COVID Nation

are worthy of note. We're going to have our in depth conversation as we do every week with our friend in house, doctor doctor Jonathan Metzel, to go through where

we are with the latest in COVID nineteen. One of the things that I brought up to him and which we'll discuss in a bit is a Reddit thread that came through a Utah I see you doctor in discussing how COVID nineteen is affecting young people children essentially infants, toddlers, teens, and all kids that fall in between, how they are getting sicker, how they are dying, how they are ending up with long COVID and other respiratory issues, cardiac issues

that they're going to be dealing with for the rest of their lives. We are seeing numbers in pediatric hospitals that are boiling over. And what does that mean? Well, it means that they will not have the ability or the capacity to deal with other injuries that come in that children have that at one time could have seemed like they were not life threatening, but because they will not be able to get the immediate care that they need,

it will become life threatening. What does it mean to live in a country that only cares about fetuses, but once those children are breathing oxygen, living and walking, that

this country doesn't actually give a fuck? What does it mean that we are living in a time when you can ban access to abortion before a woman even knows that they are pregnant right at six weeks, which, let me just be very clear, is missing roughly two periods, right, two menstrual cycles, and that you have in the same time, these very same people who then are protesting in front of hospitals and at school boards, threatening health professionals so

that your kids can't remain safe while they are at school. How can you be at once protesting the right to life and then denying actual living human beings that same fucking right. I feel insane, And so if you feel

crazy to know that you are not alone. We're living at a time right where you have Republicans that want to say that democrats are taking away all of your rights, taking away your right to pray, taking away your right to infect as many fucking people as possible with a killer virus because we are mandating that you wear a

goddamn mask. There are not a lot of things that can save us right now except for common sense, which I recognize is not actually common right because you have a lawsuit that I talked about yesterday of a woman that wanted to bring a lawsuit against the hospital where her husband lay on a ventilator from COVID nineteen because

they won't give her husband horse medication. What in the entire fuck when I say that I believe that there was a tear in the universe, when I believe that we are living in some alternate dimension or some mix of purgatory hell and the apocalypse, this is what the

fuck I am talking about. Where you would rather sue a hospital which is not a veterinary clinic, for not prescribing horse medication, right, and then at that same time, there are motherfuckers that are protesting outside that very same hospital saying that they have a right not to wear a mask. This is indeed hell, and I want people to wake up, right. We want to believe that we

are better than we are. We want to believe that fifty percent of the population isn't pro death and that they are literally protesting the right to die and take

as many people with you as possible. You know, Jonathan brings up something funny at the end of our interview, and when he says that, you know, in all of these pandemic movies right that you watch, whether it's World War Z or you know, just whatever apocalyptic style, walking Dead, whatever type of show or movie, what is happening right now would be that instead of the hero right in the movie, or the tribe or the group of people

trying to rehabilitate humanity after a killer virus or alien invasion, that in this reality that we are living in, those people would be pro zombie. They would be pro walking death. They would be going out to try and turn themselves into zombies at alarming rates because they believe that that somehow is the future. It sounds stupid, right, it sounds fucking crazy, And that is exactly what people in this

country are doing right now. What is alarming me is this, This is the first week that children across the country, all of them, right, you know, from elementary school all the way up into higher education, are back to school. What do we know to be true? Right? Even though we know that things have fluctuated and changed, what do we know for certain is that at any time that there is large gatherings right of people that within the four to six weeks post time, there are spikes in

COVID nineteen. So what can we understand to be true about the middle of October? It is going to be a shit show on top of a shittier show. Why is that, Oh, because we're already experiencing COVID nineteen surges in red states across this country. Right where you're hearing that if Tennessee were to be its own country, it would be the second worst country of COVID nineteen in the world. Right. So here's the thing. You have Texas mandating that no one can marit wear a mask. You

got Florida doing the same. You got every red state deciding to be a copycat of who can be the worst? Right? Who can be the worst on top of the worst. That's where we are. Well in four to six weeks, folks, you were going to be overwhelmed with the amount of stories of children dying, of children being on ventilators, of them having long term illness. Right that, guess what Republicans

are going to ensure that. Guess what insurance companies won't have to fucking cover because that's what they care about. At the end of the day. They care about corporations. They care about making sure that shareholders and CEOs get the most right while you get the least. They care about control. They don't care about life. And so I want us to reframe the conversation that we have around abortion,

because it isn't about the right to life. It isn't about new life coming in because if you gave a fuck right about life, then it wouldn't just be when those cells are forming themselves in uterus. It would actually be about life outside of the womb. It would be making sure that our children are safe, right. It would be making sure that they have an education, that they have access to health care, that they have nutrition. In

every one of the things that I just mentioned. Republicans have actively created campaigns and policies to work in opposition to your children being well. It's why yesterday I walked you through pieces of this cradle to grave legislation, that this omnibus of a social safety net that Democrats are trying to put together. But what they also need to put together is their messaging that frames or Republicans as who they are. They are people that don't care about Americans.

