- [Zubin] Hey, guys, it's Dr. Z.
So today I wanted to share,
I get a lot of emails,
and I wanted to share a very important one,
a very poignant one that I got
from someone named Paul
who had just started watching the show
and hit me up through my website.
And he agreed to let me share this
because he thought it was very important
for you guys to see this process and what happened
to him and his family.
And it has to do with COVID.
It has to do with the vaccines.
It started August 11th,
and I'm gonna be reading off his email here,
when Paul sent me an email and basically said,
look, you're the most reasonable voice on COVID
that I've heard so far.
I need some specific clarification
to help me get over the hump
and understand how all this works.
This is August 11th.
In recent discussions,
this idea that the vaccine doesn't prevent infection
and you can still infect other people,
this was really bothering him
even though you can prevent severe disease
because the way he was interpreting it is,
well, doesn't this just mean
that you get vaccinated not for others?
You're getting vaccinated
to protect yourself from severe disease
because you can still spread it,
and you can still get infected.
And he says, isn't that just a protective play
for me and myself?
It doesn't matter if I have 15 boosters.
If I go through the checkout
of the unvaccinated, pregnant cashier at the supermarket,
she could still get taken out
because I passed it on to her, right?
And if this is the case, why should I...
What's the advantage here if it's just for me?
And it's a really good question, right?
Because the way CDC had been communicating
up until this point
was like, "Oh, even if you're vaccinated,
"you still have to wear a mask.
"You still have to do all this
"because you're gonna kill everybody with infection too."
It was very unclear and unhelpful communication.
And it almost made you feel like, well,
why should I get vaccinated?
Because I'm not so worried about myself.
And if it's not gonna help others, why?
There's a good portion of people who feel that way.
And Paul was one of them.
So I replied actually
in uncharacteristically quick fashion on August 12th
and said, hey, Paul,
these are not uncommon questions.
Here is a link to a piece
that was in Intelligencer magazine, New York magazine,
that I'm gonna do a show on,
which I ultimately did do a show on.
Really go into the nuance of this.
So what that article basically said is, look,
even though the vaccines still
can sometimes not prevent infection,
they do reduce the risk of infection,
anywhere from five to tenfold,
and that was a very conservative estimate.
And it's not as much as CDC is saying,
but it is still quite good.
So vaccines not only reduce your chance of getting infected,
but they may squeeze down the window
during which you're actually infectious.
The people who were vaccinated
who had breakthrough infections
where they're actually shedding,
they said, CDC was saying,
they're shedding as much virus as unvaccinated people,
those are special cases.
Those are vaccinated people who really failed
and were getting just as sick.
And that could be older people.
It could be people with immune compromise.
It could be people who are unlucky
and are in that 10% where the vaccine doesn't work.
So it's kind of not the most representative sample
of what this vaccine can do.
It's still helping other people to get vaccinated
as well as helping yourself
and as well as speeding up our chance to get
to some kind of endemic status,
where the disease is no longer
causing severe disease and death
because you've had repeated chances at immunity,
whether it's vaccine, booster, natural infection.
Collectively, we get an immune memory
that then turns this thing into a common cold,
which for many people it already is,
especially younger people and so on.
But unfortunately not for everybody,
and that's been the whole problem.
That's why we have over 600,000 dead in the US alone.
So that was August 12th.
August 16th, I got a followup email.
I wanna thank you for responding.
Not sure if this reaches ZDogg or the team.
They all come to me.
I wanted to share something that I hope continues
and encourages this conversation.
And he said...
He sent it to me on the 12th.
And the truth is that he'd already been having symptoms
that he didn't mention
because he wanted to get this perspective.
And he said he's been having these flu-like symptoms.
And after the email, he got much sicker.
So he then tested positive.
Eight hours after his positive result,
his wife who's 44 and an emergency room nurse
and also hadn't been vaccinated yet
woke up on fire with a 102 fever.
Nine hours after that, the 13-year-old kid
had started running a fever.
And the two younger ones, nine and 10,
were unaffected and remained unaffected.
So as is typical of delta,
goes through the family like fire.
And as is typical of COVID,
younger kids can sometimes be spared.
They just have something about them,
whether it's less ACE2 receptors,
whether it's immunity from other cold viruses
more proximal to them,
they tend to be a little bit more resistant.
Not completely, but in this case it turned out to be true.
Then he says the last two days
have been total hell for me.
My O2 remains good enough not to be admitted,
but I'm running a fever
about 20 out of 24 hours with medication.
It's miserable.
I'm very nervous.
I also know my wife is a few days delayed behind me,
and I'm scared what's coming for her.
I wish I'd found your videos sooner after watching them
and your approach for not shaming people
and laying out the risks.
I told my wife that I would have gotten
to yes on the vaccine if I'd seen these.
I may go ahead and get one shot
when it makes sense to do so after I recover.
And please keep doing what you're doing, okay.
So that was August 16th.
And I wrote back and said, hey,
I'm sorry you're going through this.
Rooting for you and your family to get through it quickly.
I know the symptoms are hellish.
Keep an eye on the O2.
Talk to your doctor, so on,
because I can't give individual medical advice, right?
It's not ethical.
And then, August 24th.
So this was several days later,
I get the following email,
which I'm gonna read verbatim.
Zubin, I'm sorry for bothering you again,
but I wanted to share an update
as it may help you work with patients
or share info with your voice.
This experience has ruined me mentally,
and there were so many things
that could have been prevented.
I'm almost fully recovered,
and my wife is on the road to recovery.
At the ER, I was given a Z-Pak
to prevent bacterial pneumonia
and no steroids because my O2 was okay.
