Dr. David Haase, MD is a renowned medical educator trained at Vanderbilt and Mayo Clinic. His expertise touches on a wide range of specialties from personalized computational systems medicine, brain performance optimization and more. Dr. Haase is also the author of the best selling book Curiosity Heals The Human, and presented a TED talk in which he described how treating dementia starts by changing our paradigms about health and disease. For the last few months he has been neck-deep in the whole Coronavirus pandemic as he serves on the advisory board for one of the largest medical testing labs involved in COVID-19.
Dr. Haase is also the host of Superhumanizing, a new podcast that explores how you can become the most potent version of yourself via cutting-edge research, medical advances, and good old fashioned self examination.
In this episode, Dr. David Haase and John Corcoran talk about some of the timeless lessons that COVID-19 is teaching the world so far, what it will continue to teach, and how it will change the way people view and take care of their health.
Here’s a Glimpse of What You’ll Hear:
- Dr. David Haase’s involvement in the Coronavirus pandemic
- The different types of tests being carried out, the importance of an effective testing strategy, and challenges of carrying out tests
- Can a person be infected by the virus again after recovery?
- Dr. Haase addresses the issue on reinfection after recovery, why some people are asymptomatic and the role of inflammation and oxidative stress in getting the virus
- Dr. Haase discusses the possibility of COVID-19 being a seasonal virus and the ways that people can do improve their health to avoid infection
- What can be done to validate the antibody test and the possibility of developing a vaccine for COVID-19 in the near future
- Dr. Haase explains the possible mutation of COVID-19 and why that is a good thing
- Why Dr. Haase is focus in supporting life and livelihoods
- Dr. Haase’s insights on when things will go back to normal and the role of local control and influence in getting things back on track
- Dr. Haase gives a sneak peek on how the different advisory committees and medical boards are addressing the pandemic
Resources Mentioned:
- Dr. David Haase’s website
- Superhumanizing Podcast
- Maxwell Clinic
- Curiosity Heals The Human by Dr. David Haase
- The Food and Drug Administration (FDA)
- The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable: With a new section: “On Robustness and Fragility
- SDI Labs
- Dr. David Haase on Facebook
- Dr. David Haase on Twitter
- Dr. David Haase on Instagram
- Dr. David Haase on LinkedIn
Sponsor: Rise25
Today’s episode is sponsored by Rise25 Media, where our mission is to connect you with your best referral partners, clients, and strategic partners. We do this through our done for you business podcast solution and content marketing.
Along with my business partner Dr. Jeremy Weisz, we have over 18 years of experience with B2B podcasting, which is one of the best things you can do for your business and you personally.
If you do it right, a podcast is like a “Swiss Army Knife” – it is a tool that accomplishes many things at once. It can and will lead to great ROI, great clients, referrals, strategic partnerships, and more. It is networking and business development; and it is personal and professional development which doubles as content marketing.
A podcast is the highest and best use of your time and will save you time by connecting you to higher caliber people to uplevel your network.
To learn more, go to Rise25.com or email us at [email protected].
To learn more, book a call with us here.
Check out Rise25 to learn more about our done-for-you lead generation and done-for-you podcast services.
Right Click here to download the MP3
Click here to subscribe via iTunes
Advertise on the Smart Business Revolution Podcast
Episode Transcript
Intro 0:14
Welcome to the smart business revolution podcast where we ask today’s most successful entrepreneurs to share the tools and strategies they use to build relationships and connections to grow their revenue. Now, your host for the revolution. John Corcoran.
John Corcoran 0:40
Hey everybody, John here and what you’re about to listen to is actually an interview that I recorded with a client of ours Dr. David Haase, and we recorded it for his podcast which we helped to produce called Superhumanizing. And the reason I’m publishing in a my show as well as because he is a world renowned An expert in COVID-19 and Coronavirus, and we recorded this right in the midst of the whole Coronavirus pandemic that’s happening April 27 2020. And he’s been really heavily involved in a lot of the scientific effort to increase testing and identification and tracking of the disease. And he’s a big advocate of a whole body approach to improving your health and fighting off the disease. So I thought it was extremely helpful information. He has a great way of distilling down the information and explaining it and so I thought it’d be helpful to share with all of you on my podcast. So here is Dr. David Haase.
