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podcast hosted by Megan, the Duchess

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is joined by guests like Serena

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Rae, and Trevor Noah as they

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delve into the roots of countless

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and The B-Word, and redefine and

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reclaim each identity along the way.

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The complete season of Archetypes is out now

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wherever you get your podcasts. Freedom!

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Hi, I'm Paul Lefchampkins. I'm Lauren Lapkis.

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I'm Scott Aucherman, and together we make up the

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show Freedom! Freedom is

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a show where the three of us who are

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is a pretty good representation of the show. It's

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actually exactly what it is, plus singing. So

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listen to it now. The new season's out. Get

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it wherever you get your podcasts. Just go

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outside and scream, Freedom! Just like

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we do. Freedom! Freedom!

1:18

Lemonado. Hi,

1:22

In the Bubble listeners. This is Stephanie

1:24

Whittleswax. I host another show on

1:26

the Lemonado Media Network called Last Day, which

1:29

is a show about the moments that change

1:31

us. You may also remember me

1:33

from when I came on the show to talk to

1:35

Andy about mental health. Today,

1:37

I'm here to share with you an interview

1:39

we did on Last Day with Dr. Craig

1:41

Spencer. Craig has been a

1:43

guest on In the Bubble for our

1:45

Toolkit series, where he shared his expert

1:47

knowledge on navigating life during the pandemic.

1:50

But it turns out Craig's been dealing

1:52

with infectious diseases long before we even

1:55

heard of COVID. This

1:57

month, we reflect on four years since the start of

1:59

the pandemic. art of the pandemic. And

2:02

we're revisiting this crisis through Craig's

2:04

experienced eyes, which saw just how unprepared

2:06

we were as a country for this

2:08

virus. We hope this

2:10

helps you better understand this collective last day

2:12

of ours, before COVID changed

2:15

everything. And if you

2:17

like what you hear, search for last day wherever

2:19

you get your podcasts. There are many, many,

2:21

many more episodes for you to listen to. Thank

2:24

you for listening. Just a heads

2:26

up. This episode includes mention of

2:28

suicide. Please listen with care. For

2:34

our staff to like, go home, see

2:36

their family get sick, worry about getting their family

2:38

sick. Do this day

2:40

after day after day after day for

2:42

months, trying to keep myself safe

2:44

every day writing in my notebook, like, what are

2:46

the exposures that you had today? Did you have

2:48

any breaches in your personal protective equipment? Do

2:51

you feel like you know that one time

2:53

when your mask was really wet, something could

2:55

have gone wrong. It was very clear that

2:58

like the psychological trauma of what we saw,

3:00

what we did, and just being in that

3:02

environment could have these profound physical manifestations,

3:04

but everyone pushed through and

3:08

I did the same. Dr.

3:11

Craig Spencer is describing the

3:13

harrowing experience of being in

3:15

a hospital and staring down bed

3:17

after bed of very sick patients

3:20

fighting for their lives. Sometimes

3:23

these patients make a recovery.