She did telehealth with her doctor
and was given steroids, but not a Z-Pak.
She's coughing, unproductive.
Mine was productive.
It was awful, tasted terrible.
(I'm paraphrasing a little bit here.)
So the fact that she's not producing anything concerns me.
I have her chasing her doctor about it.
Okay, so there's the update on him and his wife.
I thought it was important to share because, unfortunately,
I had just visited my parents two days before I got sick.
I left their house on August 7th,
and they had finally gotten to yes on the vaccine
and went 8/9 for the first Pfizer shot.
So his parents went on the 9th.
This has sadly proven to be too late.
I infected them.
They are both 72 years old.
My dad showed signs first on the 12th of August,
and it got bad on the 13th.
We finally got him to agree to go to the ER via ambulance
because the O2 was now hitting 86% on the 20th of August.
He was not in the greatest health.
He had swelling in his legs, shortness of breath,
was walking just 15 feet,
and was diabetic all pre-COVID,
(so medically frail already)
He responded well to the oxygen at five liters nasal cannula
at 94% to 95%.
But on the 21st of August,
he had a heart attack in the hospital.
And CPR was performed to bring him back.
He's been intubated ever since.
Tests show kidney and liver injury.
They've never been able to detect brain activity
because he needed to be paralyzed
in order to accept the ventilator.
(This is common.)
Overnight last night, they were gonna attempt
to take him off and check,
but at this point it sounds like it's just a formality.
With the ventilator at max,
his O2 is just at 80%.
We were instructed to say our goodbyes yesterday
over a FaceTime call
where maybe he could hear us.
My god.
Meanwhile, I came to be with mom,
who has COPD, asthma, and emphysema
and was fighting it herself.
I had the antibodies, so I came to be with her.
'Cause he was infected, right?
But he was getting better.
I had to call the ambulance for her yesterday morning
and watch her get wheeled away
as her O2 started getting too low.
So I've been sitting alone in my parents house for 24 hours
just staring at the walls.
(Imagine what that's like...)
So far, she's doing well and responding well
to three liters of nasal cannula.
We're very hopeful.
The amount of guilt I carry
because I wasn't vaccinated
and I didn't push harder for them
is something I will take to my grave.
If I could go back, I would change so many things.
I literally hand delivered COVID to my parents
who were two days away from protecting themselves,
and my dad will lose his life as a result.
I'm completely heartbroken.
These are things I don't think people think about
with the politicization of this pandemic and the vaccine.
And then he gets pretty colorful with the language.
I'll paraphrase a little so that we can share this.
So screw Republicans and liberty
and Democrats and their judging
and Fauci and the CDC
and all the poor communication and signaling
and Rand Paul and Ted Cruz
and all the grandstanding and all of it.
None of this shit matters in the end.
Just get vaccinated and block out the noise.
This was avoidable.
I told my dad we were just getting him oxygen,
that he might even come home
with some time to recover at home.
He believed me.
I told him that going to the hospital
did not mean a certain death.
He finally gave in and believed me.
I'm heartbroken.
There's so much more to COVID.
The stress of low O2 on the organs.
Waiting it out to see if you can keep your O2
just barely acceptable
can be doing damage you don't even know.
If he went a day or two earlier,
maybe this wouldn't have happened, I don't know.
There's so many lessons here.
I don't know if you've covered them
or if you think making a video discussing these things
that happened that aren't being talked about
would be helpful and resonate with most, with more people.
But I wanted to share in case you do.
I've personally now gotten three people
to sign up for the vaccines
and to talk to their unvaccinated parents.
It's become very real now
that they saw what I've gone through here.
That's tough to read.
So on the 25th, I wrote back and said,
Paul, I'm so sorry.
Truly, I just saw this, and I apologize for the delay.
My inbox is crazy.
And I told him,
we all do the best we can
with the information we have.
Please don't beat yourself up.
Seriously, forgive yourself.
We do the best we can
in the face of conflicting information,
misinformation, disinformation, poor communication
from authorities that are supposed to be looking out for us,
who can't understand that somehow shaming people
into submission on vaccines is not gonna work,
that focusing on taking away people's freedoms
with mandates and things like that
without really sitting down and explaining the why
is not gonna work.
Stories work,
human stories where we can share,
okay, this happened to me, right?
And I asked him if we could share it, and he said yes.
Now the truth is, Paul should forgive himself
because it could have been that they all were vaccinated
weeks or months in advance and still got infected.
It could have been that his parents
were in the small group of frail individuals
that still got very sick, despite vaccine.
It could be that he and his family
still got infected with delta,
even though they were vaccinated.
But the truth is, the statistics say
that all those things were much, much less likely
had they gotten vaccinated.
And that's what I want to stick with you,
that if we're talking about risk,
if we're talking about our loved ones,
if we're talking about not just ourselves,
but those around us,
getting vaccinated is still the lowest risk
for the highest reward
because natural COVID infection
for many people is just not safe.
And so we're doing the best we can.
That's why I advocate the vaccine
even though I don't like mandates,
I don't like government overreach,
I don't like lockdowns,
I don't like anybody telling me what to do.
But I think this is the right answer.
It's the best thing we have right now
until we come up with something better.
So please, share this with people that you love,
that you're concerned about.
And I wanna thank Paul for sharing this story with me.
I know it's hard to make yourself vulnerable and share this.
And Paul, I'm looking right at you.
Really, you did the best you could.
You asked the questions.
You did what so many Americans are doing,
which are asking smart and difficult questions
before you accept something to be put your body.
That's smart.
Now we just have to listen to the answers.
All right, guys, I love you.