- Hey, I'm Zach and I'm immunosuppressed.
Right now we are living through a pandemic.
Yeah, duh! That's why you're watching this inside your home.
You better be watching this inside your home.
As coronavirus has spread throughout the US,
as we have become the most infected nation in the world,
there's been a lot of talk about
who are these people who are actually most at risk
and isn't it just all people?
So we actually don't have to be concerned at all.
Well, I'm one of those people.
Yo, and there are a lot more of those people
in your life than you might think.
So if you would please get comfortable,
this is gonna be one of those videos
where I talk to you about something serious,
because I am terrified and I hope you're terrified too.
Many of our viewers have heard me talk about this before.
But if you're new here,
I have an autoimmune disease called ankylosing spondylitis.
And yes, it is exactly as fun as it sounds.
Basically if left untreated,
all my bones would fuse together and I would become
the least effective member of the X-Men.
Bone man, with the power of back pain.
My medicine is crucial.
It works by suppressing my immune system
and preventing all those nasty processes
that are so damaging to my body.
And that, that is awesome, but it comes with a price.
It also means that my immune system is just generally weaker
and that is not so awesome especially right now.
The physical challenge for people who are immunosuppressed
or immunocompromised or immunodeficient, whole immuno fam,
is that we are generally more susceptible to sickness.
We get sick easier,
we stay sick longer,
and the severity can be more intense and more dangerous.
The mental challenge for people like us
is that you never know if you're being properly cautious
or just straight up paranoid.
Enter COVID-19 from stage left.
If I were to contract the coronavirus,
well, I don't exactly know.
I'm young, relatively.
I'm not TikTok star young, but you know, I'm young.
I'm healthy except for the chronic pain and bone stuff,
but I'm immunosuppressed.
It's possible I only have a 5% more chance
of contracting the disease.
It's possible that number is a whole lot higher.
What happens if I were to get the disease?
Well, it's possible that my body would kick its ass.
It's possible that from complications,
I would require hospitalization or worse.
I just have no way of knowing,
and it's not something I particularly wanna find out.
And that feeling of not knowing
is frankly driving me insane.
Because I don't know if I'm overreacting or underreacting.
Something as simple as getting takeout
and having a handoff from a delivery man,
is that irresponsible?
My wifi has been out,
and I nearly a panic attack on the phone
with the cable company debating
if I could possibly let someone into my house.
No wifi or death.
It's tough, it's tough.
My neighbor across the hallway has been coughing.
And I heard him say that he has a cold.
Does that mean that there is infection in my hallway?
Can I not even leave this apartment?
A little over a month ago,
before the need to shelter in place
became obvious to most of the country,
there were these two warring voices inside my head.
One that was telling me,
its probably nothing to worry about.
And the other one shouting in my ear,
you fool save yourself.
I've been quarantining here officially for 25 days now.
But in practice, it's been longer than that.
For two weeks before I started quarantining,
I stopped going out.
Turned down invites the friend's birthday parties,
didn't go out to dinner.
Just basically work at home.
Was I being responsible or insane?
Back to this.
And then even at work, I couldn't help, but be freaked out.
You know, I love and trust everyone that we work with
and I know that they know the importance of staying home,
if they're not feeling well.
But how many people do they interact with in a given day?
What if someone that I knew was an asymptomatic carrier
and they didn't even know it?
This is when we found out that the disease
had been spreading in Washington state
for six weeks undetected.
It could already be too late.
And I would have no idea.
We had a ton of upcoming travel videos for tri guys.
In fact, today I was supposed to be in New York
for my mom's birthday.
So in these early days when national messaging
was incredibly mixed, when we were told
this is not a problem,
not an American problem, not here.
I was faced with a very difficult choice.
I could err on the side of caution, keep myself safe,
but in the process, disappoint those closest to me.
Or I could roll the dice.
Not that anyone close to me wouldn't understand.
Of course they would.
They wouldn't ask me to do something
I wasn't comfortable with,
but that feeling of overreacting
to something that turns out to be nothing of looking stupid,
it's an overwhelming feeling.
I think it comes down to this desire to just be normal.
Yeah, I guess I didn't wanna admit
that something like this could affect me,
that it could affect my plans.
You know what happened next?
That brings us to today.
So, what is it like being immunosuppressed
during a pandemic?
Well, it's probably similar to what you're going through,
but just more.
I'm staying in doors.
I'm not seeing anyone
and I am washing my I hands fanatically, but above all,
I am trying to maintain my happiness and my sanity
and not succumb to these overwhelming feelings
of anxiety that washed over me throughout the day.
I've started having these nightmares where I'm in a,
like a small store, like a sandwich shop.
And then suddenly twenty-five people swarming.
It's like a college field trip,
do colleges have field trips?
It doesn't matter.
I'm in there and the nightmare is just
that I can't get six feet away from them.
And I try and cover my face with my shirt,
but I know that it's too late and it's no use.
