Deacons Discussions Drinks
Deacons Discussions Drinks
Episode 40 - Dr. Ryan Stanton - COVID Omicron Update
The Deacons sat down with Dr. Ryan Stanton, MD to discuss the current state of the COVI pandemic. Dr. Stanton is a board-certified emergency physician and has 30 years of TV, radio, and print experience. Ryan is the doctor behind several popular Facebook pages. He has not only worked as an ER physician at Baptist Health, but Ryan also works with AMR/NASCAR as a Team Physician and with WKYT and FOX56 as a Medical Expert/Contributor. Dr. Stanton also works with the Lexington Fire Department as their Chief Medical Advisor. We had a great time and we can’t wait for you to listen and give us your feedback.
Dr. Ryan Stanton, MD
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We broadcast Deacons Discussions Drinks from Georgetown, KY. We talk with our parishioners so we can become a better family. We mix in some national Catholic personalities so we can expand our horizons. And occasionally we will talk about doctrine. We will also be doing live shows on the road soon. So please subscribe!!
You can put your headset on if you want or not. But that's up to you.
Dr. Ryan Stanton:I still hear you know, but now I feel official.
Tim Stout:And now you can really hear us right media. believe we were on processed before. So you ready over there? Hello, everybody. Welcome to the cardones studio in Georgetown, Kentucky. It's, it's been a minute, I think it's what the cookie it's, it's been a minute. But we are coming to you for our first show the new year 2022. It's also the first week in Ordinary Time for you Catholics out there. So I don't know how that works out. First show first week of Ordinary Time. I'm Deacon Tim stout. I'm taking Dallas Kelly and following when our guest tonight today, whenever you're listening to us is Dr. Ryan Stanton. He's our first two time guest as he was on the show all the way back September 11 2020. When this pandemic was in its infancy
Dr. Ryan Stanton:I get the recycle the doctor.
Tim Stout:Welcome to the show. I appreciate it. Hey, good to have you back. Hey, we're still on this path, a year and a half later. What does that mean?
Dr. Ryan Stanton:Well, it just means at this point, everybody, you can turn us off and put in the movie Groundhog Day and watch it all over again. Because I feel like we are we are just full on recycling. We've got a recycling program of a pandemic here where we have wave after wave currently now in this omachron variant. You know, from a healthcare standpoint, we have this huge conflagration we're going to use this a good word meaning fire, I guess, of of staffing, patient surges, and burnout and bed availability. And so it's really been just a huge struggling challenging even when we are here, September 11 of 2020. I don't think we could have predicted that we would still be talking about it as an active problem. In 2022. I think we all thought at this point it was going to be at least not if necessarily gone potentially an afterthought.
Tim Stout:Yeah, I mean, one of the things that I think that's kind of unique is we have good representation. Here we have Brother Lin who's got the spiritual side church side of a douses teaching in the school, I'm on the private industry side, you're in a lot of different aspects, healthcare, but you're also worked with the fire department, other first responders, everybody's kind of adapted to a certain extent, but we can't seem to outrun it.
Dr. Ryan Stanton:No, not right now in and that's, that's one of our the fallacy of, of the human condition is assuming that we can tackle and tame nature. I mean, we've we've done pretty well domesticating the dog, but you know, when it comes to, when it comes to things such as viruses in and infections and the inner workings, you know, there's so much that is still that we are not going to master we are not we we have to learn, learn, basically, to live in a symbiosis with our environment, and the things that is going to do. And we all are on the same pathway. And as our bodies age, they become more susceptible to the environment. And that is exactly what we're seeing here. And the challenge is that, you know, I think we assumed that just because we were we can either politics our way out of it, we could either think our way out of it. But honestly, a virus doesn't care who you voted for which country, you're from where you were born, All it cares about is doing its thing, which is finding a host so it can reproduce. And that's exactly what these viruses do. And I think we're at the point now, I always tell my students, my people, I work with my kids, nothing gets better when you panic. And so there's no reason to panic. It's do what we can do with the stuff we've got right now, which we are better now than we were two years ago, in terms of our technology, our knowledge of this, our tools, we have to fight it. And we just have to work with it, make wise decisions, and honestly just move on as best we possibly can. And just deal with the things as they're here. We can't just, we can't continue two years into our lives of this. Two can be completely off the rails just COVID have to you know, they're still life and industry and things in school. I mean, that's one of the most important things that we have to make sure that we are doing in order to make sure that our lives can continue as best they can.
Tim Stout:Yeah, I mean, I'm, I'm in the mining business. So our guys are kind of separated when they go underground and different stuff. So we've we've managed it but business has to manage it very quickly or you're going to be out of business schools. They've been up and down, obviously, right
Dallas Kelley:teachers out trying to make a headache for our principal anyway.
Tim Stout:Well, and there's nobody that's exempt from it. Even on the church side, just you know, we've been we still have an outdoor mass here. We still give that opportunity for folks so that if because there's still a lot of fear. I mean, I saw a stat the other day it was actually one in Lexington where In St. Joe's, but anyway, they said, so many people came into the ER, and like one night, 35% of them tested positive, but they were all there because they thought they had COVID. So it has to be fueled by fear, right?
Dr. Ryan Stanton:Well, a lot of it, I mean, it's a natural human condition to have fear to be afraid of the things we don't know and don't understand. We've heard we hear all these things that are coming out about, you know, the complications, admissions, the deaths, these new variants, they have trendy names. So you know, you got to omachron I mean, it sounds like it's gonna do bad things to you. And, and you get that in, you have the symptoms, and you feel terrible. And really, a lot of health care isn't necessarily about what I can do. I mean, there's, there's things that we can do. But with viruses, especially, it's really about your own immune system and human body and trying, we give you stuff symptomatically to help you feel better. But really what people want is information, they want to know, they don't want to assume they have COVID, they want to know they want that red, that red box for positive or the or just the blank thing for negative and they want to know exactly what it is. So they can kind of decide and kind of process your mind where things are going. And I think honestly, the best health care settings, not just writing prescriptions, but it's really about providing the information, the education, what are your what is the expected course, where am I going to go from here, okay, so with COVID, this could last anywhere from about three to 14 days, on average. For some people, it's going to be the short end, for others, it's going to be even longer, the most important thing that you're going to do is rest, stay hydrated, control your fever, still try to eat as best you can, when you may or may not have this sense of taste and smell. But then, but But you know, monitor, you know, for that action, I think we really worry about the reason most people are going to pass away from COVID is because the respiratory complications associated with it, we also see a lot of the clotting with pulmonary embolus and such. But those are the things we want to monitor. And when folks are coming in, it's really because they have questions, and they need the answers and then expect what's going to be the next step from here.
