0:01

Katie

0:01

Herzog, how's it going?

0:10

Hey, Jesse.

0:13

I got some news. You

0:15

know, I have a racist neighbor. I do. He's

0:18

basically the third co-host. And patron of this podcast

0:20

and racism. Not to be confused with our Patreons.

0:22

No, very different. So racist

0:24

neighbor, he's 86 years old. Long time listeners

0:27

will have heard me talk about him before.

0:29

And this is just to be clear for not long time

0:31

listeners. This is a man who you have personally bathed

0:34

or Jana has or both? Yeah, my wife Jana. Were

0:36

you all bathing together? Your wife

0:37

Jana bathed? Yeah. You

0:40

know, I never say her name on this show. Yeah,

0:42

we could use a detour given that we're 10 seconds

0:44

into the show, but go ahead. I never say her name on

0:46

this show because I've been trying to protect her. You however,

0:48

have multiple times said her name on the show. So I asked

0:50

her if it was okay to start saying her name

0:53

and she said it's fine. So

0:54

you've definitely said her name on the show. I've

0:57

read her social security number because you asked me. I

1:01

was going to make the same joke. Okay,

1:04

well Jana, you have a wife. Her name is Jana and

1:06

she bathes this old man while you film

1:08

it. Is that how it works? Well, I film it in his nosebleeds.

1:11

That's how it works. It's check us out on OnlyFans.

1:14

Okay, so the old man, 86 years old, he's racist.

1:17

He's like

1:19

real racist.

1:21

He's not like getting accused of racist on

1:23

Twitter racist. He's like actually racist.

1:26

Ask him sometime. Actually don't ask him ever

1:29

what he thinks about the NBA.

1:31

That's such a weird

1:33

thing to be racist. Oh,

1:35

he's racist about everything, not just the NBA. Anyway,

1:37

so the news is that

1:40

his brother is moving

1:42

in with him. His brother is moving

1:44

from Michigan. He sold his house. So I'm going to have

1:46

two racists on my hands. This

1:49

one is so racist that when he was in prison

1:52

for a diamond heist, he

1:55

joined the Aryan Nation. And you might

1:57

think like, you know what,

1:58

everybody in prison has to join a

1:59

race gang you have to write. Well,

2:02

he continued up with it, which I'm pretty

2:04

sure because I saw photos of his house of

2:06

the inside of his house, a lot of Confederate flags.

2:08

There is only one reason for a man

2:11

from Michigan to have Confederate flags,

2:13

Jesse. Anyway, he's going to be my problem

2:15

soon.

2:15

Is he older, younger than the 86 year olds? He's

2:18

five years younger. So he's 80, but I think he's

2:20

like an old 80. I was gonna say he's

2:22

a spry 80. Yeah. Okay. So

2:24

probably more racist than the racist guy.

2:27

I think more racist. They also don't get along

2:29

apparently. And there's lots of guns involved

2:31

in this situation and in this household. So it's

2:33

possible I'll have two races and then

2:35

I'll have no races very quickly. Katie,

2:37

I said this before, but when

2:39

it comes to you and personal danger,

2:41

I, you represent

2:44

a set

2:45

amount of my income and an

2:48

amount I'm not willing to forego at this point. So please

2:50

be careful and to a lesser extent, I care about you personally,

2:52

but mostly the money just don't,

2:55

can you maybe like back, can you

2:57

wind down your relationship now that he has an even

2:59

younger and more racist brother to bathe

3:02

him?

3:02

I'm, I'm hoping that I can, I'm hoping that

3:04

either that I can or that they kill each other without

3:06

killing anyone else outside of the household. Yeah.

3:09

Well, we'll see. Stay tuned

3:11

folks. I hope we can get even

3:13

more racist brother updates every week, but thank

3:15

you for that, Katie. Yeah, you're welcome. Jesse,

3:18

how is the fire gala? I saw photos.

3:20

I saw you were there. Speaking of racism. Yes.

3:23

The foundation for individual rights in

3:25

expression, not education, uh,

3:28

had a gala.

3:29

It was a gala. It's not gala. It's gala.

3:31

It was pretty gay. I guess

3:33

it was a gala. Gala was awesome. It was way

3:35

fancier than the stuff I usually do. A

3:38

couple observations. One was that, um, you

3:41

know, this was one of the few places where like a fair number

3:43

of people knew who I was. I got multiple comments

3:45

as I always do that I

3:48

was taller than people expected. I,

3:50

I tweet

3:51

so short and so womanly that

3:54

I'm regularly people tell me they

3:57

thought I was a short woman, which maybe on the inside I am.

3:59

The other thing I hate to say

4:01

this, but a lot of people asked if you were there

4:04

and seemed... Disappointed? So

4:06

much disappointed that you weren't. And I kept saying, Katie

4:08

hates people. She would never come to an event like this.

4:10

She hates the entire Fire board.

4:13

She hates Killer Mike, the keynote speaker.

4:16

But yeah, Killer Mike gave an awesome speech.

4:18

So it was a really good night. I was very grateful I

4:21

could go. Thank you to Fire for hooking

4:23

me up.

4:23

Yeah. I heard that Camille

4:25

was the MC and Killer Mike was there. And so I

4:28

thought I had this vision of

4:30

you introducing yourself

4:32

to Killer Mike, having a whole conversation with him where

4:34

you thought that he was Camille and he thought that

4:37

you were a little dicky.

4:38

That's good. Did

4:40

that happen? No one would actually confuse those two. They're

4:42

very physically different. You

4:44

might. Camille,

4:46

let me put it this way. I'm going to put it as

4:48

least weirdly as possible.

4:51

Camille has a tight bot. He

4:54

knows it. He doesn't know it. He's

4:56

got a bulk to him. But it's like he's in good shape. Killer

4:59

Mike would not claim to be in good shape. He's

5:01

a large man who was toweling himself

5:03

off the sweat off as I would if I gave a keynote.

5:06

He gave a great speech. I had a really fun time.

5:09

Katie, what is the name of this increasingly

5:11

fancy podcast? This is

5:13

Blocked and Reported and I'm Katie Hearsong. And

5:15

I'm Jesse Singal. We're going to talk about health.

5:19

We're going to talk about both feline health

5:21

and less importantly, human health. We are,

5:23

I have a crazy story for you later

5:25

in the show about a particularly terrible

5:28

cat disease. A bad cat disease, huh? Bad

5:31

cats. Yes. And I'm

5:33

going to talk a little bit about Long Covid, the latest article

5:35

in The Atlantic about Long Covid and

5:38

some thoughts I have about it.

5:39

But Jesse, before we get to that, can

5:42

I fill you in on what you've been missing on Twitter? Yes.

5:45

Chaos, Jesse.

5:46

Absolute chaos. Yesterday

5:49

on April 20th on 4-20, Elon

5:52

took away all of the legacy blue checkmarks.

5:54

So now the only people who are verified

5:57

are people who subscribe to Twitter Blue with is

5:59

this like.

5:59

moneymaking scheme that he has.

6:02

So now we have this bizarrely funny situation

6:05

where the same people who spent years complaining

6:07

about blue checks are now themselves blue

6:09

checks and the people who were the subject of those complaints

6:12

are no longer actually blue checks. It's

6:14

a real role reversal situation here.

6:16

Can I tell you something? I knew about this. I

6:18

do keep one eye on Twitter just

6:20

because I want to protect you. But

6:23

one reason I knew about this is because I was leaving

6:25

my in-person therapy appointment and

6:27

my therapist asked me about

6:28

it. My normie therapist asked

6:31

me what I thought, what was up

6:33

with the blue check? What about Elon? I was like- Did

6:35

you start crying immediately? They took my blue check? I

6:37

was like, we need to do another session right now. You

6:39

just sat back down?

6:42

Double feature. Yeah.

6:43

Okay, wait. So the only

6:45

blue checks left are the blue checks you

6:47

can buy. How

6:50

do you feel about not having a blue check?

6:51

I knew that this was coming and

6:53

I thought that I would feel something.

6:55

I feel nothing. I

6:57

really did. But

6:58

you never feel anything about anything? No. Is

7:01

it long COVID? I do feel things.

7:03

I feel things for dogs, as we all know. I

7:07

did think that this was going to

7:09

pain me a little bit because it

7:11

is a status symbol. Or

7:14

it was a status symbol. It bestowed this

7:17

ridiculous veneer of legitimacy

7:19

to you, to me personally, that I frankly didn't deserve.

7:22

So I thought that I would feel a little bit

7:24

chagrined that my blue check was taken away. But

7:27

I don't at all because now

7:29

the blue check is embarrassing. It's cringe.

7:31

It's no longer a status symbol. What it says is, you

7:34

are willing to pay Elon Musk $8 a month

7:36

for what used to be a status symbol. So I'm glad

7:38

that it's taken away. But what this

7:41

resulted in was exactly

7:43

what you'd expect, which is people impersonating

7:46

celebrities and brands.

7:47

That's exactly what I said to my therapist.

7:50

Is it really? No, I was like on my

7:52

way out though. I was like, I don't care except

7:55

it's just like, everyone knows what's going to

7:57

happen. There's going to be like, and I use my

7:59

because I'm the most famous celebrity on Twitter.

8:02

I don't want to give anyone ideas, but you could pretty

8:04

easily, well,

8:05

I shouldn't say this, right? You, for example, someone

8:08

could take your name,

8:10

spell it out, use your middle initial, and just

8:12

impersonate you and have a blue check. And how

8:14

does Elon not understand that's going to immediately

8:16

become a problem?

8:17

Well, not only that, so you don't even have, because

8:19

nobody has a blue check anymore except for the people

8:21

who paid with it. So there can just be a lot

8:24

more impersonation accounts that aren't

8:26

verified that are still going to confuse the user

8:28

about who is legitimate and who isn't.

8:31

So Jesse, I collected a few of my favorites for you.

8:33

Will you look at the notes and click that

8:35

link there? This

8:36

is at NYC Gov. This is

8:38

an authentic Twitter account representing

8:40

the New York City government. This is

8:42

the only account for at

8:44

NYC Gov run by New York City government.

8:48

And then someone responds at

8:51

NYC underscore government. No, you're not.

8:53

This account is the only authentic Twitter account representing

8:55

and run by the New York City government. This year,

8:58

this is like the Spiderman meme,

9:00

but with the most important city in the world. It's

9:02

chaos, chaos. And I honestly, I'm

9:04

the real new year. And I don't actually know which

9:06

one is real, probably the first one, but I don't actually know.

9:09

Okay. Click the next link.

9:10

God, this is not going well. Okay.

9:12

So this is at NYC cooking.

9:15

And it looks like the New York Times cooking logo,

9:18

a traditional dish with a personal touch, see

9:20

our recipe for authentic King's hand.

9:23

And it looks like a severed

9:25

King's hand. That's a cookie

9:27

over a Greek salad.

9:30

I'm so confused. It's just a disgusting

9:32

photo of, yeah, what looks like a

9:34

cookie in the shape of a hand over a salad. But

9:37

because this, this comes from an account

9:39

that has the New York Times cooking logo,

9:42

it

9:43

looks and now the New York

9:45

Times cooking logo won't have any sort of demarcation

9:47

to show that this is legitimate. It looks like

9:49

the New York Times posted this

9:52

extremely bizarre disgusting

9:55

recipe. Okay.

9:56

Now do the last one there.

9:57

Virgil, Texas.

9:59

Okay, yes, I'm back. And it's time

10:02

for me to explain a few things and come clean about some

10:04

others. One out of question mark.

10:06

Okay, so this is going to need some, some,

10:08

some backstory. Can you explain it? This is

10:10

a reference to former chapel

10:12

trap house, co-host Virgil Texas who

10:16

was the subject. Oh, and he co-hosted

10:18

a thing with Brianna Joy,

10:20

Joy gray. There

10:22

was some sort of thing where someone was

10:24

claiming he like DM'd with her

10:26

when she was underage or something. And I hesitate

10:29

to even look, I don't like Virgil, Virgil

10:31

Texas is really obnoxious, but I in much

10:33

the same way I was forced to defend Noah

10:37

Berlatsky. This just when I read

10:39

these claims, it just seems so fuzzy,

10:42

but it was enough to really like fuck him over and

10:44

sort of drive him, I

10:45

think off social media. He disappeared. He

10:47

disappeared. He was co-hosting this new show

10:49

with Brianna Joy gray. The show

10:51

is a big success and he has just

10:54

absolutely disappeared. So she doesn't have a co-host anymore.

10:56

And so presumably he's not getting half the buckets

11:00

of money that she's making every month from the show. Yeah.

11:01

But so that for the kind of internet nerd

11:04

who follows this stuff for Virgil Texas to pop up

11:06

back online, this would have been a really big deal, but it's

11:08

actually someone who's at Real Rick Palace.

11:10

Yeah. And so the next two tweets are

11:12

this guy Rick Palace promoting his own book,

11:15

but the name, the handle and

11:17

the image.

11:18

That was Virgil Texas' actual old avatar.