3:25

They survive, but for

3:27

the very young and the very old, all

3:30

Craig can really do is hold

3:33

their hands, share their space

3:35

and ease their pain. Now

3:38

this picture may sound

3:40

and look and feel like the

3:42

United States in the spring of

3:44

2020 when we saw the onset

3:47

of COVID-19, but actually

3:49

it's 2014 and Craig is

3:51

in Guinea with Doctors Without

3:53

Borders treating Ebola patients. At

3:56

the time he had no idea

3:59

that only six years

4:01

later, he'd be facing yet

4:03

another terrifying infectious disease, this

4:06

time, right in his

4:08

own backyard. It was

4:10

March 1st that we had the

4:12

first confirmed case, I believe, in New York

4:14

City. And it

4:16

was like trickle, trickle, trickle,

4:19

deluge. In the span of

4:22

like a week, it went from

4:24

trying to find that one person in

4:26

the emergency room that might have COVID

4:28

to trying to find one person who

4:30

didn't. This

4:41

is Last Day, the show about the

4:43

moments that changes. I'm

4:45

your host, Stephanie Whittlesnacks. Today,

4:48

we are telling the story of

4:51

a virus, a virus

4:53

that changed all of our lives

4:55

overnight, pulled through the eyes

4:57

of a doctor who had seen it happen before

4:59

and tried to prepare us for

5:01

when it would happen again. On a

5:04

scale we never could

5:06

have imagined. So

5:17

my name is Craig Spencer. I am a few

5:19

things. I am a parent to two young, wonderful

5:23

people. I am an emergency medicine doctor and

5:25

I've been working in emergency medicine for gas,

5:28

but sounds like forever, 15 years. And

5:31

I'm now at the public health school

5:33

at Brown University, where my

5:35

focus is looking at basically how history

5:37

informs the presence of public health. Craig

5:41

has spent much of his career as a

5:43

doctor responding to crises both here and

5:45

abroad. But before he was

5:47

trying to keep the world of public

5:49

health from repeating its own mistakes, Craig

5:51

was a kid in Michigan with a

5:53

much simpler dream. Initially,

5:56

the goal was I was going to

5:58

be a sharkologist. And I

6:00

was also going to play part-time,

6:03

I guess, apparently for the Montreal

6:05

Canadiens as goalie. Obviously. I

6:07

don't know how I was going to balance those two things, but I was nine and

6:09

that made perfect sense. Unfortunately, Craig

6:11

later discovers that a sharkologist is

6:14

not a real thing. Also,

6:16

although he does play hockey, he's

6:19

no goalie. And that

6:21

doesn't bode well for his sports career. So

6:24

at the right-bold age of 11, Craig starts

6:26

to re-evaluate what he's going to do

6:28

with his life. And

6:30

I was in a social studies class

6:32

one day and we were

6:34

looking at microfiche and it said a cardiothoracic

6:37

surgeon could make like $120,000 or $130,000. And

6:42

I was like, whoa, that is the

6:44

most money of all of these things on

6:47

this microfiche. Clearly that's what I'm going

6:49

to do. And so from

6:51

that moment on, I committed myself to being a cardiothoracic

6:54

surgeon. And I didn't

6:56

know exactly what it meant. I think it kind of like stumbled

6:59

out of my mouth whenever I said it. But

7:01

I became proficient enough in saying what I was going

7:03

to do. I learned everything about the heart. I knew

7:05

how it worked, the electricity, all these things. I was

7:07

like, this is what I'm going to do. So much

7:10

so that I met a cardiothoracic surgeon once and they're

7:12

like, actually, you don't want to do this. This kind

7:14

of sucks. I'm like, yeah, I do. I know more

7:16

than you.

7:22

I walked into med school convinced that I would

7:24

be a cardiothoracic surgeon. I told everyone I was

7:26

going to be a cardiothoracic surgeon. And

7:29

that was the plan until

7:34

sometime in the middle or towards the end of my

7:36

first year in medical school, one

7:39

of my friends was like, hey, what are you doing

7:41

for the week off? We had like a summer vacation.

7:43

I said, I don't know. And

7:45

said, well, I'm going down to the Dominican Republic

7:47

with this World Health Student Organization group and we're

7:49

going to go like help. I was like, okay,

7:51

I don't know that I can help with anything,

7:53

but like, okay, cool. I'd

7:55

never really left the

7:58

country all that much beforehand. And

8:00

I went down to the Dominican Republic and

8:02

the hospital that we were working in. As

8:04

we walked in, the senior doctors were leaving

8:06

because they hadn't been paid and the residents

8:08

were kind of running their place. And I

8:10

remember walking in to this hospital

8:13

in the Dominican Republic and just kind

8:15

of being blown away that this existed,

8:17

that people were being treated

8:20

or not treated in such tough conditions.

8:23

And to see how much both the physicians

8:25

did, the nurses did, but also families did

8:27

to help their families. And

8:30

it left a massive impact on me. And I went

8:32

back home and thought, all right, maybe I can be

8:35

a cardiothoracic surgeon somewhere else in the world. As

8:37

it turns out, Craig still wasn't done questioning what

8:40

he was going to do with his life. And

8:42

at 27, he takes a year off medical

8:45

school to study abroad in China, where he

8:47

meets his future wife. After

8:49

returning to the States, he does his residency

8:51

in emergency medicine at a hospital in Queens.

