Also media, Hello everyone, and welcome to It Could Happen Here podcast, returning from our holiday break to discuss the exciting topic of infectious diseases in Gaza, and for that we're joined by an all star cast of experts. We have joining us today Saskia Popescu, who's an infectious disease epidemiologist and assistant professor at the University of Maryland.
Welcome Saska, Thank.
You for joining us.
Thanks so much for having me.
Yeah, of course, yeah, you're welcome. It's not just you.
We've also got Cave carves back, come back baby.
It's actually my first time. This is Sharene. Also, i'm here. This is my first time meeting cave so this is a real trick.
Yeah, sure, I've done you wrong, Sharen, I'm sorry I didn't introduce you.
That's okay, it's probably in the description or something that I'm here.
No one, Yeah, make a valuable contributions. People will know you're here.
But yeah, it's it's all of us.
And yeah, we talked today because like I think the origin, sorry of this particular episode is that, like a few weeks ago, there was a very funny thing on the internet about people in the i d F getting diarrhea, which is funny.
Object what the d i F stands for?
Actually, all the kids are saying, but sorry, no, it's funny.
Don't you ever apologize? Yeah, you do, not apologize for.
You any opportunity just to ship on them.
You're good.
Yeah, expect many. It's half an hour at least of this.
Don't be driving because you might laugh too much and crash. But no, it's very funny. It's the name of our group chat it's as Ready Diarrhea Forces. But aside from that, like this raises a more important question, right, which is that people in Gaza don't have access to very many medical supplies to begin with.
Were things are.
Embargoed like torny K's which is spoken out in this podcast before. They also have obviously a very resource constrained environment to begin with, and then a number of their hospitals have been bombed since then, which obviously further reduces their access to medical care. Also, they have less acklos to things like running water now because they're being bombed
to an incredible degree. And so Saskia has joined us today to like explain the risk of the spread of infectious disease, maybe give us an update on like what's already happening and the risks of what could happen. So I guess maybe we should start off with really basic stuff and explain what infectious diseases are and like how they're different from non communical diseases gets people aren't familiar, would one if you like to do that.
Yeah, I'm happy to. So infectious diseases, you know, when we talk about diseases in general, as you mentioned, there are chronic diseases, things like diabetes, cancer. When we talk about infectious diseases, meaning they're communicable for the most part, that means that they are spread through various sources human
to human, like influenza. There's things like anthrax that you can equali Campelobacter that you can get from soil, from food, and the zoonotic diseases that they are also spread through animals, so things like Ebola mirors which is Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus. So infectious diseases are viruses, bacteria, fungi, parasites, and they really love to take advantage of high stress environments for bread and unfortunately this is one of them.
So this is a very what we see with infectious diseases. A lot is that conflict and environments where people are stressed, resources are stressed, and the environment is under a continuous bombardment. There's densely populated spaces, no access to health, clean food, and water, et cetera. I mean, I could probably go on for five minutes about what makes an infectious disease spread, is going to amplify it. So these are diseases that take advantage of these environments.
I'll add that the situation is just a perfect setup for infectious disease to run rampant. There's over one point nine million people that have been displaced. Of that, one point four million are living in overcrowded shelters at this point. And in the best scenario from what I've seen, there's one toilet for every two hundred and twenty people. Now, if you ever lived in like a house of like five people and there's like one case of diarrhea, you'll
realize how terrible that is. Now you amplify that to two hundred and twenty at the minimum, and that's the best case scenario. I've heard its highest one per seven hundred people in some places. And then you know, people have to go in the streets, they have to go where there's water supplies, and you're going to be infecting those areas. There's one shower for every like four five
hundred people again in best case scenario. So it's a huge number of people getting concentrated into smaller and smaller areas and without the infrastructure there to handle that in any way. And when that happens, I mean, we are going to see I am really worried about seeing in the end of this more depth from infectious disease than from the bombardments.
Yeah, well, that's that's like a it almost feels like a double another weapon that they're that that they're that they've used because they're not letting them have a chance to recuperate or have a sanitary place to do surgeries or anything. Because if they're doing surgery with unsanitary conditions, they can get infect like the wounds can get it affected, and that's a whole nother thing, or even just like having waste in the street, like making it like having
it fester. It just it's it's really I think people forget that it's not just like a building was destroyed or people were killed. It's there's lasting effects that linger for probably generations. You know, it's just it's just I don't know. It really is infuriating.