Tim Stout:Just I mean, I just can't imagine what it's like in the ER, and you've obviously seen a lot of death in the last two years. Correct?
Dr. Ryan Stanton:Oh, yeah. I mean, even Unfortunately, COVID is taken up a big share of that, you know, people that you're admitting that that's honestly, seeing death is as a physician is nothing new and different. I mean, that you just kind of get where you almost it's second nature, I mean, because you have to walk into a room pronounced somebody and then you have to walk into the next room and act like nothing's ever happened, I can't carry that into the next room with that patient. And so you basically have to put that in, put that in the jar, put it on the shelf, and then move on you process things later. I think one of the hardest things in healthcare is, is the people you know, are going to die, that they don't know it yet. So whether it's a diagnosis of cancer, you know, we diagnose a lot of especially now during the pandemic, a lot of late stage cancer in the emergency department. And is that because of the delay and people going away screenings or whatever it is screening exams and things like that. And so they come in with pancreatic cancer, lung cancer, in just with the experience in time, I know the path that's gonna take, you know, and we want to give people hope. But at the same time, you also know certain types of cancers, certain types of stages of cancer, other comorbid conditions, but even with COVID, you know, people coming in with certain disease processes, certain parts, looking at the CT scan, oxygen saturations in the 70s, and things like that, you know, that is a good chance they are going to die. And to me, that's one of the hardest parts of health care is kind of almost seeing into that crystal ball somebody's future, and not being able to really grasp that that's going to really happen because somebody may be looking at you and talking with you, just as we are right here. And then knowing though, that the biggest question in life a lot of times is wins. When does the season run out of the hourglass? And for some people unfortunately, we know and it may not be exact but that's that's I think that's the toughest and and the toughest, because we've had a lot of that burden to COVID
Tim Stout:Have we been as far as a parish goes as far as deaths? A couple of years I mean, I know we've had our normal share bits have many of those been from COVID
Fr. Linh Nguyen:Actually, I bury six people die from well design COVID complication and what is maybe Is he the the thing I dealt with the most is very fear. Fear is a real thing, and the anxiousness so I work with people in a way to kind of nudge them to live their normal life the best that they can try to get themselves out of the house. Try to connect with people sometimes Association you know, sometime I kind of guilt them you need to go to church. Good for you but it definitely is good for for social interaction. put a mask on and you know, do all kinds of cool creative things. And try to get them just get off the mode of Ray of death, it's real fear fear is right now, I think is top of the chart. Everything that we do right now with this COVID, I think
Dr. Ryan Stanton:when you shouldn't just you mentioned there's there's no reason to sit on the couch and wait for death, it'll find everybody eventually, but don't go chasing it. And we do know the benefit of the mental wellness. That is such a player, we know that whether that faith and a positive outlook means pot better outcomes, even if you do get sick. So if you have somebody who has cancer, exact same stage of cancer, if somebody has a positive outlook, a well grounded faith, and somebody does not, the outcomes will likely be different. And there's so much to the inner wellness, the mental aspect of healing of disease processes. A lot of the ways we think and a lot of the ways our emotions are in stress and anxiety, they have negative impacts on the immune system, they have negative impacts on healing, going into things with positive with healthier diets, exercise, getting outside sunlight, those types of things, those all encourage and promote our body to have a more likely chance of healing, is there anything perfect? No, there's nothing, there's nothing perfect, that's going to say absolutely, you have about a bad outcome, and actually have a good outcome. I mean, that's the hardest thing of COVID is we know that if you're over age 7585, you have a lot of risk factors. And that then that's where your numbers really go up. But they're still young people that are going to die, they're still young people have complications, and the one thing to stress and we really get hung up on the death side of it. But for many, it's death is not always the worst outcome with regard to diseases, sometimes the damage it leaves behind, you know, for people that are chronically, you know, attached to significant amounts of oxygen, that can't get up and walk because they get short of breath. You know, it's psychosis associated with the neurologic deficits associated with it, there's a lot of long term damage. And there's actually concern that we are talking about in the healthcare communities, especially with children of a significant increase of heart attacks and heart attacks, strokes, and things of that nature from the vasculitis, the inflammation of the blood vessels that we're going to see in 20 to 30 years. Leftovers from these used to see those back in the day of polio, and other infections that came through. But you know, we think we may see similar with that as well. But you know, that that's, that's not treatable at this point. Now, we can't we can't reverse it mean, basically, the damage has been done by our own immune system, the virus really isn't tearing much up itself, it's the fact that our immune system, the only way you kill viruses by killing the cell that it's living in. And so the body goes in and tries to fix the problem, but by doing so damages the body. And so it's the the immune system is an inflammatory process, any inflammatory process leads to scarring, rigidity, aging, potentially, closures, you know, that's the heart attacks are many times are caused by an inflammatory process within the blood vessels of the coronary arteries, you get inflammation, you get the clot burden, it builds up quickly and closes off strokes very similar.