Dr. David Haase 1:40
Hello, hey, you’re here with Dr. David Haase. And this is superhumanizing. The sort of time that we’re going to be diving into understanding the complex relationships of health and disease and just what it takes for you to be your most effective and powerful self. I am here today with John Corcoran. Who has done thousands of interviews of some of the top health and longevity experts in the world? And interestingly enough, today we flip the script and he’s going to be interviewing me. So john.
John Corcoran 2:12
All right. Dr. Haase, I’m excited to interview you here today. So just a little bit of a background on you for everyone listening. Dr. Haase is a renowned medical educator trained at Vanderbilt, and the Mayo Clinic. His expertise touches on a wide range of specialties. He’s also the author of the best selling book curiosity heals the human and presented a TED talk in which he described how treating dementia starts by changing our paradigms about health and disease. But in addition to that, he also serves on the advisory board for one of the largest medical testing labs involved in COVID-19. So he’s been neck deep for the last few months in the whole Coronavirus pandemic. We’re recording this by the way at the end of April 2020. And so we’re in the midst of the Coronavirus pandemic, the shelter in places Been a month in place for a number of months now and hasn’t lessened yet just to give all of you listeners a little bit of a reference point of where we are. And so we’re going to talk about some of the timeless lessons that COVID has already taught us will continue to teach us and how it will change healthcare. So, Dr. Haase well first of all pleasure to talk to you and what what has your life been like? These last few months? You You just told me before we started recording that yesterday, you’re on a phone call with the governor of California Gavin Newsome and I imagine it’s been a little bit of crazy so what what is your involvement in the whole Coronavirus, pandemics and like,
Dr. David Haase 3:38
yeah, I mean, it’s absolutely been a wild ride because as you might know, I’m a systems medicine specialist. I’m very interested in how the whole picture works together. And as we start to recognize COVID disease and the the SARS COVID-19 virus that caused it that we believed blame it all on. It’s a really interesting story of systems. And, you know, how did we get to where we are? Why do some people get ill? Why did other people stay? Well? How are we adapting to it as a system wide? How do we dive into effective testing to get us moving forward? But I think what’s so fascinating about COVID is that it teaches us a lot about health and disease in general. And, and by stepping back, and so many people are stepping back and rethinking their health and their disease in so many different ways right now, because we have time to do that. Or at least some of us have time to do that. Yeah. You know, it’s been remarkable the lessons that start to be learned.
John Corcoran 4:46
So yeah, absolutely. So what are some of those lessons, you know, some of the big I just made a few notes here. Some of the big things that people are talking about right now is we need to increase our testing dramatically. So that’s a big one, too. People are talking about in order to open up the economy, people are talking about when do we open up the economy? Again? When do we get people back to work? When do we allow people to congregate again? How do they congregate? How should we protecting ourselves? Another big issue that’s been coming up has been whether the medical system has been prepared for this, you know, there’s been really no ramp up of PP and ventilators and different supplies and things like that. Should we start with testing then? Do
Dr. David Haase 5:31
you know I think it is. It’s interesting, because those are all the things you hear the pundits talk about all the time, right, please correct
John Corcoran 5:37
me there’s something better we No, no,
Dr. David Haase 5:39
absolutely. But yeah, you know, I think people have have kind of been beat to death with Well, yeah, we know we didn’t have enough pp. And we know that the CDC essentially screwed up the testing, you know, to make test kits. So the United States had did not have the supply of tests necessary to to actually do any of the early identification and quarantine and things like that. That other countries were able to do. And so, you know, that’s kind of neat. It’s all has been, right. Well, now we’re in a situation where we have, you know, we’re over 50,000 people have died from COVID in the United States at the present time. And, and we own recognize that, wow, this is the big deal that let’s get that goes rampant, we could be in trouble. So, having an effective testing strategy is super important, but that’s where it comes to its strategy. So you can have tests and a lot of people are getting really excited by it. There’s new antibody tests coming out. And, and some intriguing results have happened through antibody testing. I’ll come back to that. But the most important test is something called a PCR test that measures the genetic material and on a swab of the throat. You can understand if someone is infected at that time, or if they’re shedding virus or they infective. So that’s the most important test is to have a measurement of the actual viral genes that are being spilled out in some kind of body cavity. Now, if that’s present, you know, that’s a hot, that’s a hot case right there, that individual needs to be isolated. We very much need to know who have they been in contact with? Where have they been? And we need to protect the family members nearby and have a very concerted in and compassionate approach to this. These individuals are frightened, they’re scared, this disease is nightmarish to have causes terrible shakes and chills and even hallucinations and pain and coughing and I mean, it is really an awful thing to have to endure. And so it’s so the compassion that we have to have as we go about this testing is super important. But what’s occurred Is that an easier test and a much cheaper test to pull out is an antibody test and this is measuring a protein that your body makes in particular response to a disease. You know, we have antibodies for measles, we have antibodies to polio after vaccination. And those antibody tests are inexpensive to make. And, but the challenges many of them can be non specific. So we can make these protective proteins in our bloodstream that will bind to the the antigens, meaning the proteins that come out on that particular virus. But they may also bind to other chunks of viruses or they may also bind to other proteins that are not the SARS cofee to virus that we really need to identify. So there’s a big problem with fault. We call them false positives. Like oh, I did this blood test or and it’s that I have the antibody. Wow, I must have been infected. And that’s the jury is deeply out on that one well thinking scientists on both sides of of this opinion that the antibody testing is actually accurate and and many very well reputed scientists saying no these are not accurate enough. And so it’s it’s kind of the Wild West at this point in time because understanding the validity of the test that was utilized is so important in many states and governments were still using some of the old CDC tests and they frankly came back with abnormal results.