I think the crazy part is the World Health Organization. So the WHO recently released some data as to what is reported to them in terms of disease, and they said, so far not keep in mind, these are just reported numbers, and that means it's just the tip of the iceberg. In most cases, one hundred thousand cases of diarrhea and those are in young children. So half of those are in young children out of the age of five, which
means it can be deadly. And this number is just twenty five percent higher than what we have seen reported pre conflict. And in terms of respiratory infections, the things like covid, influenza and pneumonia, one hundred and fifty thousand cases. And that's just the numbers that we know about. But we're also seeing cases and outbreaks of things like meningitis, skin rashes, babies, LCE, chicken pox, which is highly infectious.
And you know, we worry in those cases about when people are in these close quarters and their bodies are already strained. Because one thing we do know is that when your bodies physiologically under stress, meaning no sleep, malnutrition, you know, not access to clean water to wash your hands, not dehydrated, et cetera, you're at an increased risk for disease and severe disease. So that means that people are at higher risk to get it and then to spread
it in these environments. And that's what's really scary because it becomes a hot spot for transmission. And you mentioned that this feels like a secondary effect in many ways. It's almost like a secondary conflict, if you will, and one that will leave lasting implications because what we do know is that disease and conflict go hand in hand. And when I think about it a lot, and we've seen this unfortunately throughout time, is that conflict can bring
disease and it can amplify disease. When I say bring disease, we know that people in these spaces soldiers can bring
in diseases that are being spread around. But we've also seen sexually transmitted diseases in the past being spread through sexual assault and sexual violence, and that's one thing I definitely worry about, and unfortunately we know that's happening and it's not something we're going to see reported for a while, but things like that can and do occur, and it's a very scary situation.
If I can tack on a little bit to the diarrhea subject here, because I am a GI and liver doc, I mean, in a typical month in Gaza, there is about two thousand cases of diarrhea and kids under five, and in the last month there was over forty thousand cases. And for kids that aren't getting water, they're not getting the recommended amount of like daily water, like it's like seven to eight leaders in refugee situations is what's recommended. These people are getting like one to two leaders per
whole families, so they're not staying hydrated. And these are kids that are most vulnerable. That's the part that is really hard for me. And I've actually seen people sort of downclay it like just like, well, diarrhea, you know, that's what you get, but in these situations, it's going to be very serious for these kids. And the other
thing we're seeing is cases of jaundice. They're noting that people are becoming that, which to me suggests that there's hepatitis A and hepatitis E, which is you know, you get through fecal oral contamination and hepatitis E in particular is what concerns me because there's pregnant women and when pregnant women get hepatitis E, it's worse for them that
that's a really bad situation. And when that happens, I mean, these are these are women who are already not getting support, They're already under nourished, They're not able to produce breast milk, They're going to be sick, They're not going to be able to feed their kids. It's I mean, I can't I can't imagine, honestly. I mean, I know it's funny. We can say these things, we can talk about the numbers, but it is like to actually wrap my brain around
it breaks my brain. I cannot, like imagine the numbers of people that are sick and are in these hospitals, not just being treated, but like the NASA Hospital, which is one of the two hospitals in Gaza, you know, they they are like a three hundred and fifty bed hospital. They are already over like a thousand patients and not to mention the many thousands, over seventy thousand people just staying there, you know, for refuge. It's absolutely a nightmare. I can't I can't write my brain around it.
Yeah, Like often I know when I speak to colleagues who are there or at the journalistic they'll go to hospitals a in the hope that they'll be safe, which hasn't proven to be true sadly, which is pretty messed up. But be you know, they have many generators, right, so they can charge and and tell the world what's happening, or try to. It seems like some of the word isn't listening. But yeah it there cost blows are incredibly overgrowded.
I wonder like if we could go back to diarrhea and there's not like a fun topics talk about it.
Score, Yeah, it's time to shine.
Yeah, this life's work.
So like I think it was diarrhea that I read kills more people than conflict annually.
Oh yeah worldwide sure, yeah, yeah, well, I mean Saskia probably has better numbers on it than I do, actually, but worldwide, yeah, it's probably the number one, number one killer.