Tim Stout:So you couple that side of it with the psychological impact on our kids. I mean, what's what's that look like? Your
Dr. Ryan Stanton:your Venus in that, you know, and that's an interesting will be the interesting viewpoint from inside the school system is I've been one that's from very early thought that we need to do our best to get our kids back into school, we know that we can significantly decrease the risk to the kids, to the children and to the staff or for the most part, but the importance, the kids have a very narrow window where they establish who they are and what they're going to be not necessarily career based. But you know, just establishing those behaviors, interactions, how do you communicate? How do you have social interactions, and those are built many times within schools with these other kids that come from other backgrounds, and learning how to work together and I think, not just the Scholastic aspect of which is huge, you know, because so many homes don't don't have a focus, or the ability to promote an education at home long term, short term, find snow days, whatever. But when we're talking about for a year, or semester, a year, two years, there's the combination of those It's the social interactions, the social development, getting those brain pathways established. And of course, it's the Scholastic aspect, where I think we're gonna see probably a pretty significant disparity, not only socially, but also scholastically. With kids left over from the pandemic.
Tim Stout:How's school for you? How are the kids?
Dallas Kelley:The you're talking psychologically, they're they're great. I was. Even today. Folkestone was when are we going to get this mask? I just want them to ask us, you know, and they to me, they the ones I'm saying I don't have any fear. What knee wanting to take them? I do have few a few. Even I believe when the mask become optional at our school, I can see I'm keeping them on. But most of them, there's no fear at all and my kids. Yeah, the
Tim Stout:Scott County school system, which obviously the Catholic schools not a part of that but the Scott County school system just voted Tuesday night to keep the mass mandate. I was following online on the Facebook. That was very comments section was very alive. Should I say oh, yeah,
Dr. Ryan Stanton:there's that's that's anything in media wise, whether it be a meeting or anything like that the comments section is rarely going to add positive value. It's pretty fun. It can be funny, but sometimes you just want to bang your head against the wall.
Tim Stout:I know. The mass mandate. Really, the teachers part of it, I think is probably one of the challenging parts of it is keeping the kids in their mask, you know, and that's obviously grade level dependent. I can't imagine first graders are second, my wife teaches fourth grade. And I know it's hard for her but when you get younger than that, out difficult trying
Dallas Kelley:to keep up mask on them. Yeah,
Tim Stout:I mean, I don't know.
Fr. Linh Nguyen:Like I say we run a quite a fortunate school that we small enough, we manage well enough. But one thing I do encounter some of our kids in kindergarten, or first grade at the goal to religion with me. You write the impact. Some of them can't even read. Because they require stay home last year. They can't even read. This is second grade.
Tim Stout:I mean, if you think about it, a sick a six year old has lived a third of their life with COVID. Literally
Dr. Ryan Stanton:just it's it. We we live in Jessamine County, kids go to Trinity. And then we want to talk about the mess stuff there. And but the you know, when we were doing the NTI days, one of the first counties to do the NTI days was snow. And they were in public school down adjustment County at that point at Rosenwald Dunbar and my kids, we missed something on the NTI and didn't have it or whatever and apologize. I'm like, What are you talking about? There's 2028 kids or wherever many are in this class and and these to your daughter was one of only two that did anything. And you know, that's that's the challenge is it's not if you don't have and it's hard enough, you know, with especially this day and age where parents are working often both parents but of course and in single parent households, kids that are with non traditional in terms of grandparents or whatever it may be relatives, to say not only or a few days as snow you need to help wrangle that and to not only do your own life and household things, but also make sure the kids are getting a quality education doing things they do it. Now we're going to do it for a semester or a year. And it's near impossible for almost anybody the best parents out there are going to struggle with this over time. Just because everything else we don't schedule our lives to say we can also pull in an extra eight hours per day for 150 days a year to teach to assist and promote teaching our children
Tim Stout:and then you get the case where everybody knows that the kids are behind right harder than hectic day catch that up but then you get these administrators in the public schools that are still just worried about the testing you know how come you're How come your class is not testing at the right level? It What did they expect
Dr. Ryan Stanton:a lesson we just just with the chips for your trucks and cars and we were here in Georgetown to your Toyota's you can you know Jesus state hashtag COVID everything and something I can't get something something's out the toilet paper has been bought up. Hashtag COVID This what happens?
Tim Stout:What's the what's the biggest thing you've experienced? That you wanted to get? But you couldn't get personally?
Dr. Ryan Stanton:Oh, the biggest the most important thing I mean, other than the fact that we're struggling to get epinephrine for the hospitals and EMS right now, which is pretty important. Really, I'm trying to think what it is oh, a lot of it is the things for motor sports, like just the things that you know, we have to have for safety equipment, like our helmets, suits, things of that nature. Last year the trucks that we're using to respond to vehicle incidents on the track Yep, we couldn't replace them because most of them were up at Kentucky Speedway waiting for for chip. Yeah, absolutely. And so you know, that's, it's always something. I'm amazed at things it's gonna say with COVID This is going to take forever to get there and then two days later it shows up and then nothing and then oh, by the way, eight months later some shows up Oh, I forgot to order it. I forgot I wanted that.
Tim Stout:I think every day it's tough to do is can be as complicated as a truck so we we haul rock in the back of track axles and all the trucks for 2022. We're already all purchased that they were gonna make they were already purchased back in September. Last year, so you weren't gonna buy it. You didn't bad already, we weren't gonna get it in 2022. But then it could be as simple as a nut or a bolt, you know, something that you used to going down to the local hardware store to go get. You walk into the hardware store and I look at you like you're crazy. Because don't you know there's a pandemic? You're not, you're not going to get this. I mean,
Dr. Ryan Stanton:didn't you realize the yellow widgets are only in fact, the, you know, just down to the simple aspect of glass. You know, there's there's a thought that part of the bourbon industry is part of the supply and demand right now is the fact that plenty of bourbon is being aged, of course, I mean, we've got 16 million barrels now, in the Commonwealth aging. They just don't have the glass to put it in, in quantities necessary.
Tim Stout:Yeah, so that means we're gonna get a lot more aged bourbon. That's my that's my hope.
Dr. Ryan Stanton:Pappy. The pappy 30 which is one
Dallas Kelley:thing on the shelf that I missed the most is you can find it Snapple diet tea. I'm addicted. I'm addicted to it. Let's meet the guy my wife calls me at school today. She said I'm in Kroger they got your Snapple tea about every case.