Unknown Speaker 9:51
So
Dr. David Haase 9:53
understanding your test is only as good as the validation and process that it goes through. You know, you can put a label on anything, you know, kind of you can put lipstick on a pig, but it’s still vague.
John Corcoran 10:08
So you’ll you’ll have to excuse me, I’m, I’m a lawyer, not a doctor. So you have to speak in very small words for me because I, my business partner is that he has a medical training background. So he understands this stuff better than I do. But so as I see it, there’s a couple of issues you’re talking about here. And this is one I’ve had multiple conversations with my wife about. So the first issue I see is kind of the layman’s question is can you get it again? If you’ve gotten it once? Yes, yes, you can get it again. If you got
Dr. David Haase 10:38
Yeah, I mean, we’re pretty clear on that the the South Koreans have been doing a great job of surveillance, and they have a large series of over 50 individuals that they had tested and saw that they had positive antibodies, and then they came down with the second round of the disease started to shed virus again. Then that is our data right now. And the thing about some Science is that if we have more data, we’re allowed to change our minds. Matter of fact, we must change our mind. This is not a political discussion or a religious discussion. Here. It’s whatever the data is, and I certainly hope that that will be proven wrong because that makes everything way more difficult that if that’s the case, yeah, when it ensued, you know, Coronavirus, you know, people go like, Oh, it’s just, well, that is a class of viruses and about 15% of what we call the common cold is caused by a different Corona virus. And it floats around so many of us have antibodies to a generic Coronavirus in our system, because we got one of the distant cousins of the SARS Kofi 19 virus, and that’s what throws a lot of this stuff off.
John Corcoran 11:50
Yeah, I guess and then a related question to that. Is that why some people have been getting Coronavirus, but they have like very minimal system symptoms.
Dr. David Haase 12:00
Oh, that’s a really good question. And I was emerging as we’re starting to recognize their very clear characteristics of who actually gets sick from this. Now we’ve known from the Chinese very early on that if people have comorbidities, meaning they have other diseases like diabetes, heart disease, lung disease, they’re going to be much more susceptible to enter the intensive care unit and die. But we’ve also seen teenagers and children and people that are apparently well that are also will have a worse disease progress than one would expect. But there’s a multitude of effects. So for instance, vitamin D seems to be panning out. This is a very important predictive factor of who succumbs or who becomes very ill from this particular disease. So, checking to see what your vitamin D level is getting some sunlight, maybe taking vitamin D supplement, all super safe things to do, right?
John Corcoran 13:00
So if you don’t get enough sunlight, you’re more likely to have an adverse reaction.
