Episode 154: Rethinking Vaccine Mandates and the Omicron Variant with Dr. Monica Gandhi
The Paradocs Podcast with Eric Larson
Vaccine mandates, mask mandates, boosters, and variants have been a constant source of debate and controversy with the pandemic. My guest today is Dr. Monica Gandhi, an expert in immunology and infectious disease who runs the HIV clinic at UCSF. She has been a fairly prominent voice in support of the mask and vaccine mandates in her home state of California and city of San Francisco. She returns from her visit in June for SARS-CoV-2 in which she guessed that it wouldn't evade the vaccine or prior infection (spoiler alert: she was right). Do Vaccine Mandates Make Sense? Dr. Gandhi is...
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Episode 153: Crowd Health is Go Fund Me for Health Care on Nitro with CEO Andy Schoonover
The Paradocs Podcast with Eric Larson
What happens when you take Go Fund Me and put it into an ecosystem of likeminded folks who want to build a community to care for each other's health care expenses? You get which draws upon some of the concepts of crowd funding for one time health care expenses within its community. By taking people from all over the country and putting them into a community where there are expectations of caring for others, Crowd Health offers a solution to paying for health care expenses without breaking the bank. Is Crowd Health Insurance? If you've been paying attention to the US health care...
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Episode 152: The COVID Drawdown
The Paradocs Podcast with Eric Larson
Today we are going to discuss the COVID drawdown. Essentially, this is what must inevitably happen for us to return to lives of normalcy where we have typical interactions with others at family gatherings, sporting events, concerts, and business meetings. Unless we are prepared to radically change the way we live our lives and choose isolation (which probably has far greater physical and mental health detriments) then we have to consider how the drawdown occurs and what conditions ned to be present for it to happen. What HaS TO HAPPEN FOR THE DRAWDOWN TO OCCUR? We've talked to...
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Episode 151: Health Care for Those Who Don't Earn High Wages with Dr. David Berg
The Paradocs Podcast with Eric Larson
One of the scariest times for many workers is being presented with a bill for medical services. Even if they have insurance "coverage", the deductible or co-pay might be more than they can afford. For hourly workers in entry level jobs or low skilled positions, medical bankruptcy is a real fear. While barely making ends meet an additional bill for an ER visit or doctor's office stop can send you to collections and destroy your credit. Unfortunately, a lot of Americans are in this exact spot as they earn a living working these low paying jobs but have little medical security even if...
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Episode 150: Make Sure Your Health Insurance Broker is Working for You and not the Insurance Company with David Contorno.
The Paradocs Podcast with Eric Larson
When you run a business, one person you usually meet and hire is a health insurance broker. In theory, these brokers work with the employers to secure the best deals for health insurance to meet the company's health care objectives. However, in practice, the brokers serve as a sales force for the insurance companies who lavish them with bonuses, trips, and gifts. The seedy underbelly of the health insurance broker industry is that they are really not working to save money or get deals for their clients - the checks are written by the insurance carriers and that's who they answer to. Who do...
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Episode 149: Is Asymptomatic Spread of SARS-CoV-2 a Thing? with Daniel Halperin, PhD
The Paradocs Podcast with Eric Larson
Not only has the COVID pandemic politicized our country - it has led to a lot of misinformation and a shutdown of communication. For instance, is there really asymptomatic spread of COVID? Or just pre-symptomatic and symptomatic spread? That might seem like splitting hairs but it can have a profound effect on policy for quarantining and testing. We've talked about this before on the show as well as general discussions on COVID policy which can be found , , and . 12 Myths and 12 Facts About COVID-19 If there is one certainty during this confusing pandemic it is that there are plenty of...
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Episode 148: Urgent Care as Primary Care with Dr. Juliet Breeze of Next Level Medical
The Paradocs Podcast with Eric Larson
There are a lot of urgent care clinics all over the country. But few of them, to my knowledge, also operate as regular primary care clinics. But that is exactly what is happening today in the Houston, Texas area with the emergence of Next Level Medical. If you think about it, it makes perfect sense to leverage all the facilities needed for a primary care clinic - exam rooms, physicians, etc. and use it to deliver regular and sometimes non-urgent care. We've discussed before that lower the cost of care with transparency so this seems like the next logical step with urgent care. We...
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Episode 147: Has the Pandemic Led to Infants Losing IQ? - with Sean Deoni, PhD
The Paradocs Podcast with Eric Larson
The COVID pandemic has brought on all sorts of changes to the way we live our lives. From wearing masks, working from home, stay at home orders, and restrictions on social interactions, the virus has caused untold disruption to the way our society functions. Although the changes COVID has brought to our schools and the lives of our school age children, it is perhaps less appreciated what changes have occurred for our infants. It is a well known fact that our environment and meaningful stimulation is necessary for normal intelligence and brain development. Infants are completely...