And my eyes both open,
and I'm convinced that I've got the rona,
and I'm gonna die.
Are you guys calling it the rona?
That's what I've been calling it.
There are people out there who have it way worse than me.
There are people who are immunosuppressed,
immunocompromised, immunodeficient,
who are probably more at risk
and whose reactions would likely be way more
severe than mine,
but all those people don't have a YouTube channel
with 7 million subscribers.
So, I'm making this video for us.
Because when we talk about
who is at risk for the coronavirus,
it's not some limited sampling of elderly Americans,
which by the way, would still be incredibly tragic.
We are talking about diabetics and cancer survivors
and asthmatics, and those with lung and heart diseases,
people of all ages, backgrounds, people you love,
people you know, people you interact with
every single day, people you watch on YouTube.
And also some people who at the moment seem healthy
in every conceivable way,
and we'll be tragically blindsided by this.
This affects all of us.
I feel the need to make this video
because there's still parts of society
that have been slow moving
in accepting the severity of what we're facing.
Still, as of filming this,
we have states that have not issued a shelter in place order
and not to beat the flirting horse here,
but watching "Spring Breakers" last week,
continue to go out and disregard the threat
that we are facing while I am here confined to my home,
it made me wanna scream.
And it's not just some drunk teens on a beach,
it's coronavirus parties and crowded parks,
and pundants raring to go by Easter.
Seeing this all is incredibly hurtful
because it sends a message to me
and to people like me saying,
we don't care about what happens to you.
So in Italy, we saw that there weren't enough ventilators
to go around.
And so doctors had to make the terrible choice
of who was worthy of those life-saving ventilators
and who wasn't because there just simply
aren't enough ventilators to go around.
What we saw in Italy
is already beginning to happen in New York.
And now we're hearing hospitals across the country,
starting to put protocols in place for if and when
they're gonna have to make those same horrible choices
that the doctors were making in Italy.
And so I am left to wonder
if I, or someone like me were to be hospitalized,
and they saw that I was immunosuppressed,
what would they do?
If they had one ventilator for two people,
would they decide that I'm not worth it?
It makes me worry.
This all changes daily,
but the administration is now estimating
that a hundred thousand to 240 Americans
might die if we do this right.
And they're calling that a success story.
That is not a success.
That is a tragedy in slow motion.
The federal response has failed us.
The president has failed us,
but we don't have to fail each other.
We need to act together now
because every moment wasted
will just lead to more suffering.
It's lived together, die alone.
That's a loss reference that excites me.
Don't get to make loss references very often.
For you, this will eventually end.
I know you're itching for shelter in place to the end.
And the second it does,
I know you're gonna wanna rush outside
and get back to life and throw 20 person parties
where everyone licks each other's face that.
Look, I get it.
I love a good face licking,
but we can't do that, not immediately.
If the virus exists anywhere out there,
well, we know what happens.
If it's out there, it can and will spread again,
and then we're right back where we started.
But for me and people like me,
this isn't gonna end soon.
This is gonna go on for a while
because I'm gonna be living in fear
of not knowing if it's actually,
actually safe to go outside.
And that is a loss.
It's a tremendous loss.
The life I love is out there.
Oh, look, I'm a tri guy.
It's in my name, I like doing things.
I like going to movies and concerts
and traveling and meeting new people.
And with luck,
I will get to do all of those things again soon,
but I need your help.
We need your help.
We are your friends, your family, your neighbors,
your nurses, your teachers, your weed dealer,
your waiter, the dude at the party
whose name you always forget.
We're Americans and we're supposed to stick together.
Look as a quick aside.
And I'm not gonna be able to fully address this,
but I know that there are a lot of people
who don't have the luxury of choice,
who cannot stay home,
who don't have paid sick leave,
who can't afford to miss out on a wage
or who were doing jobs that are essential,
to all of us to continue to live our lives.
To the latter, I thank you,
to the former, I don't blame you.
To those who are out of work
because of what is happening, my heart goes out to you.
When I say that we need to take care of each other,
I don't just mean our health.
I mean that all around.
If we don't take care of each other,
we all pay the price.
To my fellow immunoaltered homies out there,
I don't think that's a real phrase, but it should be.
Please remember to be kind to yourself during these times,
allow yourself happiness and levity
and whatever relief that you need,
because fuck knows you deserve it.
I know that this can be a really
overwhelming and scary time.
I hope that our videos can be a relief
and a laugh for you, this one aside.
I promise you that after this one,
I will go back to making dumb stuff again,
made like a full truth crime documentary about my penis,
like a couple of days ago.
So you could go watch that.
We unfortunately don't have a choice
if we are going to endure this or not, we're in it.
If you were scared, frustrated, angry, I see you.
Your feelings are valid
and I am right there with you.
To the rest of you,
thank you for watching, wash your hands,
and stay the fuck inside, thanks.