But anyway, you get the idea, show your appreciation right now and we thank you.
There should be a chant right now for PPE and show banners of supporting all the essential workers.
This is WBAI New York 99.5 FM and WBAI.org online.
The next show is Off The Hook, coming up.
It's just about 7 o'clock and it's a Wednesday.
That means it's time for Off The Hook.
Off The Hook
Off The Hook
Off The Hook
And a very good evening everybody.
Everybody, the program is Off The Hook.
Emanuel Goldstein here with you from a remote location, joined by Kyle.
Yes, I'm here.
And I believe we have Alex from a remote location also.
That's right, undisclosed location in Pennsylvania. Good evening everybody.
And we have Rob T. Firefly, is that correct?
That is correct, another undisclosed location here in Forest Hills, Queens.
Okay, well you just disclosed it, but okay, great.
So we're all here from all different locations and Reggie is there in the studio.
We're almost getting used to this.
I don't want to get used to it, but we're almost getting used to it.
It's crazy, it's insane.
How are you guys doing? Alex, let me start with you.
You still hold up there in the bunker?
Yes, I am.
Yeah, I'm doing fine too. I feel great.
I think whatever this was, if it was the coronavirus,
knock on wood, I'm knocking on wood, literally it feels as if it's passed.
A couple of weeks ago, it was difficult for me to walk down the street without feeling really tired.
I went kayaking twice today, once at 6.45 in the morning and once right before the show.
So I'm feeling very good.
I still haven't seen my family because we decided to be very cautious
because they're with my in-laws and my in-laws are over 70 each.
We're still distancing and that's painful.
I haven't seen my kids in over three weeks now.
That hurts and that's the worst of this for me right now.
I think it's longer than three weeks.
It feels like it's been longer. Has it only been three weeks?
It's closer to a month.
Wow. The thing that angers me about all this is that this shouldn't be necessary.
You should be able to know, do you have it? Did you have it?
Are you contagious? Can you be with your family?
Instead of having to do this, what seems like indefinitely.
Yeah, I think that's the problem here.
There are, to use a Rumsfeldian expression, a lot of known unknowns here.
One of those is whether or not I've had this thing.
It's possible, I think, to get the test,
but you have so much conflicting advice about whether or not you should do it.
It depends on where you are, who you speak to.
Is it dangerous to go into a hospital?
If you didn't have it, could you have it by going and getting a test?
Then you have these drive-through locations.
It's one of these things that for us, for my wife and I,
we made the decision that we'll hold out, we'll stay apart a little bit longer
because it's a minor and temporary inconvenience.
It has some psychological pain that comes with it,
but the consequences of getting it wrong can be life and death.
It's better safe than sorry.
Absolutely. I understand you're not too keen on coming back to New York City anytime soon.
Is that correct?
That's somebody who loves New York and considers it my home.
I don't see any reason for me really to go back there right now.
I think the fewer people there, the better off the city is going to be, quite frankly,
unless I can add some value to the recovery efforts there.
We're going to hang out outside the city in Pennsylvania for as long as we possibly can.
You're lucky you're able to do that.
I know a lot of people can't get away.
They have to stay in the city.
It's not a bad thing.
People can be just fine in the city if they take precautions,
and that's the really important thing.
That's what we're trying to hammer home.
We've been trying to do this for as long as this has been a topic.
Best of luck to you out there in Pennsylvania and to your family, of course.
Rob, you're over there in Queens.
I understand Gila's not with us tonight.
That's correct.
There is a holiday-type observance that she is observing this week,
so she's out of reach, but she's here.
As everyone's been doing who has certain family-type things
that they normally would be celebrating around this time of year,
different branches of my family have different ones,
and we've been doing what we could to use things like video conferencing
and the tech available to us to have the next best thing
and do things via video conference.
That's basically what's been keeping us sane around here.
Of course, when we do the shows, we use audio conferencing.
There's no need to see each other.
We simply listen to each other,
and I know our listeners appreciate that as well.
Good to hear from all of you.
One day, we will see each other again.
I'd like to start with an interesting story that you might have heard.
It's making the rounds concerning those bravest of people that are out there now,
hospital workers, people in the front lines.
We just blew the sirens and honked our horns and banged pots at 7 o'clock.
We try to do that every night.
What they are getting from their places of employment are threats.
Hospitals are threatening to fire health care workers
who, get this, publicize their working conditions during the pandemic.
In some cases, they follow through and done just that.
Ming Lin, an emergency room physician in Washington State,
said he was told Friday, a couple of Fridays ago actually,
he was out of a job because he'd given an interview to a newspaper about a Facebook post
detailing what he believed to be inadequate protective equipment and testing.
And in Chicago, a nurse was fired after emailing colleagues
that she wanted to wear a more protective mask while on duty.
In New York, the NYU Langone Health System has warned employees
they could be terminated if they talk to the media without authorization.