So like let's just break that because I most of like by the very hus being a podcast, right best, so people listening in the in the kind of the in the neoliberal core or the global north, whatever you want to call it. Right, Like, they have a smartphone and they've downloaded this, and it might be difficult to understand how you die from diarrhea, which is like an
inconvenience in a lot of places. So can you just explain that for people so they can they can understand and how the conditions that we see in Gaza would compound.
That Saska, Do you want me to go first?
Oh?
All you, I'll talk about spreads, you can talk, okay.
So, I mean, the there's a couple of issues that can happen. There's a lot, but I mean dehydration is going to be a major one, and loss of electrolytes. I mean, these people can get so badly dehydrated that the circulatory system isn't working properly, or they can lose the amount of electrolytes that they need and they're not replacing and that can cause cardiovascular issues as well. So
it's a terrible way to die. I mean, you know, cholerara and these terrible like diarrheal epidemics that you know we think of of mostly in the past. They're terrible. They're terrible ways to go, and especially if you don't have the I mean it's treatable. Usually it's treatable. You know, you get fluid rehydration, you get electrolyte management. It's it's
pretty manageable in the right situation. But if you don't have that, it's gonna be a devastating thing to the body over time, and for young kids, sooner rather than later.
Yeah, so maybe we should explain how it spread.
Yeah, I mean the scary parts. So there's multiple pathogens that can cause diarrheal illness, and for the most part, we see bacteria and viruses. If you've had neurovirus, which is the cruise ship bug, that is highly transmissible, meaning it just goes through households and environments very very quick. During outbreaks. You can't just use hand sanitizer and a simple disinfectant. You need bleach. And if you're if we're thinking about the best case scenario, and I've seen you know, diarre,
real illnesses go through schools, hospitals, you name it. We still struggle to contain those. Now, put yourself in an environment with this level of stress, and you know, the thirty six hospitals in Gazda Gaza twenty six have been damaged, twenty one are not functional at all, thirteen are partially functioning, and two are barely functioning. So we know that access to care is a challenge. Resources I can't even imagine.
So that means the capacity to treat patients with antibiotics, with fluids, everything, and now contain it, which is the disinfection you know, all the infection prevention essentially, And I don't even want to think about contact tracing in public health interventions because it doesn't exist. It's an entirely collapsed system. You know, this is a humanitarian crisis. So when you know, when you have people in close quarters and there's a lot of high touch items because a lot of direal
illness is spread through touch. It's you know, contaminated hands and objects, and then you know, you touch your mouth, you eat with your hands, et cetera. That's how these things are spread. So between the bathroom not having access, you know, not having access to restrooms. You know, we mentioned the toilet situation, there's also one shower for every forty five hundred people, so we know that people are
not able to clean themselves effectively. And this is a ripe condition for direal illness to spread, and they it spreads very quickly, very efficiently, and it is exceedingly hard to get rid of. And it worries me because a lot of these diseases, it's not just like you get it one time and you have immunity to it. It can keep going around and if you have a situation like that where you cannot clean effectively, you can't treat effectively,
then we're just going to see it continuously compound. And that's absolutely terrifying because you know, we were talking about pregnant women earlier. There's fifty thousand pregnant women right now in Gaza and they are malnourished. That's just the tip of the iceberg. And we see that so many children there are malnourished, and these are very dangerous infections for vulnerable people. And on the best of days, we struggle to contain diarreal illness. So my big concern is this
and respiratory viruses. To be honest with you, because when you have this many people in close quarters and ignore the fact that they're extremely you know, physically strained and stressed right now, which is when your immune system struggles, it's going to spread and it's going to be exceedingly hard to contain it. So this is an environment where we're going to see diarreal illness spread and it's going to unfortunately kill a lot more people then we will
even realize. It's going to take years to understand implications of this, you know, if we even consider that access to clean water and food. We've been talking a lot about malnourishment, which is huge, but I'm also concerned to the quality of food that they're getting too, and the water, all of it. Everything about the situation is going to spread disease. It's you know, I know that sounds quite dramatic, but it's entirely true.
No, I mean, I'm glad you're emphasizing that, because I don't think people realize the gravity of of like a second wave of death like that that happens like not even not with weapons. Uh, but no, I'm glad you emphasize that. Let's uh, let's take our first break. We'll be right back.