11:23

I'm ashamed to know. Yeah. Yeah. The avatar

11:25

and the name are Virgil Texas. So if you're not paying attention,

11:27

it looks like this was Virgil Texas. So this

11:30

is the

11:30

dumbest shit ever. Like I'm sorry, but

11:32

anyone, look, I know in

11:34

theory Elon

11:35

Musk is smart about some things, but

11:37

everything, not people.

11:40

That's a little, uh, anti-neurotypical.

11:44

It's like, you're like, try to make a comment about

11:47

his autism, but

11:48

you're like, let's just say he's more

11:50

into objects than people.

11:54

He's not a word cell. He's not a people

11:56

cell. He's a shape or a jitter. Let's

11:58

say there's, let's just say.

13:59

you're an incredibly cheap person.

14:01

Let's just be straightforward about this. Hey, I did waste

14:03

way more than $8 on a van. So

14:06

he's made a lot of stupid decisions starting with –

14:08

Yeah, but the van was so shady, I

14:10

spent so little on it, it just immediately broke down. It

14:12

did look good in one Instagram photo. His

14:15

first stupid decision was buying Twitter, and

14:17

I don't want to reward bad behavior. You don't

14:19

give a dog a treat after it pisses on the sofa,

14:21

and that's what paying for Twitter is to me. Two,

14:24

I provide content to Twitter

14:26

for free. So

14:27

I'm not going to pay Elon to provide content

14:30

when it's the content that brings people to the

14:32

site in the first place, not mine in particular, all content.

14:34

And three, it's embarrassing. But he did do

14:37

something that could have been funny if it was intentional,

14:39

but I don't think it was. So there

14:41

are a few celebrities who – like real celebrities,

14:43

not journalists, blue check marks, which is

14:46

a word we're not going to be able to use anymore,

14:49

who are like – these celebrities were

14:51

like, no, bitch, I'll never pay for Twitter blue, you pay me,

14:53

which I think is valid because, of course, one

14:55

of the draws of Twitter has been the chance to interact

14:57

with famous people.

14:59

Although a lot of famous people stop tweeting when they realize

15:01

your tweets can and will be used against you forever.

15:03

Anyway, so LeBron James, Stephen King, William

15:06

Shatner, a few others, all said

15:08

they weren't going to pay for Twitter blue. So then

15:10

Elon kills the legacy check except for those

15:12

three still have a blue check mark. And

15:15

this could have been sort of a funny joke where Elon

15:17

is like intentionally making it look like they actually

15:19

do pay for Twitter blue, but he's not that

15:21

clever. So he admitted that

15:23

what really happened is that he just is straight up paying

15:26

for their accounts.

15:26

Oh my God, that's so pathetic. It

15:29

is. And I suspect he did this because he doesn't want them to leave

15:31

Twitter. But of course, now it's embarrassing to have

15:34

a blue check mark. So Stephen King was just like, to be

15:36

clear, I did not pay for this, which

15:38

this makes me think that if Elon actually wanted this

15:40

to pay for itself, he would allow

15:43

users to purchase blue check marks for

15:45

their enemies. I would pay for

15:47

one for you. I'm foisting

15:48

the blue check. I'm foisting the blue check

15:50

upon you. Hilariously, Rebecca

15:52

Jones, friend of the pod, Florida Woman, she

15:54

paid for a check. She subscribed to Twitter blue

15:57

and was appropriately embarrassed about this. So

16:00

she claimed that Elon Musk paid for her. She

16:02

just made that up, because of course Elon Musk did

16:04

it. Yeah, of course. Dude, she lies

16:07

so much. Yeah. There's

16:09

also been this. I just want to concede, there has been

16:11

an overreaction where people are leaving Twitter

16:13

because he took their check marks away, like

16:15

Jason Alexander, George Costanza.

16:18

He's one of them. What? Yeah. Skoda's

16:20

blog also said they were leaving, which is also

16:22

hilarious because they were like, find us on Instagram. They're not verified

16:25

on Instagram. That's also cringe. And

16:28

of all of the shit that Elon has done since

16:30

taking over this platform, firing thousands

16:32

of people, blocking sub-stack, pretending

16:34

to care about free speech while punishing those

16:37

who personally offend him,

16:38

there's a long list. If

16:40

the thing that makes you take a brave moral stand

16:43

against Elon Musk is getting your blue

16:45

check taken away, it seems like maybe

16:47

your priorities are a little bit skewed towards, I don't

16:49

know,

16:49

yourself. That bums me out about Jason Alexander

16:51

because he, in portraying

16:54

both one of the best and funniest and

16:56

cringiest TV characters of

16:58

all time, I thought that Jason Alexander himself

17:00

was like. Acting.

17:02

Post cringe or incapable of cringe. Leaving

17:04

Twitter because they took away your blue check. Very cringe.

17:07

You're supposed to leave Twitter for the reasons I did, to avoid

17:10

a risk. Because Federal

17:12

Marshals are closing in. The hippo police are knocking

17:14

at your door. The hippo police. So it's been

17:16

chaos on Twitter, even more so than usual.

17:19

And the actual unfortunate

17:21

thing is that it really is going to be harder

17:24

to get good information. And I'm not saying that because

17:26

a bunch of shitty opinion journalists like myself

17:28

no longer have checks. The old verification

17:31

system really was biased. It was totally flawed.

17:33

It was unfair. But it did tell you that people

17:36

were who they said they were or that organizations

17:38

were who they said they were. And that's just gone

17:40

now. So just wait till there's some kind of

17:42

an emergency and people are trying to figure out who to trust.

17:45

It just this does make it significantly

17:46

harder. But of course, Elon wanted

17:48

to exact revenge on a bunch of journalists

17:50

who hurt his feelings. And it only cost him $44

17:52

billion to do it.

17:53

I noticed a seeming

17:56

uptick in these sorts of shrill

17:58

talk.

17:59

types of Twitter people who

18:02

view sub stack as fascist

18:04

who are now active on sub stack. And I'm trying to figure

18:07

out what's going on there, including a certain non

18:09

pedophile. We devoted an episode.

18:10

No, Noah alleged,

18:13

we don't need to see a blow blow

18:15

a lower blouse. Okay, Jesse, last

18:17

thing on this before we move on. So I wanted

18:20

to see if anyone was using this opportunity

18:22

to impersonate Jesse single click

18:25

that link. Would you? Thank

18:26

you.

18:27

No, nobody cares enough.

18:28

Okay, he's lying. There's about a dozen

18:30

here, Jesse. I hope they're good. They say positive

18:32

things. A lot of them are private, so I'll have to request

18:35

to follow them. Okay, please do. All

18:38

right. You want to move on to talking about COVID? Yeah,

18:40

Katie, let's talk about Ed Yong's

18:42

latest article in the Atlantic. You

18:45

know who Ed Yong is, right?

18:46

I do. He's a writer for the Atlantic. Good

18:49

stuff. Way to use contact clues. Yeah, he's

18:51

a Pulitzer Prize winning reporter who

18:53

covers a science writer, but he

18:55

won the Pulitzer for his coverage of the coronavirus

18:58

for the Atlantic. So his latest

19:01

article is headlined,

19:03

Long COVID is being erased. Again, sub

19:05

headline. What was once outright denial

19:07

has morphed into a subtler dismissal.

19:10

So for those new to long COVID, and

19:13

I'd like to think 80 to 90% of our audience

19:15

is just bed bound one way or another.

19:16

Why else would they be listening to a podcast? Yeah,

19:19

I don't know. Our podcast at least. The

19:21

CDC basically defines long COVID

19:23

as this group of symptoms that some people who have

19:26

COVID grapple with for a long time

19:28

afterward. And as

19:30

we'll get to in a minute, the symptom list is long

19:33

and it's sort of hard to know.

19:36

There's not much diagnostic clarity about exactly

19:38

who has it or who's most at risk

19:40

or like why they get it. There's some thought

19:42

that maybe

19:44

it hits you harder if you're not vaccinated

19:46

or if you had a more severe infection. I think even that

19:48

is somewhat disputed.

19:50

I'm just trying to think of the Venn diagram

19:52

specifically of people on Twitter who complain about

19:54

long COVID and who haven't been

19:56

vaccinated. And I think the number of people in that particular

19:59

Venn diagram.

19:59

is zero. Just on Twitter. Not

20:02

high, just on Twitter, but not

20:04

by a sample. So yeah,

20:06

there's serious uncertainty about essentially

20:09

every aspect of long COVID.

20:11

And if you read Ed Young's article, his basic

20:14

point is that about 10% of Americans infected

20:16

with COVID get long COVID, but

20:19

there's been this attempt to downplay the condition

20:21

and ignore it or to even claim sufferers are

20:23

making it up or suffering from psychosomatic

20:26

rather than like, quote unquote, real physical

20:28

illness. So as a result, the long

20:30

haulers,

20:31

as he calls them and they call themselves

20:33

are suffering. Okay. And why does Ed Young

20:35

say we're ignoring this? So for one thing, he

20:37

says there's a lot of stigma that might prevent

20:39

people with long COVID from talking about it openly.

20:42

We'll get back to that. Yeah. Like herpes, just

20:44

like herpes, long COVID is the new herpes.

20:46

I guess all herpes is long herpes. But

20:49

he thinks the biggest factor is that we want

20:51

as a society, we want to think COVID

20:53

is over. And if we talk about long

20:55

COVID, that illusion will be punctured. He

20:58

uses the phrase mission accomplished in a derogatory

21:00

way, which I think intends for the reader to

21:02

imagine George W. Bush claiming

21:05

the war

21:05

in Iraq was over. So here's a quote,

21:08

most of all, long COVID is a huge impediment

21:10

to the normalization of COVID. It's

21:13

an insistent indicator that the pandemic is

21:15

not actually over that policies allowing

21:17

the Corona virus to spread freely still carry a

21:19

cost that improvements such as better

21:21

indoor ventilation are still wanting that the public

21:23

emergency may have been lifted, but an emergency

21:26

still exists and that millions cannot

21:28

return to pre pandemic life. Quote,

21:30

everyone wants to say goodbye to COVID. Doug

21:32

all told me that's a Priya Dougall, an epidemiologist

21:35

and co-lead on the john Hopkins long

21:37

COVID long study.

21:38

And if

21:41

long COVID keeps existing and people keep talking

21:43

about it, COVID doesn't go away. End quote, the

21:45

people who still live with COVID are being ignored

21:47

so that everyone else can live with ignoring

21:49

it. So

21:51

those are some explanations for why we're

21:53

not all talking about long COVID that much. But

21:56

another explanation for why we don't talk

21:58

about COVID more is that as young

21:59

himself notes, it's a very vague

22:02

condition

22:03

marked by like almost any symptom

22:05

imaginable. And that because of that, it

22:09

may be drawing in a significant number

22:11

of people who think they have it, but who don't

22:13

actually have it. And that makes it challenging

22:16

to diagnose and separate out

22:18

who exactly has what in this context.

22:20

Are you talking about conditions like chronic fatigue,

22:23

Lyme disease, stuff like that? Okay. And does

22:26

that young mentioned that possibility?

22:27

Not really. Like, so he talks about

22:29

how hard it is to identify or diagnose long

22:32

COVID and all the different symptoms. But other

22:34

than a brief mention, um, sort

22:36

of knocking down the idea

22:38

that the disease is psychosomatic. Um,

22:41

and I don't think it's an on off thing where it's

22:43

like either I'll all psychosomatic or all

22:45

caused by a physical pathogen. I

22:48

think it's a bit of a straw man. Um, he just

22:50

sort of takes it as a given that people who say they

22:52

have long COVID symptoms have long COVID. So

22:55

from the start, he's estimate that about

22:57

10% of Americans with COVID developed long COVID comes

23:00

from this survey item sent out by the

23:02

census bureau and the CDC, uh, this

23:05

thing called the national household pulse survey.

23:07

So let me just read this item to you. This

23:10

is the item where if people answer, yes, Ed

23:12

Young considers him to have long COVID.

23:15

Did you have any symptoms lasting three months or

23:17

longer that you did not have prior to having coronavirus

23:20

or COVID-19 long-term symptoms may

23:23

include tiredness or fatigue, difficulty

23:25

thinking, concentrating, forgetfulness,

23:28

or memory problems sometimes referred to as

23:30

brain fog, difficulty breathing or

23:32

shortness of breath, joint or muscle pain, fast

23:34

beating or pounding heart, also known as heart palpitations,

23:37

chest pain, dizziness on standing changes

23:40

to taste, smell or inability to exercise.

23:42

And the only answer is yes or no. Go

23:45

on, Katie.

23:45

I have long COVID. Why do you

23:48

say that? I have all of those symptoms. Because of those

23:50

menstrual changes you were talking about. Yes,

23:52

I have. Yes. Yes. You have all

23:54

those symptoms? Yes, especially menstrual changes.

23:57

The blood isn't coming out of my Barbie pouch.

24:00

anymore. It's coming out of my butthole. What

24:03

do you notice about that list of symptoms?