Hospitals are muzzling nurses and other health care workers in an attempt to preserve their image,
said Ruth Schubert, a spokeswoman for the Washington State Nurses Association.
It is outrageous. Hospitals have traditionally had strict media guidelines to protect patient privacy,
urging staff to talk with journalists only through official public relations offices.
But the pandemic has ushered in a new era.
Health care workers must have the ability to tell the public what's really going on inside the facilities
where they are caring for the COVID-19 patients.
Now, one reason is to prepare other nurses and doctors for the looming onslaught of cases
and encourage donations of much needed equipment, as we documented last week,
particularly the personal protective equipment or PPE that protects them from being infected
and in turn infecting other patients as well as their families when they go home.
Now, in China, you may recall this, one of the earliest alarms about this illness
was raised by a doctor in an online chat room in late December.
He was reprimanded and forced to sign a police statement that his post was illegal.
And he later contracted the disease from a patient and died.
It is good and appropriate for health care workers to be able to express their own fears and concerns,
especially when expressing that might get them better protection.
That's according to Glenn Cohen, faculty director of Harvard Law School, the Bioethics Center.
It's likely hospitals are trying to limit reputational damage
because when health care workers say they are not being protected,
the public gets very upset at the hospital system.
Imagine that.
Doctors are a famously independent profession where individual medical judgment
on what's best for the patient is prized over administrative dictates.
That's reared its head during the COVID-19 outbreak,
with many physicians, nurses and other health care workers talking to social media
to express deep concerns about the lack of protective gear
or much-needed patient care equipment, like respirators.
Some posts have gone viral and are being shared hundreds or even hundreds of thousands of times,
often tagged with hashtag GetMePPE.
Privacy laws prohibit disclosing specific patient information,
but they don't bar discussing general working conditions.
NYU Langone Health employees received a notice from Kathy Lewis,
executive vice president of communications,
saying that anyone who talked to the media without authorization
would be subject to disciplinary action, including termination.
Jim Mandler, a spokesman for NYU Langone Health,
said the policy was to protect patient and staff confidentiality.
Because information is constantly evolving,
it is in the best interest of our staff and the institution
that only those with the most updated information are permitted
to address these issues with the media.
You think maybe the people that are actually fighting this disease
might be the ones with the most updated information?
Just a thought.
New York's Montefiore Health System requires staff to get permission
before speaking publicly,
and sent a reminder in a March 17th newsletter
that all media requests must be shared and vetted by the public relations department.
Because it's all about public relations.
Associates are not authorized to interact with reporters
or speak on behalf of the institution in any capacity without pre-approval.
That's according to the policy.
Lori Mazurkiewicz, the Chicago nurse who was fired
by Northwestern Memorial Hospital after urging colleagues
to wear more protective equipment,
has filed a wrongful termination lawsuit.
A lot of hospitals are lying to their workers
and saying that simple masks are sufficient
and nurses are getting sick and they are dying.
How is this different from China?
From what happened in China?
I'm seeing very little difference, if any.
Not all hospitals are blocking staff from talking to the press.
New York's Mount Sinai has been scheduling media interviews
for nurses, physicians, and trainees
to help the public understand the severity of the crisis.
That's according to a spokesperson in an emailed statement.
The University of California San Francisco Medical Center
has gotten hundreds of such calls
and encouraged workers to talk to reporters.
Nisha Mehta is a radiologist from Charlotte, North Carolina.
She runs two Facebook groups for physicians with around 70,000 members.
She's fielded numerous requests from healthcare workers
hoping to get their stories into the public arena.
Nisha joins us now.
Nisha, welcome to Off The Hook.
Thanks for inviting me to be here.
I can't imagine the challenges you're facing
both as a healthcare worker
and somebody who has to fight just to be heard,
just to express opinions and opinions of other people
about a very, very serious health matter.
Yeah, so, I mean, to be clear,
I'm not telling stories about my own personal experience.
It's really what I've been dealing with
is actually talking to the hundreds of physicians
who feel as though they have something to say
and haven't been able to get those messages out.
And I think there's so much importance behind those messages
that they're trying to get out, and it's not.
Nobody's trying to blame their institutions.
Nobody's trying to make anybody look bad.
They're really trying to get these stories out
for the right reasons, right?
We've got these reasons where, number one,
we want the public to be aware of how bad COVID is
because I think it's very easy
to be sitting in your house quarantined
and not understand what's going on on the front lines
and why it is that you're sitting in your rooms
and not being able to go out.
And so if people were to have access to those stories
and really understand the depth of what is going on
in New York City,
I think that it would help people to understand
the reason why they're being told to stay home.
And I think that most of my colleagues would echo that,
and that's why they want to get those stories
out there for them.
And then secondly, I think it's really important
for us as a physician community
to be able to talk about these things
because it's only a matter of time
before these things are going to hit
our respective institutions outside of New York City.