8:54

And it's while doing this work

8:56

that Craig discovers his true passion,

8:59

helping communities where the need is

9:02

greatest, yet deeply underserved. This

9:04

is what leads him to volunteer with Doctors

9:06

Without Borders in 2014. At

9:09

the time, Ebola is ravaging West Africa

9:11

and the organization has set up a

9:14

treatment center in Guinea where the deadly

9:16

disease is spreading and conditions are getting

9:18

worse. Now, I was

9:20

chosen to go to Guinea because that nine-year-old self

9:23

of me that wanted to be a goalie for

9:25

the Montreal Canadiens and had started learning French, I

9:28

continued that and Guinea was primarily

9:30

French-speaking. And so I was sent

9:32

there to be part of the

9:34

response with Doctors Without Borders. And

9:37

I was with maybe a half a dozen other

9:40

folks that were working with me on the same

9:42

project and we were among

9:44

the only people on this massive Air France

9:46

flight into Guinea. I

9:48

have pictures of an

9:50

empty first class, an empty business class. They

9:53

seemed like hundreds of seats, like a sea of seats

9:55

that were just kind of empty with

9:57

a half a dozen of us, just kind of all holed

9:59

up. huddled in the middle. And

10:02

that's kind of when it really hit me

10:04

that I was, you know, going

10:06

into an area

10:08

of incredible uncertainty, but also of

10:10

really incredible need. And the fact

10:13

that like, it was

10:15

so critical to be able

10:17

to get providers and supplies in as

10:19

easily as possible. And I was super

10:21

grateful that I was able to get

10:23

in, showed up in Guinea,

10:26

and kind of started amongst the,

10:28

you know, five to six most

10:31

distressing weeks of my life up until that point.

10:34

Craig has spent most of his career going where his

10:36

patients need him the most. But

10:38

now he's dealing with a disease

10:40

like Ebola, which is highly contagious.

10:43

And that means there's something else he

10:45

has to consider, his own life. You

10:49

know, there was this narrative at the time

10:51

in 2014, really in September of 2014, just

10:54

as I was getting on that

10:56

plane, there had never been to that point

10:59

kind of an international staff working with

11:01

an organization that had ever been infected

11:03

with Ebola. That's despite, you know, responding

11:05

to abuns of Ebola outbreaks, you

11:08

know, for almost 20 years. And so

11:10

that in itself was encouraging. Like, yeah, it's tough and

11:12

it's scary and it's crazy. But like,

11:14

honestly, there's been so many people that have come before

11:16

me, a lot of people I'm working with that are

11:18

training me. They're saying like, the protocols

11:20

are rigorous and incredible and it is going to

11:23

be tough. But you're going to be

11:25

okay. And it was really

11:27

like right before I left that there

11:29

was the first of our international staff

11:31

that had been infected. And

11:34

it's kind of like tore down that wall

11:36

of impenetrability. And

11:39

there were people that I was training with at that time that

11:41

decided to go home. And I said, you

11:43

know, I kind of committed this far. And

11:45

if people like myself, point frankly, that

11:48

like feel comfortable working in different places, have skills

11:50

to work in those different places, are

11:53

willing to work in those different places, are like not doing it, then

11:55

who's going to do it? I

12:00

would go in in the morning at like seven in the morning

12:03

and we would walk down the hill. We would

12:05

have, because it was kind of like a

12:08

French European mission, like they didn't eat breakfast. They had

12:10

like a cup of black coffee and a little vashkiri,

12:12

those little cubes of cheese. And I was like, this

12:14

ain't a breakfast. You know what I'm about to go

12:16

do for 12 hours? Come on, let's talk with you

12:18

people. And then I adapted

12:20

and it was okay because it got hot and it

12:23

was kind of humid and we'd go down, walk down

12:25

to the Ebola treatment center and we'd

12:27

go in, we'd go through the whole process,

12:29

take off our clothes, put on scrubs, walk

12:31

through, get kind of decontaminated, make

12:33

a plan for the day. And then within a

12:35

half hour would be in one of those yellow

12:38

Tyvek suits and a hood and some

12:40

goggles and would be going in to

12:43

really take count of

12:45

the horror that had really taken place overnight.

12:48

Ebola was just like, it was just so mean.

