Speaker 1: Good morning, peeps, and welcome to wok F Daily with
Speaker 1: me your girl, Danielle Moody, recording from the Home Bunker. Folks,
Speaker 1: I'm very excited to welcome back to woke F Daily
Speaker 1: our friend doctor Abduel el Sayed, author of Medicare for All,
Speaker 1: hosts of the podcast America Dissected, and a public health
Speaker 1: advocate that we've had on the show throughout the course
Speaker 1: of the pandemic. I bring doctor el Sayed back to
Speaker 1: the show because we haven't completed or risen above. Despite
Speaker 1: what the Biden administration says COVID nineteen, we are still
Speaker 1: experiencing four hundred deaths a day, which amount to three
Speaker 1: thousand people dying a week from COVID nineteen. We haven't
Speaker 1: eradicated monkeypox. We haven't really understood what long COVID really
Speaker 1: is because we only have two and a half years
Speaker 1: of research because that's how long COVID has been around.
Speaker 1: We don't know the longer term implications of what happens
Speaker 1: to folks trying to get disability because they're no longer
Speaker 1: able to work. Because there are some people who have
Speaker 1: had COVID that are struggling immensely. But we just don't
Speaker 1: talk about it. So how does President Biden saying and
Speaker 1: announcing that the pandemic is over affect people's ability to
Speaker 1: one have empathy, but also for public health advocates to
Speaker 1: try and alert the public to the fact that while
Speaker 1: we're not experiencing a surge with COVID now as we
Speaker 1: have in the past two years, what doctor l Sayed
Speaker 1: will say is that if you look at the UK,
Speaker 1: which has been our canary in the coal mine every
Speaker 1: time we're about to hit a surge, he says, COVID
Speaker 1: nineteen numbers are up fifteen percent in the UK right now.
Speaker 1: And climate we know by virtue of how climate change
Speaker 1: is aggressively impacting now our day to day lives and
Speaker 1: we're seeing, you know, these once in a century storms
Speaker 1: every fucking year. He'll talk to us about the correlation
Speaker 1: between these public health crises and the fact that we
Speaker 1: will see another global health pandemic in our lifetime and
Speaker 1: how it ties into climate change. Folks. You know, I
Speaker 1: know that it is exhausting and at times we just
Speaker 1: want to put one of these crises, at least one
Speaker 1: of them, if not all of them, behind us. But
Speaker 1: the thing is is that we're not learning. We're not
Speaker 1: learning from anything because and we, as a president of
Speaker 1: the United States announces mission accomplished and the mission is
Speaker 1: far from being fucking over. That means we've stopped learning
Speaker 1: and we've stopped educating, and that, if nothing else that
Speaker 1: we've learned, spells fucking danger. So what do we do?
Speaker 1: How do we move forward? How do we regain our
Speaker 1: trust and faith and institutions that were rocked by COVID nineteen.
Speaker 1: So this conversation coming up next with our friend doctor
Speaker 1: Abdul Lsed will lay bare, you know, frankly, folks, where
Speaker 1: we are right now with the virus, where we are headed,
Speaker 1: and how critical the upcoming midterm elections are to understanding
Speaker 1: how we build a robust health infrastructure that is prepared
Speaker 1: to meet these impending crises. The Damage Report with John
Speaker 1: Idarola is one of the most popular shows on the
Speaker 1: TYT Network that serves as your daily breakdown of the
Speaker 1: genuine threats and challenges facing our country and world. These days,
Speaker 1: we're confronted with an overwhelming sea of shocking, confounding, and
Speaker 1: devastating news stories. The Damage Report is your life raft,
Speaker 1: helping you navigate the day's news and understand the damage
Speaker 1: caused by the corrupt establishment, politicians, corporations, and everything in between.