Dr. David Haase 13:04
Yes, yeah. Vitamin D. And it’s interesting. You know, we’ve we say, Well, why does influenza reared its head every winter? Well, it kind of rears its head almost in the same pattern as the amount of average vitamin D production our skin gives us. So there’s many other reasons. It’s not just one thing, I think, that is what is so hard for people to hear. And that is really the truth of reality. Health disease, and the human experience is a complex experience. There’s a lot of smaller factors that comes together, that are always more important than the one big factor. So when we take all these, we take all these chronic diseases that we say are a problem. What are the commonalities that really tie them together? Well, it’s inflammation and oxidative stress. Now, most of us know inflammation. So inflammation is you you see something Red Hot, swollen and tender on your body. That’s inflammation. But oxidative stress you can think of as almost inflammation of molecules. You know, it’s it’s molecules having oxygen attached to them and essentially rusting. And that occurs when our cells are not efficient at making energy, or inflammation actually causes this molecular rusting to go on. And it turns out the commonality in so many people who are becoming very ill, or that they have high baseline levels of inflammation, and this oxidative stress, and when do those things happen? Well, when you’re sick. I mean, these are the fundamental underpinning causes of most of our chronic degenerative disease. So COVID is teaching us it’s teaching us that being well protects us and it gives us massive levels of resilience. See when being confronted with an unknown foe? And that is that is really the message, I think we should be looking at that preventive health care, self health care, asking the questions of how can I be the fullest version of myself? How can I be the healthiest version of myself the most productive protects you at times like this? Because it’s not just the bug. It’s very much or like as there’s a classic argument about this between pester and linic, two very famous scientists in in France, and pastor was the one who developed pasteurization. He is the one who said, Oh, it’s all the bacteria. It’s all the bug, right? He said, he called it the germ, or the seed. He said, that’s, that’s the problem. That’s what causes disease and his friend linic said, No, no, it’s the soil. It’s everything. around that seed, or that germ that enables a disease to emerge in a particular individual, and is it the seed? Or is it the soil? And again, and again, we’re finding that you know, the answers both to a degree, you know, without the seed, right? Without the virus, you don’t get COVID-19. But if you’re, if your soil is healthy, if your underlying health and vitality is high, it gives you incredible amounts of resilience. Okay, I want to ask
John Corcoran 16:33
a little bit more about that. So I guess that that actually was the question I was gonna ask, which was how do we reduce inflammation? How do we reduce oxidative stress? And I realized you could probably give us a three hour answer on that. But the short podcast version of it, but would Yeah,
Dr. David Haase 16:47
absolutely good. No, it’s good. I mean, I think the first thing we can recognize is that our bodies are really smart. Right? Our bodies are really smart in it. Our bodies are constantly sending us signals, they’re sending us information. And if we’re just open to listening to that, we can help guide ourselves through a whole lot of these journeys. So for instance, you know, I’ve already said inflammation causes pain, swelling, redness, loss of function. So if that is happening, recognize that symptom. So any itis in your body, such as a joint that’s inflamed or periodontal disease with your gums inflamed or your skin a dermatitis or your skin inflamed with folliculitis, your colon inflamed the colitis, all of those itis is tell you you have inflammation. Now the question is okay, you don’t Oh, that’s what that is. That’s a process. It’s not a disease, right? It’s the process. So what causes inflammation while you recognize your inflammation is your body’s defense system? Right. Those are the bones It sets the napalm that you the immune system is laying down to destroy anything that should be, is working against the body. And so the major classes of things that raise inflammation are infections, which we’ve talked about here. allergens, you know, just allergy season probably increases people’s propensity to severe illness, for COVID. Certainly, allergies rev up our histamine response. And histamine is one of the things that cause a big emergence. There’s many things we can do to decrease our histamine response, and that would be to eat foods that have a lot of queer certain in them. quercetin is found in onions and apples. And quercetin kind of coats the outside of the cells and makes the cells less twitchy to release. histamine. Crumlin is actually much like a pharmaceutical called or to be quercetin as much like a pharmaceutical company. formalin, which is essentially a derivative, of course, that is used for the same reasons to hold down histamine production. But so allergies are one. And then injury for instance, any type of chronic injury that takes place in the lungs, you know, especially as asthma continues to progress, that you don’t just have the allergy going on, but you have inflammation that starts to take place from the injury of the tissue itself. toxins, so breathing in polluted air starts to cause a diffuse injury to the lungs and that injury triggers the immune system to say there’s damage, we need to clean up the damage. And then insulin interestingly enough, so if you have very high insulin levels, this predisposes a body to have a more aggressive inflammatory response. So eating your hohos and your Twinkies are definitely something that carcere wrap up inflammation. And then the other two things that are very potent is often gluten in the diet and dairy in the diet are two things that we’ve found to rev up the inflammatory process in many individuals, certainly not all been individuals, but those are good things to be thinking about. How could you tune yourself up? That was really fun. And finally, just lots and lots of brightly colored fruits and vegetables, okay, that’s, you know, let’s eat out of the garden to the greatest extent you can you exercise, get fresh air, pick your own fresh vegetables, we would be a whole lot better off. So we’d like weed my garden a little bit. Now that we know that we said that Yeah, that
John Corcoran 20:48
was that was great. That was perfect. That was exactly what I was looking for. All right, I want to ask you about a couple of related issues you mentioned. So you mentioned the seasonality of the flu bug People people have been wondering about that now we’re in late April of 2020. So maybe it’s too early to ask you this. But do you expect that there’s going to be a waning with Coronavirus as we head into next month ahead? We don’t know.