And it reminds me too of when we saw U N peacekeepers in Haiti and they introduced polera, and you know, and that's it's an unfortunate reality when you are bringing in groups of people to and this you know, for in Haiti, they were trying to help the situation. In this case, it's not surprising. I mean, there's there's a really good book called Contagions and Chaos that actually talks about how infectious diseases can amplify conflict or create it.
And ultimately, I think we're just going to see this as a rolling in health issue until there's a ceasefire and until there's really substantial work in there to resource and to take care of people.
I mean, it's scared any Kave. You mentioned that you had a question for Saskia I.
Do you know you've written and you talked a lot about the intersections of science and policy, particularly in terms of COVID nineteen. We've seen that global threats elsewhere can affect Americans, and I'm wondering, is there a way to try and appeal to Westerners who aren't that interested yet and why they should care about infectious diseases that are
rising or become rampant in other places. Is there an argument you can make to these people who may not care that much about the Palestinian people per se.
Oh, there's the political answer. I should give you. And then there's the real answer, which is political answer saying that you know people do care and you know we're just having the console in your mind them. But the real answer is, look, we just came out of three and a half years of a pandemic and at this point, if people don't give a shit, they're not going to.
And I know that's crude for me to say, but it's I've been working in this and we've seen it from Ebola to mers too, empocs, and in now coming out of COVID. I think we can safely say that, you know, it's not a matter of if, but when. But people really like the saying that is infectious disease knows no borders, and to a certain extent that is true. Infectious diseases they don't know that, but it ignores the fact that some countries are more equipped to handle them,
and that borders are a pores concept. So in this case, I think from an American perspective, where it is a very complicated relationship Americans have and I'm not getting into that when it comes to Israel. The reality is that it shouldn't matter if it's a conflict. If you see an outbreak somewhere. You should be worried for those people, and it shouldn't matter if it's going to impact you.
But now that we have lived through a pandemic, a historical event, I would like to think people would see this and realize any one of these diseases can come to the States, it can strain global resources. And I'm hopeful that with the amount of attention that's coming to this and that the work that the WHO and the UN have been drawing attention to it, that will change.
But I get a little nervous every time we talk about infectious diseases and conflict areas because I find that Americans and it's not just us, that people in high income countries disassociate because that is a conflict related issue, but it's not Conflict can mean many different things, and it's essentially saying, this is an issue that's going to
bubble out of control. And if we were in a situation where there was no clean food and water, we had no access to health services, in medicine, well was an issue in power, no communication and I just read that three Palestinian internet providers went down, so they have no way to contact outside world. They have housing, safe passes, et cetera. Any one of those impacted US, we would be experiencing it. And I will leave that question with one comment. That's to say we are a very well
resourced country. The US invests so many resources into health, global health, security, biopreparedness, all of the above, and we were one of the worst performers when it came to COVID response. And I say that having worked in health care during that and doing epidemiology, and I think this should be a continuous wake up call that it's we're one disease away from an international crisis, and when we see this, it should really speak to the fact that
it is global health. It's not national health, not local health, it is global health. That's my ted talk.
The good tech.
I guess if I could piggyback on that, there is not a single war that I have covered, either remotely or in person, where I have not then seen those people arrive our border where I live, Like I was in Syrian Kurdistan in October. I am seeing people leaving Turkey more and more Turkish Kurdistan, but also Syrian Kurdistan, or people who went to Syria went back to Turkey
at our southern border right now. I am seeing people from conflicts all over the world at our southern border right now, and every single conflict, because we tend to stick our nose into every single conflict, it ends up here, right because we tell people we support them and then we abandon them, and they come here thinking that we were going to support them. I'll also add that every time there is an infectious disease outbreak going forward, it will be used in the same way that COVID was
to prevent asylum. The title forty two that was used to like quote unquote catch and release migrants at the southern border allowed border patrol to reject people without processing their asylum came. That's a public health floor, it's migration law.
Biden's already indicated that he would love to do the same thing again, and like, you don't even need an excuse with this infocused disease stuff, right the laws are already there, and it was already in place for several years, so it's kind of stood the test of the courts.