Speaker 1: Join The Damage Report's notorious fan club, the Dragon Squad,
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Speaker 1: Create a fun dragon nickname that fits your personality, collaborate
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Speaker 1: Person of the Week, and much more. Listen to The
Speaker 1: Damage Report on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcast.
Speaker 1: If you like what you here, be sure to subscribe
Speaker 1: so you never miss an episode. Friends, I am very
Speaker 1: happy to welcome back to WOK. It's been way too long.
Speaker 1: Doctor Abduel el Sayid, who you know, is the host
Speaker 1: of America Dissected. He is the author of Medicare for
Speaker 1: All and Healing Politics, and a public health doctor that
Speaker 1: makes his rounds on cable news and in other spaces
Speaker 1: to educate us on what is happening in this country
Speaker 1: and around the world as it pertains to public health.
Speaker 1: Welcome back. I want to start with the obvious, which
Speaker 1: is a couple of weeks ago. President Biden was on
Speaker 1: sixty Minutes and he's walking around the Detroit Auto Show.
Speaker 1: No one is in a mask. It's the first time
Speaker 1: that the auto show is taking place in three years,
Speaker 1: and he says, the pandemic is over. Your reaction, a
Speaker 1: good doctor, your reaction to that, you know, the hard
Speaker 1: part is that you think about all of the folks
Speaker 1: who are yet in hospitals, who are yet dying four
Speaker 1: hundred a day about and all the folks who are
Speaker 1: so scarred by long COVID, and you have to ask
Speaker 1: whether or not it's prudent to call this over. But
Speaker 1: then the bigger question is this The thing about a
Speaker 1: pandemic is that you can't really call it over from
Speaker 1: where you sit, kind of like a hurricane. You don't
Speaker 1: really see the edges of the storm. And it could
Speaker 1: be that the lull in the storm is the end
Speaker 1: of the storm, or it could be that it's the
Speaker 1: eye of the storm. And while we've been lucky not
Speaker 1: to have a fall surge as we've had for every
Speaker 1: year of COVID so far, yet that's not to say
Speaker 1: that it's not coming. In fact, you look at in
Speaker 1: the UK, which has been sort of a harbinger of
Speaker 1: things to come in the US, their cases are up
Speaker 1: fifteen percent over the past two weeks, which suggests that
Speaker 1: this still could be coming. The other aspect of this
Speaker 1: is that you know, we think we are we have
Speaker 1: reached pretty close to the most efficient variant of omicron.
Speaker 1: When I say efficient meaning the most immunovasive combination between
Speaker 1: immune evasive and transmissible. And yet it's plausible that while
Speaker 1: we're expecting the virus to zig i e. We are
Speaker 1: vaccinating people against the BA five subvariant, that it could zact,
Speaker 1: that there could be a whole new line or play
Speaker 1: of variants that arise. We don't know what this virus
Speaker 1: has in store, and so it's just it's a little
Speaker 1: bit frustrating to watch a president triumphantly declare that we
Speaker 1: have one mission accomplished when we actually don't really know
Speaker 1: that that's the case. And the last thing I'll say
Speaker 1: is this is that the reason this matters, and it's
Speaker 1: not just a matter of what we say, is that
Speaker 1: the administration, while the President has declared the pandemic over,
Speaker 1: the administration has been making an ask of Congress to
Speaker 1: fund all of the COVID diagnostics and the treatments and
Speaker 1: vaccines that we need should there be another another another search.
Speaker 1: And so this just undercuts that in a pretty profound way.
Speaker 1: So it's not just semantics here. It's not just you know,
Speaker 1: throwing a lot of assault in the wounds for people
Speaker 1: with a long COVID. It's actually undercutting the administration's own
Speaker 1: effort to be able to deal with the next search
Speaker 1: such that we can get to a point. But the
Speaker 1: pandemic really is over. But the hard part is you
Speaker 1: can't really declare it from inside and where we are.