24:06

They're vague. They seem like they could apply to

24:08

lots of different diseases or conditions,

24:10

I suppose.

24:11

Yeah. They include both

24:14

stuff that's more likely to suggest a serious

24:16

physical problem, like your frequently

24:18

mentioned menstrual changes in your Barbie pouch, but

24:22

much vaguer stuff like brain fog

24:24

or difficulty concentrating. A

24:27

lot of these could be the result of other conditions.

24:30

I think

24:31

this looks like all the symptoms

24:33

of menopause. Well,

24:35

one other journalist I was discussing this with

24:38

said that some of them are symptoms

24:40

of paraminopause, which occurs earlier. Yeah.

24:44

That's when your Barbie pouch shrinks

24:46

before you think it's going to shrink. It's like

24:48

putting it in the dryer. I can't

24:50

say that term, Barbie. I'm

24:52

with Kid Rock. No, definitely

24:55

not with Kid Rock. Shoot those cans.

24:58

The other thing is that

25:01

we need to take into account here, if we're going to approach

25:03

this subject scientifically, the

25:05

pandemic was a unique societal

25:07

trauma. As Americans, we had

25:09

never been through anything like it, including

25:12

9-11. Three weeks after 9-11, I

25:14

hate to say it, life was-

25:15

You're saying COVID was the real 9-11? COVID was

25:17

the real 9-11. Three weeks after 9-11, most of

25:19

us were back to the normal

25:21

rhythm of life. How long did it take? You're

25:24

different because you're a hermit. But for most of us-

25:26

No, no, no. I'm different because I'm a

25:28

Muslim, and so it wasn't back to the normal rhythms

25:30

of life for me. I was discriminated against.

25:32

No, one time are COVIDs. Oh,

25:35

COVID, yeah.

25:38

The connection between mind and

25:41

body is really complicated, but it's quite

25:43

credible to imagine that the psychic

25:45

shock of an event as awful as COVID and

25:47

as long lasting as COVID will leave a mark

25:50

on people. If you got COVID, you

25:52

got COVID at a time when you're probably also dealing with social

25:55

isolation or losing loved ones or losing

25:57

your job or some combination of all this.

25:59

stuff. And that

26:02

sort of psych well in the beginning, that's true.

26:04

Yes. I

26:05

mean, it lot of this lasted

26:07

a while. It was a big shock. When

26:10

people go through psychological trauma, it

26:12

can bring physical symptoms. So

26:14

you're not like the way this question is asked,

26:17

you're basically asking people like, since

26:19

this big horrible traumatic thing have happened,

26:21

have you experienced any of these symptoms? It could be COVID.

26:24

It could be other stuff, right? Gotcha. So

26:27

one researcher working for the Federal Reserve also

26:30

noted that, quote, the pulse survey suffers from

26:32

an extremely low response rate, around 6% in

26:34

recent survey

26:35

waves. In

26:37

addition, respondents cannot be linked over time, precluding

26:39

longitudinal analyses that would facilitate causal

26:42

inference about the effects of long COVID. For these

26:44

reasons, the pulse data may be more useful as a

26:46

barometer of qualitative patterns than

26:48

as reliable gauge of magnitude. So that's

26:51

another warning side. If only 6% of people are

26:53

responding to this, you might be more likely

26:55

to get responses from people who are sick,

26:57

which could skew the numbers. Does that make sense? Yeah.

27:01

Young doesn't really mention any of this. He doesn't mention any of the

27:03

fuzziness of

27:05

figure out who has long COVID, of

27:07

how broad the survey is. And it's very,

27:10

to my mind, high likelihood that it will overestimate

27:12

the number of people with long COVID. He

27:14

also takes his very particular political stance

27:16

on the question of whether we should trust that people's self-diagnoses

27:19

are accurate. Here's what he writes, quote, to

27:22

a degree, I sympathize with some of the skepticism

27:24

regarding long COVID because the condition challenges

27:27

are typical sense of what counts as solid evidence.

27:30

Blood tests, electronic medical records and disability

27:32

claims all feel like rigorous lines of objective

27:35

data. Their limitations become obvious only

27:37

when you consider what the average long hauler goes

27:39

through. And those details are often cast aside

27:41

because they are quote, anecdotal and by implication,

27:44

unreliable. This attitude is backwards.

27:46

The patient's stories are the ground

27:48

truth against which all other data

27:51

must be understood. Gaps between

27:53

the data and the stories don't immediately invalidate

27:55

the ladder. They just as likely show the holes in

27:58

the former. Katie, what do you, what do you make

28:00

as a journalist and alleged journalist

28:02

of this idea that the patient stories

28:04

are the ground truth against

28:07

which all other data must be understood.

28:09

This is sort of like this, this attitude

28:11

that

28:12

we should value quote unquote lived experience

28:14

rather than empirical data.

28:17

I just as a journalist,

28:19

I think it's a strange impulse to take, but

28:22

also an increasingly common one or at least a common

28:24

one among young in particular.

28:26

I mean, I have trouble parsing

28:29

exactly what that means in this context.

28:31

The patient stories are the ground truth against which

28:34

all other data must be understood. It sounds

28:37

noble and obviously it's

28:39

important to listen to patient stories, but

28:41

the whole point of doctors and

28:44

journalists for that matter is to evaluate

28:46

stories and try to figure out which ones are true and

28:48

which are not and which are somewhere in

28:50

the middle. So there's probably some people

28:52

who think they have long COVID and who do, and there's

28:54

probably other people who think they have long COVID

28:56

and they don't.

28:59

So even though doctors and psychologists

29:01

at this point have learned a lot about how mind

29:03

and body interact, and that includes like

29:05

crazy demonstrations of the placebo effect

29:08

where you literally inject someone with salt water

29:10

and they start to feel better. None of this

29:12

is in Yang's article.

29:14

And why do you think he ignored this? I'm

29:18

migrating a little bit here, but

29:20

when you connect this story with some of Yang's other work,

29:22

I think part of the problem is like what happens when journalists

29:25

start to see themselves as an advocate

29:27

for a downtrodden group? Like there's

29:30

nothing wrong with that being part of your goal

29:32

as a journalist or part of your identity. Even if I go

29:35

to report on a civil war in Africa in a

29:37

parallel universe, much more courageous.

29:41

Do they have good wifi in the Congo?

29:45

If I do some of the

29:47

cojones to go report on the civil war, I'm obviously

29:49

doing that partly to tell the stories of victims

29:51

because they might not be told otherwise. That's good. That's

29:54

a perfectly journalistic thing to do, but

29:56

I think if I start to sort of exalt the victims

29:58

and to not

29:59

with any sort of skepticism,

30:02

that's not good journalism. And it's

30:04

not like a perfect parallel with what Yang

30:06

is doing, but I think there's like a severe lack of context

30:08

here that might cause people to

30:11

overestimate the prevalence of long COVID

30:13

and overestimate how sure we can

30:15

be that someone has

30:18

it solely on the basis of their say so. Does

30:20

that make sense to you? Yeah,

30:21

I remember seeing some reports from

30:23

the beginning of COVID when, of course,

30:25

PCR tests were less available, but some reports, and I don't know, I

30:29

can't really evaluate how good these

30:31

were, that a significant

30:34

number of people who reported having long COVID didn't

30:37

have the antibodies for COVID. So that's to

30:39

say they were never infected with COVID

30:41

in the first place. Yeah, I mean, that wouldn't

30:43

be surprising, because again,

30:46

people feel crappy in a lot of ways. They

30:48

have all sorts of symptoms, they might have some other long-term illness, and

30:50

they latch onto explanations for

30:52

it. Like, we've seen this in a lot of other contexts,

30:55

and we've talked about some of them on this show.

30:58

So the problem is, if you just, there's

31:01

got to be a line here where you want patients

31:03

and patient advocates to have a voice, but they can't

31:05

be the final word. At

31:08

one point, Young writes, quote, a British survey

31:10

of almost 1,000 long haulers found

31:13

that 63% experienced overt discrimination because

31:15

of their illness at least

31:17

sometimes, and 34% sometimes regretted telling

31:19

people that they

31:22

have long COVID. So that's

31:23

a... Just like herpes.

31:24

That's

31:27

a plus one study, and I noticed it, and

31:29

I found it to be so shoddy that I wrote it up

31:31

for my newsletter last year, even though I usually stay away

31:33

from this subject. They literally just

31:35

took online groups of people who say

31:38

they have long COVID. So the entire

31:40

sample is people who say they have long COVID, and

31:42

they said, do you feel discriminated against because of that?

31:45

Katie, do you think that's a valid and

31:47

reliable way of gauging how often it is

31:49

that people are discriminated against for having long COVID? And

31:51

they recruited these people from online? Absolutely

31:53

not.

31:53

There's a lot of basic social scientific

31:56

reasons not to trust a survey like that. For example,

31:59

if people who are... more likely to think they have a chronic

32:01

illness are also more likely to

32:03

attribute ambiguous

32:06

interactions with others in a negative way. There

32:08

you go. You would expect when asked are

32:11

people treating you in a negative way for this

32:13

reason, they'll say yes, like, it's

32:15

just it's not

32:16

good survey work. So if like, if you're

32:19

one of the best science reporters in the country, you shouldn't

32:21

cite this just because it supports

32:23

your theory that that long COVID is a

32:26

is a big deal.

32:26

Do you think he's actually one of the best science reporters

32:29

in the country? I mean, he has that reputation. Right.

32:31

But do you think that

32:32

I don't know. I didn't I'm not gonna lie. I didn't I

32:35

don't know. I didn't read that much

32:37

about like COVID maybe just because I felt so

32:39

wiped out by like the impact of COVID on

32:41

my life. I didn't read a lot of his and you had long COVID

32:43

and I have severe long COVID as I've been saying and

32:46

raising money about I will say

32:47

that's why you're so tired. Y'all

32:49

the one time I saw

32:52

Ed Young brush up against an area I know something

32:54

about, which is how to interpret polling. I thought

32:57

he got like a basic thing pretty wrong and that

32:59

he misinterpreted this poll in

33:01

a way that supported his political priors,

33:04

which is are that we should spend a lot

33:06

of money, government money to sort

33:08

of recover and build back better from COVID, which

33:10

I personally am fine with as a liberal.

33:13

But like, I'll include a link to

33:15

this. This I think the only other time I've ever

33:17

critiqued him in that. But I, I don't

33:19

know. I thought he didn't read the study carefully

33:21

before summing it up in an oversimplified

33:23

way in the pages of the Atlantic.

33:24

Well, he's also written about gender dysphoria,

33:26

right? What do you think about his work on that?

33:29

Oh yeah. He wrote, that's

33:31

a whole other thing.

33:34

I think there might be a pattern here

33:36

of he's very skeptical of studies

33:39

that don't match his own priors. And

33:41

we now know that Ed Young thinks that like we shouldn't

33:43

be doing critical reporting

33:46

on gender dysphoria stuff because he signed

33:48

that open letter. To the New York Times? Yeah,

33:51

the New York Times open letter. Of course he did. So

33:54

I don't know. I think there's a little bit of a pattern here where

33:56

I've

33:57

definitely fallen victim to the same thing. You need to be careful

33:59

with confirmation by.

33:59

bias, but you should look

34:02

at all studies skeptically, because all studies have

34:04

weaknesses. But I think, I don't

34:06

know, like now that I've read this long COVID thing, I can

34:08

come up with a few instances in which he seems to not

34:10

be very skeptical of studies that

34:13

support messages he's hoping to

34:15

impart, if that makes sense.

34:16

Yeah. And one thing I noticed just as a reader, like

34:18

I don't know anything about COVID. I don't know anything

34:20

about long COVID. I haven't had COVID. I might be the last

34:22

person in America who hasn't ever had

34:24

COVID, except for my racist neighbors.

34:26

You're just so healthy. Yeah.

34:30

I don't leave the house. But as a reader

34:32

who knows that Ed Yong is supposed to be one of the best,

34:34

if not the best science journalists

34:36

in the country, Pulitzer winning, I

34:38

would read this article and just believe

34:42

everything that he says. And without

34:44

any sort of expertise in this area, it's really

34:46

hard to evaluate the quality of

34:49

his reporting. So I did read his article,

34:52

and then I went and I read another article. This

34:54

one is in The New Republic. It's by a

34:57

reporter named Natalie Sher.

34:58

Jesse, do you know her work?

35:00

Yeah. She's been really good on things like Havana syndrome.

35:03

And she's also written about long COVID. Then

35:05

I read a piece that she wrote, and her piece

35:08

was much more skeptical. Not that she didn't

35:10

say that long COVID doesn't exist, but she

35:12

talked much more about this mind-body connection

35:14

that you're talking about here. And

35:16

I read her piece, and I was totally convinced

35:18

by her piece too. And so this is as a news

35:20

consumer, it's

35:22

really hard to know. I have no reason

35:24

to think that Ed Yong knows any more about this than Natalie

35:26

Sher does. I have no reason to think that she knows more about

35:28

it than he does. So as a consumer, I'm

35:31

just sort of left in this space.

