up, you know, I tweeted a lot during urges about our employees that we
629. employ 1000s of people working in our labs, Los Angeles been our big one. And we we tested all, we
630. still do all of our employees every single day PCR testing the enti
631. re pandemic, and everyone wears a
632. mask in our buildings. Those are the plan. And we test everyone. And during the different searches, like
633. the big surge of Omicron, we had, like 35% of our employees always out with code. And the people
634. would ask, like, you
635. know, how negligent Are you just like pointing fingers at me. And I tried to explain
636. that our employees in Los Angeles live in multigenerational households, they go. They have the
637. children, their their parents and their grandparents at minimum, brothers,
638. sisters all living together,
639. close quarters, someone gets it, everyone gets it. And you know, we did our best to kind of manage
640. that, of course, we turn on the car, we put people on hotels, preemptively. We did everything to kind of
641. keep our operation goin
642. g because we were responsible for testing, all of LA City and I wanted to bring
643. up is the public testing was used a lot by uninsured and underinsured on Medicaid that don't really have
644. a
645. 38:41
646. way out which by the way, the federal government is now coming
647. in attacking the doctors that used
648. those public health.
649. 38:47
650. It wasn't medically necessary is one of my favorite questions about you know, PCR testing. But that's
651. for another day. You want to stop too many efforts from me today.
652. 38:58
653. But the point Van
654. derbilt is is it, you know, it's a clean institutions.
655. 39:04
656. But my point I wanted to bring up is the COVID pandemic itself, the underserved actually used testing
657. sites more than the well to do that, you know, could pick up the phone had access to a docto
658. r and could
659. get whatever they want. And you know, normal medicine, the Medicaid patients, the uninsured, the one
660. those that struggle to even get an appointment for any type of health care,
661. 39:29
662. but that's gone. Now Alex, that's gone. But
663. 39:32
664. what I'm
665. saying is they're the ones that that knew, like the doctor was saying that COVID Just a
666. sickness could affect their ability to provide for their family. And now they're stuck with getting long
667. COVID Because they're the ones exposed the most to the infectio
668. n and yes, the pandemic has
669. disproportionately affected. I hate to use the term but I don't want to use lower class but that the the
670. -
671. 13
672. -
673. Transcribed by
674. https://otter.ai
675. Working class, those that have had the work face to face and be exposed to people every single day.
676. So Dr. Ely Poston, now
677. they have long COVID,
678. 40:08
679. who's going to pay for their care? Right, who's going to pay for their care? It is Vanderbilt, let's talk
680. about the hard truth.
681. 40:15
682. Here. You know what it's going to be, they're going to be on Medicaid, and they're going to
683. get basic
684. care or HMO and know they're going to be put on medical management. And so you're live with it. So
685. what do you think about that Dr. Healy, I think that
686. 40:33
687. we as a society have to struggle with, we have to face the fact that these people must
688. have some
689. element of the added dollars, the $5 billion next bill, that next money that Biden is raising, for the so
690. called next gen, we're going to have to direct some dollars towards these people, because the systems
691. that were in place prior don't catch t
692. hese people in a safety net. And they need to have the long COVID
693. clinics established, we need to have a system of clinics established for them. We're doing it here in the
694. CIP center free of charge. But that's just because we have donations coming in. And
695. we're we're we
696. know that we need this humanism. You know, if you think about what humanism is, humanism, to me is
697. the, the acknowledgment that by just by being human, you have an innate set of qualities that you are
698. owed by the rest of us around you, and t
699. hat we must lift ourselves up and focus our attention and
700. efforts to give you what you are owed. And in a sense, for me, as a physician, my patients have a claim
701. on me, they have a claim on me. And you know what, the more disadvantaged they are, the bigger
702. their
703. claim gets. This is what's called preferential option for the poor, I must turn my attention to the people
704. who need me the most, and everybody, you could say, well, everybody needs you the same, because