And this will impact even if you don't give a shit about people in Palestine, and maybe you should examine what's up with your morality if you do, like, this will impact you because people will come here, and it will impact you because people who should come here won't be able to and that will mean that people who have done nothing wrong, you who trusted us when we lie to them. You know, people Americans seem to care
about Afghanisa more than other people. Like I've spoken to hundreds of Afghan women our border and like they were stuck under Title forty two in very dangerous situations in places like Mexico. So even if you only care about those people, you should still care about this. I guess can I add something to I think, please.
You know, to avoid fueling isolationism, because I think that happens all the time when we talk about these global health issues. Every resource that has to be put to helping this health crisis that is bubbling out of a humanitarian crisis is a resource that's not back where it's supposed to be addressing global health issues. Meaning so for example, when we saw the people outbreak in West Africa in twenty fourteen, after there were you know, we started to actually realize
the implications to malaria controlled tuberculosis HIV. So when we have to throw a bunch of emergency resources at a crisis, those are coming out of somewhere else. And I worry too that people don't realize that we're, you know, as the who, the un everywhere, MSS is having to help this situation because there's no access to care and again
is a health crisis. That means we're going to start to see other things pop up elsewhere, and that really worries me because we are already very strained when it comes to global health resources. We just again came out of a pandemic, so everyone's tired, everyone's burnt out. We've got health systems and a lot of and we're seeing even in the US where a lot of funding for
like the CDC is being pulled in NIH. So now that we're out of kind of coming back into this panic neglect cycle, I worry that a lot of the resources that we're having to pull to address this crisis are going to then ultimately leave a lot of other places at risk or infectious diseases for long term health implications. So it is a lot bigger than one area or
people you know, having to flee to the US. It's it's all of these things, and too often we approach this with a very short sighted this and we have we don't you know, we have finite resources when it comes to global health response, and when we have to use them because you know we're not you know, approaching this effectively or appropriately, then we're going to see larger implications.
Yeah, even like we can just keep building off each other stuff and it's not here from the other two. Even recently, I was trying to buy some humanitarian daily rations for the border, which are people aren't familiar. They're like MRIs for refugees, and make sure we eat one on our.
Live show once.
Yeah it's very salty, Yeah, very salty. That it's good for the electrolytes, but like that is a state department. It's buying the back of surplus retailers at the minute, which means that there's obviously like a critical lack of supply of these things. Same with UNHCR shelters, and like that means that someone else doesn't get to eat, right, because we've just massively increased the burden of people who
desperately need to eat. Like it's not like these things were chilling before, like there were you know, hunger is still a massive problem in the world, despite us having so much food here and so like they say, yeah, the same as true of medical supplies. Like you said, right that that means that somebody else doesn't get them, that money doesn't go to something else very important, that it could be going to.
Can I ask about something I just learned about the past couple of days. So on December twenty fifth, the Jerusalem Post reported that an IDF soldier died of a fungal infection, and apparently he was hospitalized and eventually he died, and at least ten other soldiers have been diagnosed with
infections of some sort. I think what kind of made me annoyed is that there is a headline from the Times of Israel that said, as a soldier with fungal infection dies, fears grow of Gaza diseases spreading into Israel, and apparently they're examining whether the infections originated from the Hammas tunnels and all this stuff. I think, while Iel, it really bothered me because I looked at all of
these articles. I mean, most of them are obviously Israeli sourced, but it still was the same rhetoric of there's diseases in God and our soldiers are getting them, And honestly, the takeaway in all of these was we have to worry about Israeli public health and the Israeli citizens. It wasn't about anything about the gosins or anything like that. And I was just I guess I wanted to ask, is there any truth at all to the idea that there can be certain infections localized to that degree even
though it's like a very small country in general. And I guess it's really I feel like it's a just fear mongering tactic using health as a weapon. But I don't know. I'd love to hear your thoughts.
Even the fungus has gone woke. I can't believe it. They've weaponized fungus, sasky. I'll let you address it, but I would say this, I mean, I think the fear I just did an episode of my podcast on funguses and talking about the last of us and seeing like the truth that there's really a concern, especially with global climate change, and it is I mean, the thought of a fungus affecting humans in that way who were not in some way under their body understress or immuno suppressed,
it's it's not that likely. And I definitely agree from what I'm hearing that like this is just another way to be like, look at these dirty people, we should bomb them to them.