12:51

And you could see someone in the morning that looked

12:53

fine and then the afternoon come back and be

12:56

told that they died. And that

12:59

was really, really tough. But

13:01

I think we all kind of put that to

13:03

the side because there was just like more people that

13:05

came in and there was not enough of us. And

13:08

there was like three or four doctors for 60, 70,

13:10

80 patients. And

13:13

every person that you wanted to do something like put

13:15

in an intravenous line so you could put them on

13:18

like a drip for some fluid, that was like a

13:20

10 to 15 minute activity to

13:22

do correctly because you can't do it

13:24

incorrectly because the risk is if

13:26

you get stuck with a needle that was

13:28

in someone that had Ebola in their arm

13:30

and you stick yourself mistakenly like you'll die. It

13:33

was just that. So yeah, I was afraid. I

13:37

was around folks that had been

13:39

there for some time. The local staff were

13:41

just absolutely amazing. All the Gideon doctors and nurses

13:43

that I worked with were just, I

13:45

mean, heroes beyond

13:48

words and had showed up every single day and

13:50

had gone home to family who had been sick

13:52

and took care of them after they had gone

13:54

home. I went home at the end of

13:56

the day and the day sucked and it was 12 to 14 to 16 hours

14:00

We went in a bunch of times and it was sweaty

14:02

and tiring. And all you had

14:04

was some voskiri and some kind of crappy coffee to

14:06

make it through the day sometimes. And

14:08

that sucked. I can only imagine what

14:11

it was like because I got to go home

14:13

and have a beer and sit and relax.

14:15

And for our staff to go

14:17

home, see their family, get sick, worry about getting

14:19

their family sick. Do this

14:21

day after day after day after day

14:24

for months. To me it's

14:26

absolutely unimaginable and they

14:29

didn't get enough credit for everything

14:31

that they did. It

14:37

was tough because at that time there

14:39

weren't vaccines really, there weren't good treatments

14:41

for Ebola. It was kind of just

14:43

a cross your fingers and hope

14:45

for the past. And if you're younger than five

14:47

and older than like 60, the likelihood that you're

14:50

going to make it is really, really, really dismal.

14:53

If you're in the middle of that range and

14:55

you're well nourished and don't have a bunch of

14:58

health problems, likely that you'll

15:00

make it is a lot better. But

15:02

a lot of it was just kind of out of our

15:04

hands. And so we did everything we could, putting in

15:06

IVs, giving medications, treating symptoms, giving

15:08

dignity, holding someone's hand, things like

15:10

that when people are in these

15:13

kind of these tents and

15:16

seeing so much kind of death and destruction

15:18

around them. And despite how horrible

15:20

it must seem for me and dobsmacking it

15:22

may sound, I got off

15:25

easy. After six

15:27

overwhelming weeks at the Ebola

15:29

Treatment Center, Craig flies back

15:31

to New York. It's October

15:33

and he returns home to peace and

15:36

comfort. And that is

15:38

when everything he'd seen hits him hard.

15:43

Everything gone from a

15:46

month and a half of seeing what I

15:48

just described to you every day, seeing maybe

15:50

half the beds in any space with

15:53

someone dead or empty waiting for another

15:55

patient because someone died overnight. I

15:59

got good at putting that in. that off and not

16:01

dealing with it then, but

16:03

ended up dealing with it when I was back in New

16:05

York City. And so being at

16:07

home, feeling really kind

16:09

of profoundly depressed, asking

16:11

questions of like, could I have done more? What could we

16:14

have done more? What

16:16

about people that are left behind? Things

16:19

like that, that you just... And I wasn't

16:21

working clinically. I wasn't allowed to go back to work. And

16:24

so it's kind of just like sitting

16:26

around, which for an emergency doctor is

16:28

probably the worst possible form of punishment.

16:31

I tried to find ways to cope and adapt and we're

16:33

trying to go for a run or try to do these

16:35

other things. But there was one day

16:37

when a good friend of mine was like, man, you're a hot mess. We

16:39

need to get you out of the house. And I

16:41

was like, I don't want to leave the house. I'm

16:44

fine here. I want to leave, but I don't

16:46

want to leave. And

16:49

so he was like, no, no, no, no. We're going to like take

16:51

the train, come down here. We're going to like, I

16:53

don't know, go bowling, do something. It'll be fun. I

16:56

was like, I don't want to go. I ended up going

16:59

and ended up the

17:01

next morning waking up and

17:04

feeling like something was a little bit off.

