Speaker 1: Good morning, peeps, and welcome to wok F Daily with
Speaker 1: Meet your Girl Danielle Moody recording from the Home Bunker, Folks.
Speaker 1: As I mentioned yesterday on Woke Wednesday, today's conversation with
Speaker 1: our friend or in house doctor, doctor Jonathan Metzel, is
Speaker 1: going to be our reflection on this week, marking the
Speaker 1: four year anniversary since COVID was named a global health pandemic.
Speaker 1: And what I can tell you is that, you know,
Speaker 1: I put up a couple of videos on TikTok and
Speaker 1: on Instagram, and it is so disheartening to me some
Speaker 1: of it. And I know that there are trolls and you know,
Speaker 1: and all of those things, but it is so disheart
Speaker 1: heartening to me to put up these videos that really
Speaker 1: encourage us to reflect on this time and people respond
Speaker 1: with like it was a hoax, it was the flu,
Speaker 1: it was you know, it didn't matter. And I'm just like,
Speaker 1: the distortion and the misinformation, the chosen ignorance is just
Speaker 1: wildly disheartening. I don't know what else to say about it,
Speaker 1: but I do know that for the rest of us,
Speaker 1: particularly the wok F engaged wonderful audience that you are,
Speaker 1: that we need to be reminded of the trauma that
Speaker 1: we have gone through and continue to go through, to
Speaker 1: reflect on what we lost and also what we gained,
Speaker 1: right and how our lives have changed.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: I mentioned yesterday that how I got started in this
Speaker 1: comment was with my mom, who celebrated a birthday this week,
Speaker 1: and her birthday coincides with, you know, now the shutdown
Speaker 1: of the world and her brain surgery and all of
Speaker 1: these things, so it's a notable time for us each
Speaker 1: year over the last four years. And you know, so
Speaker 1: when she was teaching yoga this week, she did exactly
Speaker 1: what I did on the show, which was, you know,
Speaker 1: kind of have her students think about and reflect on
Speaker 1: the last four years where they were four years ago
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty, how their lives have changed. You know,
Speaker 1: Have they given any stock to that change, right? Like,
Speaker 1: are they asking their friends and their family how they
Speaker 1: really are, how they have been managing, you know, or
Speaker 1: have we just gone back to business as usual. I'm good,
Speaker 1: things are great, you know lies and you know, and
Speaker 1: she said that it was really powerful that folks were
Speaker 1: really appreciative, because I think that we need to give
Speaker 1: ourselves and each other the permission, right to publicly be
Speaker 1: able to grieve in a lot of ways, the ways
Speaker 1: that our lives have been turned upside down, and that
Speaker 1: you know, many of us are looking for the opportunity
Speaker 1: to share our truth and be vulnerable about the ways
Speaker 1: that we are different, about the losses that we have suffered,
Speaker 1: and about the purposeful changes that we have made, the
Speaker 1: shifts that we have made in our lives, you know.