Dr. David Haase 21:14
You know, and you really kind of a shame most people have been sheltering in place literally in their shelters. So there’s a whole bunch of folks that are more vitamin D deficient now than they were before the before the recommendation was made to you know, sequester. So are people going to have the level of vitamin D right now that we would expect for this time of the year, and I’m going to tell you we all live in caves? Oh my gosh, the average vitamin D level when just drawn on? What’s thought to be a healthy, you know, human being out there in the wild is atrociously low. So you know, we need to be showing a bit more skin to the sun in small doses right now. getting burned. But I think we have really gone. We’ve gone overboard in worrying about skin cancer, to the extent that we’re not allowing our body to have an interaction with nature that has had for thousands and thousands and thousands of years. Yeah, but it’s all about dosing. Right? You just don’t, you don’t go as you know, take you know, take your entire white body out and you know, roasted on a Florida beach. Yeah, that’s gonna cause injury, right? Yeah, it’s gonna cause inflammation, right. And now
John Corcoran 22:35
really for me, now we’re down that path natural born redhead and certainly for me, my pale skin. So yeah, that’s for sure. I wanted to circle back you were talking about the validity of testing for antibodies. And I wanted to circle back to that again, because you were you were saying that we’re it’s kind of an open question right now. What needs to happen in order for For us to be confident in the results of that testing.
Dr. David Haase 23:05
Yeah, you know, because there weren’t any, because we had such a paucity of testing available. The FDA really allowed a lot of early development on tests to move the process for so we had something to go on, which is great, you know, absolutely. You know, lab develop tests are excellent tools. And one of the reasons we are in the mess we are is because the FDA was really tightening down the screws holding back independent labs from developing tests in house. So it’s actually been increased regulation and restrictions that made it more difficult for our our US labs to be as responsive as we could be. I mean, we are absolutely a cauldron for innovation. And the FDA has been actually impeding that long term for labs in the last couple of years. So there’s another problem. Okay, we’re going back to the systems. How did we get into the problem we’re in? Well, inappropriately aggressive regulation, I think is one of our problems in that domain. So, but then how do you know if a test is good? Well, you have to ask the questions. How are you? What are you testing against, you want to understand that that antibody is sensitive, that the test is going to pick up this COVID antibody, if it’s present, and you also want to make sure that is specific, that it’s not going to pick up antibodies that would be similar, but not the real McCoy. And that really depends upon our standards, what type of antigens Do we have present to test an a, an antibody as being effective, and we really don’t have a gold standard for those antigens yet, the ones that we test against see because a virus has a, you kind of think of it as a, you know, a Goofy, Goofy shaped ball with a whole bunch of different ridges and shapes on the outside. And you’re going to each antibody is going to find one unique area on this irregularly shaped ball. And but we don’t know which of those antibodies were not clear yet which of those antibodies are actually protective against acquiring the COVID disease. And we’re not actually certain which antibodies are meaningless. So we’re still at a point in time that we’re doing the best we can to identify the various proteins that are on the outside of the virus, that the antibodies will cross react against. That will predict who actually has had the disease and whose antibodies are actually protective against the disease.
Unknown Speaker 26:09
So you see the
Dr. David Haase 26:10
problem, right? Here’s the problem, right? Because if we have poor testing, and we go like, Oh yeah, you know, this big survey in California and says, oh, wow, maybe maybe 20% of California’s have already had this virus. And that’s what this particular antibody test that was done at Stanford says, and most people don’t believe that at all. However, those people go out and start acting as if they have been exposed. Yeah. And and now and now. If they didn’t get infected, we put them in the category of having a reinfection. And that’s not accurate either. So the the point of it was somebody resolve their infection, or do they ate were they really In fact, it has everything to do with how valid valid the test is. And that is why at every instance that can be done, the PCR of the RNA should be done, we know with very, very, very high levels of certainty that if you have a positive there, you’re positive. And you can be clear about
John Corcoran 27:18
disease. So then one one of the questions that are issues that people have been talking about is the idea of having some kind of like, litmus test where it’d be safe for certain people to go out to society because they they have certain antibodies, it sounds like from what you’re saying is that you don’t see that happening anytime soon, where we don’t have certainty.