17:07

And how long did it take from

17:09

feeling like something was a little bit

17:11

off to figuring out that something was

17:13

incredibly off? Unofficially

17:16

or officially? Well, unofficially, I knew. Yeah. And

17:19

it took about three minutes when I took my temperature and I was

17:21

like, oh, it's 100.3. That

17:24

is officially a fever. That

17:26

was the unofficial like, well, you took all your

17:29

malaria meds and everything else is okay. So,

17:31

okay. Process of exclusion. Not

17:33

looking great. And then I

17:35

think it was later that evening, maybe 12

17:37

hours later that I'd gotten a test back

17:39

after I'd gone into the hospital. The

17:42

pre-authorized version of the Ebola test that was done across the

17:44

street at the New York City lab

17:47

was positive for Ebola. Last

17:57

day is a show about the moments that changed. I

18:00

just don't think I will ever get used

18:03

to this. I'm Stephanie Little's wax. And

18:05

I have had one of these moments. We

18:07

all have. So let's unpack the chaos that

18:10

is our human existence together. I don't believe

18:12

things happen for a reason. I don't believe

18:14

the universe has a plan. Each week I

18:16

sit down with a new guest to explore

18:19

happy, sad stories of transformation. It's leaning

18:21

far, far into the paint. That's what

18:23

it is. Listen to Last Day wherever

18:26

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out a free trial of Lemonada Premium today in

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the Apple Podcast app by clicking on our

19:03

podcast logo and then the subscribe button. We're

19:05

back. After

19:13

six days of being home in

19:15

New York City, Craig tests positive

19:17

for Ebola. The illness that wrought

19:19

so much horror in Guinea has

19:21

followed him back home. What

19:26

on earth goes through a

19:29

person's mind when you have seen the horrors

19:31

that you have seen and then

19:33

you find out this test result? I

19:36

don't know that I thought so much of my own

19:38

mortality like, okay, I know I am at

19:40

this point, you know, 33 years

19:42

old and I'm healthy and so likely that I'm

19:45

going to die is probably somewhere

19:47

between 40 to 50 percent. I don't

19:49

think I did those numbers. I was like, wow,

19:51

that really sucks. Now what do I do? Knowing,

19:53

of course, there was nothing really to do, but

19:56

thinking one about, you know,

19:58

did this impact? family, what about

20:01

my my fiancee at

20:03

that time, like was she exposed and

20:05

oh my gosh, that would be

20:07

the worst thing in the world if that were

20:09

the case. Like, you know, my

20:12

own mortality seemed more manageable than the

20:14

idea of like infecting the person that I love the most.

20:18

Suddenly though, this diagnosis is

20:20

much larger than even that. Craig

20:23

reports his symptoms to the health authorities in

20:25

New York and he's rushed to the hospital

20:27

in an ambulance. Before

20:29

his Ebola diagnosis is even

20:31

officially confirmed, he is

20:34

headline news because Craig

20:36

is literally the first Ebola

20:38

case in New York City.

20:41

Breaking headline right here in New York

20:43

City, a young American doctor back from

20:45

Africa raced to a New York hospital

20:47

and tonight it is confirmed a new

20:49

case of Ebola. Frankly, people in the

20:51

neighborhood are scared and some of

20:53

them are panicked. In fact, I had one gentleman

20:55

who wouldn't even shake my hand because

20:58

he was scared. Spencer sparked Ebola

21:00

fears in New York City after

21:02

health officials revealed he rode the

21:04

subway, ate at a restaurant and

21:07

went bowling with friends the day

21:09

before he showed symptoms. The venerable

21:11

New York Times asked, can you

21:13

get Ebola from a bowling ball?

21:15

Experts say the simple answer is no.

21:18

With no Wi-Fi or TV in his room,

21:21

Craig has no idea how big

21:24

his story has gotten. Instead, all

21:27

he's thinking about is how the

21:29

hospital he's in and the care

21:31

he's getting is so vastly different

21:33

compared to what he'd just seen

21:35

in Guinea. I

21:37

was in a hospital room with

21:39

one physician that could spend an hour with me. There

21:42

was like 30 something people on call, you

21:45

know, a pulmonologist and a nephrologist. And

21:48

so I knew

21:50

that I was going to get way better

21:52

care, even if it

21:54

seemed like just a few weeks ago, like no better care existed.