Dr. Ryan Stanton:Yes, the 2022 toilet paper and so if anybody
Dallas Kelley:out there is listen I got your teeth
Tim Stout:so, so cute my wife she likes big K dot lemon lime. And whenever we go to the Kroger we buy everything that we can all of it we can get and usually there's one nine times out 10 There's none but stays over there shaking his head because what his drag is that right? What is that right? And he stopped it at all the Kroger's between here and sits and bad everything they've got
Dr. Ryan Stanton:Amazon official doctor tell me
Tim Stout:but I mean part part and that contributes to the problem right? Because when we don't see it for so long and we see it, we're gonna buy
Dr. Ryan Stanton:Alright, so I want to know if I doubt that anybody here has actually seen it my favorite soda is called Doctor enough that heard that okay, so Doctor enough is the company has Johnson City bottling it Johnson City, Tennessee where I grew up for 20 years. They they were the same company that that initiated and created Mountain Dew and then they sold Mountain Dew because they didn't have the capacity theoret From what I heard that they couldn't didn't have the capacity to do both. And so they kept Dr Rena which has got a lot of niacin. So vitamin vitamin B vitamins so nice and thyme and those types of things and basically a rally pack in a bottle. If you're medical out there.
Tim Stout:It's good for you. That's why soda
Dallas Kelley:doesn't come in diet.
Dr. Ryan Stanton:It means the regular one has his cane sugar in his cat probably more sugar than a field cane. But they only had an East Tennessee well about two well right before COVID They started selling it at at oh shoot Cracker Barrel. So those old fashioned old like in the coolers or whatever those things on the side Dr. Enough, so you can try it in for me I'm gonna
Dallas Kelley:have to you know if you're a good commercial I might have stopped
Dr. Ryan Stanton:it sprite and ginger ale had a baby not quite so elite sweeter. This one is more on the sprite caffeine. Oh, gosh. If you want to do roofing, you won't need a
Tim Stout:doctor enough? NUFUF Enough. I'm gonna put that in the show notes too. But I'm gonna try. I'll try to the Cracker Barrel. What about you, it's something you've gone to buy that you can't buy? Data. You get out just don't go you. You lead a simple life. Is that what you're saying? Simple. Interesting. Very interesting. Yeah. So we've we've, we've made a lot of steps. One of the things I think that's frustrating for a lot of folks out there is this, this testing seven, I'll tell you a little story, and then you can tell me what to make of that. So my wife and I, we both have been vaccinated. We both have had COVID before vaccination. And we've both been boost. So we're supposed to go to Atlanta for New Year's Eve. She starts to feel unwell. She goes and says I'm going to get tested because we're going to visit some people that digital is very immune compromised. So needed a test. So she goes to the health department. They say it'll be 24 to 72 hours to get your result. She says okay, 48 hours and we have nothing. We're trying to make a decision. She's trying to get a rapid test can't get one opens up. She goes and gets a rapid test. She's positive. 12 days later, we stayed home by the way. 12 days later, she gets the result from the health department. And she's negative. She positive or what she negative?
Dr. Ryan Stanton:Well, the thing is you also you have to parse it out even further and positive or negative in terms of infection, are you actually infected or is it just exposure? So basically what those tests are picking up is the viral particles. So the PC are an antigen testing, you're looking for those certain changes within your nasal pharynx. And so we don't 100% know, the test, if they say positive, are very specific. So you have your sensitivity and specificity sensitivity means if you have something, what are the chances it's going to find it. So this, the sensitivity is lower in these tests, usually in the range of the upper 80s to around 90 mid 80s or so, specificity if you test positive in the upper 90s. So meaning that if it says your positive, there's a 90, let's say this case, 7% chance that you actually have it, that it detected it accurately. But just because it detected it doesn't mean that you are actually infected with COVID-19, you may have been exposed, you may just have some been around somebody you may have, you know some of that in within your nasal pharynx. So it doesn't necessarily mean you're acutely ill now it sounds like she was and that's what we're seeing with omachron is the fact that you have not only with this new longer hook, I call it like Velcro, the velcro got longer so it can grab easier to the cells. And it's bypassing the not only the natural immunity, but also the vaccine immunity. So the vaccines are kind of doing now what they initially intended, which is decreasing the morbidity and mortality risk of you going to the ICU getting admitted to the hospital, ICU and death. So it's still doing that incredibly well. And we're seeing with, especially with fully vaccinated people that for the most part for many, the diseases with COVID now is relatively mild, and many people just felt a little bit absolute sore throat, you know, this one does have a lot more sore throat than any of the prior variants, probably because of that long hook is catching it farther up into the upper airway as opposed to getting down to the lower airway. So, you know, that's his did. Yes, she probably had it that those symptoms probably were Omicron
Tim Stout:that just expected it to be reversed, though, right? The rapid test to say
Dr. Ryan Stanton:a lot of is timing negative and what it's looking for. Are you looking for the antigens? Are you doing a PCR of the RNA strain strand? And so a lot of it is exactly what you're looking for in the timing. So COVID sniffing dogs can pick it up about two days before people get symptoms. So that's a real thing. Oh, yeah, we use them for NASCAR. Okay, we'll come. We'll circle back to that. So they can pick up they can pick it up about two days before, you know a lot of these other tests, rapid test, you have to build up that viral load enough that you can actually detect it. So in the first day or two, it's not picking up very well, several days in which it sounds like we're talking about two days later, right? You're actually got that number up. And so the farther you get into symptoms, the more accurate the test is, in terms of detecting COVID itself up to a certain point. It's not unusual to have a negative on your first day of years of symptoms. Really? Yeah.