35:32

I honestly do not know what to believe. I don't know if long

35:35

COVID exists, if it's psychosomatic, if

35:37

it's a software problem or a hardware problem, which

35:39

is something that Natalie Sher writes about. I'm

35:42

as baffled as I was before I

35:44

actually

35:45

read these articles. Yeah. I'm actually

35:47

embarrassed that I haven't read the Sher one yet, because

35:49

that came across my desk forever ago, and I think she does good

35:51

work. But I would say

35:54

if you read two articles on this, and one

35:56

of them does address the mind-body

35:59

connection.

35:59

and how difficult it is when symptoms

36:02

are this vague and wide ranging and

36:05

one doesn't, I would always err on the side of

36:07

the journalist who gives you the more

36:08

it's complicated account. But

36:10

Jesse, he won a Pulitzer.

36:13

That is true. Sure.

36:16

Was not the only other

36:17

journalist to like look at this in a sensitive

36:20

but appropriately skeptical way. Back in 2021, Stuart Richie,

36:24

he's a buddy of mine. I met him in person once. He's a really

36:26

good science writer and psychologist. He

36:28

did a piece for UnHerd. The headline

36:30

does not do justice to it. The headline is does long

36:32

COVID really exist? The article is much

36:35

more nuanced. He just pointed out that

36:37

like, while there was all this conservative

36:39

nonsense about COVID going on, this was 2021. And some of

36:42

that nonsense he and his friends had helped debunk

36:45

by making a website, looking at common conservative

36:47

claims. He pointed out that like,

36:49

on the left, people were being a bit too credulous

36:51

about long COVID and he didn't deny

36:53

that

36:54

there's something here, but he pointed

36:56

out that there were wildly varying preference

36:59

estimates and quote, and that there was a ton

37:01

we don't know. Let me just read one

37:03

quote from that. Part

37:06

of the confusion also has to do with the grab bag,

37:08

quote, non specificity and quote

37:10

of the long COVID symptoms. We know that fatigue,

37:13

pain, and many of the other commonly reported

37:15

complaints can be caused by a whole range of other

37:17

disorders, including psychosomatic ones,

37:20

or can appear in the absence of any known diagnosis.

37:23

Medical science is notoriously bad

37:25

at explaining, treating, or even properly

37:27

describing symptoms like fatigue and

37:29

chronic pain. This is something we've struggled

37:32

with for decades, much to the dismay of endless

37:34

numbers of patients who often feel ignored and

37:36

misunderstood by their doctors. That's,

37:39

I thought advocates for long COVID patients point

37:41

to embarrassing mistakes made in the past, like Freud's

37:44

idea that quote, repressed erotic ideas,

37:46

end quote, were the cause of some physical symptoms.

37:49

I mean, that's true. I know, because I just did not the note,

37:51

no FAP thing. But again,

37:54

I think if you're trying to figure out who to trust

37:56

the fact that, you

37:58

know, to a certain degree, three, Stuart

38:00

Richie and now we can say Natalie Schur are

38:03

like, they're sort of throwing up their hands and they're saying like, look,

38:05

this is really complicated.

38:07

Um, and, and Young's article

38:09

also reminded me of a great New York magazine

38:12

article. My former colleague Molly Fisher

38:14

wrote about chronic Lyme back

38:16

in 2019. Do you remember this one?

38:18

I don't, but you know, I do have chronic

38:20

Lyme, so I should read it. You have chronic everything.

38:23

Um,

38:23

you have chronic rudeness is what I've diagnosed.

38:25

I do have chronic Lyme.

38:28

I sent you the picture. Remember? Oh God.

38:30

Yeah, I did not need that picture. It

38:32

was not a joke. This was a 2019 New

38:34

York article, uh, quote, maybe it's

38:36

Lyme. What happens when illness becomes

38:38

an identity?

38:40

This was before COVID of course, but Fisher

38:42

made a lot of points that apply to long COVID as well.

38:44

Chronic Lyme has quote, no consistent

38:47

symptoms, no fixed criteria and no accurate

38:49

test. End quote. She writes that quote,

38:52

there are just enough openings in the standard

38:54

account of Lyme disease, enough ambiguity about

38:56

how this disease looks, how it works and how it can be

38:58

stopped to make it sound like a conceivable

39:01

explanation for all kinds of symptoms. Start

39:04

looking online and the symptoms that chronic Lyme

39:06

patients describe may well sound familiar. Brain

39:09

fog is the big one.

39:10

Everyone talks about trouble, thinking and focusing,

39:12

forgetfulness. Then there's fatigue and pain,

39:15

headaches, joint pain, muscle pain that won't go away,

39:17

or maybe the pain does go away. It comes and

39:19

goes, or maybe there's nausea or your

39:22

eyes hurt, or you've got panic attacks or bladder. Check,

39:24

check, check, check. Does any of this? Yeah. Does

39:26

any of this sound familiar to like everyone?

39:28

I mean, but, but Lyme though, Lyme, like, and I say this

39:30

because I did just literally have Lyme disease.

39:32

There is a, you get a big fucking

39:35

bullseye on your, in my case, on your butt. Oh

39:37

no, Lyme disease

39:39

is totally real, but, but Fisher points out that

39:42

people who convinced themselves they have chronic

39:44

Lyme, um, and it's mostly women,

39:46

which mirrors a pattern we see in some long

39:48

COVID data, you know, people

39:50

who convinced themselves they have this and who may not,

39:53

they fall victim to all sorts of quacks

39:55

who offer them both a pat explanation

39:58

for their distress and also treatment.

39:59

said in some cases are outright dangerous. People

40:02

have actually died because they've had ports

40:04

installed to help give them medicine for

40:06

chronic Lyme they might not have, and then they've gotten infections

40:09

as a result.

40:09

Yeah. Have you read Ross Douthat's work

40:11

on chronic Lyme, which he has? Just a little

40:13

bit. I mean, he wrote a whole book on it, right? Yeah. I

40:16

haven't read the book. I've read some of his essays. And

40:18

Ross is ... This is one of those cases where

40:20

I'm sort of a natural skeptic. I

40:22

think a lot of people are fakers and whiners. But

40:25

when Ross writes about this, I believe

40:28

him. I believe the symptoms, and he did these

40:30

treatments, some of which are wacky as hell, and some of

40:32

them he said worked. It could be the placebo

40:35

effect, of course. And of course, if

40:37

you feel like shit and something makes you feel better, it probably

40:39

doesn't really matter if it's a placebo

40:42

or not, unless there are other complications

40:44

based on the treatment.

40:45

Well, and again, but I want to be clear, I'm not saying

40:47

that no one has long COVID or no

40:49

one has chronic Lyme. These are

40:51

serious diseases that could affect you in the long run, and maybe

40:54

in some cases these treatments work. Although

40:56

in medical research, the lowest quality

40:59

of evidence possible is someone feels bad,

41:01

then they take a thing, then they feel better with no comparison

41:04

group, because all sorts of stuff can go wrong there. But

41:06

in terms of determining causality.

41:09

So yeah, the point is that isn't that any of

41:11

these people individually aren't

41:13

telling the truth or accurately

41:15

describing their symptoms. It's that you don't

41:18

know. You can't know for sure what's going on, especially

41:20

when you're talking about conditions that start to have an online

41:22

identity surrounding them.

41:23

Too bad there's not a test for that. Look,

41:26

the chronic chronic Lyme to long COVID is a little bit

41:29

apples and oranges, but I was just struck by like how

41:31

differently Molly Fisher approached

41:34

the subject as compared to how young approach

41:36

long COVID. Like it jumped out at me that

41:39

young only focused on stigma

41:41

and on the idea of people being too ashamed of

41:43

long COVID to admit they had it.

41:46

I'm sure that's true for some people, but

41:48

anyone who has hung out in circles like ours knows

41:51

that like at least when it comes to like

41:53

elite liberal types, I don't feel like we're

41:56

exactly shy about sharing our ailments. Doesn't

41:58

feel like the opposite of anything.

41:59

does. Too much. TMI.

42:02

I don't know, man. In terms of

42:04

who to trust, Yang

42:07

is ignoring that we live in a world where chronic

42:10

illness influencer is an actual phrase

42:12

that describes an actual group of very successful online

42:14

people. It's a job. Being

42:16

chronically ill to make money is a full-time job.

42:21

I do have sympathy for

42:25

people who have this or who feel like they have

42:27

it. It's sort of a nightmare situation.

42:30

Especially if

42:31

doctors can't figure it out. It

42:33

wouldn't be fun for doctors to doubt you, but it's partly

42:35

the job of doctors to doubt you, right? Right.

42:37

There's so many other cases

42:40

where you go to a doctor complaining of something

42:42

and the doctor sort of just throws

42:44

their hands up. I don't know what it is. That's happened to me.

42:46

Of course, the way that our

42:49

medical system is structured,

42:51

when you go to a doctor, you're probably not getting

42:53

much real attention. They have patient

42:56

after patient after patient after patient, your health insurance

42:58

changes every year. Your doctor changes every year.

43:00

The system is so fucked that I think it's really hard to

43:02

get adequate care for a lot

43:04

of us. I feel real sympathy

43:07

for these people.

43:07

This was a point both in Fisher's article and

43:09

this article I read in Slate that was partly response

43:11

to hers. If you're an honest

43:13

doctor and someone comes to you with these nonspecific

43:16

symptoms and you're like, I'm

43:18

not sure. You could have chronic Lyme. I'm not

43:20

sure you do. I'm not sure how to help you. That's

43:23

the honest, professional thing to do. On the other

43:25

hand, you're like, yes, you definitely have chronic Lyme.

43:28

Let's get you set up with regular appointments for me. There are a thousand

43:30

dollars a pop. That's a real thing. There's

43:33

these New York City doctors who just, some of

43:35

whom are facing, at the time of Molly's

43:37

article, were facing investigations

43:39

by the state board or whatever. There's

43:42

a real tricky balancing act here because you

43:44

want to listen to patients and make them feel

43:46

heard, but it's sort

43:48

of

43:49

lying to them to be like, yup, you definitely

43:51

have this. Let's get you started on treatment. It's not

43:53

sort of lying. Maybe some of these doctors have convinced

43:56

themselves of doing the right thing, but it's like, it's not honest.

43:58

Anyway, let me just.

43:59

Let me wrap this up by reading one other thing Ed Young

44:02

wrote from 2020. I think this was his first

44:04

ever article on long COVID.

44:08

As many people reported brain fogs and concentration

44:10

challenges as coughs or fevers,

44:13

some have experienced hallucinations, delirium,

44:16

short-term memory loss, or strange vibrating

44:18

sensations when they touch surfaces. So

44:21

like, again, it's that

44:22

balance. Someone who's experienced

44:24

delirium or hallucinations or vibrations.

44:27

I'm not sure as

44:29

a journalist, you're even doing them any favors by being

44:31

like, yup, that's definitely long COVID. Definitely not

44:34

something psychological. So should we write the

44:36

polls for committee? Yeah, exactly. We should

44:38

seek to have them deplatform. I'm trying to go well. Let's

44:41

at least get his blue check taken away. Okay. Well,

44:43

we're going to move on from sick people to

44:45

sick cats, but first housekeeping. Well,

44:47

let's do it. Go for it. Let's see what you can remember.

44:49

We are a podcast. You can reach

44:52

us at locked and reported podcasts at

44:54

gmail.com. There you can email

44:56

us all of your chronic disease stories.

44:59

Also stories about adult baby diaper lovers,

45:01

Twitter blue checks, anything you want, send them there.

45:04

Oh,

45:04

we got, we got one email from someone who wants

45:06

to be connected with others, but I'm too lazy.

45:09

So I said that she should send us a, a, an

45:11

adult baby diaper. Hopefully

45:13

by this time next week, we'll be like, if you're

45:15

an ABDL, email this person to do whatever

45:18

you people do.

45:18

Yes, we are the place to go to

45:21

connect with other adult baby diaper lovers, apparently.

45:23

Not sure how this happened. Also,

45:25

if you go to blocked and reported.org, you

45:28

can become a primo, a premium

45:30

subscriber of this very show. You get

45:32

three extra episodes of this show.

45:34

Every month you get access to

45:36

our comment section, which is the best

45:38

common section on the internet. I think that's not an exaggeration,

45:41

right? And

45:41

Fuego. It's in Fuego. Yes. It's

45:43

lit. I think they say that right. It's lit. It's

45:45

lit. Jesse, did you turn on the subscriber

45:48

chat? No, you're going to write. No,

45:49

no. Well, so I, so I

45:51

said, I texted you about doing

45:54

it, but then I realized like, I thought it would

45:56

just like open up a chat room where subscribers could

45:58

say whatever they want, but we need to post.

45:59

something to like spark the conversation. And

46:02

that was too much pressure. Okay,

46:03

so we have not turned on the Subtriber chat,

46:05

but maybe. Well, if you're

46:07

a subscriber, do you feel strongly about the chat

46:10

function? Let us know and we can look into it.