And I think we need to be prepared
to be able to deal with that,
and part of that is really being able to learn
from the experience of our colleagues.
And so we need to hear people saying things
like, well, yes, this was really overwhelming,
or we had a really hard time with X, Y, and Z,
or we saw this in this patient that we were surprised by,
and here's how we dealt with it,
and here's what worked, and here's what didn't work.
And if we don't get those stories out there
and if we're not allowed to tell those things,
we're actually doing,
there's a real public health risk
that's being created by the fact that
people aren't able to share their experiences
as well as they would like to,
and as openly as they would like to.
Yeah, another example that comes to mind
is just the types of PPE for different situations
and being able to share that versus what's available
and how physicians and healthcare workers
can navigate that,
because just the technical, the layering,
the processes and protocols for that
seem to be varying widely,
which is why when we hear people sounding the alarm,
it can get really drastic
and even end in healthcare workers succumbing to things.
So that's also part of it too, right?
Exactly what, to where, when,
and maybe what works better in various scenarios, right?
I mean, I think exactly, you're on point with that,
with we can't standardize things
or even really get data based on evidence
if we don't have the ability to have
that pool of information there and say,
well, this institution had a lower rate of infectivity
of its healthcare workers.
What were they doing differently from this other institution?
And again, the point is not to blame specific institutions
and point fingers.
It's how can we learn from each other in this experience
against this disease
that we really don't know a whole lot about
and that we're all learning on the job as it's evolving?
How is it that we can make the most use
of the little information that we have
to hopefully guide us to be able to do this better later, right?
Because coronavirus is not going away.
And I think that that's an important point to stress.
Far after we come out of this lockdown sort of situation,
we're still going to have coronavirus
and people are still going to be getting sick
from coronavirus for quite some time,
at least until we have a vaccine.
And if we don't have the protocols in place
to be able to deal with that,
more people will die than need to.
And so I think that that's really where everybody's saying,
you know, whatever it is that we need to talk about,
whether it's PPE, whether it is, yeah,
which type of masks have been effective in preventing infection,
whether it is, you know, how many people are dying,
what are their ages, what are their events,
I mean, anything, any information that we can get out there
that really allows us to build on that.
Because right now we have a pretty blank slate
as to what we know relative to what we know
about other diseases that we regularly treat.
So the point of the slowdown here is really, you know,
it's not that we're fooling ourselves into thinking
that coronavirus is going to go away,
it's more how long can we slow this down
and use that time effectively to gain information
so that we can effectively treat this
when it comes out again in a second surge
and a third surge and a fourth surge,
because there will be those things, right?
We know that from the Spanish flu.
It's not that as soon as we let people out of their houses again,
there's going to be another spike,
but are we going to be better prepared to deal with it
than we were with the first spike?
And those are the important things that we're really trying to say
is information is good, we're learning from it,
we're, you know, in real time trying to, you know,
most medical doctors, if you talk to them,
we have hours and hours of journal clubs over little minutia
before we adopt them into practice, right?
And they're based on years and years of research.
We don't have that luxury with COVID-19.
Everything is very, very dynamic and very fluid.
And so the more information we can get out there
so that we can try to come together as a community
and say this is what we think we need to do, the better.
And Dr. Mehta, you know, to those points,
I think, you know, they're going to be very well received
by our audience here, you know, which is focused on technology,
hackers, whistleblowers.
I mean, doctors have a very long history of being whistleblowers.
You go back to, you know, doctors who blew the whistle
on tobacco companies for smoking and the health effects
and malnutrition.
I mean, doctors, think about even people like Stephen Biko
who organized around apartheid.
He was a medical student, a black medical student
in South Africa that was responsible for, you know,
starting the end of apartheid, which is kind of amazing
when you think about it.
But I think we're dealing with, you know,
something that's really dangerous,
the silencing of health care workers.
And on the one hand, as Emmanuel was pointing out
at the beginning of the show, we have this contradiction
where the politicians, the people, the populace,
on one hand, is exalting the health care workers,
praising them for their sacrifices,
for their selflessness in going to work every single day,
putting their lives, their lives of their families on the line
and their lives on hold in order to treat these people.
And so we're exalting them on the one hand.
And on the other hand, we're silencing them.
And how are we silencing them?
It seems to me like this is a very good example
of the danger of internal policies,
of hospital policies perhaps, that doctors may not have input into
or health care workers in general may not have input
into those policies, but yet here they are
making massive waves and ripples
when it comes to this global pandemic that we're all facing.
Yeah, I mean, I think the important thing there is,
you know, a lot of these policies were in place prior to COVID-19.
And I think that the thing that we're disappointed by
as a community is sort of the lack of flexibility
in those policies when we understand
that there is a different challenge that we're facing.
So a lot of these policies make sense in different eras, right?
They make sense to protect patients.
They make sense to protect health care workers.