Tim Stout:There you go. You heard it here first. I think it's confusing. It's confusing to people plus people can't get test, right? There's, well, there is a you know, we
Dr. Ryan Stanton:still got a half a billion that are coming out somewhere, you know, and these are all antigen tests. They're on their way. They're on their way they're in the government tried their nares vehicle. But the you know, the tests are there. And most of those are going to be the rapid antigen based tests. Those are all, we've actually used those a fair amount in motorsports, we have seen positives, we've seen a lot of negatives. I mean, they seem to be doing pretty well. And it's a good screening tool. But you know, the thing is now to just understand with how much COVID We're seeing, is to put it in context, a lot of people are going to have COVID not know what we think we're probably picking up about a third of it, that are actually out there with testing, you know, use them you if you want to know the answer, fantastic. A negative does not mean negative. A positive doesn't mean that you're necessarily still contagious. You know, just just use use it in context. And that's the challenge right now is the information gaps have been giant the last two years,
Tim Stout:Lisa, picking up a third of that. Does that mean if we're have a positive rate of 20? You think it's more like 50?
Dr. Ryan Stanton:I don't know, not the test? Okay, I just think probably, to the remaining aren't getting tests
Tim Stout:aren't getting tested, but they're, they're still paused. So what do you what? What do you think the positivity rate is? Across the country right now,
Dr. Ryan Stanton:if you look at the numbers, we're probably pushing anywhere from two to 3 million new cases a day. And that's why this spike is so sharp. I mean, it's, it's just rocketing up right now. And probably within a week or two, I'm not sure exactly. When, when, you know, this is when we're going out. But, you know, this, these, the number is going to start dropping off within a week or two, as if we keep the pace with the rest of the world with Oh micron is it's a huge spike up and a relatively quick spike back down and not going to be this wide swath that we saw with delta or some of the other variants and, you know, that's that's, and we can, you know, talk about, you know, hopefully this is what we kind of talked about before we get started that this is a natural progression of viruses. They tend to have wave wave wave and then they have this huge flameout, just like stars do. You know, stars have this huge supernova right before they end float and came in on themselves. And the thought is and what would be wonderful is if this is kind of the supernova of the, of the virus, and it does this quick spike up. And the combination of vaccines, natural immunity exposures, that this is the last of the big spikes.
Tim Stout:What would that look like?
Dr. Ryan Stanton:I would hope I mean,
Tim Stout:it that would it be just, you know, just back to normal?
Dr. Ryan Stanton:I think as close as you can get to normal, I mean, back to normal with 850,000 fewer Americans that we had before. I mean, that's the that's the unfortunate toll as we've lost one and 100 people over age 75 to it is, you know, it's going to be different. And I think it it should and it better change the way in terms of medicine and health care and public health that we prepare for large scale national epidemics and pandemics. We are clearly very good at localized disasters, we respond very well to tornadoes, and hurricanes, what we have uncovered is that we are not ready when the entire countries involved.
Tim Stout:Yeah, the weather no matter what side of the political aisle you're on, both of them haven't done very well.
Dr. Ryan Stanton:Yeah. And you can look at that's that's probably if you look at most of the states, whether right or left. So they have some have made good decisions, you know, some some are good decisions, some are bad decisions, nobody's made the absolute right decisions. If you hear a health care professional that has said the exact same thing the entire time, they are wrong, because we've learned so much new stuff. And we were so ignorant about this thing early on. And we what the coolest, the kind of a cool thing and a curse of this is everybody in the public has gotten to see the entire scientific process play out on the media. And the worst thing has happened is where it's gotten politicized that made it near impossible, right in
Tim Stout:the hearings where Dr. Fauci and Dr. Rand Paul are Yeah, boxing Yeah, they're
Dr. Ryan Stanton:going at it and you know, they're they're fighting over things that so politics jump in. And which makes anything difficult just because we're so staunch in our in most people are many no and say most, I mean, I think a decent percentage on each side are pretty, pretty dug in on their political beliefs. And you know, a lot of people in the middle. But you know, with this, you see that science is not always clean. It's not perfect. You know, whether you look at the hydrocortisone or whether you look at the ivermectin, it takes time to do science to do the test. And that one study is for generating a hypothesis. Another type of study is the one that shows that it's widespread, beneficial, or harmful to people. And so it takes time, and it's not clean, and it's not perfect. And not all doctors agree. And not all scientists are on the same page. And so I think that has made it difficult, because almost everybody said, Well, I heard Dr. so and so or so and so meant to say this. And it may be completely off the rails, just because you have an MD or do after your name, including myself doesn't mean you're right.
Tim Stout:I just that was your question. I think he answered your question. You say I said, you got a question for the doc. And you said, what happens when one doctor tells you something and then another doctor tells you the exact opposite?
Dr. Ryan Stanton:It usually means that we don't actually have a firm answer.
Dallas Kelley:But I did think of two new guests that I'm gonna try to get on our next show. Dr. Fauci editor. Oh, my gosh. I guarantee our listenership will go up a little bit. There's a little bit
Dr. Ryan Stanton:the padding on this wall.