Speaker 1: And and I worry that when people listen to the
Speaker 1: President they'll take what he's saying over seriously as congret
Speaker 1: Congress people of the Republican Party have and say, well,
Speaker 1: if the pandemic's over, why would we be funding this right?
Speaker 1: You know, the people who listen to WIKA f know
Speaker 1: that after were two years of dodging the virus. Myself,
Speaker 1: I caught it Labor Day weekend while I was outside
Speaker 1: at an outside family event. It wasn't even like an
Speaker 1: outside concert. It was like an outside family barbecue. And
Speaker 1: I caught COVID and thankfully, you know, I had very
Speaker 1: mild symptoms. Thankfully I did not require the anti viral treatment.
Speaker 1: I just kind of wrote it out in my apartment.
Speaker 1: It was more frustrating and annoying. But the entire time
Speaker 1: I was thanking doctors, I was thanking science. I was
Speaker 1: thanking researchers for the ability to be able to ride
Speaker 1: out this thing that was inside of my body, that
Speaker 1: is still inside of my body, that has killed millions
Speaker 1: of people. And so, you know, one of the things
Speaker 1: that I want to ask you about is the fact
Speaker 1: that we still don't really know about the long term
Speaker 1: implications of long COVID and and you know, and it's
Speaker 1: something that isn't being spoken about because there are people who,
Speaker 1: like myself, have you know, COVID finally caught up with them.
Speaker 1: I have friends and colleagues that have had brain fog.
Speaker 1: I did not have brain fog. They are continuing past
Speaker 1: having tested negative these symptoms casually coming back. And so
Speaker 1: how do you think that we should be speaking about
Speaker 1: and public health experts like your self should be speaking
Speaker 1: about long term COVID and what we think, you know,
Speaker 1: possibly worst case scenario, what the implications are for our workforce,
Speaker 1: right for disability moving forward. Yeah, you raise a really
Speaker 1: important point. First, I want to say, I'm sorry to
Speaker 1: hear that you had the disease, and I'm also grateful
Speaker 1: that it wasn't so serious, but you join literally millions
Speaker 1: and millions and millions of Americans who've had COVID. I
Speaker 1: was infected back in April, as was my whole family,
Speaker 1: and the consequences of that for you and me has
Speaker 1: meant that we got a bit sick for a couple
Speaker 1: of days and then we got over it. But we
Speaker 1: don't actually know what the long long term consequences of
Speaker 1: this virus are. What we do understand is that for
Speaker 1: people who are who are infected, some proportion upwards of
Speaker 1: ten to twenty percent will develop a set of chronic
Speaker 1: symptoms that we call long COVID. But we don't really
Speaker 1: understand the path of physiology of it, why it's happening,
Speaker 1: or how to treat it, or what the long long
Speaker 1: term consequences might be. Because let's remember, right what we
Speaker 1: call shingles. Before it's shingles, it's chicken pox. And what
Speaker 1: tends to happen is right that that virus we now understand,
Speaker 1: goes dormant in a piece of your spinal cord, only
Speaker 1: to come out when your immune system is weak and
Speaker 1: follow its pathway down your neuron to a very picular
Speaker 1: part of your skin in effect caused another clinical infection phase,
Speaker 1: and we don't know what is dormant in our bodies.