They make sense to make sure that information
that's getting out there is valid.
But I think the challenge that a lot of us are facing right now
is we're not trying, nobody's trying to tell the story
of an individual patient that is, you know,
going to be a violation of any sort of privacy, right?
A lot of us are talking en masse about stuff, right?
This is what we're seeing as a trend.
This is what we're seeing.
And again, I think the point there is if, honestly,
if the hospital systems want to control that message
and make sure that they're accurate,
there's probably some goodness in that too
in the sense that people exaggerate all the time, right?
And so you do want accurate information out there.
And if we had a little bit more of an open policy,
then reporters, after talking to physicians,
could call the public relations departments
and say, hey, is this true?
Is this something that you guys are seeing?
And they could actually get that information validated,
and it could actually be even more powerful
because it's got the veracity, you know, associated with it.
So I think that the big thing is we have to look at these policies
in the context of the time in which they were made
and then say, what do we need to change
in the interest of the greater good
in terms of getting this information out there,
understanding that nobody is going to blame a hospital system
for being overwhelmed during this time.
That's not, you know, no hospital is going to look bad
because they had five more people die than another institution.
I mean, that's not reflective of the hospital's care.
It's reflective of the disease
and whatever the specific situations are at that particular time
that have nothing to do with factors that are within the hospital's control.
And so I think that that's –
I've had certain people tell me that their institutions are afraid
that, you know, people are going to see them as the COVID-19 hospital
because they're going to have more cases than other hospitals,
and they don't want that public relations appearance.
And those things, I think, are a little bit silly, right?
In fact, if more people with COVID are going to a particular institution,
you could make an argument that says
that they have a lot of faith in that hospital system,
and that's where they're choosing to go to get their care.
So, I mean, I don't think that these things have to be negative things,
and I think that we just have to look at those policies very carefully
and say, what are we losing by not getting that information out there?
Yeah, that's a very good point.
I mean, look, these policies were obviously well-intentioned policies.
They may not exactly fit the situation that we're in right now.
You know, the other side of this too,
which a lot of our listeners may be thinking about,
is this sounds like a violation of our free speech rights,
but it's not necessarily the case.
I think it's an important distinction here is that hospitals,
most of them being privately owned,
can button up their employees in however manner they see fit here.
So long as it's not the state doing something,
the First Amendment isn't necessarily implicated.
However, my question to you, Dr. Mathis,
is that are there advocacy groups that can help physicians get the word out?
Are there things like unions or advocates?
Are there lawyers volunteering their time to try to help doctors
and health care workers speak out freely so that this information can be shared?
So I think that that's a challenge that we're facing right now
because physicians have traditionally not really united in any way, shape, or form
because we've just been kind of busy doing patient care, right?
The average physician works 50 to 60 hours a week.
They really advocacy has not been our strong point.
And I think that COVID-19 is really shedding light on some of that lack of advocacy on our behalf.
And then the other thing is, is, you know, you brought up unions,
but a lot of people may not know this.
It's actually illegal for physicians to unionize nationally.
So they're allowed to unionize within their respective institutions with a common employer,
but they cannot unionize nationally.
The other thing to keep in mind is that there's less than a million practicing physicians in the United States.
So no matter how strong our lobby can, you know, be,
we're a very small number of people in regards to the workforce.
And so there's a lot of powerful lobbies out there that are much more powerful than the physician lobby
just by virtue of the fact that we just don't have those numbers.
And so I think that's why a lot of the advocacy efforts that I've been really working on have been contingent upon saying,
well, let's come together with other health care workers.
Let's get the public to, you know, let's talk to the public.
Let's get the public support and say, hey,
these are things that we need to do to protect our health care workers so that they can be around to protect us.
And I think that that's a really, really important point to get across is that, you know,
I mean, you can send people in there to be martyrs, but then what's left of the front lines after that?
It's not like we have a readily replenishable source of health care workers, you know, and we're going to need them more than ever.
So we really need to be protecting them in any way, shape or form that we can right now.
And I think that that's really been the focus of a lot of my advocacy efforts is to say, you know,
a lot of you have perceptions about physicians and who we are and what we do.
And we haven't done a really good job of that PR in terms of, you know, telling people what's wrong with some of those perceptions.
But right now we need to realize that we need our health care workers to be able to focus on medicine and not worry about, you know, whether or not they're going to get COVID-19.
Right. They should have the PPE in place so that that's not a factor in their decision to go into a room or not go into a room or provide certain care.
Because, I mean, that's that's the last thing that any of us want as physicians.
You know, we've all this is what we do. This is what we're passionate about. This is what we're like groomed to do.
I mean, we I don't think a lot of us pictured us ourselves in this specific circumstance, but this is what we were going to do.
And so how do you best utilize our skills without having us have to worry about all these things like, you know,
PPE or malpractice protections or any of these other things that physicians are worried about right now as their practices close financially?