Tim Stout:You know, think about it. I'm not a doctor Fauci fan, but the guy is a public servant, you know, and just like you say, Wait, the highest paid well, okay, but just like what you said, I mean, everybody's going back and quoting what he said, a year and a half ago. And if that was still true, today, then the pandemic would be over. But obviously, things change. And you can't, I mean, you're a medical doctor, it's the same thing in a scientific community, when you talk about, you know, mathematic equation or proving something, you know, there's a whole lot of theorems that never get proven. And it's the same thing in the medical side of it, you have a theory, you go down that road, and you try to develop something. Sometimes it's right, sometimes it's wrong. But
Dr. Ryan Stanton:there wasn't too many hundreds of years ago that everybody in this world was fully convinced and proved that the world was flat, and that the sun rotated around us. And, you know, took then now is just the opposite where that so it's with information and medicine is the most important aspect of that, you know, medicine likely led to the death of our first president with believing we could blood lead out the infection with George Washington. And if we stayed with stuff just because it's the way we've always done it without taking into account new information and changing the way we do things. It would be really interesting to put together What I said in September of 2020 10. Now to see what is different, there are some things that are very similar that are the same COVID still stinks. But there's there's things that I have learned and done differently and medication wise and mask wise and prevention wise, and that would be a flip 180. And if I was in politics, I would be used as the reason I couldn't get reelected, that you'd use
Tim Stout:yourself against it. Yeah. Well, you know, the mask is a is a great example. We we all have plenty of mass. Now, there are not as there's not a shortage of Basque, but there is a still a shortage of n 95 masks, am I correct in saying that? Or is are the hospital and healthcare workers still reusing those beyond what are well different than when we started
Dr. Ryan Stanton:and they were all designed as a single use, right, all of those like that one, those are a single use, you go in, do the job come out, and you're done with it. We are not where we were before before you used it until it broke. There are studies that have come out since then, showing that you are losing efficacy and safety and fit of that mask, within hours. A significant proportion stop that aren't as effective at four hours, all of them are leaking at the end of the shift. And but what we know is that if you know if you know a lot of physicians and nurses, especially working in pediatrics, emergency medicine, you know, places on the frontlines that deal with a bunch of illness, they don't get sick very often, probably because we get these little tiny aliquot of these infections all the time, I probably been exposed to so much flu already in so much strep and so much COVID that our bodies kind of acclimate to it slowly. The problem we have with infections like these, especially now with what we're seeing is with a number of people, we are constantly bombarded with these huge doses of COVID-19. And so it's overpowering any type of natural immunity vaccine immunity that we may have. And so, you know, the masks are beneficial for us. But I hope in September 2020, saying that it's not it's a tool that may that has some benefit, but it was definitely never the solution.
Tim Stout:And the government's gonna have mask for everybody. I just read that today. The government's ban,
Dr. Ryan Stanton:in 95 said that it actually there's concern in the health care industry that they may that was the concern with recommending part of the early recommendation recommendations from the CDC, on using the cotton masks and whatever was basically, so people weren't going out and buying all of the health care quality masks, so they could stay in health care, right. And the concern is now do we have the supply chains right now, to supply every American with an in 95 Mask and still stack all the healthcare needs? We can't get chips for our cars. Now all of a sudden we can produce
Dallas Kelley:and the testing I gonna send out testing Yeah. 500 million
Tim Stout:500 million tests at home tests, will that be a? I'm assuming that's a rabbit
Dr. Ryan Stanton:test like the by an ox? It's the ones you can like pick up at drugstores. Now.
Tim Stout:If you can find them. Yeah. But I
Dallas Kelley:seen a news clip where they, you know, Vice President said, I think it was the testing will be mailed out within the week, right. And then they interviewed I think they interviewed the people who make them and they were like, I don't think
Dr. Ryan Stanton:problem is for us we've been we've got like eight tests that we use in the hospital, eight different ones. And which ones we use fluctuates based on the supplies we can get. And so the reagents, the storage media, the swabs every week, it's something different that we're short on so we change which technique we're using.
Fr. Linh Nguyen:It got to make you guys really humbles and
Dr. Ryan Stanton:I think this is the first time that for the most part, that medicine got scared. Because, you know, we're used to being around diseases. And it's very rarely that, you know, people you walk into a room and just very casually with all these infectious diseases and things of that nature. But you know, there was there was a lot of fear. And I've lost a lot of, well, a number of physician friends around the country, to COVID-19. But in the end, you know, right now, I think we're just all ready to get it all back to normal, where we can see people's faces again, and not have to be worried every single time somebody comes in and wait 90 minutes after the room is left in order to clean it to prevent the next person from getting COVID You know, all those things that we're having to do this disrupted and of course with families out there. It's visitation, right. I have limitations on visitation. That was one of the toughest things are in COVID and the early stages is people dying and not having anybody around
Tim Stout:at NC my mom in a nursing home for nine months. They the net impact on her was unbelievable the psychological impact. I
Dr. Ryan Stanton:mean, that's it's honestly like the young where we wanted to get them together. It's the elderly thing for nine months. You can't come out of your room.
Tim Stout:Miss torture. Oh,
Dallas Kelley:I'll tell you one of the I miss the most is seeing people's faces. I'm missing terribly. And that's hard. That's a big part of health. I've seen with some of my kids, I've seen them out in the stores this weekend I'm preaching. And I see I'm, as I'm preaching, I see what I think is one of my kids. They don't have a mask on. And I'm not sure. So I asked. Yeah, I was there. I didn't even recognize,
Dr. Ryan Stanton:honestly, if I had probably 75% of my ER staff, because it's flipped over so much. If I saw them out and about, I probably wouldn't recognize them without a mask, because now identify people, by their eyes, their eyes. Exactly, right. Yes. So when you see the rest of your face, you're like, oh, no, Cuz usually most people identify eyes, mouth, chin structure, facial hair, those types of things.
Tim Stout:Same thing, cycling community when I didn't recognize if somebody didn't have their, their helmet. I didn't recognize who they were. Right. I mean, because it's such an important part of relationship. Right? That I mean, the as the gateway to the so just taking a lot more information than we really think that that it does.
Dr. Ryan Stanton:And what's your trigger? And and that's and what what do you mean, each person's a little bit different terms of what they used it for that recognition. But this will significantly change probably the way we recognize people. And the way we talk to people, you know, for so long, it was actually it was kind of good, because I didn't have to worry about my face game. You know, I didn't have to worry about which facial expression
Tim Stout:I mean, he Are you serious look,
Dr. Ryan Stanton:I just had to really focus on your eyebrows doing what I need to do. You know,
Tim Stout:I was amazed I shared with you I was in the ER with my mom this this week. And one of the one of your colleagues was that with a person, a man that they brought in EMS, he was obviously hard to hearing very owed. And I watched the doctor interact with him. And I was it gave me a great sense of humanity, because I don't know how long he'd been working. But he handled that man. So well. I was, I was surprised. I was really shocked.