Speaker 1: And I offer to all of you this coming weekend,
Speaker 1: like reach out to your friends, your family, you know,
Speaker 1: offer it up, you know, to ask people how they're doing. Man,
Speaker 1: it's been four years, Like isn't it wild? Like how
Speaker 1: have you been managing? And just see what happens. Because unfortunately,
Speaker 1: without direct leadership from the top, giving us as a
Speaker 1: country the opportunity to collectively grieve, which I think would
Speaker 1: be incredibly powerful, it has been politicized. As evidence by
Speaker 1: some of the comments that you wouldn't see because I've
Speaker 1: deleted them because I don't want that shit lingering on
Speaker 1: my page. But to deny people the opportunity to grieve
Speaker 1: real loss of a life, of livelihood, of stability, is
Speaker 1: to deny each other's humanity. And that's why we're in
Speaker 1: the predicament, the shit show that we're in right now
Speaker 1: because of the forces at play that are working to
Speaker 1: dismantle our humanity, our values, our shared morals. So how
Speaker 1: do we put those pieces back together? It begins with
Speaker 1: recognizing ourselves and each other, providing grace and space for
Speaker 1: necessary conversation. So coming up next my conversation with our friend,
Speaker 1: our in house doctor, doctor Jonathan Metzel. Folks, you know
Speaker 1: that whenever we have the opportunity to speak with our
Speaker 1: in house doctor, doctor Jonathan Metzel, I am always thrilled,
Speaker 1: and I'm thrilled this week honestly because Jonathan. This month
Speaker 1: is the four year anniverse since COVID was named a
Speaker 1: global health pandemic by the WHO, by the CDC, and
Speaker 1: our worlds were altered in March of twenty twenty. And
Speaker 1: what I find so troubling as I do my own
Speaker 1: reflection because from my family, for folks, that we had
Speaker 1: been listening to me for those four years. You know,
Speaker 1: March twenty twenty was when my mother was diagnosed with
Speaker 1: a brain tumor. She went in for brain surgery the
Speaker 1: day before everything shut down, and thank god we were
Speaker 1: able to, you know, have the surgery, get her home
Speaker 1: and recover, and because of COVID, we were able for
Speaker 1: her to recover and heal as a full family. So
Speaker 1: for us it is a time of like deep reflection
Speaker 1: and gratitude. But Jonathan, what I realize as I do
Speaker 1: my own reflections every year and my FAMI family does theirs,
Speaker 1: that collectively, as a country, we just pretend that this
Speaker 1: traumatic world stopping event where a million over a million
Speaker 1: Americans lost their lives didn't happen.
Speaker 2: I mean, I've been thinking about this so much. I'm
Speaker 2: so glad we're talking about it for the history of
Speaker 2: the world, for the history of everything we know, but
Speaker 2: also for our own history. Right, you and I started
Speaker 2: talking as you say all these things, but you and
Speaker 2: I started our conversations because we were like, holy crap,
Speaker 2: when's the world going to go back together? And that's
Speaker 2: what started our weekly conversations. And so it's also I
Speaker 2: know I didn't get anything. I'm sorry, but this part
Speaker 2: of the story is like it just feels like, and
Speaker 2: I'm thinking of Eric Kleinenberg's new book, like the World
Speaker 2: broke and we never put it back together is kind
Speaker 2: of what it feels like. And so it's funny, like
Speaker 2: I'm going to give you an example that is not
Speaker 2: related to COVID for how I've been thinking, which is,
Speaker 2: and I think I've talked about this for a bit.
Speaker 2: It was like the middle of the night and I
Speaker 2: watched Ferris Buehler's Day Off. And the crazy thing was,
Speaker 2: here's Ferris Buehler. He hangs out with his friends. He
Speaker 2: like ditches school, they steal the car, they go to
Speaker 2: the Cubs game, they go to a parade. But the
Speaker 2: whole thing is the movie was made like a year
Speaker 2: before cell phones, and so all these people are like
Speaker 2: doing all this stuff, but they couldn't conceive that they
Speaker 2: could have ever just called, Like they keep stopping to
Speaker 2: go to a payphone or something. Farris Bueler would have
Speaker 2: been busted in five seconds if he had a phone
Speaker 2: had a day off, And so there was something that
Speaker 2: happened that irreparably, irreparably changed everybody's consciousness. And now when
Speaker 2: you watch it, you're like, why is this guy getting
Speaker 2: to ditch school?
Speaker 3: Just track as far right, right, right right, But nobody
Speaker 3: you watched millions of people in the movie Dancing at Chicago,
Speaker 3: nobody could have conceived And it's just a way that
Speaker 3: a technology was going to come and changed everybody's perception
Speaker 3: about the basic premise of the movie.