46:12

Okay, what else? We have a subreddit.

46:14

You can find that at blockedinreported.reddit.com.

46:18

Is that right? Yeah, you're betting a thousand, I think, with

46:20

the URLs, which is unusual for you because of your chronic

46:22

fatigue syndrome. We have merch, barpartumurch.com.

46:27

Yep. All right. Is

46:29

that it? What is your mom's

46:32

middle name? She's Catholic. She doesn't

46:34

have one. Wait, is that actually a thing? I don't know. I

46:37

think that's it. Yeah, definitely check

46:39

us out at blockedinreported.org. We've

46:42

got some primo

46:44

episodes to record coming up. Yeah. Should

46:46

be good. Okay, Jesse, are you ready to move on?

46:49

Let's do it. Cats. Okay, this was

46:51

one of the more complicated stories

46:53

that I have ever worked on. Huge

46:56

thank you to Trace for helping me

46:58

on Spool Unspoil, this

47:01

particular story. It was very complicated.

47:03

Spool, spool, unspool. Jesse,

47:06

what do you think about cats? You know, I like

47:08

cats. I'm a nonpartisan in

47:10

the never-ending cat dog wars.

47:12

I know you favor dogs. I think cats and dogs

47:15

both serve valuable niches in today's modern

47:17

economy. You're non-binary. I'm non-binary

47:19

when it comes to cats and dogs.

47:21

Okay, so our segment today

47:23

begins with an email we received from a

47:25

listener named Allison. Here's what she wrote.

47:28

I have a bit of a wild story you may be interested in.

47:31

It involves crazy cat Facebook groups, the black

47:33

market, and lots of drama. This

47:35

might not be something you care to get into, but as

47:37

I was going down this rabbit hole in an effort to

47:39

save my cat,

47:40

I felt like it was so weird and crazy that

47:42

I have to get this story out. So here I am. Intriguing.

47:46

Going down a rabbit hole to save your cat.

47:48

Wow. I'm just trying to picture that right now. Okay,

47:51

so Allison went on to say that in

47:53

March of this year, her kitten Winnie

47:55

Winslow contracted a rare but increasingly

47:57

common virus called FIP.

47:59

were feline infectious parietontus.

48:03

Parion... Paratonitis. Oh

48:05

my God. You've

48:07

been working on this for hours and you don't know how to pronounce

48:10

it. Wait, say that word again. Paratonitis.

48:13

It looks like paratonitis based on the numbers. Okay, we'll

48:15

go with that. We're going to call it FIP.

48:17

This is where her journey down the rabbit hole began.

48:20

So let's start there. She sent pictures of Winnie. He

48:22

was one of those floofy long-haired cats, like multicolored

48:25

in different shades of white and gray. He

48:27

had clear blue eyes.

48:28

Like a silver fox type? Silver... like a

48:30

white fox. So Alison describes

48:32

him as sweet, snuggly, curious, and social.

48:35

She said, give him a treat and he would be your best friend.

48:38

That's like you, isn't it? Well, yeah, but also

48:40

it's just... Okay, cats are more interesting

48:43

than they're given credit for. They do have individual personalities.

48:45

But I like when people try to describe how special

48:48

your neet, their cat is. It likes food.

48:50

He likes treats. All right, well this is unique. Keep

48:53

meow sometimes.

48:53

I would pick him up and perch him on my shoulder and he would just

48:55

hang out there while I would about my day.

48:58

His meow sounded like a little question. Aww.

49:01

That's sweet, right?

49:02

So Alison and her partner adopted Winnie

49:04

at four months old. And then when he was about eight

49:06

months old, they noticed one evening that he seemed listless,

49:09

lethargic, kind of sad. And that his

49:11

third eyelid was showing. I've never had a cat

49:13

before other than a two-week period when

49:16

I had a mouse. That cat's name

49:18

was Kitty Persog. And

49:20

I've never heard of the third eyelid, but it's a mucous

49:22

membrane in the corner of the eye that it's generally not

49:24

visible if the cat is healthy. So clearly something

49:26

was wrong. So they brought Winnie to the vet

49:29

the next day and got some tests done. And

49:31

as they were waiting for the test

49:32

results,

49:33

Winnie suddenly got a lot worse. So Alison

49:35

says that he was very clearly in pain and

49:37

his eyes were swollen and yellow, so they rushed him to

49:40

the emergency vet. And the vet

49:42

said that he was pretty certain. It was this FIP,

49:45

feline infectious periotontis.

49:46

Say

49:49

that again, Jesse. Peritonitis?

49:51

I'm just literally reading the word, Katie. Okay.

49:54

So this was a dire diagnosis. It

49:57

typically occurs in young cats, and it's

49:59

almost always a death.

49:59

sentence. It's caused by a coronavirus,

50:02

though not COVID. And there are two forms

50:04

of it, wet and dry, not unlike the two

50:07

forms of cat food, oddly.

50:08

Do they diagnose FIP via

50:10

anonymous internet surveys? Both of them, yes.

50:13

Both of them are fatal,

50:15

but there are differences in some of the symptoms.

50:17

So with wet FIP, there's an accumulation

50:19

of fluid in the chest. Symptoms include

50:21

lots of appetite, fever, diarrhea, weight loss,

50:24

also symptoms of long COVID.

50:26

With dry FIP, there's also loss

50:28

of appetite, fever, weight loss, but

50:30

there's no fluid buildup. And they could have additional

50:33

neurological symptoms like trouble standing

50:35

or walking, seizures, paralysis, vision

50:37

loss, and death, often within

50:39

days or weeks. It's a really bad disease.

50:42

And it typically affects cats under two. So

50:44

that's sort of especially sad. And there's no vaccine

50:47

against it. There

50:47

is, however, a treatment, but as Alison's

50:50

vet told her, she could not get it

50:51

from him. Why not? So the treatment

50:54

is an antiviral. It's actually a variant

50:56

of remdesivir. And that might sound familiar

50:59

to you because it's also used to treat COVID.

51:01

So this particular variant is called GS441524.

51:05

We're going to call it GS for short. And

51:07

the patent is owned by Gilead, which

51:10

is of course, a giant pharmaceutical company that

51:12

specializes in antiviral drugs like

51:14

remdesivir. And the reason Alison

51:16

couldn't get it from her vet is because Gilead

51:19

refuses to license this drug as

51:21

a treatment for cats, which means it's not

51:23

FDA approved for FIP. So

51:25

it's illegal to prescribe it for that use in the US.

51:28

Gilead doesn't comment on this. The working

51:30

theory is that they won't license this for cats

51:33

because they think it will hinder the remdesivir

51:35

market because the drugs are so similar

51:37

that any adverse effects in cats

51:40

might have to be investigated for

51:43

safety issues in humans.

51:45

This is apparently pretty standard in the industry.

51:47

Drug companies don't create problems for themselves if

51:50

they don't have to. Okay, but does it work for cats?

51:52

It does. This is not snake oil. This

51:54

is actually as close to a

51:56

miracle drug as it gets. So there's

51:59

an FIP research

51:59

who also was a cat lover at UC Davis.

52:02

His name is Nils Peterson. And

52:04

he's been studying FIP since he was in vet

52:06

school in the 1960s. And around 2015 or so, he got in touch

52:08

with someone

52:11

he knew at Gilead. This person sent

52:13

him a bunch of different drug molecules to test,

52:15

including GS44152. So

52:18

Peterson started trials and in that first trial,

52:20

he infected 10 cats with FIP, which

52:23

he's a cat lover. This has just got to be a wrenching

52:25

experience for someone like him. Maybe

52:28

he

52:28

just picked like really unpleasant

52:30

cats. Yeah. Yeah, shitty cats. And

52:32

then he administered GS441524. Every

52:35

one of them survived. And in 2019, he

52:37

published a

52:40

field study of 31 cats with FIP.

52:42

So that was cats who contracted

52:45

FIP naturally, not in the lab. And

52:47

of those 31,

52:48

five died of FIP or were euthanized

52:51

with FIP. One died of unrelated

52:53

causes and 24 survived

52:55

and remained healthy by the time of publication. That's

52:58

crazy. So that's a survival rate of about 80% for

53:00

a disease that kills nearly all of the cats who

53:02

get it if left untreated.

53:04

But of course, this is a small study, but

53:06

it's still promising, right? And besides the study,

53:08

there's just loads of anecdotal evidence that it

53:10

works, including from vets. So

53:13

Alison's vet, he told her, I'm paraphrasing

53:15

here, you may have read some stuff online about

53:17

some drugs for FIP. Normally with FIP,

53:20

I would say that it's fatal, but I have been proven

53:22

wrong a few times now. He told her

53:24

that he couldn't help her get it, but if she could get it herself,

53:26

he would help administer it.

53:28

So how's she supposed to do that? Okay.

53:31

Jesse, this is where this becomes a story about the internet.

53:33

Because even though Gilead won't license

53:36

this drug, there's still a need for it. So

53:38

naturally, a robust black market has

53:40

emerged to fill the void. Because if you know cat

53:42

ladies and cat gens and cat enbies, you

53:45

know, they will do anything to save their cat babies,

53:48

including paying thousands of dollars for

53:50

black market drugs from China that they inject

53:52

into their pets.

53:53

How much does it cost? Okay, so that's kind

53:55

of a difficult question to answer. Just

53:57

a few years ago, it could cost upwards of $10,000.

53:59

for a full course of treatment, and

54:02

yes, people did pay that. The prices

54:04

come down a lot since then, but it's based

54:06

on where you get it, the size of the cat, how much you

54:08

need, if it's wet or dry FIP,

54:11

what brand of drug you get, et cetera. So

54:13

we're going to talk about the cost again in a little while,

54:15

but before we do, you need to meet Robin

54:18

Kintz. There have been a few articles

54:20

published about the FIP block market in the last

54:22

few years. The Atlantic published one

54:25

in 2020, so did Business Insider. A number of

54:27

other outlets, like smaller outlets, have published

54:29

them as well.

54:29

And a woman named Robin Kintz is mentioned in almost

54:32

all of them because Robin is one

54:34

of the more prominent figures in this world, and

54:36

she's the founder of a Facebook group called FIP

54:39

Warriors, which has become a primary

54:41

source for people to get block market GS.

54:44

Here's how the Atlantic story begins. When

54:46

Robin Kintz's two kitchen ... fuck.

54:48

When Robin Kintz's two kitchen ... fuck.

54:51

When Robin Kintz's two kitchen ... fuck. No,

54:54

keep it. No, you're not. Three times in

54:56

a row, you said when Robin Kintz's two

54:58

kitchen, which is not a

55:00

thing, and we're keeping that in. Fine.

55:03

If you screw something up twice, you can edit it out.

55:06

Okay. When Robin Kintz's two kitchens ...

55:09

Kittens. Fiona and Henry

55:11

contracted a fatal cat disease last

55:13

year. She began hearing of a block market

55:16

drug from China.

55:17

The use of the drug, known as GS441524,

55:20

is based on legitimate research from UC Davis,

55:23

but the ways to get it seem less so. Quote,

55:25

it was, if you want to save your cat

55:27

and send me thousands of dollars, and I'll DHL

55:30

you some unmarked vials, she says.

55:32

And she did. Kintz transferred the thousands

55:35

of dollars, got the unmarked vials from China, and then

55:37

injected the clear liquid into her dying cats

55:39

every day for months. The Atlantic

55:41

story goes on to explain that when Robin

55:44

was trying to get this drug, she joined some Facebook

55:46

groups for FIP and posted

55:48

in the groups asking about how to get GS, put in

55:50

those groups at the time the discussion of how

55:52

to procure the drug had been banned. And

55:55

at

55:55

the time, this was really controversial in those groups,

55:58

with some people arguing like yes, we should be ... doing

56:00

everything we can to save the cats.

56:03

And some people being like, no, this is black market

56:05

medicine, don't touch it. One of the

56:07

more prominent people in the latter camp, so

56:09

the anti-black market camp, was Susan Gingrich.

56:12

She's the sister of Newt Gingrich. Her

56:16

cat, Bria, died of FIP in 2005,

56:19

and she started a fund for research into the disease.

56:22

She was also an administrator of one of these groups

56:24

that banned discussing black market GIS. And

56:27

her preferred tactic, and she wasn't alone in

56:29

this, was to pressure Gilead into licensing

56:31

it, but that hasn't worked yet. And

56:34

as you might imagine, black market drugs are

56:36

controversial among vets too. You're

56:38

feeding an illicit trade. Some will

56:40

absolutely refuse to get involved, and others,

56:43

like Allison's vets, will offer to help with the injections.

56:46

And the Steelman case here

56:48

is that I,

56:49

of course, sympathize with people trying to save their pets.

56:53

But the more this black market emerges,

56:56

there could just be some horrible unintended consequences

56:58

if scammers start sending fake GIS,

57:01

blah, blah, blah.