21:56

Right? Like this is all we could do. We don't have a

21:58

treatment. We don't have a cure. That is all we can

22:00

do. And you come face to

22:02

face with the fact, personally, that

22:06

there is something better that can be done. And

22:08

I was going to receive that. And I was

22:10

grateful for that. But at the same time, just

22:12

really disturbed by that idea that,

22:15

damn, this is like – this is what everyone should get. Like,

22:17

what would it – what would it have been like if just

22:19

a few weeks ago I could do the same thing for

22:22

every person to get a test result back in

22:24

less than half a day as opposed to three

22:27

or four days sometimes where people just kind of

22:29

sat in limbo without knowing and then we

22:31

go back to them and say, hey, you don't got Ebola. You just

22:33

have malaria. You can go home now after

22:35

you've been in a place with other people that may

22:37

have had Ebola and maybe you're exposed. And what does

22:39

that mean for your community and for your kids? Like,

22:41

these are things we thought about every day. I didn't

22:43

have to think about that. I didn't have to think

22:45

about the hospital I was at or the people that

22:47

were taking care of me running out of their own

22:50

supplies or equipment or – I didn't

22:52

have to think about that. It

22:55

was reassuring and also disconcerting at the

22:57

same time to know that I was in

22:59

a place where I was going to get the best, but I'd come

23:01

from a place where I had seen the worst. As

23:04

Craig's care team swirled around him, debating

23:07

how best to treat him, his

23:09

mind flashed to another doctor who

23:11

had been infected with Ebola, Dr.

23:13

Sheikh Umar Khan. Dr. Khan

23:16

was at the forefront of fighting Ebola in

23:18

Sierra Leone, but he wasn't

23:20

offered an experimental drug that would treat his

23:22

illness. The World Health

23:24

Organization and Doctors Without Borders debated

23:27

whether it would be ethical to give

23:29

Dr. Khan the one drug available in

23:31

the area. He died in

23:33

July, just a few months

23:35

before Craig was hospitalized. But

23:38

in the U.S., Craig's cup

23:40

was overflowing with treatment options.

23:44

We were on the phone with the FDA

23:46

– by we, I mean

23:48

my wonderful physician Laura – on the phone

23:50

with the FDA trying to get approval to

23:53

get one of these medications that

23:55

was just like another medication that was being used

23:57

at that time to – come

24:00

in the country or to get access to it, to get

24:02

it flown up to New York. And then

24:04

when she was trying to do this,

24:06

they were like, well, actually, we can get you the real

24:08

thing. It'll just come down from Canada. And

24:10

so someone was willing to send down, ship

24:13

down, drive down a medicine from Canada to

24:15

give to me at a point in my

24:17

illness where it was clear that I was

24:19

likely going to survive. And

24:21

at the same time, one of the

24:24

best physicians in

24:27

this area who put his life on the line wasn't

24:30

able to access the same thing. And people

24:32

talked about it and debated it for such a long period of

24:34

time. And for me, it was like, well,

24:36

here we got this thing and this thing and this thing and this

24:38

thing and this other thing. And there's this other thing. I don't

24:41

know that any of them made a difference, but

24:44

just having them there, the

24:46

inequities were obvious. I mean,

24:48

it was just huge. After

24:51

19 days of being confined in

24:53

his little box of a hospital room,

24:56

Craig is cleared to go home and

24:58

he attributes his full recovery to his

25:00

amazing care team, who not

25:02

only looked after his physical health, but

25:04

showered him with love. The

25:07

nurses that

25:09

took care of me every day were just so

25:12

great. When I got to the point where I was like, yeah,

25:14

I'm ready to eat again. There was one of the Haitian nurses

25:16

that was like, great, I'm going to make you the best black

25:18

rice you've ever had. And I was like, well, I've never had

25:21

black rice. It was a low bar, but bring it. And it

25:23

was so good. And

25:25

there was this nurse

25:27

who had grown up in Korea who was

25:29

like, I'm going to bring you the most

25:31

amazing bibimbap. And sure enough,

25:33

it was just so great

25:35

to be sheltered from

25:37

the outside and just have kind of like

25:40

an internal bubble of love from those folks

25:42

was great. And so it wasn't until I left the

25:44

hospital that I interact with the media, I

25:47

got to read a statement that I

25:49

think was short and sweet and basically expressed a lot of

25:51

things I've already shared with you. I'm

25:54

just one dude. There are

25:57

Thousands of people right now in West

25:59

Africa. The That are infected. About

26:01

to be infected dying. While my

26:03

taste has garnered international sense and.

26:06

It is important to remember that my

26:08

and section represents but a fraction of

26:11

the more than thirteen thousand reported cases

26:13

sedate in West Africa. The

26:16

center of the outbreaks where families

26:18

are being torn apart in communities

26:20

are destroyed. Put. Your

26:23

focus where it belongs and.

26:25

I wrap that up. Got. My

26:27

parents are never talk into the media

26:30

ever again. I'm done a half. That's

26:32

what we call dramatic irony. Yeah, sister

26:34

success as the because Ah, be in

26:36

a dumb and me like I'm not

26:38

a this. There's no value and that's

26:40

like what am I gonna do whose

26:42

mind Meghan attains would want to hear

26:45

for me in the future? For.