Speaker 2: And the other thing about Faris Bueler's Day Off, which
Speaker 2: again is the most random right turn, but it's like,
Speaker 2: if you watch it again, people aren't on cell phones,
Speaker 2: which is kind of weird to watch a world where
Speaker 2: people aren't on cell phones. And then if they would
Speaker 2: have didn Faris Bueler's Day Off, like even five years later,
Speaker 2: nobody would have looked each other in the eye. Everybody
Speaker 2: would have been like, hold on one sec. Kind of
Speaker 2: get a picture of that for Instagram or something like that.
Speaker 2: So it's just funny that like things happen that change
Speaker 2: our perception, that happens all the time in big ways
Speaker 2: and small ways. And I feel like, for me, that's
Speaker 2: kind of the story of COVID, but in a really
Speaker 2: bad way, which is there are all these massive things
Speaker 2: that happened, like a million zillion people died and they're
Speaker 2: gone and there's no you know, it's funny, like think
Speaker 2: about it. In the beginning, like we had music tributes
Speaker 2: and memories and it was kind of weird of the world,
Speaker 2: and all the opera singers got together and then everybody
Speaker 2: just it's just the loss of life was so an
Speaker 2: ending and overwhelming that everybody was we just have normalized
Speaker 2: it in a way. So part of it is the
Speaker 2: loss of life, but the other part is just the
Speaker 2: way it changed we relate to the world. Like people
Speaker 2: feel to me, and this is my question for you.
Speaker 2: People feel less social, they feel less communal, they feel
Speaker 2: less they feel more tired, just rallying people to do
Speaker 2: things as harder. The perception of what it means to
Speaker 2: leave your apartment is just so different. The perception of
Speaker 2: what it means to work feels different. The perception of
Speaker 2: what politics means is so different. And so for me,
Speaker 2: there's the massive things, which are death, and then there's
Speaker 2: the subtle things, which is are just how it changed
Speaker 2: how we think about things we never thought about, like
Speaker 2: going five days to a week in the office. Of course,
Speaker 2: yeah that's what I do and I like my colleagues
Speaker 2: and stuff. And now people don't want to go in
Speaker 2: two days a week and they're working from home and
Speaker 2: they're or isolated but maybe more productive. Like it's just
Speaker 2: everything everything changed our perception to me. To me, that's
Speaker 2: the enduring thing which I think really has profound political implications.
Speaker 1: Also, And I think that that's right, that our perception
Speaker 1: on everything has shifted in such a dramatic way. And
Speaker 1: I love the analogy that you gave to Feris Bueller's
Speaker 1: Day Off, because like the whole premise of the movie,
Speaker 1: like you said, wouldn't have even been able to like
Speaker 1: get off of, you know, get out of somebody's idea
Speaker 1: and into a script, because it would have been like
Speaker 1: he'll be found in two seconds or caught in two seconds.
Speaker 1: Somebody will snap a picture and post it and boom,
Speaker 1: you know, you know where he is. That also just
Speaker 1: makes me sad about the loss of anonymity in a
Speaker 1: deep way as well. But to the perception piece about
Speaker 1: how we work, how we live, how we gather, how
Speaker 1: we connect, all of these fundamental things that make us
Speaker 1: huge women, that make our society tick have changed and
Speaker 1: we don't reflect on it at all. And I think
Speaker 1: that that is something. And I don't know, because you
Speaker 1: travel internationally more for work than I ever do, and
Speaker 1: I want to know from your conversations and travels do
Speaker 1: other countries have a deeper reflection because of and people
Speaker 1: love to say, like, you know, Donald Trump didn't change anything,
Speaker 1: ball blah. And I'm just like the fact that we
Speaker 1: don't have a remembrance for those that we lost to COVID,
Speaker 1: the fact that there isn't like a moment of silence
Speaker 1: collectively every year, the fact that there is going to
Speaker 1: be no real coverage on the news of those that
Speaker 1: we lost and remembering this time and kind of like,
Speaker 1: you know, having this reflection is deeply American because we
Speaker 1: love to forget things. We love to bury them and
Speaker 1: pretend that they didn't happen. I e slavery, right. So
Speaker 1: I'm just wondering for you, you, with your international community,
Speaker 1: is there a difference in terms of how people look
Speaker 1: at this anniversary.