I mean, there's so much going on that physicians and other health care workers are worried about right now that I really feel like shouldn't be on their plate right now.
You know, it shouldn't be up to them to fight for PPE. That shouldn't be a fight that we're trying to fight.
We're trying to fight the medicine stuff. You know, let us do that. Don't don't make us fight for PPE right now.
You know, so so often. Thank you for joining us, doctor.
So often with these sorts of issues with whistleblowing in particular, I can kind of see both sides of it, even if I vastly disagree with one side.
But I'm having a lot of trouble in this case, understanding the motivations of an agency like a hospital when they choose to restrict speech like this,
because if the hospital's remit is to work toward the public health, isn't part of that to let the information out there as to how things actually are?
Like, does that not trump sort of, you know, PR and looking like, oh, our hospital's great.
Like we should know if things are not great, because that's part of getting the word out there to the general public about all of our social responsibility that we're sharing right now to do things like social distance and flatten the curve.
So like could you could you speak a bit about like what might actually be motivating the hospitals to not want this information out there?
I think a lot are worried about privacy of patients.
I think people are worried about, you know, their institutions, reputations.
And I think that a lot of these things, much like a lot of things in medicine, are sort of antiquated.
You know, this is how it's always been and this is how we how we do things.
And and I think that honestly, I think I could speculate on a lot of what those reasons are.
I have a hard time believing that they are listening to all these stories everywhere of everybody talking about how they're not letting their stories out and not justifying what it is and why.
So, I mean, there must be some rationale that is, you know, that that trumps everything else in their minds in terms of getting this information out.
I think it's hard for me and, you know, it sounds like you and a lot of other people to understand exactly what those motivations are.
I think the bigger thing for me that I'm really frustrated about is the retaliation side of things.
Right. You know, I don't know how you fire somebody for trying to speak out, you know, for the common good.
I don't know how you fire somebody for voicing their concerns that they're not being adequately protected.
But that part to me is what really rubs me the wrong way.
And especially in the middle of a global pandemic.
Correct. That is unconscionable.
I mean, not to draw a parallel, but some defunding the World Health Organization is the only thing I can think of that's worse than that.
Well, now we're talking with Dr. Nisha Mata.
You're in Charlotte, North Carolina.
Now, you have a face, a couple of Facebook groups, I believe, that is kind of a clearinghouse of information.
You want to tell us something about that? Right.
So I started these two large online communities that existed prior to Covid.
And, you know, they're basically places for verified physicians to get together to talk about various things that we don't normally talk about outside of medicine and things that we that we do normally talk about medicine.
And so, you know, one group focuses a lot on business and finance skills because physicians don't get a whole lot of business and finance training.
And so one of them is based on that. And then the one that we've really been focusing a lot of our advocacy and Covid-19 work on is a group called Physician Community, which has about thirty five thousand.
I think it has right now thirty three thousand members and physician side has fifty seven thousand members.
But but those groups basically physician community really focuses on just talking about life and medicine.
So people are talking about, you know, what they're seeing on a daily basis, what they're worried about, what they are trying to work on together with other people sharing treatment, you know, discussions about what what it is that we should be doing in certain situations and what drugs are being used experimentally.
And, you know, it's really cool, actually, to see a different way that health care information is being portrayed, because, like I said, we're used to sort of this very traditional method of waiting for these large scale studies and and then digesting them in the form of journals.
And this is sort of everything is evolving on the fly so rapidly. So it's been a really great place, I think, for physicians to come together, support each other.
You know, if they lose one of their colleagues to just be able to post and say, I lost my colleague and have everybody understand what that means and not only what it means for them and their families, but also for what it means for how scared we are that that could be us another day, you know.
And so I think it's just been a really great place for people to come together and support each other in a time where there's not, you know, especially in the area of social distancing right now.
I had one one health care worker tell me it's so frustrating because what I really need right now is a hug. And of course, that's not happening right now. Right.
And so I think this is it. It's been a great way for people to come together and really not only sympathize with each other and support each other, but also advocate for our common needs.
So we actually out of these online communities have basically pulled over 100000 physicians in terms of what it is that they need to be able to tackle COVID-19 and not have to worry about things outside of medicine.
And we put them into a document that's actually been delivered to Congress and that several congressional members are actually working on right now to see what they can extract for some some legislation.
So we're hopeful that we'll get some protections out of it that we didn't have. And those include things like whistleblower protections and things like that that we don't have right now.
As a physician, do you do you think that we might actually wind up in a better place health care wise after all this?
You know, I do think that this is exposing a lot of problems in the health care system. I think that we will hopefully learn from a lot of these.
You know, just I think there's so many things that have been challenging in US health care that we're already reaching the brink of a breaking point prior to COVID-19.
And I think that the stress that is being placed upon the health care system right now is further exposing some of those issues.