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Episode 146: Explaining COVID in 11 Minutes with Dr. Eric Larson
The Paradocs Podcast with Eric Larson
Imagine yourself in California at a clearing in a large forest. And it’s on fire. There are three groups of people standing before you. A large group is screaming and running around pointing at the fire. They’re yelling that we need to do something, anything we can to stop the fire. Meanwhile, there is another group (not as large) with their backs to the fire. They are mocking and ridiculing the group running around panicking. They tell them to calm down and to stop ordering people around. They insist there isn’t anything wrong at all. Of course, the largest group of people are...
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Episode 145: Surgery without Insurance with Dr. Keith Smith
The Paradocs Podcast with Eric Larson
A lot has happened since we last met with Dr. Keith Smith from the back in 2018. . We also spoke about how the system was rigged to enrich the hospital systems, insurance carriers, and PBMs (what's new right?). So what's happened since then and how has the center done with the pandemic? Is the Surgery Center of Oklahoma Thriving or Just Surviving? Not surprisingly, Dr. Smith says that the center is doing just fine and has increased its market share from other states. Additionally, the international community from Canada is now being allowed to come back into the US for their...
info_outlineToday we are going to discuss the COVID drawdown. Essentially, this is what must inevitably happen for us to return to lives of normalcy where we have typical interactions with others at family gatherings, sporting events, concerts, and business meetings. Unless we are prepared to radically change the way we live our lives and choose isolation (which probably has far greater physical and mental health detriments) then we have to consider how the drawdown occurs and what conditions ned to be present for it to happen.
What HaS TO HAPPEN FOR THE DRAWDOWN TO OCCUR?
We've talked to numerous experts who all have various opinions on how the pandemic will play out and what strategies will be needed to get to the 'other side' of the pandemic. You can find the initial conversation with Dr. Graham, immunology with Dr. Gandhi, and science ethics with Dr. Bhattacharya on the episode list at the end of this writeup. The following is a short list of what conditions need to be present to return to normal:
- Broad acceptance of the fact that the virus, SARS-CoV-2 which causes COVID-19, will become endemic.
- Recognition that the endemic virus cannot become eradicated and will absolutely infect everyone - probably multiple times.
- Understand that vaccination including booster shots will not significantly stop transmission of the virus but only provide protection from serious illness.
- Sterilizing immunity (protection from infection) for SARS-CoV-2 will be temporary whether one has had vaccination or prior natural infection.
- Accept that no measures to stop transmission outside of severely draconian restrictions on movement and social interaction have middling effects on the spread of the virus.
- We will have to be comfortable with no longer 'looking' for the virus with every respiratory illness and only test those whom we feel are at high risk or can use novel therapeutics.
- Public health officials, politicians, and policy makers have to accept that there is very little that can be done to 'contain' the virus.
What the Drawdown Will Look Like
The drawdown will look different depending on what part of life you are looking.
- Schools: Most schools will continue their current policies through the end of this school year. Next year, most school systems will have returned to pre-pandemic policies of no temperature checks, mask wearing, etc. Only the most heavily unionized schools or urban will mandate extreme measures like vaccinations. This will become even harder to enforce as the majority of the country has returned to normal and we see a striking similarity of outcomes between the two ways of schooling.
- Universities: Already there are differing policies in place between schools and the lack of differences with outcomes will move nearly all universities to eliminate all restrictions next school year.
- Mask Mandates: These will disappear completely by next year in almost the entire country. The political cost for maintaining these measures will be increasingly steep and politicians will declare victory over the virus and insist that their earlier measures did their job to save lives but are no longer needed.
- Vaccine Mandates: Despite attempting to impose these mandates through federal fiat on transportation and for air travel - these will disappear as more and more states reject their use.
- Hospitals: Health care facilities will still likely be burdened with extraordinary personal protection measures like masking at all times throughout all of next year. The federal government controls this regulation and unless there is extraordinary political pressure these will continue. Perhaps the loss of workers in health care will encourage the removal of this rule but that will take longer than this year.
Dr. Eric Larson is the host of the Paradocs Podcast and not a fan of many of the mandates imposed on hospital personnel. show notes
Episode 152: Today's show
Episode 132: Dr. Gandhi discusses why the variants for COVID should not be a concern.
Episode 134: Dr. Bhattacharya explains why science is suffering so much in the current atmosphere.
Episode 143: Dr. Graham and I discuss how we were so right about so much of COVID
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