Dr. David Haase 27:40
This is, but Don, this is the other thing that’s important. We’re going to have to move forward with the information we have. I mean, we all recognize we have to both protect our life and our livelihood. We recognize that you know, at some point we have to leave the cave and go out into the wide world. How do we do that best is something we’re going to have to continue to learn along the way. Now, I’ll let me go back to another thing, the antibody test that I think is really going to show the best validity is an antibody test that was formed in conjunction with the South Korean and the Chinese governments that California has had a point the California universities have had a part in validating. But until we’re able to publish comparative information, it’s going to be hard to pit one test against the other. So that should be coming very soon, is the publication of comparative testing between the antibodies both showing to make sure that there’s not additional false positives and people aren’t going out falsely reassured that they have had the virus and you know, they didn’t see notice.
John Corcoran 28:59
No So we’re talking mostly about testing. But another issue we hear a lot of people talking about is the possibility of there being a vaccine or something similar to like a flu shot. Again, I’m not a doctor. So I don’t I don’t understand these things. But is that a possibility on the horizon?
Dr. David Haase 29:15
I think we all we all hope for that. I actually did viral research when I was in medical school some eons ago at Vanderbilt, and the Coronavirus was one of the viruses that we were working on in the lab. And that was, what 25 years ago, and then we haven’t seen one or merge yet. So the Coronavirus is very sneaky, it it mutates very quickly, you know, kind of one mutation every two weeks. And that’s really good news for the most part. Viruses when they mutate almost always lose function. So the longer a virus is out sounds
John Corcoran 29:52
really scary. I’m glad you said they mutate every two weeks. I’m like, Oh crap, but then we said that’s good. I’m glad
Dr. David Haase 29:59
Yeah. Because this It’s actually very hard to mutate towards a higher function. Right. So, you know, higher organization is a really difficult thing to emerge in. And that’s often why we see viral disease kind of die out, because we’ve just waited long enough that enough mutations have happened, that the disease itself becomes less dangerous over the course of time and less able to spread and less able to do it’s what happened here then. Yeah, absolutely. Okay. I mean, and that’s part of the reason to, you know, do sequesteration and, you know, you know, shorten the slope or slow the curve, you know, whatever you’re doing is, is actually giving natural history a an opportunity to play a part in the solution here. Now, we can’t count on that at all. But it is a part of the natural process of how viruses behave in the world. should give us some should give you some reassurance. So by vaccine, you know, that’s somebody else’s work to do. I’m really interested How do we, right now support the life and livelihood? How do we find out who is safe, who is infected, who is infectious, who has recovered, and and who is resilient, and resistance to becoming infected again, and putting people into those categories enables us to get back to work. And the other thing that we need to do is not just do testing, but also do tracking. You know, so that person has symptoms, then, then we need to, we need to know who they hung around, right? How can we help that entire family system or that entire community to identify this quickly stop the spread, and so that the most people can be back in the workplace and back out living their lives with high levels of freedom as possible. So it’s interesting. Some people have some pushback against, oh, I don’t want to be tracked. I don’t want people to know where I am. I don’t want people to know who I hung around. But guess what that tracking is actually what’s going to give People freedom. And so, you know, there there’s a point there’s a time for everything. And right now is a time to, you know, we need to have mechanisms to be able to track where you’ve been. And so that you can have the most freedom possible.
John Corcoran 32:17
And people are talking about apps, I saw an ad or not an ad someone’s posting something on on LinkedIn about that about an app you could download where you could kind of keep track of where you were and things like that. It’s I mean, normal. You know, this is not a normal discussion about civil liberties, because we’ve all been started. It’s crazy. I mean, you hear these stories about I heard a story about someone not too far from here, a friend of a friend who was pulled over by a military Humvee just and they were just driving down the road, and they were checking to see you know, where they’re going. And, you know, it’s crazy to that we never could have anticipated we’d be in this type of scenarios. Yeah,
Dr. David Haase 32:51
yeah, that great book is the black swan. You know, I think I think that you know, when what we should actually always expect is the unexpected. I mean, the things that really Cause the most chaos in our lives are not the things that are happened frequently are usually not the thing that we’re worried about or prepare against. It’s, it’s these, you know, Black Swan events, like we’re in the midst of right now.