Everything related to Palestinians is oh, it's all the plague. Like they're scary, they're barbaric, and also they're going to make you sick. It's it's really infuriating. They're just going at every angle. I just I found the quote that made me mad. Can I read it? Okay, I'm going
to read it. Basically, it says the war between Israel and Hamas has led to the destruction of large swaths of Gaza and internal displacement of the vast majority of its population, resulting in what is called humanitarian crisis for the Palestinians. It is called that because it is that body what law. These conditions have led to the outbreaks of various diseases, which can potentially threaten the well being of hundreds of thousands of IDF groups fighting in Gaza.
They can also ultimately spell trouble for public health in Israel. I just can't believe that's the takeaway.
All at Saskia, do you want to address the spread of fungal infection in a situation like this.
Yeah, I mean, look again, this is a situation where disease is going to be spread and that includes idea soldiers. They are at risk because guess what, they all have to go back to their bunks and sleep at night in close quarters. Do we see diseases spread easily in militaries, of course, I mean it would be insane not to think that. But trying to, you know, source it in Palestinians and Gazas is slightly ridiculous because there's no epidemiological
evidence of that. But it's also kind of weird to me that they're saying a fungal infection. That's a very specific thing, and bungle infections aren't fast infections for the most part. You know, when we do see them, I think from a regional perspective. If you live in Southwest like I do, Valley fever is a fungal infection. It's in the dirt though, it's a spore in the dirt, and it's not spread between people though that's that's the key part. It is you inhale it and you get it,
and it takes months in a lot of cases. But you know, can you can you see fungal infections yeah, that could be contaminated water, you know, inhalation, through showers, things like that. I mean, there's ways for that to happen, but we really just for the most part see those infections spread from an individual source, not an individual person. They tend to really not be they're environmentally spread, you know.
And I'm not a fungal expert. I can just speak to the ones that I've seen, and really we don't see them spread between people, and so I think that it's it's a weird choice to say, and I worry a little bit that they're just again to your point, trying to say like, oh, look, our soldiers are getting sick. You know, the sacrifice that we're making right is so much. And here's the thing. Conflict is where we're going to
see disease spread no matter what. And I if you're so worried about soldiers getting fungal infections from Gaza, then maybe keep the people in Gauza safe and then they're you know, either way you paint this, if you're trying to blame it on them, they keep them safe and they won't be able to spread disease. Very simple.
Yeah, they did. They did. Cite contaminated soil.
Okay, that's a contamination thing like environmental.
Yeah, this one epdibiologist said that these soldiers have come back with serious anti microbial resistant infections that they've picked up through contact with contaminated soil, among other factors. Like one, I feel like it's like a very direct statement.
There's a lot of there's a lot to unpack there.
Yeah.
Again though if it's in the soil, it's an environmental exposure. That is like, that's not anyone's fault from an anti microbial perspective that I'm having a hard time believing that value fever, as I mentioned, is really hard to treat, so sometimes it's not responsive to some of the medications you give. But you know you're gonna get anti microbial infections more so from people and contaminated objects, because that means that it has to have been exposed to antibiotics
and become resistant to the infections. But there's that feels like very messy, uh, you know, reporting on their part or communications, because not a lot of that makes sense to me. And either way, if they're saying it's from the environment, congratulations, you've just proven you're not getting it from people.
Yeah, thank you for getting into that. I just the the Hamas tunnels, the Hamas terror tunnels, sorry in their words, their terror tunnels. They're going to investigate whether infections have originated from there. It just it's also just that doesn't make any sense. So I'm glad to have two doctors here agree, and that's all I wanted.
I mean, I will say this Coxidium micosis is value fever, and we like, you know, she just mentioned it's we see it here in California. It's the reason why we used to say, if you're driving down Central Valley, California, down the Eye five, you should roll up your window and not breathe in the air because there's a possibility of getting it from that. So okay, they say that, Well, I don't think they do so much anymore.
There's a whole number of reasons why you don't want to be breathing in.
Yeah, there's a lot of cow farms out there too. It gets a little bit nasty out there in the I five. But but I mean, that's what is an endemic thing. It's like, if they don't want to be exposed to it, stay out of that area.
Yeah, but you're not going to get it from other people. That's the kicker. It's not spread from people.
It is very common to attribute infect your diseases that come from conflict to your enemy. It's like if you look at like the nineteen eighteen pandemic flu, right, and all the different things that people call that flu and the people to whom they attributed it, like, you can see that we've been doing that for more than one hundred years. It's it's part of the process of dehumanizing people who you're trying to kill.