57:01

Absolutely. So when Robin's

57:03

cats got sick, and she posted in these groups some

57:05

other women in the group, D.M. Tur, and gave her some

57:08

advice, which that's how Robin got the drugs

57:10

herself,

57:11

then she started a new group called FIP

57:13

Warriors, where talk about GIS not

57:16

only wasn't banned, it was encouraged. That

57:18

was the point of the group, to get people to medicine.

57:20

Wait, are we going to get to this, or did her cats

57:22

get better? Her cats got better, yeah. Okay,

57:24

good. You buried

57:25

the lead. I don't know, there's just so much

57:27

drama we're getting into, that just didn't seem that important. But

57:30

you're right. Well, you don't care about cats at all? Her

57:32

cats, yeah. Anyway, good to see you.

57:34

And at first, that's what the group was, right? It

57:36

was volunteer-run, it wasn't an official nonprofit,

57:38

but it wasn't a money-making venture. It was

57:41

just people trying to save these cats. Robin

57:43

made that clear in the beginning. She said, no one involved

57:45

in this group takes commission, and it actually costs volunteers

57:48

money for things like shipping, and they

57:50

work to donate the drugs for people who can't afford it, etc.

57:53

She told the publication 1-0, it's one of these

57:55

medium verticals, quote, it's

57:57

like the Dallas Buyers Club, when patients couldn't get

57:59

a the AIDS meds they needed in this country legally.

58:02

That's kind of what I'd like to think we're doing for cats. But

58:05

things have changed since that group started.

58:08

For one, the group is huge. It currently

58:10

has over 43,000 members and 26

58:13

moderators, and there are spin-off

58:15

groups and groups in different countries and different languages,

58:17

et cetera. And the mission has expanded

58:20

since the beginning. Like they started testing

58:22

drugs. See most of the block market drugs

58:24

are coming from China, and as you can imagine,

58:26

the quality controls can be subpar. So

58:29

how are people supposed to know what they're getting, right? So

58:32

GS sellers will approach the group, and

58:34

if they're unknown, if they haven't worked with them before,

58:35

the mods will ask for samples

58:38

to send to cat rescues, and if the cats survive,

58:40

it works, and if they don't,

58:42

they don't work with the seller.

58:43

Or at least they should. That's interesting. This

58:46

is like out of like an econ textbook of how like a block market can

58:48

like establish trust and what's interesting.

58:50

Plus the group isn't just connecting cat

58:52

owners with the sellers, they're also distributing

58:55

themselves. Or at least they were. There

58:57

have been some changes lately due to some scandal

58:59

that we'll get to shortly, but what you

59:01

need to know is that the drugs weren't going directly from

59:03

the manufacturer to the buyer. Rather,

59:06

they were getting shipped from China or Hong Kong

59:08

to the admins of the Facebook group, and

59:10

then the admins would sell them to buyers.

59:13

Or to use the term that people in the group

59:15

use, the admins would sell them to parents.

59:17

The cat parents. Now, this is the sort of thing,

59:20

the cat

59:20

parents. This is the sort of thing that used to make me

59:22

roll my eyes at pet people, like calling

59:24

themselves parents, but now that Moose is in my life,

59:26

and I regularly refer to Janna as

59:30

mother, as in Moose, go

59:32

ask your mother to take you out, I'm busy.

59:34

I get it.

59:35

I'm going to try to refrain from calling the cat owners

59:37

parents to avoid triggering anyone, but

59:39

this is what it's called in this world.

59:42

But the

59:43

moderators of FIP Warriors

59:46

control the supply of drugs?

59:48

Not the moderators, the admins.

59:50

It's sort of a hierarchy, right? So the moderators.

59:53

The admins are the people who founded it at

59:55

the very top. While Robin sits at the top

59:57

below her are admins who are basically independent.

59:59

contractors who sell and

1:00:03

distribute the drugs. The mods are the people

1:00:05

who essentially run the

1:00:07

Facebook group and connect buyers

1:00:10

with admins.

1:00:11

Does that make sense? Yeah. So the Facebook

1:00:14

group, FIP Warriors, it's not really a discussion

1:00:16

group like a standard Facebook group. Here's

1:00:18

how it works.

1:00:19

You request to join, you answer a few questions,

1:00:22

and if you're admitted into the group,

1:00:24

you post that your cat has FIP, most

1:00:26

people include pics, and then a moderator will

1:00:28

comment on the post basically saying, check your DMs,

1:00:31

and then the mod will turn the messages off on the

1:00:33

post. Got it? Yeah. So

1:00:36

I joined the group, I did exactly

1:00:37

this. Wait, is this why you asked me to pose

1:00:39

as a kitty cat and hit those photos of me? You're

1:00:41

not the furry, I asked the furry to do that. Just

1:00:44

a big picture of Trace in a cat costume. So

1:00:47

I joined the group, I did this minus

1:00:49

the pic,

1:00:50

and I got the following message in my inbox. I'm

1:00:53

sorry your sweet kitty is not well, but for FIP

1:00:55

you are in the right place for information and support. FIP

1:00:58

is no longer a decent. That said,

1:01:01

FIP is extremely aggressive. This

1:01:04

was from a mod, and this person said

1:01:06

she was going to connect me with an admin. And

1:01:08

then shortly after that, I got a message from the admin

1:01:11

who sent me to a website with general information

1:01:13

about FIP and GS and

1:01:15

asked me a bunch of questions about my non-existent

1:01:18

cat. So I had to Google things like how much do cats

1:01:20

weigh and do cats get fevers and if

1:01:22

so what temperature. I learned a lot about cats.

1:01:24

So at this point you're deep undercover

1:01:26

pretending to be a cat mod. A cat lady,

1:01:29

yes. But you know nothing about cats. Right.

1:01:30

So I asked right up front how much it

1:01:32

was going to cost and the admin said it depends

1:01:34

but most cats can be treated under $1,500. It

1:01:38

really does depend. There are all of these factors

1:01:40

like the size of the cat, the type of FIP,

1:01:42

the brand of drug, whether you get pills or injections,

1:01:45

etc. And the price has gone

1:01:47

down a ton in recent years like a use

1:01:49

of cost upwards of $10,000 to get a full

1:01:51

course of treatment. And one of the things the

1:01:54

admins help people figure out is what drugs

1:01:56

they need and how much to administer. So

1:01:58

here's an example. You have a six pound cat

1:02:01

who needs a regular dose and you choose

1:02:03

one of the more cost-effective brands. So

1:02:05

that could be as low as just under $800

1:02:07

for the total course, which by the way, takes 84 days

1:02:10

of either injections, pills, or both. And

1:02:13

if you have a six pound cat and the disease is in the brain,

1:02:16

it could be as low as $1,200 if

1:02:18

you go with the cheaper brands. Now,

1:02:21

if you get an admin who is making a living off

1:02:23

of this, they, and when

1:02:25

I say they, I mean she, it's almost all women,

1:02:28

might recommend brands that offer

1:02:30

the highest commission to the admin. We'll

1:02:32

get to this later. But in that case, the

1:02:34

treatment for that same cat could be $1,500 at the

1:02:37

regular dose, $2,500 for

1:02:39

the higher dose. So I've seen reports

1:02:41

from the last year of people paying up to $4,000 and less

1:02:44

than $700. Either

1:02:47

way, it's not cheap. That doesn't include the vet

1:02:49

bills, but it can save your cat's life. So a lot of people

1:02:51

are willing to pay whatever they can.

1:02:52

Part of the

1:02:55

price jumping around is literally just like people

1:02:57

taking commissions off it and sometimes charging

1:02:59

you for more medicine than your cat needs.

1:03:01

Well, no, it's not charging you for more

1:03:03

medicine than your cat needs. It's the brand. We're

1:03:06

going to get all into this later.

1:03:06

This reminds me, I read a book by

1:03:09

Ben Goldacre about the

1:03:11

shit pharmaceutical companies poll and it sounds

1:03:14

not unlike that, although coming from different people.

1:03:16

What would you, if Moose had

1:03:19

a

1:03:20

CIP, canine, whatever, whatever, how

1:03:22

much would you pay to save Moose's life? So I have given

1:03:24

a lot of thought to this question and I think

1:03:27

I can say $100 million. That

1:03:30

sounds about right. Yeah. Okay.

1:03:33

So back in the Facebook group,

1:03:33

the admin explained what I could expect. One,

1:03:36

I will get you dosing based on a description

1:03:38

of symptoms. Two, I will connect you with someone

1:03:40

locally to get the first few vials. Three,

1:03:43

then

1:03:43

once you have done the first injection, we can get

1:03:45

you set up with your first order. So basically,

1:03:48

you want to get the meds as quickly as possible because

1:03:51

this disease progresses really fast.

1:03:54

And so they have what they call vile holders

1:03:56

all around the US and even around the world

1:03:58

who keep the medicine on.

1:03:59

hand and distribute it locally. So

1:04:03

they connect you with a vial holder, you know, so

1:04:05

if my cat actually really existed and really did have FIP,

1:04:08

I'd probably meet someone in Seattle and get that first

1:04:10

vial.

1:04:11

And then once you've started, you can

1:04:13

order more for yourself. So the admin

1:04:15

said she would help me figure out if I needed injections

1:04:17

or could just do the pills, and that basically depends on how

1:04:20

sick your cat is, if it's dehydrated or not. I

1:04:22

also asked about the legality of the arrangement,

1:04:25

and she said, quote, it is not an issue

1:04:27

for you since you are using it for personal use, but

1:04:30

it is an unapproved med. Technically,

1:04:32

there are patent laws not being adhered to. So

1:04:35

gray area, basically, like, I'm not gonna

1:04:37

get in trouble, I'm the end user, but

1:04:39

somebody else might get in trouble.

1:04:41

Gotcha.

1:04:42

Okay, and so Jesse, this whole

1:04:45

situation has all the ingredients of major

1:04:47

internet drama. You've got a dubiously

1:04:50

legal marketplace, you've got sick pets, you've

1:04:52

got Facebook groups, you've got money, you've

1:04:55

got desperate people, most of whom

1:04:57

from my perusal of the group are women,

1:04:59

cat ladies. And

1:05:01

these cat ladies are just

1:05:03

desperate to help their cats. The

1:05:05

posts are really heartbreaking, like their cats

1:05:07

are dying in front of their eyes, and there's

1:05:09

a cure out there, but instead of just

1:05:11

picking it up from the vet, they're begging strangers

1:05:13

to take their money. It's got all the

1:05:15

ingredients of the Molotov cocktail

1:05:18

of internet bullshit, which is exactly

1:05:20

what has happened, ultimately leading to the splintering

1:05:22

of the group and a major fall from grace for

1:05:24

Robin Kents.

1:05:25

Yeah, I was gonna say, as you were describing this, it

1:05:27

just, every sort of this will not end

1:05:29

well alarm bell is screaming

1:05:32

or meowing, if you will, but take me through

1:05:34

what happened.

1:05:34

Dude, it's knitting drama,

1:05:37

it's dress drama, it's cat

1:05:39

lady dress, everything. It's all of it at once.

1:05:42

Okay, so the drama of Peercept started not long

1:05:44

after the group was founded because FIP

1:05:47

Warriors has clearly tapped into a market here

1:05:49

and other people want in on it, and some other people

1:05:51

were there first. There's a company called

1:05:53

Cure FIP that started in 2019, and

1:05:56

whoever runs it has this wonderful habit

1:05:59

of airing dirty laundry. on the website. So

1:06:01

they wrote a blog

1:06:04

post about how FIP warriors

1:06:06

really has helped tens of thousands of people get

1:06:08

this drug, but as the group grew, the

1:06:10

mission crept from just wanting to help cats

1:06:12

to making money. And CureFIP

1:06:15

claims that they now engage in these unsavory

1:06:17

practices, like pushing particular

1:06:20

vendors that Robin Kintz has agreements with,

1:06:22

rather than just looking out for what's best for the cats. They

1:06:25

claim that Kintz and her admins use, quote,

1:06:27

scare tactics to dissuade cat owners

1:06:29

from buying brands they don't represent

1:06:32

and that they, quote, demand fees from

1:06:34

GS manufacturers to represent their products

1:06:36

to cat owners. They also claim

1:06:39

that FIP warriors will sell bad drugs

1:06:41

and then try to undercut the competition by

1:06:43

claiming that other distribution networks are scammy

1:06:46

or that their patients have high relapse rates. And

1:06:49

they claim that they don't make money off of this when they

1:06:51

do. And so whoever runs this company

1:06:53

also posted screenshots of a public feud

1:06:55

between Robin Kintz and a company called Mu-Shin.

1:06:59

This was someone from Mu-Shin accusing

1:07:01

Robin of lying

1:07:02

about not taking a commission, covering

1:07:04

up for brands of drugs that killed cats, and

1:07:07

cheating FIP parents out of donations

1:07:09

that were meant for them. So this person

1:07:11

from Mu-Shin, her name is Nikki, she posted all

1:07:13

of these DMs between her and Robin that showed

1:07:16

Robin negotiating commission and fees.