John Corcoran 33:12
Right, right. I want to ask you a little bit about kind of what behind the scenes has been like, to the extent you can talk about it, you know, participating in these advisory committees and governors and stuff like that. But before I do, and this seat given how nuanced your answers have been, this seems like an overly simple and simplified question to ask, but I’m sure you’ve been asked it, so I feel fair asking it. In light of what you just answered, how far out do you think it’ll be before we return to some sense of normalcy? And we, we really, you know, come out of our cave. What are you saying, What are you thinking right now?
Dr. David Haase 33:51
Well, I think that needs I think what’s most important is that that is has some degree, actually a lot a large degree of local control and local influence. So this is where it comes back to tracking. I think immediately today there are substantial parts the United States that could be opened up and go about business. If we had tracking if we have the ability, and we can provide more testing all the time, the lab that I’m the chair of the scientific advisory board on SDI labs out of California has incredible capacity for doing additional testing. And but as an interest very soon, we expect to have a FDA approved home test, home testing available, and that’s what’s going to be necessary. How can you send out a, you know, somebody kind of not feeling well, boom, you check in the app, you take your symptoms, you identify everybody that’s around you. All those people get the app, they start recording their symptoms at that same time. test kits are dispatched to You, you can do those in the comfort of your own home, shipped out, you know, within 2448 hours, you have some answers coming back, and then you get ongoing care. There’s ongoing follow up, there’s a process, we have to think of all this as a system, not as a test. Right. But to think of what’s the solution, not just a test, and and how are you guided? How are the sick cared for, and, you know, cared and cured? How do we make sure the well are protected? So the answer to your question about when are we going to be out? I think it could be immediately in areas that are have very low levels of the disease present at this time. That can have high trackability. Now New York City is not that place, right. New York City is now my gosh, why don’t you know so many people so close to each other? Yeah, with a high prevalence of disease. You know that but I mean, I grew up in South Dakota I’m gonna tell you there’s some towns out in South Dakota, you hasn’t had a single case. So you should just go about businesses usual out there. And but, but have the mechanism to track through I
John Corcoran 36:13
wonder if then rapidly respond. It seems like there’s been cities and counties and then kind of like leading the charge on these things. And I wonder if maybe it will be a city or county that says, Alright guys, here’s the deal. You can leave you can go out, but you ever have to go out you have to download this app on your phone. Yeah, or something like that.
Unknown Speaker 36:32
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, we
Dr. David Haase 36:37
freedom is about the ability to live your life, right. You know, we, we accept speed limits, you know, we choose to all drive on the right side of the road, right? We all accept the fact you know that, you know, you it’s not a good idea to be drinking alcohol when you’re 12 right. So there are We have some understandings that we’ve come to slowly as a society. And right now we’re having a very uncomfortable situation where we need to make some drastic shifts very quickly, if we’re going to protect our lives and our livelihood. Now, and, and I am not a big government guy, right? So I don’t really relish that idea of having a trackability but good caught. I mean, Google, Amazon, Facebook, they all know where you are already. They already know everybody I hang out with, you know, the idea that there is privacy is just ridiculous. How about having some of that information used for your own benefit? That’s what we’re really looking at and for the benefit of your community and those you care about. So I think civil liberties are super important, but this doesn’t really trample on civil liberties and in a meaningful way, this is giving us civil liberty.
John Corcoran 37:58
That’s a great point. That’s great. And so the last question was just what has it been like being part of these advisory committees advising government governors, did you expect you’d be doing this at this point right now?