It happened with COVID too, No, it's.
Yeah, yeah, I mean, yeah, that was a whole different situation.
I guess humans just don't learn. I suppose.
So I wonder Saskia like we obviously this is a terrible situation, and it's one that's like super easy to feel very disempowered with because you know, as much as you march around and do things, it doesn't seem to be stopping. There is there anything that like people can do, advocate for, like take action on, that could make this slightly less bad.
I mean, a ceasefire. I encourage people to donate to UNISF and obviously you know MSF A lot of the wonderful organizations doing work there, and probably my my biggest one right now, especially since we're around the holidays and people are spending a lot of time with family and likely getting into some heavy conversations around the dinner tables. Make sure you're well informed and you're not spreading misinformation and disinformation online because that's been a huge aspect of this.
You know, we saw with the humanitarian crisis in Ukraine. You know, Russia took direct action to spread misinformation and disinformation, and we're struggling with that in the United States right now with this. So I encourage people to stay informed of this, to really utilize good resources and not pull things from social media. If you're going to share something, you know, do so from an accurate source. I really, you know, the who un have been really good at
doing continuous updates and sharing that information. Human Rights Watch at all of the above, and on top of again, donating and really being an advocate for a ceasefire, to me is the biggest thing because also reminding people, hey, this is currently a localized crisis, but infectious diseases and a humanitarian crises, excuse me, rarely stay that way.
I would also plug the Palestinian Medical Relief Society the PMRS. They're the on the ground people. They've been there since nineteen seventy nine. They are founded by Palestinian doctors. It's mostly a Palestinian run and they're doing I think, really
good work down there as best they can. And they're where actually the who gets most of their information or a lot of it at least it's coming from their updates from the PMRS people on the ground, So that's another local source to look at if people are interested in getting involved.
Perfect, you got to do.
Sure, I'm not going to wrap it up yet. I was just thinking how unfortunate it is that people don't care enough. So you have to be like, it's not only going to stay localized, Like it's not just that probably you know what I mean. I hate that we have to go there because, especially after going through a pandemic yourself, if that is still not enough for you to have any kind of empathy, that's that's just insane to me. That's uh.
The one consistent thing I've seen is a lot of people say, oh, this conflict is you know, very There's a lot of history and I don't really want to get involved and yeah, and you know, to us, I do understand that there is a long, complicated history that not a lot of people are well informed of. But inform yourself. And that doesn't mean you can't have empathy. You can you know, denounce the Moss and also denounced
anti Semitism. These things are not really intrusive. And it's it's impressive to me that we're still after you know, it's not even been three months and we've lost twenty thousand people that we know of a this. We're seeing journalists held left and right as well. It's it's impressive to me that people are still saying, oh, I don't I don't really want to comment on that, or you know, it's it's it's very messy.
It is, and it's not though in the medical I'm sorry, James. In the medical world, i've seen doctors complain about more about the word provider and how it's used. Then the fact that three hundred medical professionals have been killed, some of them while doing their duty in the hospital, Like, that's a part that kind of surprised me from a medical perspective. And you know, I think I mentioned it
to you before. I'm grateful for coming on your show, because I think a lot of the overlap between doctors who listen to our show and they listen to yours, and they're very vocal and they're online, and they are the ones who are really giving me hope in these situations because and there's a lot of people in medicine, this is a medical issue. I mean, I'm not even talking about any of the history. That's nothing. That's not what I'm that's not what it's important to me right now.
It's about this healthcare crisis that is worsening and progressively worsening, and it is a bit of a bummer that I'm not seeing a little bit more interest in addressing it.
Yeah, I would hope also that most people, like insider outside of medical community could maybe agree that like the correct number of hospitals to bomb is zero hospitals, and that yeah, there isn't a reason why you bomb a hospitalities, shouldn't.
Anthony Blincoln said like a year or about Ukraine and Russia. Russia bombed hospitals and schools. There's no way that's normal. And then like there's a video where it's like cross sectioning into like right now, how it's like we're always going to support Israel. So it's like, no, it's not normal. Bombing hospitals and schools is never normal or okay, it's crazy that Israel went from being like we would never bomb a hospital to bombing dozens of them and nothing happening.