Speaker 1: We don't know what the long term consequences will be,
Speaker 1: So what we really have to be planning around both
Speaker 1: for people with what I'll call acute long COVID, which
Speaker 1: is kind of a weird way of thinking about it,
Speaker 1: but you know, the long COVID that comes immediately after
Speaker 1: an infection versus the potential for a we'll call it
Speaker 1: longer COVID that comes after a phase of dormancy. We
Speaker 1: had a plan for that in terms of the very
Speaker 1: structures of our society. And let's be clear, we live
Speaker 1: in America right now, we're nine percent of the people
Speaker 1: don't have health insurance at all. Another fifteen to twenty
Speaker 1: percent could be liable to lose their health insurance because
Speaker 1: it's it's it's rickety, because it's underfunded by conservatives through medicaid,
Speaker 1: or live in states where Medicaid was never expanded in
Speaker 1: the first place. And then for everyone else, unless you're
Speaker 1: on Medicare, which Republicans never stop trying to attack to
Speaker 1: justify Medicare advantage a privatized version, you are liable to
Speaker 1: lose your health insurance if you lose a job, or
Speaker 1: if you turn twenty six, or if you get married,
Speaker 1: or if you get divorced, or if they decide to
Speaker 1: randomly jack up the price on you or your business
Speaker 1: such that you can't afford it even if you are eligible,
Speaker 1: and so we do not have a firm healthcare system
Speaker 1: in our country. Guaranteeing that for people is mission critical,
Speaker 1: particularly now considering the fact that tens of millions of
Speaker 1: people will have long COVID in tens of millions more
Speaker 1: are liable potentially to have a longer COVID should that happen.
Speaker 1: And the problem is, we just don't know. Nobody's ever
Speaker 1: had COVID in their bodies longer than two and a a
Speaker 1: half years, simply because it didn't exist before two and
Speaker 1: a half years. And so we've got the plan around
Speaker 1: the potentiality, and we already know that there are enough
Speaker 1: people who have chronic symptoms that can be very debilitating
Speaker 1: and depleting, and those people deserve and need our society
Speaker 1: to step up and make sure that they have the
Speaker 1: care they need and that they and their families are
Speaker 1: taken care of if they can't work. You know, you
Speaker 1: would think that one of the examples of a strong,
Speaker 1: you know, democratic society would be how it takes care
Speaker 1: of the least among it, right, like, how how people
Speaker 1: are cared for and the sturdiness of our systems, whether
Speaker 1: it be public health, public schools, and so on and
Speaker 1: so forth. And what we have seen is over the
Speaker 1: last couple of years, the cracks, the purposeful in a
Speaker 1: lot of ways, cracks in our systems have been exacerbated
Speaker 1: and have been pushed, you know, past their breaking point.
Speaker 1: Part of that crack also is people's trust in public health,
Speaker 1: in the CDC, in the WHO and so you know,
Speaker 1: here I want to ask you is how does one
Speaker 1: both restore faith in these agencies that were tested I
Speaker 1: think to some extent and you know, beyond repair over
Speaker 1: the last three years, in the fact that decisions were
Speaker 1: made and continue to be made about COVID that are
Speaker 1: really about capitalism, that are really about getting people to
Speaker 1: work back to work as quickly as possible, because you know,
Speaker 1: I would tell you that after five days of sitting
Speaker 1: on the couch behind me, I would have never been
Speaker 1: able to go back to anybody's office, right Like I
Speaker 1: was exhausted and I had again the COVID symptoms that
Speaker 1: I had were mild, So I can't imagine people the
Speaker 1: CDC coming out and saying, well, just slap on a
Speaker 1: mask and going to work with a mask. So I'm
Speaker 1: wondering what you think about the position that the public
Speaker 1: public health is an industry is in and the faith
Speaker 1: and trust that people have in in these systems. Now,
Speaker 1: you know, I'll tell you, long before COVID, we have
Speaker 1: had a ruthless approach to thinking about the exchange of
Speaker 1: labor for money in America, and we tell people that
Speaker 1: they ought to get all access to all of these services,
Speaker 1: including their very healthcare, by working, and then when they
Speaker 1: cannot work, we take these things away. And all that