Dr. Ryan Stanton:And you'll be it that's one of the skills of Emergency Medicine is you know, we'll go into a room. And we'll have somebody who's just had something bad to pass away, we walk into the next room have to act like everything is back to normal. And then interacting with people. I mean, and that's one of the most important things because there has been a lot of there's been a big uptick, uptick in verbal and physical abuse against healthcare workers, especially in the ER setting. And is to understand that there's human beings on both sides. And for us, the hardest thing to remember is that it's not just a case in the diagnosis, that is a human being into them. That is the most important thing happening at that moment. To me, it's one of the 30 things that I've diagnosed that day. And so having understanding that personal engagement nature, but then when people come to the ER, as patients and visitors understanding that you've got staffs that have now been pounded for two years, with COVID, and risk of infection and worry about taking things home to families and things being disrupted. I mean, it's, I think one of the most important things we could get out of this, if we can is just understanding the human element. And the most important of that thing of that human element is our ability to be a community even if we're different. I mean, if you don't like Fauci, whether I do or not,
Tim Stout:he's still a person. We can still be friends. Yeah, absolutely. Whether we all
Dr. Ryan Stanton:agree, or no, we've been
Dallas Kelley:fighting that for a long time. We still be friends, no matter what your political views are, we've
Tim Stout:we've lost our ability in this country to dialogue through differences, right? I mean, if you're, if you have a different viewpoint than I do on, whatever today, today, it's COVID, right? Anything related to COVID, then you're not my friend, you can't be my friend, which is
Dr. Ryan Stanton:completely ridiculous. But if we agree on everything, it's just a short conversation is a pretty boring day. I mean, the most interesting conversations is when we're not on the same page. And when we're open enough to listen to the other person's viewpoint to understand where they got it, where they come from, and to reexamine where I am, because that's part of that's part of maturity and knowledge and intelligence is the ability to take where you are now and reassess it based on different views or new and new information and grow from that. And I think we we need that more we need to be able to have this conversation was I know it is working. It was work a COVID has made it worse because it put us all for months and months completely separated from everybody.
Tim Stout:Yeah, it's kind of like the signs I've seen not by the Catholic Church, but some some nondenominational church when I'm driving down the road, be nice. It doesn't say agree with everybody. Right? Right. It doesn't say your point of view is right or their partner point of view is wrong. It's just be nice. And that's one of the things that I try to do in most settings now because and I shared just when I preached on Christmas Eve is I went into Christmas Eve Kroger half hour before they closed and the cashier I was with my son And the cashier, just look, you know, totally frazzled. And I say what? What do you say when you're leaving Kroger to the cashier? On Christmas Eve, you say Merry Christmas, and I walked out the front door there and son said, I don't think she's having a merry Christmas. And, you know, he's right. I mean, she's, there's a, there's an article that I read this morning doing a lot of reading about grocery workers and the impact on grocery workers how they they've never had any time off frontline workers very similar to to healthcare and think of the number of people that they're interacting with and stress, Hey, you don't have my, my drink my tea, tea, and that's who gets the brunt of it. So you know, it's just just be nice. Hey, up here, you know,
Dallas Kelley:we've made it a point to always give a little extra with tips now and be extra patient with the restaurant workers and grocery store worker. Because man, they need
Dr. Ryan Stanton:everybody. Everybody is right now everybody's just exhausted. And that's, you hear that so much. Now, when you ask people, How are they and they just say I'm tired. And you know, it's more than just the physical tiredness of not getting enough sleep at night. It's kind of that emotional fatigue of just the hits, just keep on coming. And you know, if we can be nice, share a laugh, supportive, you know, whatever it may be even my neighborhood, you know, God bless my wife, she volunteered me for the HOA a number of years ago. And because all of them left, but me this year, I became president, which I have no interest in whatsoever, that is gotta be the worst job. And now, it's definitely not the worst. I live in a relatively small neighborhood. And we're all reasonable, for the most part. But you know, that sent a couple messages out there says, hey, just understand it. People you don't understand, I know a couple of things of the neighborhood just because of the job I do and things and it struggles, challenges, seasons, people are going through, and you never know what's going on behind closed doors behind that wall. So you know, what you may think is, is you making your point or dirt or putting your foot down, may actually just be rubbing dirt and a wound or making things worse. So why not, let's just try to lift each other up a little bit. And be supportive and be there for people. And let's work through this together. And you know, whether you believed in what Governor Beshear said or not, you know, the one thing I did agree with is that we're in this together. And you know, you can't just because you're you're Republican or Democrat doesn't mean you, you get to do it a completely different way. We're all dealing with nature together right now. And and I think the way to move the country forward is for us to actually have that positive dialogue and supportive environment that lifts each other up.
Fr. Linh Nguyen:Is a great opportunities. And the question for me, are we learning from this? Are we willing to kind of let go, I'll pry and say, let's let's work together. And it's so real. And it's it challenge the whole nation right now. And then we still not get it.
Dr. Ryan Stanton:It's actually interesting what what a good guest would be is international folks, somebody from Europe, somebody from Canada, to say, tell us how we did. Because it's very interesting to get the international viewpoint of how Americans handle a lot of things. But this pandemic has been a big one. And you know, it's kind of like watching the this is kind of like hanging out. I always feel like Canada feels like we're the raucous neighbor in the apartment downstairs. Please let them go to bed at midnight tonight and not play loud music.
Tim Stout:I did see a video of a guy who was not from America. I can't remember where I was. I had to find it. But he he he went into a supermarket that first I showed her by complaint and how there's nothing in the supermarket. And then he went into the supermarket. And he's like, wow, look at all this stuff. Yeah. Because as Americans, we've become complacent with access to anything we ever wanted. Anytime we wanted, anytime, anywhere. Yeah, right. And Amazon made it worse. Right? I mean, all Amazon's but I mean, it's, it's I mean, it wasn't that way when we were kids growing up, you just you just couldn't have everything you wanted whenever you wanted it all the time. It just wasn't possible. And I think this pandemic is has taught that again, can't believe you're on the HOA, I mean, you're everywhere. Tell us what's switched what, how to follow you. I mean, I've seen you in a lot of different places. I think Steve's got some slides up of your social media stuff
Dr. Ryan Stanton:we are now on. I just became the chief medical correspondent for Fox 56. And it really is not much different than what I was doing at the other stations is just kind of, you know, for the sake of a better term, they just finally put a ring on it, you know, by a commitment that goes both ways.