26:47

Now though, Craig is eager to return

26:49

to his regular nice over the next

26:52

five years, Clegg is all across the

26:54

world. stain very busy he flies back

26:56

to West Africa to talk Ebola, followed

26:59

by stance in Chad and Burundi deniers

27:01

on a ship carrying some migrants crossing

27:03

I see and later doing research in

27:06

the deserts of Nice Air. Like

27:08

I said, he is a busy busy

27:10

guy. As for his family,

27:13

he and his wife welcome their daughter

27:15

and to the world And an early

27:17

twenty nineteen the family moved to Paris

27:19

for Crags teaching job. When he

27:21

returns to work in New York, he's

27:23

flying home. And pretty

27:25

soon it's January. Twenty Twenty. Those

27:28

friends crag and his wife made while he

27:30

was studying abroad in China suddenly start hitting

27:32

him up. There. On lockdown to

27:34

do this new virus that circulating. They

27:36

don't know what the hell is going

27:39

on, but they do know who to

27:41

ask. i'm the

27:43

doctor said everyone is like stay it's a

27:45

great i and six months i'm going to

27:47

cut through the shit what is going on

27:49

like what's the deal like hey i'm in

27:51

beijing and i'm not allowed to leave my

27:53

house at what do you know about this

27:55

one leg on about word was at that

27:57

point that i kind of jumped in and

28:01

was concerned. Concerned enough

28:03

to the point that like within a couple

28:05

weeks my wife was the one at Trader

28:07

Joe's with like two carts full of groceries

28:09

and she was like, y'all are laughing at

28:11

me now but you won't be soon assholes.

28:13

She was that kind of person and in

28:17

retrospect I love her. No one's laughing at her.

28:19

I was like we had toilet paper for days.

28:25

As a non-medical person I remember I was

28:28

washing the dishes. It was January. I was

28:30

listening to that daily episode about Wuhan. I

28:33

remember distinctly being like fuck. It

28:36

was no good. Like yeah I

28:38

mean I really it's like how many daily episodes

28:40

have I listened to and I can remember it's

28:42

like place and time you know like where things

28:44

started to feel like they shifted. Take

28:47

us to that moment in your life your

28:49

career and then at what point

28:51

you know based on all of your expertise

28:54

did you realize that this was

28:56

going to hit home and it was going to be

28:58

not just bad but really really fucking bad. Yeah.

29:03

You know this had been something that I'd seen.

29:05

I know what happens with these infectious disease and

29:07

what they look like. I know you

29:09

know that I got to keep myself safe and

29:11

my family safe and so I started wearing a

29:13

mask in like January because I knew that these

29:15

things were already moving and if

29:18

history has taught us anything especially with respect

29:20

to infectious diseases like by the time you

29:22

pick it up it has already been on

29:24

the move. It's already moved around travel

29:27

bans are probably not going to help like all these

29:29

other things that we do don't necessarily

29:32

make much of a difference. I was like all right well

29:35

if we can do anything we can kind of get

29:37

ourselves ready our family ready kind of work with my

29:39

colleagues and be like hey this is what's coming down

29:41

the pipeline that you should be prepared for this. We

29:43

all should be prepared for this and how we're going

29:45

to think about it. Things that we're going

29:47

to do if we get sick our family gets sick. So

29:49

those kind of like in January and in February I

29:51

mean obviously what we saw in

29:54

Italy and in Iran was

29:57

really just kind of like

29:59

soul-breaking. and concerning.

30:01

And I remember like late February, just

30:04

kind of waiting, like, where in the hell is this

30:06

thing? Like in New York City, why

30:08

have I not seen these? I don't understand what

30:10

is going on. Like I know it's definitely here.

30:12

And then it was March 1st

30:14

that we had the first confirmed

30:17

case, I believe, in New York City. And

30:20

it was like trickle, trickle,

30:22

trickle, deluge. In

30:24

the span of like a week from

30:27

like middle to late March, it went

30:29

from trying to find that one person

30:31

in the emergency room that might have

30:33

COVID to trying to find one

30:35

person who didn't. All

30:38

of a sudden, Craig and his colleagues

30:40

find themselves on the front line trying

30:43

to fight a deadly virus

30:45

that is spreading so fast. The

30:48

rest of us regular, degular folks

30:50

looked on from our television sets at

30:52

home or sat on a

30:54

fire escape every night and clapped

30:57

our hands or banged pots and

30:59

pans together to support the first

31:01

responders. Remember all that? But

31:03

the reality is, our

31:05

best, our heroes were

31:08

sent off to battle unarmed.