Speaker 1: does is demonstrate the moral bankruptcy inherent in forcing people
Speaker 1: into a set of institution that under pay and under deliver,
Speaker 1: and for which they're told to rely on the very
Speaker 1: basic means of a dignified life, like being able to
Speaker 1: get healthcare when you get sick. So how does it
Speaker 1: happen that you know, when you get sick, you can't work,
Speaker 1: and then you lose your healthcare to be able to
Speaker 1: treat you to get sick so you can work. I mean,
Speaker 1: the thing doesn't make sense on its own terms. The
Speaker 1: other part of it, though, is that these institutions generally,
Speaker 1: they need to fundamentally be rebuilt in and rethought. I think,
Speaker 1: you know, we've had a set of public health institutions that,
Speaker 1: you know, the people who work inside of them are
Speaker 1: great people who care a lot about the people in
Speaker 1: our country and the people that they serve. But they've
Speaker 1: been underserved by institutions that have been robbed of the
Speaker 1: funding that they need to be able to do the
Speaker 1: work that they do. And so they've been shells of
Speaker 1: themselves for a very long time, and they just haven't
Speaker 1: been tested. And I'll be honest with you, COVID was
Speaker 1: a gnarly public health problem. You're talking about a virus
Speaker 1: that's airborne that we didn't understand, that was very different
Speaker 1: than the most similar virus to it. We didn't have treatments,
Speaker 1: we didn't have vaccine. But monkeypox is not monkeypox is
Speaker 1: the one oh one of public health. This is a
Speaker 1: virus that we had well characterized for decades, We had
Speaker 1: available vaccines, we knew how it spread. It has an
Speaker 1: extremely long latency period, an incubation period, so you can
Speaker 1: vaccinate somebody within ten days of an exposure and reliably
Speaker 1: prevent them from ever having symptoms at all. And we
Speaker 1: still just couldn't do it. And so what I think
Speaker 1: has happened is that, you know, the massive hurricane, if
Speaker 1: you will, of COVID came and destroyed our very rickety
Speaker 1: public health institutions, and then we never really rebuilt them,
Speaker 1: and that brings us I think back to the statement
Speaker 1: by the President, which I found really frustrating. It wasn't
Speaker 1: the pandemic is over, but we learned a lot of lessons,
Speaker 1: and we need to rebuild our public health agencies so
Speaker 1: nothing like this ever happens again, and we need to
Speaker 1: make sure that we're protecting and taking care of people
Speaker 1: who still may die of the virus. And we need
Speaker 1: to make sure that we're invested in a far more
Speaker 1: stable disability system so that people with along COVID are
Speaker 1: not hurt by this. It was the pandemic's over, Let's
Speaker 1: move on. And when you say we're going to move on,
Speaker 1: what that basically does forecloses on all of the reconstruction,
Speaker 1: the rebuilding that needs to happen, because well, if you
Speaker 1: rob both, you know, the Republicans moved on the day
Speaker 1: before COVID started. Let's be clear, and then if Democrats
Speaker 1: are moving on, like, where's the political will to make
Speaker 1: sure that we're never here again? And that has to
Speaker 1: continue to be part of the conversation. And so long
Speaker 1: as we don't allow it to be part of the conversation,
Speaker 1: we're not going to do it. And the next time
Speaker 1: a very serious virus hits us, it could be more devastating.
Speaker 1: And the thing I want folks to understand is, yes,
Speaker 1: this was a quote unquote once in a century pandemic
Speaker 1: in an era where we have once in a century
Speaker 1: hurricanes every single time. So you know that we're gonna
Speaker 1: have another. Like the idea that we're not going to
Speaker 1: have another virus anytime soon is I think wishful thinking.
Speaker 1: And so let's make sure that our house is in
Speaker 1: order before the next one hits. Hey, I'm David plots
Speaker 1: a slice political gab Fest. As another election season accelerates,
Speaker 1: it can be tricky to sort through all the noise
Speaker 1: and the news. Each week on the gap Fest, John Dickerson,
Speaker 1: Emily Bathlon and I decipher the headlines, break down the races,
Speaker 1: and tell you what issues really matter. We do not
Speaker 1: always agree. We definitely do not always agree, but we
Speaker 1: always deliver thoughtful debate and we always have a good time.