Speaker 2: Well, yes, and let me say three things. But the
Speaker 2: first is actually going to answer the question before, because
Speaker 2: I had one more thing to say about this. I
Speaker 2: taught a class for a long time on COVID and society.
Speaker 2: We started teaching it in the second midst. I spoke yeah,
Speaker 2: and you spoke a munch And so for me, the
Speaker 2: most telling thing and I'll get to the international thing
Speaker 2: in a second, but let's just hold on to the
Speaker 2: first thought for one more minute, which is for me,
Speaker 2: the most powerful And I'll tell you in a bit.
Speaker 2: We stopped teaching that class. It got too intense because
Speaker 2: people in the beginning and they were all like, we
Speaker 2: are the world and we're on the same team. And
Speaker 2: by the end, like to get people to even talk
Speaker 2: about masks, they were going to kill each other, like
Speaker 2: it was so people were so divided, And that's part
Speaker 2: of the story for me, is one thing about the pandemic.
Speaker 2: Another thing is that we spend so much more time
Speaker 2: on social media and on our computers and our phones
Speaker 2: than we did before, even though we had them available,
Speaker 2: and so it's so much easier to divide people, like
Speaker 2: the level of like manipulation. Like remember in the beginning
Speaker 2: of the pandemic, every's like, oh there's misinformation and disinformation
Speaker 2: and we have to stop it for real everything. But
Speaker 2: now like where it's like we are so susceptible to
Speaker 2: being divided in every way possible. And so that's number one.
Speaker 2: But number two and I'm just rambling crazy today, but
Speaker 2: the most powerful thing we would do in this class,
Speaker 2: I'm going to ask you this question is we would say,
Speaker 2: do we would tell the students look at a video
Speaker 2: clip of you before the pandemic, or if you don't
Speaker 2: have one. Look at a picture of you, but look
Speaker 2: at you know, a clip. What didn't you know that
Speaker 2: you know now? In other words, what information or knowledge
Speaker 2: or perception? The way people would do this for like war,
Speaker 2: like before and after the war, what didn't you know?
Speaker 2: Look at yourself before the war? Oh, I was so innocent.
Speaker 2: What didn't you know before the pandemic? That you would
Speaker 2: tell yourself now? And we would ask we had one
Speaker 2: hundred and fifty students in the class. We would tell
Speaker 2: them to go back to their prior self and tell
Speaker 2: them a story about what you know now that you
Speaker 2: didn't know that now? Do you matter if I put
Speaker 2: you on the spot and ask you that question?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm like I'm thinking, I'm there's so much that
Speaker 1: I did this. There is like there's so but I'm
Speaker 1: trying to think of, like what would be that one
Speaker 1: thing that I would tell myself In March twenty nineteen, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that you can still I would say this that, like
Speaker 1: your ability to build connection in person is critical, but
Speaker 1: you can build connections virtually with people, right, like if
Speaker 1: you were never able to go outside, like there is
Speaker 1: way to continue to like deepen friendships and like build
Speaker 1: community but being in person is something that like is needed, right.
Speaker 1: I think that that's the thing that I tell myself
Speaker 1: because I'm a very social person and you know, a
Speaker 1: person that if I allow my calendar to dictate, my
Speaker 1: life would be filled with stuff to do all the time.
Speaker 1: And so the other part is that like you don't
Speaker 1: have to have busy work, like you can just slow down, right,
Speaker 1: Like that is you know that your productivity is not
Speaker 1: your work. So those are two things that I would
Speaker 1: like say, what did your students say? What did you say?