705. we're all equally made. I agree with that. We'
706. re all priceless. However, many people have abilities to
707. work the system better than others. And so that makes me say back to you. Let's speak out. Let's talk
708. to our congressman, let's talk to our president, let's work as a medical community. And let's cre
709. ate
710. programs that will lift these people up. You know, I know we're running out of time here. So I'll close by
711. telling you one last story during COVID at a patient named Jimmy Johnson, and Jimmy was in the ICU
712. for non COVID related reasons, but we stopped
713. all visitation so no family could come in and see him. In
714. addition, he was an inmate. So he was under the guard of the prison system. And by the way, we just
715. launched a website last week, called scopes and shields, SC o p s, a n d shields, and it's to brin
716. g
717. together the law enforcement system and doctors to say how can we do a better job of caring for these
718. vulnerable patients when they're in the hospital? Well, Mr. Johnson had a huge set of red shackles on
719. his ankles. As I saw him on the ventilator with th
720. e tube down his mouth. I said, you know, why is he
721. shackled like that? That makes no sense. And it's, it's not improving his care. And in fact, what I, what I
722. said to the team was, let's call the prison. And let's get rid of those shackles so that he can f
723. eel the
724. dignity and this is what I want for all long COVID patients as well, not that long ago, which are the same
725. as incarcerated, but anybody in my life, who I'm trying to provide mercy, what's mercy, mercy is the
726. willingness to dive into the chaos of an
727. other person's life and provide lifting and healing. And during
728. COVID, we provided a lot of chaotic care, but were we always providing lifting and healing. Without that
729. lifting and healing part? It's false mercy. So for him, we got the shackles off, he lif
730. ted his knees up. He
731. -
732. 14
733. -
734. Transcribed by
735. https://otter.ai
736. looked at me in the bed, and we got him off the ventilator. And he started telling me stories about his
737. his family and his life and riding horses. And you can see that something clicked in his mind that day.
738. He said, No, really, there
739. was a swimming hole, a fishing hole, whatever you want to call it, but most of
740. all, it had horses die. I loved ride horses. I'd sneak off and ride after school and get in trouble almost
741. every day because I was late for dinner. This is a man finding his why
742. to live. And do you know that we
743. thought he was dying Mr. Jimmy Johnson, and two and a half years later, he is still alive, because he
744. found a way to live and people have to find their purpose. This is our goal. This is our charge to help
745. people remember
746. that they are priceless and no amount of disease, whether it be long COVID or Pics
747. or whatever they get that does not reduce their price lessness by an iota.
748. 44:42
749. I listened Dr. Ely. Never more truer word than that. I don't care whether your insurance
750. stiffs us, I don't
751. care whether you're uninsured and don't have any assets. I don't care whether you were a criminal or
752. not. You are a human. And true humanism is exactly what you just said. You look into the eyes of that
753. person that human and you say, our
754. charge is to build your dignity, to get you through the challenges to
755. palliate your suffering, and help you live. Right. And we have forgotten that in medicine, we have
756. forgotten that because of the corporatism and medicine. We now need to get back to it.
757. It's been
758. stripped from us, it's time to take the charge again. So Dr. West Ely, listen, you are a legend. You're
759. amazing. We appreciate the time that you give us from Nashville. We are we are amazed that you can
760. do research in Nashville because you know,
761. there's a lot of other stuff you can do in Nashville. But
762. instead you chose to help mankind. So we appreciate you coming on for Alex and for Steve. We are
763. signing off and we'll see you guys next week. Thanks for listening to hard truths and convenient liv
764. es
765. with Alex Michigan and Dr. Steve Murphy. If you have a question, email us. Hello at HTC l
766. podcast.com. For more information on this podcast please visit our website HTC all podcast.com Be
767. sure to follow us on all social media at each T cell podcast. If
768. you enjoyed this episode, please make
769. sure you rate and review us on Google, Amazon, Spotify, or wherever you find podcasts. And if you
770. hated this episode, then go tell the staff off

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