Speaker 1: So subscrib drive to slates Political Gapfest new episodes every Thursday.
Speaker 1: You know, you make such a good, solid comparison to
Speaker 1: these hurricanes, to these once in a lifetime fires, to
Speaker 1: these once in a lifetime tornado seasons, because they're not right.
Speaker 1: They're becoming ever more frequent. And you know, one of
Speaker 1: the things that I do want to ask you, and
Speaker 1: maybe you don't know, but you can hypothesize for us,
Speaker 1: is you know, the correlation between the possibility of new
Speaker 1: viruses and climate change, right, and the fact that you
Speaker 1: have the waters that are warming, the fact that we
Speaker 1: have deforestation, the fact that you know, we're talking about
Speaker 1: glaciers that are melting, that are letting out This is
Speaker 1: no joke by nat GEO. I saw the other day
Speaker 1: letting out bacteria in the air that hasn't been airborne
Speaker 1: in a billion years. We have no idea what its
Speaker 1: compatibility is with our current atmosphere. So what are your
Speaker 1: thoughts about the correlation between public health and climate change? Yeah,
Speaker 1: so there's no one way to attribute anyone virus, but
Speaker 1: there's a clear mechanism that is linking climate change to
Speaker 1: the emergence of more and more rare or novel pathogens.
Speaker 1: You know the fact that we had a covid pandemic
Speaker 1: and then monkey pocks sort of emerged, and then we
Speaker 1: have a Nui bowla outbreak all the same moment. I
Speaker 1: think we really ought to sort of cock our eyes
Speaker 1: at that and take a real hard look, And the
Speaker 1: mechanism is pretty clear. These kinds of viruses jump into
Speaker 1: humans when the animals that carry them in which they
Speaker 1: are reservoirs or for which they are reservoirs, tend to
Speaker 1: add mix with humanity more commonly. So as we DeForest
Speaker 1: more and more of our forests, the wildlife that was
Speaker 1: in the forests is coming closer to human habitats because
Speaker 1: they're losing their homes literally, And when that admixture happens, right,
Speaker 1: the risk that a virus or a bacterium that had
Speaker 1: been resident and what we say endemic in animals that
Speaker 1: are you know, causing like a common cold for them,
Speaker 1: can jump into humanity where we are completely immune naive,
Speaker 1: meaning our immune systems have never seen these viruses and
Speaker 1: then start to spread like wildfire and cause serious illness.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's what we think happened with COVID. You know,
Speaker 1: monkeypoxes is actually it's not even a monkey disease. It's
Speaker 1: a rodent disease that that was first discovered in monkeys
Speaker 1: when it jumped into monkeys. But the more we start
Speaker 1: destroying animal habitats, the more likely it is that these
Speaker 1: animals are going to try and find new habitats amongst us,
Speaker 1: and the more likely it is that the pathogens that
Speaker 1: they're carrying are going to jump into us. And so
Speaker 1: there is a clear connection there and that should be
Speaker 1: really worrisome for everyone. You know, With a few minutes
Speaker 1: that I have left with you, I do want to
Speaker 1: address where we are with monkey pox, and then I
Speaker 1: want to wrap up by looking at the midterms and
Speaker 1: getting your thoughts on how public health is going to
Speaker 1: be playing into the outcome of the midterm elections, or
Speaker 1: should be if you don't think that it is. But
Speaker 1: you know, monkeypox comes onto the scene and everyone who
Speaker 1: was alive or remembers learning about the AIDS epidemic and
Speaker 1: crisis had a series of horrible flashbacks because once again
Speaker 1: the United States did a bang up job in making
Speaker 1: it seem as if this disease was going to stay
Speaker 1: within the LGBTQ community, particularly men who sleep with men
Speaker 1: and by virtue of doing so, even if that is
Speaker 1: where it began, right, we know we should know that
Speaker 1: nothing stays where it is now. Right. COVID began in China,
Speaker 1: it didn't stay there, Right, So what was the point
Speaker 1: do you think I've duel in the fact of the
Speaker 1: media public health officials sounding the alarm not dissimilarly to
Speaker 1: the way that they did HIV AIDS, which then made
Speaker 1: it dismissable. If you're like, well, I don't check that box,
Speaker 1: so this ain't about me. Yeah, you're raising a really
Speaker 1: important point. And the degree to which we have a