Yeah, but like yeah.
I guess just felt like like completion. Again, it's not okay when Turkey bomb's hospitals in Northeast area either, like I was there when they bombed one, they bombed another one. Since it's not okay when the Hunter and Meanmile bombs hospitals and at this one hospital left standing in the whole of Kerny State right now, and like this is happening there too, not like not caring about those people because it's just a topic of the day or whatever.
Like it's also not okay to use white phosphorus on armed civilians across the board were Yeah, like in general, it's horrific, and I just I think it's it's you know, and there was there were a couple of reports and I think that there's still data coming out about it that bodies had organs stolen from them, Yeah, which is just horrific.
And yeah, it doesn't really practice what Israel has done for a while though. Israel's uh, they said they stopped it and then they're continue to do it. But it's like they're notorious for bringing to returning bodies that have been like autopsied or having all their organs removed. And I want to just point out that for Muslim burials, the body is like it's very important that the body is whole, and the same for Jewish burials. But it's
just really disgusting, just point blank and then also really disrespectful. Yeah, sorry interrupted, No, no, I mean it's and again, you know, I think there's still a lot of information coming out about that and how many that cret etc. Because I, like I mentioned before, I think information right now is really challenging. Accurate information, of course, is exceedingly difficult, so
I'm always very careful, you know what we say. But to me, you know, the Washington Post just released a really good article and in death analysis of the attacks on the Al Shifa hospital, because that's the biggest hospital in Gaza. And for a while, you know, IDF was saying, well,
this is where Hamas has been operating. They have a tunnel networks and there was there was a good breakdown of why this is int accurate and at the end of the day, now there's no acceptable reason to bomb a hospital, and drawing attention to the fact that this
was occurring and misinformation is being shared is huge. So I'm hopeful that you know and very grateful to be on this podcast and talk with you all because the more information we can communicate about this situation, but also about the fact that there are much larger consequences of this from just even an infectious disease perspective is so critical because I don't think people realize that, and again they disassociate when they hear it's the conflict, it's a
result of conflicts. It is so much larger than that. It will you know, we will see it in the States, we will see the ramifications of this and if nothing else again coming out as COVID, I'd like to think that we realize that we are part of a much larger, interconnected world and infectious diseases are simply a plane flight away.
Yeah, very true.
Thank you both so much for your brains and your knowledge of we're coming on the show.
It's thanks for having us.
Yeah, thank you so much for having us, of course, and before we go, I'd like to ask you guys if you have anything you'd like to plug, like white people can find you good. You've mentioned a couple of good resources, but other information resources, that kind of thing that you'd like to share.
So in terms of the resources, I I am following a couple members of the pm RS. They have a Twitter feed but it's not very active, but the who gets a lot of the same information and they do a good job of updating in terms of where you could learn more. I just did an episode on the healthcare crisis in Gaza on my podcast, The House of Pod, which James has been on and stream. I'm trying to get you to come on so I'm down. I'm going to keep working on you in Saskia too. I mean you're all invited.
I'm recording this.
I'm just gonna release it on my podcast as well, and uh yeah, so listen to us there. I'll be doing more episodes on this topic as well in the in the coming months.
Cool.
Perfect, How about.
All of those resources I really been looking to of course, on the public health parents so w h O and writes watch and my big go tos as you know again as all the sources we've already mentioned, and I really I want to give a shout out to a colleague of mine, Jessica Alti Rivera, who is really really wonderful in this space and has been doing a lot
of science communication on her Instagram. I tend to be a little bit more on the cesspool that is formally Twitter, but you know, I'm I think there's some really wonderful people out there, this entire group included, that are actively working to share information but also how people can get
engaged and involved. So shout out to her and just all of the hard work that a lot of key journalists are doing in this space, because again, if you have no communication out it's really hard to get accurate information.
Well, thanks guys for listening. Why are you laughing? James? Can I wrap this out? Or is this too monotone? Send it now? That's the show again, Thanks again for both of you being so outspoken, and I think especially reminding everyone that it's actually not complicated, because it's also like a medical issue. It's not exactly when you just look at the numbers, look at BodyCount, look at families.
That's I think what our main focus should be and I appreciate you both because I know it's a tricky out there to be outspoken.
So thank you, thank you guys, thank you so much.
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