They are people who don't care about workers rights, women's rights, lgbt Q rights, voter rights, are anyone having rights outside of the corporations, to force you into some type of new fengled, indentured servitude where you should just be grateful that you have a job. Who cares if you're able to go to the bathroom, Who cares if you're able to have a lunch break, Who cares if your work too exhaustion? Right, so long as you should be blessed and feel thankful that you have this job, That's what

Republicans want. That's the world that they want us to live in, folks. Coming up next is my conversation with our friend doctor Jonathan Metzel, talking again raising the alarm about where we are with this pandemic and what it is that we need to be paying attention to peep,

so you know that I am always so happy. While I don't know if talking about COVID nineteen on a regular basis every single week makes me happy, but I am happy that our guide, doctor Jonathan Metzel, our in house doctor here on woke F Daily, has always been by our side over the last eighteen months, walking us through where we are, where we're going. Jonathan, you now right now are in Tennessee. You are back at your university, teaching in person, and so I'm interested to hear how

things have been going for you there. But before we jump into what's happening in Tennessee, I want to bring you this read, Jonathan, that is posted in the Salt Lake Tribune by an ICU doctor that it works with children. And this is what he wrote, and this was verified by the Salt Lake Tribune to make sure that the doctor was who he said. That he was operating under anonymity because of course, in these United States, we now threaten doctors, We now want to physically assault doctors if

for trying to keep us safe. And this is what he wrote. Hey, there, friendly neighborhood ICU doctor reporting he's talking about a death of a teenager that has happened. Kids are getting sicker this time around, and it is happening more frequently. This includes newborns, toddlers, and teens. Has not spared any of them. There are multiple cases on the ventilator, which is not something that happened routinely in

children across the country. We are seeing children with respiratory illness, shock, terrible, myocdartis, and strokes in the setting of COVID. Unfortunately, he continues to write, we are also seeing SPY and other viruses, including RSV spikes that are nearing levels of what associate with a bad winter flu season. This is overwhelming pediatric units. At some point this weekend, pediatric ICU patients were spending time in the emergency department waiting for a bed, and

that is not a safe situation. He goes on to say that pediatric units at capacity is insane. There are patients that had delayed transferreds from outlying emergency rooms as well as because they could not be accepted and transported in a timely matter. He said, when this happens, negative

things occur. Jonathan, what is your reaction to this thread by this doctor who was talking about his particular situation in Utah, but using it as framing for what is happening across the country in children's hospitals and pediatric units, well, certainly there's so much happening in real time now. I mean, this is happening now, and so part of the issue is, as we know, there's a lot of disinformation out there,

the research apparatus is slow to catch up. But I would say, just as somebody who's obviously studying and teaching about about this issue, it makes sense to me to hear that for a couple of reasons. I mean, number one is that of course we know kids under twelve are not vaccinated, so there they become de facto the highest risk, and then the delta variant delivers a much more potent, potentially debilitating load of virus. Right the viral

load is much much higher. And then kids are also going back into schools, and so I think right now is really the very important time to be tracking stories like this because it just it just for me at least, And again I want to be careful because I because you know, you don't know what's going out online and things like that. But I would just say it makes sense to me. I mean, kids are vulnerable because they're unvaccinated.

It's a very fraught time, and they're going back into schools right now, and so I would just say that this is a story we have to track very closely and see what happens. The other the other important part of what you just said is that it's not just about kids getting sick right now. There are two other

major issues. Number one is that we know that even mild cases can lead to long covid U. One of the words in that piece was myocarditis, which I think is very important, long term cardiovascular effects, long term lung effects. And so even if kids aren't getting sick, they're still at risk of a long term stabilitating illness. That that's number one. And then two, of course is before the pandemic. We use pediatric ICUs for everything else that kids get

sick of. Often thinks that they that they survive, but I mean kids have all kinds of other you know, you just name to think of the spectrum of other kinds of illnesses that get kids sick. And if there's no space and those ICUs, things that are preventable illnesses all of a sudden become much bigger risks. And so this is a very front time and particularly as kids

go back to school. You know, one of the things that this doctor had written too, he said this, simple things like a minor headbleed after falling from a trampoline or small spleen laceration after a car accident can turn into catastrophes when patients are not being taken care of immediately. So to your point, he was bringing up that same issue that we are using this pediatric wards as now

these overflow COVID wards. But what happens to those kids that are coming in with other issues that aren't immediately being taken care of. What happens to them? Right, and they're sitting on these beds in emergency rooms waiting to be seen because we have so many children that have pressing needs barreling down on them because they've contracted COVID. And this is a bigger, untold story of the pandem. I mean, m I studied gun violence, right, and gun

death went up last year? Um And why did gun death? Well, there were more guns, there were more shootings, but also in many parts of the country, who got shot in the arm or the leg um that wasn't fatal two or three years ago um. But but you're going to bleed up because there's no there's no er, there's no ICU. So um gunshots that that that weren't fatal on you know, on their face um really became fatal because because there

were there were no beds. And so really this story is not just about COVID deaths, which is what we're tracking. It's also like, what's the other impact on our incredibly burdened healthcare system? And so I just think it's a very important time for people out there to think about prevention, preventative medicine. I got my flu shot the other day,

you know, because I could never get enough shots. But I mean just other things like that, because it's just we we have in our minds and assumption of oh, that's something medicine can fix for right now, medicine is you know, hanging by U dental flos in a way. And so you know, so in a way, the other issue of this pandemic is what's not getting treated in a way that it used to. That is it for

Today's Woke, a f daily podcast. To hear more from today's show, including my full interview with doctor Jonathan Mexel, support me on Patreon at patreon dot com. Slash Woke a f Power to the people and to all the people. Power, get woke and stay woke as fuck.