Speaker 2: I said that the connections that you take for granted
Speaker 2: are much more fragile than you realize. In other words,
Speaker 2: like all the assumptions about common good or health or
Speaker 2: wellbeing are just there. You know. I felt like I
Speaker 2: lived in an enlightened era because you know, my dad
Speaker 2: escaped the Holocaust and we came to America and this
Speaker 2: is democracy and all these kind of things, and I
Speaker 2: just I just I just would tell myself that the
Speaker 2: bonds are are are strong, but they're much more susceptible
Speaker 2: than you ever realized about everything things you really assumed
Speaker 2: as core of civilization. So for me, that's it. The
Speaker 2: students were it was really sad because most of them said, like,
Speaker 2: my life could get derailed at any moment, you know,
Speaker 2: or like, you know, because a lot of them lost
Speaker 2: scholarships or lost years of playing sports or lost things
Speaker 2: like that. So for them it was kind of like
Speaker 2: shit could go south at any minute, and so it
Speaker 2: was more like prepare that kind of thing. But it
Speaker 2: was also you know, we love zoom and we have
Speaker 2: all these technologies and you could spend more time on
Speaker 2: your iPhone than you ever wanted, but I'd be curious
Speaker 2: now to do it again. It was great the first
Speaker 2: three years, and then there was just the division in
Speaker 2: the class got to be really intense. And it wasn't
Speaker 2: just division about COVID. It was division about race, the
Speaker 2: things that we couldn't that we easily talked about, Like
Speaker 2: we easily talked about race that first year, and by
Speaker 2: the third year, I would say stuff like, you know,
Speaker 2: it turns out like tons of working class, poor white
Speaker 2: Americans died of COVID, And then one student would say, well,
Speaker 2: they deserved it for not getting vaccines, and somebody else
Speaker 2: would say, you're anti white race. Like it just got
Speaker 2: really intense, and that's what you do in college. You
Speaker 2: talk about it, but it yeah, yeah, but it was
Speaker 2: just you know, we just thought, like, man, maybe we
Speaker 2: can reframe this. So now I have a more cheerful
Speaker 2: class about guns in America. But no, So it was
Speaker 2: just interesting to see that. So I would say that
Speaker 2: to me that what I'm talking about is a kind
Speaker 2: of global phenomenon in some ways. Now I think America
Speaker 2: it's more intense in a way. It certainly feels more
Speaker 2: intense because there was this movement rising, so all these
Speaker 2: things happened about you know, we just have it just
Speaker 2: happened that this happened when Trump was president, and then
Speaker 2: the sedition to overthrow the government and all these things
Speaker 2: and George Floyd. Everything happened that kind of manifested it.
Speaker 2: But I have, as you know, a lot of relatives
Speaker 2: in Israel. They were like in the beginning out there
Speaker 2: clapping on their balconies for the healthcare workers, and now
Speaker 2: that country has been like ripped in a million pieces.
Speaker 2: And it's very similar. Right, A lot of the hardcore
Speaker 2: right wing people are buying guns, and they're anti science,
Speaker 2: and they're obviously pulling them into even worse war. So
Speaker 2: this idea of like we're all going to come together there.
Speaker 2: I know, people are just becoming quite tribal because this
Speaker 2: thing spread. I have a lot of colleagues in Europe.
Speaker 2: I guess the one place, and I don't know, this
Speaker 2: is naive maybe, but I'm part of a project in
Speaker 2: Scandinavia where they're doing this thing called the COVID Narratives Project,
Speaker 2: which is like, what's the narrative of COVID that people
Speaker 2: can memorialize and talk about and imply. And so I'm
Speaker 2: curious where Scandinavia fits in. Now I'll tell you My
Speaker 2: theory about all this is that there's this sociological theory
Speaker 2: called social cohesion, which is basically that countries that have
Speaker 2: shared infrastructure or build shared infrastructure during something like a pandemic,
Speaker 2: end up coming out of it better. An example not
Speaker 2: from COVID is like the UK during World War II,
Speaker 2: for example, you know, London was being bombed and blockaded,
Speaker 2: and the British government said, Okay, we're going to nationalize
Speaker 2: access to healthcare, We're going to democratize access to food
Speaker 2: because everybody should be taken care of at a time
Speaker 2: when we're all facing a common enemy. And it turned
Speaker 2: out then when World War Two ended, they had the
Speaker 2: framework for the NHS and social welfare programs and all
Speaker 2: these kinds of things that helped the country. And Scandinavia
Speaker 2: is kind of similar, like there's good infrastructure and a
Speaker 2: bunch of other things too. So I would bet that
Speaker 2: countries that have like shared collaborative resources and don't like
Speaker 2: all go like this is my resource and not yours,
Speaker 2: which is what we're doing. Yeah, I bet those are
Speaker 2: the countries. But this that reminds me. I'll check back
Speaker 2: in on Scandinavian. I'll report back.