And so I do hope that that will lead to greater change on a level that will make the system more resilient and and really give the system, you know, get it back to being focused on what matters the most, which is patient care.
And one final question for you. We we spend a lot of time blowing sirens and horns and things like that. But what can people do that will help that will really help?
So first of all, I have to say that the sirens and horns do really help. And I think that it's really, really important to health care workers.
We don't always, you know, in our daily work prior to COVID-19, I don't think we get a lot of thank yous to the degree that we've been getting them over the last few weeks.
And that, I think, has been really, you know, it's something that you can hang your hat on and say, OK, I'm doing good work and I feel good about this.
And even though I'm stressed, I know that, you know, people are supporting me. And that means a lot. So I don't want ever to belittle the importance of that.
On a larger level, we would love your support. So, you know, this legislation that I suggested, for example, we've got a petition on change.org slash help physicians.
Having people sign that and share that, that would be immensely helpful. Talking to your congressman about, you know, what are you doing to help support the health care workers?
That would be immensely helpful. I think at this point, we just really need some intervention from a very high level to say this is how we're going to protect our health care workers.
Yeah, it seems like a lot of the calculation is more like a risk aversion and crisis management because a lot of the response and preparedness hadn't really been adequate initially.
But we're in this phase where health care workers have really a lot of credibility and so do their institutions.
So it's really a pity like that they'd feel they need to do any kind of what we'd say is like PR.
But it really I hope in the future is more about a really honest conversation because the public's been sort of becoming pretty used to getting some very grim and honest, you know, facts from institutions.
So I really hope these sort of internal or other kinds of control measures placed on health care workers.
I really hope that's not a trend going forward because as I said, the institutions and the workers themselves have a lot of credibility in this moment.
And it really would be great to continue to get the truth and scientific stuff and the facts that they're seeing in every day throughout their operations.
I would echo that. I really hope that this brings up a lot of good change in the future and gives physicians and other health care workers more of a voice in the health care system.
Which, you know, I think is anybody that watches it carefully knows that there's a lot of other special interests involved in there that, you know, factor a lot of things in that maybe physicians and patients would prefer weren't the number one priority.
So I think I'm hoping this will refocus a lot of things.
We've been speaking with Dr. Nisha, a radiologist in the thick of all this and helping people find their voice and speaking out freely as well as fighting this horrible global pandemic.
Dr. Nisha, thank you very much for joining us and best of luck to you and we hope to get updates.
Thank you so much. Yes, absolutely. Thanks for having me.
All right. Take care.
You too.
I'm just blown away by the courage people show, by the fortitude and I hope we don't forget that after all this is finished.
Of course, there are people that either are forgetting it or never knew it to start with.
Today in Michigan, there were protests.
Protests against reality, I guess, but mostly against the governor because she happens to be a Democrat and because Trump has targeted her.
Basically, there was a demonstration called Operation Gridlock.
It was organized by the Michigan Conservative Coalition, who else, and the Michigan Freedom Fund, a DeVos family-linked conservative group.
It was a Facebook event called on attendees to, in all caps, take action in Lansing, but not on foot, stay in your vehicles.
However, even that was too much for the demonstrators to be able to follow because many of them got out of their cars and crowded the streets.
Yeah, they crowded the streets in Michigan in the middle of a global pandemic where people are being told to keep their distance.
Not because they're Republicans, but because they're humans and because this is a medical emergency.
But they said, open up Michigan.
At one point, they erupted into a lock her up refrain in reference to the governor.
Oh my god, you think you know where the boundaries of stupid are and then you see Michigan.
I know there's a lot of good people in Michigan, but boy, these are not them.
Honestly, what are they imagining?
Is it like restaurants and service industries and entertainment being opened up at gunpoint?
Is that what it's going to be?
We're going to have a mob to force people to serve drinks and socialize and be amongst one another in public.
I mean, get out of here.
It's not what we're doing right now.
Well, okay, I'm going to try to address some of their concerns.
I don't know why we have to keep saying Democratic governor.
I mean, yeah, it's becoming apparent that when somebody calls for something that means staying safe, that they turn out to be Democratic.
When someone says, no, we can do whatever we want, they turn out to be Republican.
It shouldn't be that way, but it sure seems like it's going that way.
Okay, so the Democratic governor last week issued one of the nation's strictest stay-at-home orders amid the coronavirus pandemic,
choosing to not align the state with the federal agency's revised list of critical infrastructure,
which would allow some, and I'm going to have trouble saying this, some Michiganders, is that the right word?
Okay, Michiganders to return to work.
The list is advisory, but her decision to tighten instead of loosen restrictions has sparked backlash from Republican legislators across the state.
Only Republican legislators, interesting.
Now, her latest stay-at-home order, which is scheduled to be enforced through April 30th, which, you know, that's 15 days away.
That's really not that long a period, but okay.
Basically, it's been criticized as too restrictive and confusing for businesses.