Dr. David Haase 38:11
Well, I do I sit on several boards, and I love hard questions. I mean, I love really the opportunity to dive into the root cause of problems and see how can they be fixed from the inside out? I mean, that’s my favorite, my favorite hard test to do. And I would just have to say, I just have an incredible admiration for the individuals that are engaged in all levels of government on the ground. You know, in backup in the boardrooms, you know, everybody is working so hard to be part of the solution. I mean, we need to be very proud and thankful for our healthcare workers. But I will tell you that in in every aspect of government, there is more listening going on to science than we have had in a long time. I think this is I hope this is a good transition to where, you know, for a long time, the experts and it didn’t really matter what their field was. Because we’ve lived in an era where Google has emerged and we can all be an expert on to a level on a topic. Right? And it doesn’t take very long and so expert knowledge has been increasingly disrespected. And and I think what we’re recognizing there’s a very important role for experts to be able to lend a hand and put take pieces of knowledge and information and data and put it into wisdom that can then be acted upon. And more listening has occurred in government than I have seen in a very long time. People are asking hard questions and they’re okay with disagreeing. That’s okay to disagree, but then dive into why do you disagree? Is that It isn’t a matter of substance. So science, or is it just an opinion that you have a hard time letting go of just yet. So I have seen so many people change their minds in these last in this last six months or six weeks, in ways that are really good. And they’re, and I want to say that I’m incredibly impressed. The State of California has really done a great job of protecting their citizens and doing everything possible to do to both protect life and livelihood. It’s I literally hard balancing.
John Corcoran 40:34
I live in California in San Francisco, just outside of San Francisco and I feel that way certainly that they were definitely were proactive and did a good job. Yeah.
Dr. David Haase 40:43
And, and a massive, massive nation. You have their
John Corcoran 40:49
fifth or sixth largest economy in the globe, right. So it’s like a huge rise. Right. So yeah, and Gavin Newson. You know, I’ve been following him, known him for a long time. followed him very closely for a long time because I’m right outside of San Francisco. And I’m not surprised that he’s done a good job with this because he’s, he’s one who hasn’t been shy from the get go whether you agreed with them or disagreed with him. He hasn’t been shy about saying, this is the way that I feel. And I’m gonna, I’m going to take on this even though this is the third rail, and everyone else is telling me this is political suicide to do it. I’m gonna do it because it feels like the right thing to do. And he’s done that multiple times in this career. Yeah. So, you know, like making the the really tough, courageous decision to order people to shelter in place before really any any other big parts the United States had, I’m sure was not an easy decision. And I imagine you were were you involved in that early stage or more recently? No,
Dr. David Haase 41:46
No, I wasn’t. And I will say that we were going to have to be very cautious about the the wisdom of the retrospective scope gives us right because you know, what we know now compared to what we knew a month ago compared to what we knew a month before that, you know, it’s vast the differences in our experience and our knowledge base. And I’m, and I have a lot of respect for leaders who actually lead you know, and you know, you can disagree absolutely and but if somebody’s leaving you at least know what you need to disagree against, and and you can push back specifically, which is incredibly powerful. So a lot of respect for, for all people across the globe are dealing with this and we do you need to remember that this is a global disease. We happen to be ahead of it all in the United States, but it is it’s spreading like wildfire in Russia right now in Saudi Arabia. You know, different pockets of the world are erupting. So this is really a threat for humanity, humanity and in all of the nations are having to ask questions about Now how do we move forward? And I hope that we really focus on our humanity as we do this. As we move forward. It’s not acting out of fear, but it’s acting out of an assertion that we’re all valuable. And it’s worthwhile for us to work hard to do the right thing for ourselves and those that are around us. You know, this is this is a time who, you know, circumstances don’t define us. They reveal us. And these circumstances are revealing much about all of us.
John Corcoran 43:35
Well, Dr. hussy, this has been tremendous. Thank you so much for taking the time to share this wisdom. Please remind everyone where they can learn more about you connect with you learn about more about the work they do.
Dr. David Haase 43:46
Sure, absolutely. And so you can find me on David halsy md Comm. That’s our website. You can also follow me on Facebook or Twitter again, David halsy, MD calm and that’s ha AS e comm an old German mispronunciation. And and I would love to talk more about we got so many interesting projects going on. There’s so many fascinating things. But I’d love to keep you informed on just what is the very latest going on in the world of COVID, dementia, brain health and all kinds of other fun stuff. So this is John, I want to thank you for taking this time to interview me. It was pretty, it was pretty interesting to have.
John Corcoran 44:34
My pleasure. My pleasure. Great. Yeah. Thank you so much. All right. Thanks, everyone. Take care.
Outro 44:40
Thank you for listening to the Smart Business Revolution podcast with John Corcoran. Find out more at smartbusinessrevolution.com. And while you’re there, sign up for our email list and join the revolution. And be listening for the next episode of the Smart Business Revolution podcast.