welcome guys i'm dr mike hansen a board-certified physician
specializing in internal medicine pulmonary disease and critical care medicine
now i've seen hundreds if not thousands of covid patients between the intensive care unit doing
pulmonary consults in the hospital as well as in the pulmonary clinic but i also want to bring in
someone my best friend who is also a doctor he's a psychiatrist and he had covid and then he later
got the vaccine and then later on he got covid again presumably the delta variant so here he is
welcome dr hizbe ali thanks dr hansen for having me um i just want to say i'm a big fan
you do a great job of you know giving information out to people a good public health service
so i appreciate it uh yeah i am one of those people that got covid and then presumably delta
despite getting the vaccine in between what happened was i was working in an
emergency department in new york and at the time when the covid broke out so
march last year was when it picked up and i got sick around april and at the time i really
just had mild symptoms i'm an otherwise healthy guy i'm a runner so i'm in pretty good shape uh
all i had was loss of smile for about 10 days and some muscle weakness for like really a few days
and i didn't really even know i had it i was still actually going to work
at that time so after that about six seven months later when they had the vaccine come out
and i got the vaccine i had gotten moderna and the two doses it was about december of last year
and you know things were fine i had no problems no issues with the vaccine whatsoever
and then last month i ended up getting the delta variant presumably because i was really
really sick and i know how it happened i was out at a led zeppelin tribute band concert no
one was wearing masks everyone was out they were celebrating kind of the reopening of these clubs
so i was probably exposed to a really high viral load i think at this concert because two days
later is when i just went down and i felt like my lungs were on fire i couldn't breathe i couldn't
even walk up the stairs let alone go run you know five to ten miles you know so that was
the first time i was like wow i've never gotten a lung disease or issue ever in my life even when
i had the flu before it was never anything close to this and i was sick for at least 10 days
i would say 14 days i was testing positive for covid and it was bad it felt like someone threw
acid in my lungs couldn't breathe so that was quite a struggle did you check your oxygen with
the pulse socks do you check your oxygen yeah so i did check my pulse socks and my pulse socks
i checked it a few times so i don't know how low it actually went it might have gotten lower
at some point but it was around 95 i think it went 95.96 which is lower than my usual
but yeah it went about that low yeah i mean for someone who's otherwise healthy with perfect lungs
you should be setting you know 98 99 100 so 95 percent might not seem like it's that much of
a drop but someone who should normally be 100 go drop it by five that's actually pretty significant
yeah and that's why we always say you know you can't always go by the absolute numbers when it
comes to oh well what's the oxygen level you have to understand someone's baseline and then what is
their baseline and then how low are they compared to the baseline that is significant absolutely
i mean i again like i said i checked my pulse socks a few times but i could just tell you
like walking up the stairs i was out of breath it was ridiculous it's never happened to me before
that's when i was like wow this thing is real and even healthy people
that are vaccinated can get it the thing about you is that you weren't you weren't just
vaccinated with moderna you actually had covid plus two doses of the moderna vaccine so at that
point already your antibodies should have already been through the roof and
some people will say oh well the vaccine didn't work it's actually quite the opposite because
had you not had the vaccine you probably would have been super sick as a result like requiring
hospitalization possibly intensive care unit possibly long covid possible death who knows
yeah absolutely absolutely the vaccine you know again it was right so it does raise a question
of what my antibody titers were but again i already had covid once i got the two
shots a month apart so i thought i was protected i actually didn't take it that seriously that's why
i went to this concert you know i didn't think i was gonna get it and i didn't think you know
it was that big of an issue obviously i should have watched more of your videos
but once i got it i was like this has to be real and then i tested
you know i went to cvs drive-through and i got a bunch of covid tests and you know it was tested
positive immediately very high counts also so that's when i was like i'm pretty serious and
i think the 10-day course of dexamethasone kind of what really saved me as well as probably being
vaccinated from ending up in the hospital but you're a living example of you know why exactly
people should you know get the vaccine even if they're young i mean look um i run over 100
miles a month i'm a really active guy i'm really healthy i have no medical problems like i bet i've
actually never really gotten sick with anything including the flu i've never gotten sick so
for me to end up uh you know almost bedridden in my own house where i couldn't even walk was was
the big wake-up call and when i'm a living example of the fact that a young healthy people can
definitely get it and b the vaccine protected me from ending up in the hospital and as you probably
know young healthy people unvaccinated are getting incubated so i think the vaccine helped me
in that regard and also of course the steroid treatment for 10 days i will say this i've
seen hundreds if not thousands of covid patients ii've yet to see a single vaccinated person
actually die from covid now i'm not saying it hasn't happened but out of the hundreds
if not thousands of patients that i've seen i've not seen it happen i've also not seen
someone end up in the hospital as a result of getting the vaccine right like i never i'm
yet to see an anaphylactic reaction again i'm not saying it hasn't happened i'm just saying
i haven't seen that i haven't seen someone end up in the hospital as a different result of the
vaccine such as myocarditis such as guillain-barre syndrome such as thrombosis and thrombocytopenia
so all these things that you hear as potential things that can happen with the vaccine that are
incredibly rare you know higher chance of being struck by lightning than these things happening
but yeah i see you know this past 10-day stretch that i worked in intensive care unit
every day more and more covid cases i personally had five covid patients that i was seeing every day
in the intensive care unit wow and one person died actually that guy he didn't even believe in covid
he actually didn't believe in covid and he thought that he was in the hospital because he caught
pneumonia because he was forced to wear a mask wow and he literally died not knowing or not believing
that he had covid yeah i am a living proof i had it so i've already had this conversation
with my patients i clearly tell my patients to get the vaccine and when they acquire me at
home look i got delta i got i got covid the first time i most likely got the delta variant