Speaker 1: really terrible history in public health and medicine dismissing diseases
Speaker 1: that are either more commonly found or emerge among the
Speaker 1: LGBTQ community is shame. On the one hand, the institutions
Speaker 1: in question had to do a far better job than
Speaker 1: they did, and their logic would have been, we need
Speaker 1: to alert people about what they can do themselves. But
Speaker 1: when part of that is to provide a vaccine, and
Speaker 1: part of what you're asking them to do is to
Speaker 1: get vaccinated. When you don't have enough vaccine because you
Speaker 1: delayed getting the vaccine manufacturing facility authorized and you allowed
Speaker 1: your strategic stockpile to go bad, well that's on you, right,
Speaker 1: And I will say that, you know, we went from
Speaker 1: having a daily high of about five hundred cases new
Speaker 1: cases a day to about two hundred new cases a
Speaker 1: day now. The doubling time, meaning the number of the
Speaker 1: amount of time it takes for the number of cases
Speaker 1: to double, went from eight days to twenty five days.
Speaker 1: So when you reduce the doubling times, that's a good thing.
Speaker 1: That's on the back of members of the community doing
Speaker 1: what they needed to do to protect themselves, and the
Speaker 1: public health institutions that should have been on it from
Speaker 1: the jump doing the bare minimum to facilitate that. And
Speaker 1: so you know, it is deeply, deeply frustrating. And then
Speaker 1: the other part of this is that as we think
Speaker 1: about raising alarm and trying to empower people with information
Speaker 1: that they can use, there has to be a rejoinder
Speaker 1: to that conversation, kind of like what we talked about
Speaker 1: when you declared the pandemic over, which is this is
Speaker 1: a disease that is most common or more likely to
Speaker 1: affect a particular profile. And also it is a disease
Speaker 1: that can jump quickly, and all of us have to
Speaker 1: do what we can to make sure that the communities
Speaker 1: that are affected have the resources that they need to
Speaker 1: be protected. And that's on all of us. But you
Speaker 1: know when you just say the first part, meaning this
Speaker 1: is most common among men who affects with men, without
Speaker 1: saying the second part that this is a disease that
Speaker 1: can affect anybody, there's no reason why pathologically this cannot
Speaker 1: jump and will not jump, then what happens is you
Speaker 1: create an implicit opportunity to dismiss this given the marginalization
Speaker 1: of the LGBTQ community in America, And so I really
Speaker 1: appreciate you raising that point, and no, it's it is.
Speaker 1: It's it's sad that in twenty twenty two we are
Speaker 1: seeing the same echoes of HIV, and it just says
Speaker 1: that a lot of the implicit marginalization, the structural marginalization
Speaker 1: that exists is way bigger and exists in a subterranean
Speaker 1: way that we have to root out and that that
Speaker 1: we solve a lot more work to do. So last
Speaker 1: question for you, my friend, is around mid terms, we
Speaker 1: are making the long Slow Death march as I will say,
Speaker 1: um to to to the midterms, and and I want
Speaker 1: to get your thoughts on how you think one that
Speaker 1: public health is playing a part in getting people to
Speaker 1: the polls, is it top of mind? And two, um,
Speaker 1: how you would be messaging public health as we are
Speaker 1: making this march to mid terms? How it can be
Speaker 1: done better. I worry that Democrats are not pressing their
Speaker 1: advantage right now that they see or Republicans see the
Speaker 1: pandemic as something they can hang on Democrats despite the
Speaker 1: fact that it was under a Republican president that this
Speaker 1: pandemic emerged, that the early days where we could have
Speaker 1: contained it, we failed, and that the failure to think
Speaker 1: about supply chains in general allowed the pandemic to turn
Speaker 1: into the economic situation that we're in right now. And
Speaker 1: I think Democrats, we don't do ourselves any favors by
Speaker 1: running away from it, declaring the pandemic over and pretending
Speaker 1: that it's behind us. What we need to do is
Speaker 1: we need to make sure that we're telling the story
Speaker 1: of what happened that under a Republican president, under which
Speaker 1: our government was treated as a political hobby horse for
Speaker 1: that president. That president ignored the fundamentals of public health.