Tim Stout:But they've made a big investment, I think 56 Right. They've changed a lot of things.
Dr. Ryan Stanton:They read their three They're just completely revamped brand new morning programs for hours every morning. It really is nice and they've really done a great job supporting what I've doing and what I want to do from the healthcare standpoint. NASCAR still Medical Director for GMR motor sports doing EMSA let's see EMSA s RX NASCAR, the team the side team is added road to Indy, and then our IndyCar safety team as well. I'm not over that one, but do work with him pretty closely. And then of course Lexington fire, love working with the local fire and EMS that's kind of my wheelhouse is that frontline treat medicine. And then you're an ER doc on top all that. I do that as well and a husband and a dad and got my 14 year old a 12 year old we've got every time I go on a trip I think we get a new pet the rule is if they get a new pet while I'm traveling, I get to name it. So we've had cats named poops and squeeze. And it's a good rule. A dog named Coco Vaughn, scratch and sniff and we had Barnum and Bailey we have Mr. Magee and Mr. Ferguson. Mr. T Ferguson. And so that's that's the way we roll in my houses. We get new pets I name them, and then stuff happens down the road.
Tim Stout:I can't see that ending well for you, though.
Dr. Ryan Stanton:Oh, I mean.
Tim Stout:So how many pets do you have right now?
Dr. Ryan Stanton:Alright, so let's see. The too many kids are at least independent. We have two horses. So we have a horse named Seabiscuit. See with a dash and a big z k it is trendy. Seabiscuit pony. That is my daughter's name Casper. He's white. Then we have the dog Bailey. Her brother, Barnum we had to get rid of because they didn't get along. Then we had the cat is we have two cats. We have poops and squeeze the other one got let out and apparently became friends with a coyote. So poops. Not great friends. They didn't mean they disagreed, maybe different sides of politics. So poops and then Mr. Ferguson. Let's see what else do we have? Oh, we have my oldest daughter decided she wanted to chinchillas so that she has to chinchillas but they stay in a room and the only thing I have with that is ensuring that she cleans out that cage every Sunday. So the whole end of the house Dutton staying thank
Tim Stout:God I love animals.
Dr. Ryan Stanton:We do we do love our animals we got our little Noah's Ark of of Jessamine County where we're just welcoming things in and then for the most part, let nature take its course.
Tim Stout:A bigeye additional questions as we wrap it up, I just one of the things I want to say is any closing advice in general for folks, don't panic. Obviously, you said that at the beginning. But what else
Dr. Ryan Stanton:don't panic, I mean, we're better off now at facing this, if delta would have had I mean, if omachron would have happened at the beginning, we'd have been in real trouble real big trouble. This isn't great. But you know, we can work with what we've got, you know, people who are candidates for the vaccine and a booster need to get it just to protect you and everybody around you. You may be young and very healthy. But those that you're around may not be and we don't know 100% Who's going to have a bad outcome. make wise decisions. Don't put yourself in a situation we're going to have a huge risk for a spread. We're seeing a lot of small events, you know, whether it's weddings, funerals, parties, things of that nature, where we have the spread, if you're feeling ill don't go to an event cancel, this is a time where you get a free pass to get out of any type of engagement that you have. I mean used to you'd feel guilty if you couldn't go to something you'd RSVP this you're actually doing a favor. The masks certain settings, hand washing the masks, especially with with prevention of flu and RSV. They may not be perfect for COVID. But they help a ton with some of these traditional viruses that travel on larger particles such as flu. We had I didn't see a flu diagnosis from March of 2021. Note, yeah, 2021. March 2021. No, he was before that is 2020. And March of 2020. Until about four weeks ago was the first flu I've seen. Wow, we went at 18 months crazy. So you know, make wise decisions be nice to each other. We're gonna make it through this. This will end. And you know, I hope that soon enough. And the thing is, I guess if this ends, I don't get invited back.
Tim Stout:Oh, absolutely. We'll talk about we'll talk about NASCAR, NASCAR that
Dr. Ryan Stanton:we'll see. That'd be perfect. But hopefully, next time we talk COVID will be a afterthought.
Tim Stout:My plan will be to have you as the first three time guests. Oh, perfect. So that opens up a whole lot of second time guests between you can
Dallas Kelley:you can follow right after Dr. Fauci and Senator Paul,
Dr. Ryan Stanton:just I could still come in here when the heats high and the humidity is up.
Tim Stout:We could sell tickets and do a fundraiser for the church further Think about that. With Fauci. Yeah without shame, grandpa. Well, listen, we thank you for coming. We'll have you back regardless of what happens. We hope the prediction is true that that that ends the way you're already. So hey Podrick Can you give us a blessing that we all have patience and be Can everybody hear something along those lines? How about that?
Fr. Linh Nguyen:Whoa, excellent. So let's pray Gracious God, we give you thanks to a difficult time, we'd recognize you are with us. Your wisdom continued drawn us toward the give a patient of the cross of your son Jesus Christ to give us true sight, what it mean to love what it means to dedicate what it mean to commit to each other. And so we as you said, your grace and blessing to all of us, our listeners, those who suffered was during the difficult time of this Coronavirus. And so to all the first responders, healthcare workers, those who are dedicated to the service to your Son, Jesus Christ, to guide us, give us a true peace of your love, that we may truly be a true witness to one another in the life we all commit to live. And we ask this to your blessing in the name of the Father, not the Son of the Holy Spirit.
Tim Stout:Amen. Amen. Amen. Thanks again, Doc. Until next time, I appreciate it. Excellent. I'm digging Tim.
Dallas Kelley:I'm Deacon Dallas.
Fr. Linh Nguyen:I'm Father linguine. Goodnight, everybody. Thank you.