as well and if it wasn't for being vaccinated i probably would have been in the hospital
despite being super healthy and never having any respiratory problems ever in my life
so what else could explain me getting this sick it's not the flu it's not the cold
i've never had those problems well here's here's the thing is that what most people
or a lot of people don't get is that you could do everything you can be perfectly healthy let's say
you're 18 years old 21 years old and you work out an hour every day and you eat nothing but
the healthiest food and you get eight nine hours sleep every night and you don't have a lot of
stress even that person can still dive covid the chances are less likely the more of those
things that you do the more overall you're in good health the less likely you're gonna die of covid
but you're not guaranteed of that yeah and so here's here's what most people don't get is that
even you take that 20 year old person who's perfectly healthy who does all those things
their risk of dying from covid is still higher than the risk of something bad happening from
the vaccine even though their risk of having a bad illness from covid is still extremely low
for that person that i just described it's still way higher than having a bad outcome from the
vaccine absolutely i mean that seems to be one of the biggest barriers um and especially my patients
who come in you know i've seen a variety of reasons that they don't want to get the vaccine
some people are conspiracy theorists of course no matter what you say they're never gonna
believe you some people they just don't have the right information so that is a little
bit frustrating i think it has to do with freedom and i'm not going to do what the government says
i think that's right i think that's what it comes down to that's that's definitely that's definitely
a big part of it i think if you look around the world most people you know they're itching to
get the vaccine they're looking at us like hey you guys have all these extra vaccines that are
you know lying around the irony the irony sorry because you said that i got to jump in the irony
of what you just said is the person who's editing this video right now is actually in south africa
and he is about to get his code vaccine and he's super excited about it and he's probably laughing
right now as he's editing this video so to your point it's exactly that yeah and look we have
data right like israel is ahead right israel's ahead where they went ahead with the booster they
got scientific data and their covid rates have dropped they're dropped right that's like actual
data so if we want to look up to a country and say hey who's doing it right
i think israel's doing it right yeah they're smaller population you know so i think that
it's easier for the government to kind of you know get people on board they're more you know
well-informed probably and maybe they don't have as many opinion news things and entertainment
things that distract them from actually seeking out real data you know what i mean as a doctor i
can live with saying hey this is fda approved the data shows this yeah in a rare event if something
happens there's no way to know 100 but the data shows that the vaccine is safe you know the vast
majority of the time versus like you said getting covid like i did i got covid that was scary you
know there actually were a couple days during that stretch of the 10 days where i thought i might end
up in the hospital and be intubated and or die you know i was actually really really scared that
thought is more scary than getting a vaccine i've gotten 20 vaccines probably in my life even more
you know traveling around the country my mom is a pediatrician i got every vaccine in the book
as a child nothing ever happened to me like i said i've been the healthiest person i've never
gotten sick i've never been in the hospital so vaccines work so you believe in modern medicine
yeah and let me also say one one more thing that i think is a uh proves that the vaccine actually
works again i got the delta because i went to a concert packed concert no one was wearing masks
right when the delta in the middle of the delta breakout in nevada um but no one was wearing masks
and i probably got exposed to a huge viral load right so i got sick plus i was out late night so
my immune system was probably stressed out um so i got sick i come home i live with my girlfriend
right she's also vaccinated she was only exposed to really me that was symptomatic
we both got tests from cbs i tested positive like i said more than 10 days two weeks
straight she tested herself the same time i tested myself i did about six seven tests in that 14 days
so did she she never tested positive why she's vaccinated and she was only exposed to one person
so it is protected i went and got exposed to probably a hundred people yeah you know that may
have had it definitely quite a few that packed a crowd so um that goes to show that if you're
vaccinated yes you're probably going to be exposed to a few people here from people there in the
course of your daily life but it is protective she never got it that's why i was so confident getting
the vaccine when it first came out when i got my vaccine in december in the second shot in january
why people were saying oh it's so courageous no it's because i believed in the science and
i believed in the medicine and and i could i i have the ability to break down a study
a trial a randomized controlled trial and analyze it and then feel confident about you
know what it's showing and i believed in it and that's why i got it and i wasn't scared at all
i think people forget that in the last 100 years since we've had antibiotics and vaccines that our
life expectancy has also doubled and um i know they want to call out doctors and scientists
conspiracy you know part of a conspiracy but in reality i'm actually surprised how amazing science
is in terms of our lifespan despite the fact that we're actually sicker with more chronic illnesses
such as diabetes and cancer because of our diet poor diet and poor you know lifestyle choices
that's actually a great achievement of science that it's enabled us to live us longer than
we used to be 100 years ago by almost twice as long despite all these chronic conditions so
i took my hat to the scientists and doctors actually and we should thank them
sometimes science does make mistakes of course you know what i mean but
that's few and far between compared to how much benefit science has actually provided to people so
it's perspective is always a good thing yeah definitely science gets it right more often than
it gets it wrong so yeah you know in the beginning of the covid outbreak i can actually understand
people being a little bit suspicious but now you know it's been over a year and a half um we've got
enough data right to show does it happen and we have other countries as models to look after see
what happened when they actually follow through with vaccinations so there really is no excuse now
have a good night glad you're better and thanks for coming on tonight i want to thank you actually
for doing a great job and just trying to you know educate people so they make informed decisions
about it yeah but anyway thanks again man i am going to wrap this up and get some sleep you
see my rest up talk to you next time alright man talk to you later all right peace out