While people can still buy alcohol and lottery tickets in person, the order closes businesses that sell products such as hardware supplies and gardening seeds.
The order has also affected grocery stores and department stores, some of which have roped off sections not deemed as essential to comply with the orders.
Okay, you know, I actually see some points here.
I can see an argument, like maybe seeds should be considered essential, especially if they grow food or something like that.
Yeah, these are discussion points.
They're not reasons to swarm the streets and do something so monumentally stupid in the wake of what we're standing in right now.
And something you have to remember is that this thing is really taking off in Michigan.
Michigan has the third most COVID-19 cases in the nation right now, the third most.
And you know what? They're not the third most populous state in the nation.
Why do you think that is?
It's because of dumbasses that are going around not following medical advice.
And medical advice is not Democrat or Republican.
It's science.
And please don't tell me that science is biased and that science is liberal.
Seriously, how much evidence do people need to see what works and what doesn't work?
None of this had to happen, by the way.
None of this had to happen had we taken the appropriate steps at the very beginning.
Now, the odds of anyone taking the appropriate steps at the very beginning are slim.
I'll give you that.
But some of the monumentally stupid decisions and utter lies that we have seen over the past few weeks
is something that I think definitely needs to be examined and investigated when we have time to do that.
What are you guys out there in Skype land thinking of this?
It's really mind boggling.
I mean, I will be the first one to admit I've spent a whole lot of the past 30 years of my life or so
taking to the streets and marching at protests.
I've lost count of how many big cardboard signs I've held up in crowds.
But now is not the time.
It is just, you know, read the global pandemic-soaked room
and make better decisions when you're trying to get your voice out there and get heard.
And it just amazes me that even things like this,
even things like breaking the social distancing and the curve flattening
that is all of our responsibilities right now is seen by certain people as in itself the act of rebellion.
Like, oh, yeah, you're going to tell me I'm going to stay home?
And they're not just putting themselves at risk, but everyone else.
It's herd immunity we're depending on.
And it's not just their own stupid asses they're putting on the line with us.
It's all of us.
But, Rob, you know what I hear a lot in these arguments is that it's not as bad as people are saying.
Not as bad.
When we have tens of thousands of people dying in this country alone
and hundreds of thousands across the planet so far
with many more expected,
to say it's not that bad, I just cannot fathom what kind of human thinks this way.
Yes, there are other diseases.
Yes, there is flu.
This is not either of those things.
This is something highly contagious.
This is something for which there is no vaccine whatsoever.
This is something for which many, many people are susceptible.
And it's not just the elderly.
It's not just the sick.
It's all kinds of people.
Many of them might succumb to this.
And to be asked…
It's also…
Go ahead.
It's a symptom of how broken the public discourse is right now.
This is the end result of certain people basically breaking the trust that people had in the news, in science.
Everybody can just say fake news.
That's something they don't like now including numbers that say to anybody with half a brain,
you should stay home right now.
And just the fact that so much of the evidence is out there.
The fact that we're so interconnected and any of us has a direct connection to the evidence.
We can all bring it up on our computers or devices or whatever.
Everybody has access to the data and still they're making deliberately bad decisions.
And that's because of just the past generation or so of twisting of people's perception of the raw data that's out there
until they can just dismiss what they don't like.
We're going to open up the phone lines because we can do that.
It's not enough that we have…
How many different locations do we have open at the same time?
Four and plus the studio?
We're going to open up phone lines too with our special phone number.
802-321-4225.
That's 802-321-HACK is our telephone number.
Again, we're using Google so it's not going to necessarily work.
But if it does work, you'll be able to talk on the air and hopefully hear us as well.
802-321-4225.
And obviously we can only take one phone call at a time.
And for those of you who don't get in, you'll probably wind up on some kind of crazy voicemail that we'll never hear.
So if that happens, hang up, try again.
Simple as that.
And it takes time for the calls to get to us too for some reason.
I'm not sure why that is.
Oh, but here's one now.
Hang on though, it's being blocked by another window.
And good evening.
You're on off the hook.
Can you hear us?
Yes, hello.
How are you doing?
Good, good.
Very interesting commentary.
I wanted to share the conservative label that these people hide behind.
Okay.
In essence, they're not really conservatives.
They're reactionaries.
Or as a conservative in the real sense, even though they are authoritarian, they care about precedent.
They care about tradition.
They care about aspects of the law.
Can I ask you something, sir?
Where are those people?
Where have they gone?
Well, most of them have died.
Seriously, most of them have died.
And most of them have been pushed out of the way from the reactionaries, the Freedom Caucus, the fanatics.
They came in there during the time of Occupy Wall Street.
I thought those were the people that should have went in there after them, but they didn't.
But that's a separate thing.
And most of those conservatives, they're from the Nixon generation.
A lot of them died.
The problem with the conservatives is they view that they have the right to be authoritarian because they know better.