Speaker 1: I'm curious before COVID, and this is somebody I am,
Speaker 1: somebody who built a career off of public service, right,
Speaker 1: like worked on Capitol Hill, worked in nonprofit organizations like
Speaker 1: you know, was a teacher, all of these things, and
Speaker 1: so very much believe in the public good. But something
Speaker 1: that I didn't honestly realize until COVID was how important
Speaker 1: leadership is in this country. And that is something that
Speaker 1: I took wholeheartedly for granted, even going through the Bush
Speaker 1: years right where you know, you had a president fly
Speaker 1: over black people dying in New Orleans because of Katrina,
Speaker 1: right and not sending in aid. But somehow, you know,
Speaker 1: you have celebrities that are sending in eighteen wheeler trucks
Speaker 1: to provide water. Right, So it is to recognize how
Speaker 1: different I think that America would be right now if
Speaker 1: Donald Trump had not been the president, had we not
Speaker 1: had a president that had turned the virus into a
Speaker 1: racial slur, had we not had a president that told
Speaker 1: people not to wear a mask, and that you know,
Speaker 1: to keep states open was to liberate them right and
Speaker 1: did not put the public health forward, told people to
Speaker 1: shoot up, bleach and light. You know that if you
Speaker 1: removed Donald Trump, the Trump administration and MAGA, if it
Speaker 1: had been Hillary Clinton, if it had been Obama and
Speaker 1: it happened during the Obama years, like what a vast
Speaker 1: difference I think that we would be in right now.
Speaker 1: I think that America would have been stronger and more
Speaker 1: united because we would have seen COVID as like as
Speaker 1: shared responsibility instead. I mean, you would have still had
Speaker 1: those people who want a grift in a price gouge,
Speaker 1: and that happens all of the time. But I think
Speaker 1: that there would have been much more of a community
Speaker 1: building and shared humanity if we had had the right leadership.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean it's that you really need that right,
Speaker 2: because you know, I just I have much more to
Speaker 2: say about that. You know, there are all these moments
Speaker 2: early in the pandemic when people were wondering is this
Speaker 2: thing going to be polarized or is it going to
Speaker 2: be unifying? And remember Trump two months into the pandemic,
Speaker 2: the Trump administration filed a brief with the Supreme Court
Speaker 2: to like overturn the entire Affordable Care Act. They blocked healthcare,
Speaker 2: they blocked medicaid reform in red states, like all these ways.
Speaker 2: They signaled that it's not just politics as usual, but
Speaker 2: it's an opportunity for us to like get ahead, you know,
Speaker 2: by profiteering in a way in this horrible moment. And
Speaker 2: so it became what's called a polarizing crisis where people's
Speaker 2: divisions really were enhanced. Now, I'll say that the thing
Speaker 2: about COVID is that it just went on so long,
Speaker 2: like it was almost beyond comprehension. Usually people think of
Speaker 2: before and after and then we can do a memorial,
Speaker 2: and then we can do a statue and all these things,
Speaker 2: and it just defied all that because it's still floating around.