1:07:18

And the commission was pretty fucking high. Like

1:07:20

at the time, Mu-Shin was selling vials

1:07:23

of their product for $358 and Robin got 58 of those dollars.

1:07:28

Wow. They also paid her a monthly fee of $2,000,

1:07:31

which Robin then renegotiated. Nikki

1:07:33

asked her to make sure that Mu-Shin would be protected

1:07:35

from the admins and Robin renegotiated

1:07:38

her fee to $3,000.

1:07:40

They sent this money, by the way, to her in $10 bills

1:07:43

and a box of cash.

1:07:44

That's awesome. That's how we get

1:07:46

paid for this podcast. So Mu-Shin,

1:07:48

Mu-Shin's a company that

1:07:50

makes a drug and sells it to people

1:07:53

in the States or wherever. Why would they need

1:07:56

protection from the admins? I

1:07:58

don't get that.

1:07:58

Okay. So Robin. Robin allowed ...

1:08:01

This was unusual, but Robin allowed mission

1:08:04

admins in the group

1:08:06

itself. Can't

1:08:07

just say, this Ben Goldaaker book about the pharmaceutical

1:08:10

industry, there's this whole thing he has about how

1:08:12

crazy it is that pharmaceutical reps are allowed

1:08:14

inside hospitals and doctor's offices. It's

1:08:17

all the same ship, but with cats.

1:08:18

Yeah. Here's

1:08:20

a quote from an insider, former admin. I

1:08:23

asked her about this protection racket,

1:08:25

and here's how she explained it. Most of the admins

1:08:28

and also non-admins objected to the

1:08:30

fact that Mucien charged 358 per vial of

1:08:32

medication, and also their sales

1:08:35

reps were extremely aggressive. Mucien

1:08:37

was getting special treatment as far as sales reps

1:08:39

being allowed in the group, special mentions in

1:08:41

post and documents, et cetera. At the

1:08:43

same time, there were other equivalent brands

1:08:46

from 75 to $140.

1:08:48

Most of the admins wanted Mucien

1:08:50

removed from the group. Protecting

1:08:54

them by protecting what Nicky is saying is basically, make

1:08:56

sure that we don't get kicked out of the group. Don't kick us out of

1:08:58

the group even though the admins want it.

1:08:59

Mucien's

1:09:03

reps would continue to have direct access to these desperate

1:09:05

people trying to cure their cats.

1:09:06

Exactly. Gotcha. Okay.

1:09:09

So,

1:09:10

Nicky and Robin, Mucien and Robin

1:09:12

have some sort of falling out.

1:09:14

I guess

1:09:15

she didn't protect them so well after all.

1:09:17

Nicky posts all of these screenshots. The

1:09:19

screenshots circulate. Some of the admins

1:09:21

get pissed because it is increasingly clear

1:09:23

that Robin, and not just Robin, is profiteering.

1:09:27

We talked to a former admin named Celeste.

1:09:29

She was on FIP Warriors' executive committee,

1:09:32

and she explained how the commission worked. So,

1:09:34

the commission varied, but at the top, most

1:09:37

of the admins would get a $35 commission per

1:09:39

vial of GS that they sold. Robin

1:09:42

clearly got more. We saw from those DMs that she was

1:09:44

getting $58 for a vial of Mucien. Celeste

1:09:47

says that

1:09:47

in the six months prior to leaving

1:09:49

FIP Warriors, she was assigned

1:09:51

265 new cases. She

1:09:54

made a commission of $22,000 in that time,

1:09:56

and she used her commission to pay for the treatment

1:09:59

of 40 cats in her area.

1:09:59

And by the way, Celeste

1:10:02

also runs a cat rescue specifically for FIP

1:10:04

cat. So when I chatted with her, she was caring for

1:10:06

four of these FIP creatures in her home.

1:10:09

She's either a saint or a crazy person, maybe

1:10:11

both. So Celeste polled Robin's

1:10:14

shipping records. She shared this with me

1:10:16

for that same six months. And during

1:10:18

that time, Robin had only 18 new

1:10:20

cases, but she was middlemanning for other admins.

1:10:23

So she was shipping the drugs herself, selling and shipping

1:10:25

herself. She made half a million dollars

1:10:28

in that time.

1:10:29

In six months, she made

1:10:31

half a million dollars as a cat

1:10:33

medication middlewoman.

1:10:35

Plus whatever fees she was getting from Gia's

1:10:37

vendors. Oh my God. This

1:10:39

is crazy. Right. So Celeste was estimating

1:10:42

this based on the shipping, but she seems to know what she's talking

1:10:44

about.

1:10:45

And it gets crazier, Jesse, because Robin was

1:10:47

not the only person who profited handsomely

1:10:49

off of this business. And I should say, I don't

1:10:52

think there's anything wrong with profiting off of your work. Robin

1:10:55

put this whole thing together.

1:10:56

She's providing a necessary service.

1:10:59

But the problem was that for a long time,

1:11:01

FIP warriors promoted itself as a volunteer

1:11:04

run group, even a nonprofit. It's just not.

1:11:07

Celeste told us that several of the admins were making

1:11:09

so much money that they quit their jobs.

1:11:12

Two of them purchased second homes. One

1:11:14

remodeled her house. And there was just

1:11:16

no transparency that this was a money making

1:11:18

venture and a very lucrative one at that.

1:11:21

In fact, Celeste said that when people

1:11:23

needed refills, some of the admins

1:11:25

would jack up the price so they could make more money

1:11:28

off of people when they were at their most desperate.

1:11:30

Hey, that's just dynamic pricing.

1:11:32

And

1:11:34

some customers complained that when they initially

1:11:36

tried to get the products, they weren't shown price

1:11:38

lists. The admins were really aggressive

1:11:40

at signing them up at first, but then once they

1:11:43

started treatment, they weren't available to

1:11:45

answer questions. And to be clear,

1:11:47

some of the admins were really good and

1:11:49

benevolent and did send price lists

1:11:52

and were transparent and were genuinely

1:11:54

doing this because they love cats and they want to help

1:11:56

as many as possible. But it does appear

1:11:58

that some of these people were just an expert.

1:11:59

to make money, for instance. Kitty,

1:12:02

what if they loved cats and money equally?

1:12:04

That's actually, yeah. Remember? It

1:12:06

could be both. That's fine. Yeah. Okay.

1:12:10

In 2021, Postal Inspectors got a tip about a shipment en route from Hong Kong to a woman

1:12:12

named Nancy Ross in Oregon. Ross

1:12:14

was an admin, and the shipment contained,

1:12:17

this is according to the Oregonian, quote, 14 yellow

1:12:20

boxes advertising facial masks for

1:12:22

all skin types and at least a handful of purple

1:12:24

foil packets advertising chewable

1:12:26

dietary supplements. Each of the boxes

1:12:29

and packets had a caricature of

1:12:31

a white cat on the front. So as

1:12:33

you would guess,

1:12:34

these boxes actually contained GS4, 4, 5, 2, 4. This

1:12:38

was reportedly the fifth shipment Ross had received

1:12:41

in three months. So the FDA

1:12:43

gets involved, and a criminal inspector

1:12:45

from the FDA, I didn't know that they exist, but they do, joins

1:12:48

the Facebook group and messages Ross

1:12:50

and tells her she needs the drug. But Ross herself

1:12:52

was not a seller. She was one of several

1:12:55

admins who didn't actually do selling and shipping themselves.

1:12:58

She connects the agent with an admin named

1:13:00

Nicole Randall who lives in Texas and

1:13:02

who, according to an FDA affidavit, was

1:13:04

the ringleader of this. I asked our former

1:13:07

admin friend Celeste about this and she said it's

1:13:09

bullshit. Nicole was not the ringleader.

1:13:11

She was basically an independent contractor like all

1:13:14

of the other admins. She just did it at a

1:13:16

much bigger scale and made more money off of it. And

1:13:18

Nancy Ross, by the way, she never

1:13:20

sold GS herself. She connected

1:13:23

parents with admins like Nicole, and the reason

1:13:25

she got those shipments wasn't to sell

1:13:27

them. It was to send them out to vile

1:13:29

holders across the US, so the people who keep

1:13:31

the GS on hand for quick supply. As

1:13:33

far as I know, she wasn't charged with anything, but Nicole

1:13:35

Randall was. And the FDA found

1:13:38

that she was a big seller, and I mean really

1:13:40

big. The Oregonian reported

1:13:42

that she told these vendors in Hong Kong and

1:13:44

China to mislabel the goods as beauty products, and

1:13:47

then she sold them directly to consumers between $65

1:13:50

and $385 a vial, which is a big

1:13:53

markup from the vendors themselves. So

1:13:55

the investigation found a spreadsheet of where she

1:13:57

kept her sales. She sold almost $65

1:13:59

a vial. 60,000 vials and over 230,000 pills from July 2020 to June 2022 and

1:14:01

Jesse from those sales Just

1:14:07

guess how much she made

1:14:09

two million dollars nine point six million dollars.

1:14:11

Oh my god He's like these

1:14:13

are like the the scar

1:14:16

faces of cats.

1:14:17

Yes This is the what's

1:14:19

the guy's name from that mess TV show

1:14:21

Walter white. Yeah, she's the Walter white

1:14:24

She's not making it. All right bad bad bad comparison her

1:14:27

assets were seized her money her cars

1:14:29

her houses and

1:14:30

When you're making profits like that

1:14:33

and overcharging your buyers It's a little hard

1:14:35

to argue that this is all for the good of the cats,

1:14:37

right? And this was not

1:14:39

actually the first raid the first raid

1:14:41

was even weirder This was an elderly

1:14:44

woman who was mistakenly accused of importing

1:14:46

testosterone and human growth hormone

1:14:48

She's

1:14:51

just jacked So

1:14:55

She was taking it to teenagers in

1:14:57

that case It was the DEA who conducted

1:14:59

the raid and they turned it over to local

1:15:02

sheriffs and they basically Told this woman

1:15:04

to stop and nothing came of it, but it did

1:15:06

freak out some of the admins and several of them quit Okay,

1:15:09

so after the second raid the Nicole Randall

1:15:11

raid Celeste says that Nicole

1:15:13

told them after the raid that when the numbers came out

1:15:15

they were gonna be mad and they absolutely

1:15:17

were Celeste said that money could

1:15:19

have saved so many cats

1:15:21

And she's right and after that a lot

1:15:23

of the admins didn't want to touch the drugs themselves

1:15:25

So they started connecting buyers directly with sellers

1:15:28

rather than shipping it themselves

1:15:30

And at that point communication among the

1:15:32

admins and robins was declining some

1:15:34

of the admins were like look We are not

1:15:37

here to profit We are here to save cats and

1:15:39

you create if you greedy fuckers would stop treating

1:15:41

this like a money printing machine the

1:15:43

feds wouldn't be interested and the raids would

1:15:45

stop and

1:15:46

besides that

1:15:48

They were pissed that Trent that Robin wasn't transparent

1:15:50

with them about the deal She was making with vendors There

1:15:53

was also a PayPal account that people could donate

1:15:56

to it was controlled by Robin. She was

1:15:58

supposed to use this to

1:15:59

pay

1:15:59

into the Warrior Treatment Fund, which was a fund

1:16:02

to treat cats in need of their

1:16:04

parents or whoever couldn't afford the drug. Celeste

1:16:06

said that she would tell her clients who couldn't afford to buy

1:16:08

the drugs about this fund and then recommend

1:16:11

that they get the drugs from the fund.

1:16:13

Not a single one of them were approved to use it.

1:16:16

And she said that after many requests, Robin

1:16:18

finally provided statements for the treatment fund

1:16:20

and she hadn't actually donated anything from that

1:16:23

PayPal account. Oh, damn. And

1:16:25

this all went against the supposed admission of FIP

1:16:27

Warriors. Celeste said, FIP Warriors

1:16:30

was supposed to be brand neutral. So if the medication

1:16:32

works, we will support you and we will trial

1:16:34

and test medications to keep you updated

1:16:37

with what is working and what is not.

1:16:38

Yeah. I mean, I could totally get why,

1:16:40

like the, I

1:16:42

don't know what the proportion was, the handful

1:16:44

or more of like people in this for the right

1:16:46

reasons would feel totally betrayed by all this profiteering.

1:16:49

Not only profiteering, but profiteering that directly

1:16:51

harmed the group.

1:16:53

Exactly. And one of the

1:16:55

major points of tension here was Robin's

1:16:57

management style. So according to

1:17:00

Celeste, it was basically, it was chaotic. She

1:17:02

rewarded people she liked and punished those. She didn't.

1:17:05

And one of the admins she didn't like was a woman,

1:17:07

I'm going to call Sarah. This is a pseudonym. She's

1:17:09

a very interesting person. She's an engineer

1:17:12

at one of the big tech companies and her spare

1:17:14

time, she races cars and does freelance

1:17:16

FIP research. And she's actually co-authored papers

1:17:19

on FIP. So Sarah

1:17:21

knows what she's talking about when it comes to this disease.