But they did have some basic respect for the law and American values and things like this.
All of that is gone.
Now we're in the era of kayfabe, which is that Trump wrestling WWE mentality, where someone asks you a question.
Why did you lie about this?
Why did you cover up this?
Why did you delay?
You blame China.
They can take blame, but you have to blame as well.
Oh, you're fake news.
You're disgusting.
And that's the kayfabe culture and mentality.
I just wanted to share that these people are not conservatives.
And they hide behind that label for decency.
And you should call them what they are.
Reactionary.
Some of them are fascists.
There was a more political or neocon arm that needed to co-opt that movement in certain ways.
But there's now, like you mentioned, this shock value reactionary stuff that really fits with a lot of the social media and other technology that we're seeing.
It really is about engagement and getting people's goat.
But there is really a lot more to it.
We get a little disillusioned with labels.
People calling hackers one thing or another or just aligning them with criminality.
We talk about those distinctions all the time.
Labels themselves really don't beget the kind of conversation you need to really truly understand some of these areas, political or technical.
Yeah, I agree.
My name is Aragos, by the way, and I'm in West Harlem.
And I just want to say thank you for allowing me to share that perspective.
And a great program.
Out of this, some mobilization and some action should come.
Because I'm of the mindset that we are the leaders we've been waiting for.
It's up to us to get stuff done.
Alright, well thank you very much for that phone call and thanks for the inspiration.
Hope to hear from you again soon.
Take care.
And our phone number is 802-321-4225.
Anything from Skype land out there, guys?
Just trucking along.
We're still doing all we can out here to maintain our social distances.
And when we have left the house to shop for necessities and whatnot,
it's been kind of heartening to see how quickly everyone else has adapted as well.
And people are respecting distances in public and shops.
People are not going as nuts as I feared that they might.
And I think when it comes down to it, people that I've seen have been taking on their share of the responsibility we all have right now.
We have an incoming call from Bulgaria, I believe.
Is this Bobson?
Good evening, Emmanuel.
How are you doing?
We've been in a don't-get-out-of-your-house situation for more than four weeks.
So I've been watching too much TV and all that.
Other than that, I'm doing okay.
You sound pretty good.
Are people in Bulgaria generally following the rules?
Well, going outside in the neighborhood for supplies and such is allowed as long as one covers their face.
And the order for face masks lists also scarves and such, in case no mask can be obtained, which has happened.
How is the health system faring in Bulgaria?
Well, there are numbers, but it's somewhat unclear how many tests are available.
They're a bit pricey if people wanted to find out for themselves.
It's a bit unclear if the numbers that are coming out are relevant to the situation as such.
Have you been able to occupy your time otherwise, without getting out?
Have you done any interesting activity other than watching television?
Or how are you staying sane right now?
Well, I try and read some books and such.
And also, in recent days, I started watching the daily video safaris on YouTube from South Africa.
Wow. Well, you know, if I can recommend anything, it's not that stupid tiger show.
It's the plot against America.
That's the latest David Simon miniseries.
That's for everybody, not just you, Babson.
But that will definitely hopefully wake you up.
Babson, we're going to have to let you go because we are out of time.
Have a wonderful evening.
Thank you. Good hearing from you.
Yeah, good to hear you.
All right. Any final words from you guys out there in Skypland?
Yeah, I'll jump in here for a moment.
I'd like to say, you know, cheers to the host here.
I think this is the first, I want to say video conference or something.
This is the first show that we've had since we've all been separated where we've had a guest,
we've taken calls, and everything has gone pretty damn well.
So, you know, good job.
Why do you have to say that, Alex? We still have a minute.
I can still knock something over easily.
Yeah. So, I just want to say stay safe, everybody.
I think Dr. Mehta's interview today was really excellent and got the point across that, you know,
we need to support our health care workers, that the pots and pans at 7 p.m. do make a difference.
That was something that came out of this.
And it's so important to share information.
That's something we've always been a proponent of.
And sharing information, it literally has life and death consequences.
Well, I did one thing to do my part with those 7 p.m. celebrations.
I bought myself an air horn.
And you're going to be hearing me every night at 7 o'clock showing my appreciation from a safe distance.
I'm not going to go up to people and do it.
But any final words from you, Rob?
Just that, you know, cheers and thank you to everyone out there who has been holding up their end of the responsibilities.
And speaking as someone who is an expendable, I mean, essential worker, I'm going back to work tomorrow after some time off.
And, you know, I've been feeling a lot of feelings about actually getting back out there into the grind and stuff.
But, you know, I'm ready to do what I need to.
And I applaud everyone else who's doing what they need to.
Stay safe out there, everyone.
Okay, that's it for us.
We'll be back again next week.
OTH at 2600.com is our email address.
Thank you so much to all the listeners for sticking with us and for showing your support and writing to us.
Stay safe, everyone.
And we're going to get through this together.
Good night.