Speaker 2: And so I think part of the issue was it
Speaker 2: just wasn't conceivable for us, and it certainly wasn't conceivable
Speaker 2: for people like Trump. Just what was being faced in
Speaker 2: a certain kind of way. And then there's of course
Speaker 2: all this retrospective like, oh, of course I knew that
Speaker 2: we weren't this wasn't going to work. Of course I
Speaker 2: knew vaccines and all this kind of crap. But like,
Speaker 2: everybody was just scrambling it. It was a you know,
Speaker 2: I trust the people who know what they're doing, but
Speaker 2: everybody was just scrambling. It wasn't like we had a
Speaker 2: model for it. So I completely agree with you about leadership.
Speaker 2: You know, ironically, economically we came out better than anybody.
Speaker 2: But there's a kind of interesting reason why that is,
Speaker 2: which is that we had migrants who did a lot
Speaker 2: of the jobs and kept our economy going up. And
Speaker 2: so a lot of people that are now if the
Speaker 2: Republic is wudn't get reblocked. But but so they're all
Speaker 2: there are all these stories. So it's, man, it's so intense.
Speaker 2: It's like this half hour flew by, because.
Speaker 1: I know, yeah it is. It's it's just like, you know,
Speaker 1: but you're you're the person that I wanted to have
Speaker 1: this conversation with because you're right in remembering that our
Speaker 1: entire conversation weekly came out of we don't know what
Speaker 1: the hell is going on, So let us just like
Speaker 1: do what we can do, you know, to speak to
Speaker 1: each other, to speak to the audience and kind of
Speaker 1: get through this moment. But even to be on the
Speaker 1: other side, I can't really say to your point that
Speaker 1: we've made it to the other side, do you know
Speaker 1: what I'm saying? Like I feel like, I don't know,
Speaker 1: maybe in another six years, when it's been ten years,
Speaker 1: who knows where America, our democracy, like our you know
Speaker 1: where we will be at all. But it's just it's
Speaker 1: wild to reflect on your twenty nineteen self and today.
Speaker 1: So I'll give you the last thoughts.
Speaker 2: Well, just that the election really matters. I mean, I'm
Speaker 2: kind of stating the obvious, but part of the reason
Speaker 2: we can even have this conversation is that we had
Speaker 2: the shadow of a functioning public health infrastructure. Trump is
Speaker 2: now saying if they win, they're going to destroy the CDC,
Speaker 2: They're going to end every vaccine thing, They're going to
Speaker 2: end all this stuff, and so, you know, I would
Speaker 2: just say that the lessons are still pretty urgent about
Speaker 2: why the election matters and public health, it would seem
Speaker 2: to be like on the top three of the list.
Speaker 2: It's not for a lot of people, but it should
Speaker 2: be because if we do away with research about how
Speaker 2: to treat illness and public health and structure and stuff
Speaker 2: like that, then ten years from.
Speaker 1: Now smallpox will be back, you know, like U leo.
Speaker 2: All these things, yep, if we've never heard of and
Speaker 2: so and so. I just think that it really ties
Speaker 2: into like why the reason number like nine and fifty
Speaker 2: eight about why the election is so urgent is about
Speaker 2: one side clearly is using the pandemic to talk about
Speaker 2: destroying the public health infrastructure and that really can't and
Speaker 2: healthcare infrastructure, and to me, that would lead to a
Speaker 2: very different and much sicker country. And the other side
Speaker 2: is saying, let's learn from this and and boost our
Speaker 2: well being. So to me, that's a pretty straightforward choice.
Speaker 1: As always, my friend, doctor Jonathan Metzel, appreciate you. Happy
Speaker 1: anniversary tea four years of oh I got of conversations
Speaker 1: on on woke at our own narrative. Really really appreciate you.
Speaker 2: Thank you, thank you. Let's keep going, everybody.
Speaker 1: That is it for me today, Dear friends, on Woke
Speaker 1: a f as always power to the people and to
Speaker 1: all the people. Power, Get woke and stay woke as fuck.