1:17:23

And she told me that in

1:17:25

the beginning when she showed up to FIP

1:17:27

Wars, she was full of idealism about helping

1:17:29

these cats. She's like Celeste and that she never looked

1:17:32

at this as a way to make money. She has

1:17:34

a job. So she started as an admin

1:17:36

in spring of 2020. And over

1:17:39

time, she started to realize that this was

1:17:41

not a purely philanthropic organization.

1:17:43

And some people were making not just

1:17:45

money to cover their time, they were getting rich off

1:17:48

of this. Not everyone, of course, maybe not

1:17:50

even a large number of them. But Sarah didn't

1:17:52

like this. And she didn't like how Robin talked about

1:17:54

the group. She told me, quote, as

1:17:56

time went on, I saw the amount of commission rising

1:17:58

and I noticed Robin spoke about

1:17:59

warriors the way you would a business. Global

1:18:02

brand, competitors, grow the business, etc. Things

1:18:05

she said about money donated to a treatment

1:18:07

fund that was supposed to help cats that couldn't afford

1:18:09

treatment, about money she was getting from

1:18:11

suppliers, communications with suppliers, it

1:18:14

didn't add up. At the same time, things were coming to

1:18:16

light, like the revelation that she had been making

1:18:18

money from Youshin to promote them. They were sending

1:18:20

her cash in a box. She said it was a mistake,

1:18:23

she wouldn't do it again. But then there were occasional hints

1:18:25

that she was getting something from other suppliers too.

1:18:29

So Sarah was suspicious of Robin.

1:18:31

In addition to saying she played favorites

1:18:33

with vendors who paid her, Sarah says

1:18:35

that she smeared people into dinners she didn't like.

1:18:38

Quote, it was becoming clear that we weren't there to protect

1:18:41

and advise. Warriors was about selling, Sarah

1:18:43

told me. So things came

1:18:45

to a head with one brand in particular. Sarah

1:18:48

says there are problems with this brand in terms of

1:18:50

quality control and they suspected it was actually

1:18:52

killing cats. So most of the

1:18:54

admins refused to recommend it, but a handful

1:18:57

of them kept promoting that, including Robin. And

1:18:59

after a few admins in Canada started raising

1:19:02

the alarm bell about this, Sarah

1:19:04

says they were quote, summarily removed,

1:19:06

blocked and publicly smeared. They were

1:19:08

kicked out for being whistleblowers in the group.

1:19:12

Oh my God, this is so crazy. Yeah. And

1:19:15

Sarah says that the admins Robin kicked

1:19:17

out had evidence that Robin and another woman

1:19:19

in the group had invested in this company

1:19:22

whose drug was killing cats. Yeah,

1:19:26

I saw the evidence by the way. And

1:19:29

Sarah says that throughout all this, Wait,

1:19:31

and the evidence was compelling. It was, yeah, it was DMs

1:19:34

about the, about their investments. Okay.

1:19:36

Oh my God.

1:19:37

So Sarah says that through all this, she'd

1:19:39

been standing up to Robin about the profiteering

1:19:41

and the missing treatment fund donations and about

1:19:44

promoting this bad brand and making

1:19:46

policies that seemed more about profit than

1:19:48

helping cats. Sarah said Robin

1:19:50

and quote, others who were firmly in the for

1:19:52

profit camp had become openly hostile to

1:19:54

me. But the problem was that it seemed like there

1:19:56

was no way to leave without being smeared. And

1:19:59

I was also concerned concerned about and emotionally invested

1:20:01

in the well-being of cats I was helping.

1:20:04

She, that's Robin, promoted a toxic

1:20:06

culture and formed a clique that agreed with her. It

1:20:09

was emotionally draining and traumatic. At

1:20:11

a conference that several of us attended in July,

1:20:13

one of them literally brought me to tears in public.

1:20:16

This gives a whole new meaning to

1:20:18

the idea of a cat fight. It

1:20:20

really does. A cat lady fight. So

1:20:23

Sarah doesn't like Robin. Robin doesn't like Sarah.

1:20:26

And then last month,

1:20:27

all this comes to a head, when Robin finds

1:20:29

out that Sarah has scent meds that weren't

1:20:32

one of the brands that were sold in the group to someone

1:20:34

as a donation. Sarah says this was

1:20:36

typical behavior. They distribute what they called

1:20:38

trial vials all the time. But Robin

1:20:41

learns about this and she tells the executive

1:20:43

committee that Sarah is breaking the rules. So

1:20:46

the executive committee has three members. Robin,

1:20:48

another admin, and Celeste. Celeste

1:20:50

is on Sarah's side. So on March

1:20:52

5th, Robin and this other woman on the executive committee

1:20:55

both vote to kick Sarah out. Celeste

1:20:57

is

1:20:57

a dissenting vote.

1:20:59

Four days later, Sarah is supposed to

1:21:01

be officially kicked out and the other

1:21:03

admins are supposed to be informed that she's gone. Celeste

1:21:06

is pissed about this. She doesn't want Sarah kicked

1:21:08

out and she's afraid this decision will exacerbate

1:21:11

what's already a very tense situation. So

1:21:14

she decides to act.

1:21:15

Early that morning, before Sarah could get kicked

1:21:18

out, she goes into the Facebook

1:21:20

group and she removes the admin

1:21:22

rights of Robin and the other admins,

1:21:25

which prevented Robin from removing Sarah

1:21:27

from the group. What?

1:21:29

That's not very good. Ops that you're

1:21:31

just letting how it's

1:21:33

like so easy.

1:21:33

I don't totally understand the dynamics of how the

1:21:35

Facebook admin situation works. But

1:21:38

Celeste says, my thought was it would force

1:21:40

us to talk as an admin group about it. Instead,

1:21:43

Robin removed about half the admins and moderators

1:21:46

from everything else and then spent the day telling parents

1:21:48

they would need new admins and interviewing admins

1:21:50

and mods to find out where their loyalties lay.

1:21:52

So it's like a real palace coup.

1:21:55

Yes. Or a real palace meow.

1:21:58

Okay.

1:21:59

So that's the start of the big split. They

1:22:02

involved a mediator and he was able to calm things

1:22:04

down and help them come to some agreements. Robin

1:22:07

reinstated them and Celeste says that lasted

1:22:09

about a day and then she removed them again. And

1:22:11

then so six weeks ago, Celeste, Sarah,

1:22:14

and a bunch of the other admins severed

1:22:16

entirely from FIP warriors and started

1:22:18

a new group called FIP Global

1:22:21

Cats. This group is much smaller. Right

1:22:24

now they have less than 4,000 members, 14 admins,

1:22:26

including Celeste and Sarah, in 10 months.

1:22:29

Celeste

1:22:29

says their goal is to quote, support

1:22:32

treatment, work towards a legal cure, be

1:22:34

transparent, drop commission, and

1:22:36

our treatment fund will be supported by a

1:22:38

501c3 with a governing board rather than a

1:22:40

single individual. There have been some

1:22:42

hiccups. Celeste says some vendors won't

1:22:44

work with them because they're afraid of pissing Robin off.

1:22:47

But they hope that by offering cheaper meds because

1:22:49

they aren't taking commission, more people

1:22:52

will have access to GS and more people

1:22:54

will be able to pay it forward by donating to

1:22:56

those who can't afford

1:22:57

it. It's just like crazy how like you

1:22:59

can like just fucking let people

1:23:01

have these drugs for their dying cats. Oh my God.

1:23:04

Yeah, it's pretty wild. I reached

1:23:06

out to Robin to give her a chance to comment or to

1:23:08

refute these allegations from Celeste and

1:23:10

Sarah and others. I didn't hear back from her. Celeste

1:23:13

provided a mountain of documentation

1:23:15

to back up what she said. So I do trust that she's

1:23:17

a reliable narrator. I still would have liked to get

1:23:19

Robin's perspective on this. I

1:23:21

did talk to a mediator, the mediator

1:23:24

who tried to resolve this fight. His

1:23:26

name is Peter Cohen. His cat Smoky

1:23:28

was one of the first cats treated at the trials

1:23:30

at UC Davis. And he runs a nonprofit

1:23:33

called Zen by Cats. So Peter

1:23:35

is by nature, he's a peacemaker. He's much

1:23:37

more sympathetic to Robin and he does have an interesting

1:23:40

perspective on this. He actually owns

1:23:42

the trademark to FIP Warriors and he licenses

1:23:44

it to Robin for a dollar a year.

1:23:46

Well, that's good because she's hard up on cats.

1:23:50

They've been working together since the beginning. He

1:23:52

said that from the very beginning, it's

1:23:54

been this real uphill battle because everybody

1:23:57

hated them. Drug companies hated them.

1:23:59

advocated them, even Dr.

1:24:02

Peterson, the guy at UC Davis who discovered

1:24:04

this cure, he was wary of the group.

1:24:07

And so that was the environment that

1:24:09

they emerged from. And he also said

1:24:11

that in the beginning, when it really was

1:24:14

all volunteer, some of these admins

1:24:16

ended up working 10 hours a day on this. They

1:24:18

needed to get paid for their work. And he

1:24:20

said that while FIP warriors

1:24:22

really should have been transparent about the commission

1:24:25

that the admins were taking, lawyers

1:24:27

told them not to post this anywhere because

1:24:29

they were selling black market drugs without

1:24:31

a license. So even if they wanted to be transparent,

1:24:34

they kind of couldn't be. And it is true,

1:24:36

admins really could face some legal issues besides

1:24:39

that. For instance, practicing

1:24:41

medicine without a license. That's

1:24:43

illegal. Peter is currently trying to

1:24:45

figure out a workaround for this by using admins

1:24:47

to collect info from

1:24:49

the cat parents and then using volunteer

1:24:52

vets to do the actual dosing. But

1:24:54

of course, there's barriers to this too. There

1:24:56

are vets who won't touch this. It takes time to establish

1:24:59

a network like this.

1:24:59

And meanwhile, cats are still getting the virus

1:25:02

and dying from it. Yeah, it seems like a really, I mean,

1:25:05

like we said up top, it seemed like a situation

1:25:07

rife for corruption and

1:25:09

none of that should be, it's a crazy story, but

1:25:11

it shouldn't be surprising.

1:25:12

Yeah. From Peter's perspective,

1:25:14

he told me, he said, quote, there are no villains here. Celeste

1:25:17

and Sarah would probably say that there is a clear

1:25:19

villain here and it's Robin. But to me, the

1:25:21

much bigger villain here is Gilead.

1:25:23

And yes, it does appear that Robin was doing

1:25:26

a lot of shady shit and taking advantage of her position.

1:25:29

But this would all be avoidable if Gilead was

1:25:31

just license the fucking drug.

1:25:34

The black market would instantly disappear and

1:25:36

way more cats would be saved, but they're probably

1:25:38

never going to do this. So one of the things that Peter

1:25:40

does was done by cats is help fund research

1:25:42

into new FIP drugs, because the only

1:25:44

way out of the black market is if

1:25:47

someone else replaces a new drug. So

1:25:49

an even better would be a vaccine. So cats don't get this

1:25:51

disease in the first place. So Peter raises money

1:25:53

for this. He says at nine out of every $10

1:25:56

that he raises goes directly into research. I

1:25:58

do trust him.

1:25:59

We'll post a link to his organization in

1:26:02

the show notes. Are you sure Peter isn't just Robin?

1:26:05

I think there's no bad people here. Robin

1:26:07

was in a difficult situation. Just a very

1:26:09

nice guy. What about the

1:26:12

listener and her cat Winnie? Did

1:26:14

Winnie turn out okay?

1:26:15

Sadly, no. Alison tried

1:26:17

to save him, but with the cost of tests,

1:26:19

X-rays, and overnight stay at the emergency vet

1:26:22

and plus the medication, she just couldn't

1:26:24

afford it. And she says that by the time they figured

1:26:26

out what was going on, he could barely walk.

1:26:29

He was mostly blind. He didn't recognize

1:26:31

her and he was in terrible pain. So

1:26:33

she chose what she thought was the most humane option.

1:26:36

She told me on his final evening, he suddenly

1:26:38

knew who we were and snuggled with us on the couch.

1:26:41

He slept with us the whole night. And then in the morning of

1:26:43

April 3rd, he was put to

1:26:44

sleep. You probably had trouble reading that because animals

1:26:47

are the only things we care about. It's not a dog, Jesse. It's

1:26:49

not a dog. So

1:26:52

a very sad ending to the story. Yeah. Crazy

1:26:55

story. Crazy story. I had no idea that

1:26:57

this disease existed. I had no idea about

1:26:59

this black market for the disease. Yeah.

1:27:02

So yeah, part of me wants to blame

1:27:04

Gilead. Part

1:27:05

of me

1:27:06

uses it as like, it almost could be like a libertarian

1:27:09

parable because you would think

1:27:11

there would be some reason.

1:27:13

I don't know how any of this shit works. Some sort of carve

1:27:15

out where like, yes, you can give this medicine

1:27:18

to cats and

1:27:19

we're not going to worry about

1:27:22

it.