Speaker 1: He told people to inject bleach, He failed to to
Speaker 1: protect people from the pandemic itself. Ultimately more than a
Speaker 1: million Americans died, and he also failed to protect our economy.
Speaker 1: Since taking office, Joe Biden has had to clean up
Speaker 1: that mess, whether it was making sure that we got
Speaker 1: shots in arms or making sure that we secured supply chains,
Speaker 1: everything from the Long Beach ports to bringing so much
Speaker 1: of the supply chains that we have relied on back
Speaker 1: home in the forms of everything from chips to um
Speaker 1: you know, to basic masks. And that is what Democrats
Speaker 1: have had to do because of the failure of Republicans
Speaker 1: on this issue, and all that we've done, don't forget,
Speaker 1: was to save yet more lives that would have died
Speaker 1: had that that failed leadership continued. Um And so I
Speaker 1: think we have to make sure that we tell that
Speaker 1: story and we own that story. I think it's lazy
Speaker 1: for us to sort of try and pivot off the
Speaker 1: pandemic as if it was over, because that could come
Speaker 1: back to bite us and ass I mean, if we
Speaker 1: have you can imagine if we have another similar kind
Speaker 1: of surge to Omicron and then next month what that
Speaker 1: could mean in the midterms. So we have to be
Speaker 1: telling the story that is true, which is Republicans failed us.
Speaker 1: We are still living in the in the consequences of that,
Speaker 1: and and Democrats have done everything we can to solve it.
Speaker 1: Would I would love to see more. Absolutely, Don't get
Speaker 1: me wrong. I would have loved to see more. And
Speaker 1: yet you know, as you and I both know, democracy
Speaker 1: is at an existential survival point, and you know, I
Speaker 1: worry a lot given where Republicans are going with this.
Speaker 1: What I'm reading in the team leaves is you know,
Speaker 1: if you still have Donald Trump campaigning for you state
Speaker 1: wide in places like Arizona, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Ohio. What you've
Speaker 1: basically said is I don't actually care if I went
Speaker 1: an election right, because I don't believe democracy matters all
Speaker 1: that much. All I'm going to do is rile up
Speaker 1: my base so that when we inevitably lose, we can
Speaker 1: point at the whole apparatus and say this doesn't actually this,
Speaker 1: This system doesn't actually work because it's been giving too
Speaker 1: many rights to people who don't look like you, dear Bass,
Speaker 1: and therefore we ought to deconstruct this thing. That's where
Speaker 1: I think they're headed, and that's really really dangerous a
Speaker 1: point I'm terrified and I remain terrified bringing the alarm
Speaker 1: on a day to day basis, Doctor Abduel. I'll say
Speaker 1: thank you so much for making the time to join
Speaker 1: us on woka f Don't be a stranger, don't let
Speaker 1: too much time pass before you come back and join
Speaker 1: us again. We appreciate you. Yeah, thanks for having me.
Speaker 1: I appreciate you you're constantly talking up on these issues
Speaker 1: and look forward to join you next time too. That
Speaker 1: is it for me today, dear friends on woke f
Speaker 1: as always power to the people and to all the people. Power,
Speaker 1: get woke and stay woke as fuck.