31:12

In the emergency departments, before

31:14

2020, you got to

31:16

put on an N95 mask once a year. And

31:18

that's when you went and did your fit testing

31:20

as part of like your hospital compliance. People

31:23

didn't really know how to use them, didn't

31:25

really have to put them on. Maybe if

31:27

you saw patients that had concern for TB,

31:29

maybe you'd put it on tuberculosis, but like,

31:31

you just weren't wearing it. And so there

31:34

were a few, few people like myself that

31:37

had gone to places like West Africa that

31:39

had learned how to use personal protective equipment

31:41

as if your life depended on it because

31:43

it did. We had way too

31:45

few of those folks here in the US because

31:47

it was way too difficult for people to

31:50

leave their jobs in 2014, 2015 to go to West Africa. Too many places made

31:54

it difficult or impossible, including some of

31:57

our best medical centers in this country.

32:00

it impossible to send staff to West

32:02

Africa at that time. And the result

32:04

was that we had so few people

32:06

that had any damn idea about how

32:09

to work in a place like that

32:11

with an infectious disease. Things that are

32:13

second nature after doing this for just

32:16

a few weeks during Ebola, for example,

32:18

were things that we learned the really hard way

32:21

in March and in April of 2020. Are

32:24

you seeing as things

32:27

ramp up in March and change

32:29

so rapidly? Are you having like

32:31

flashbacks to 2014? Are you feeling

32:33

like this energy that you've never

32:35

seen at home? What

32:37

are the sort of differences and similarities

32:39

that you're sensing both kind of internally

32:42

and as you're

32:44

actually visualizing? Yeah, what was weird

32:47

for me was that I had done

32:49

this in a bunch of other places.

32:51

I'd gone to hepatitis outbreaks and I'd

32:54

seen Ebola outbreaks and like gone to

32:56

respond to other diseases in other places,

32:58

but I never expected it at

33:01

home in one of like the finest medical

33:03

centers in the country or in like the

33:06

wealthiest city in the world that we were

33:08

going to be not

33:11

fully up to the challenge. That's something I was

33:13

used to in other places, but not here.

33:15

Like home is where I came to for

33:17

refuge from all of those things, not as a

33:19

place to kind of experience that all over

33:21

again. So it was

33:24

definitely traumatic and it was tough

33:27

initially to try to reconcile those

33:30

weird realities with some things that

33:32

even I just knew as very

33:34

basic things that we could be

33:36

doing. One example is a

33:39

personal protective equipment buddy. We call it a

33:42

PPE buddy and in West Africa during

33:44

Ebola, you didn't check your own PPE.

33:46

Someone else was responsible for it because you can't

33:48

see. Someone else can get underneath and take a

33:50

look at all the nooks and crannies and see

33:52

and make sure your mask is covering your eyes,

33:54

etc. I was like, oh, wow, why didn't we

33:56

do that initially? And it's something that we ended

33:58

up talking about. about and implementing

34:00

and thinking more through, but there

34:03

were missteps for everybody, myself included,

34:06

and we could have and

34:08

should have done a much better job. I

34:11

think the trauma of those first few

34:13

weeks was because we were flat-footed and

34:15

short-sighted and not prepared, and all of

34:17

those things kind of collided, especially

34:20

in New York at the end

34:22

of March 2020, where

34:28

on many days I saw more people die

34:30

in that emergency department than I did most

34:32

days while working in West Africa during Ebola.

34:36

Working in the ER is

34:38

grueling, which is familiar to

34:40

Craig in some ways and worse

34:43

in others. And as he's

34:45

treating patients and layering his

34:48

PPE and coming home and cleaning off

34:50

and going back and doing it all

34:52

over again in the morning, he pauses.

34:55

And reflects on just how severe

34:57

things had gotten and how

34:59

quickly Craig takes these

35:02

thoughts and he writes them out

35:04

in a series of tweets. He

35:06

doesn't have many followers at the time, maybe 500, but

35:10

this report from inside the walls

35:12

of a hospital, it

35:15

strikes a nerve. It's

35:17

kind of the day that I think pulls it all

35:19

home for me in terms of what it was actually like

35:22

working in the emergency department at that time, what

35:24

the new normal had become and how normalized

35:26

it had become for us, what it felt

35:28

walking into this kind of UV wonderland, which

35:34

is like there's this light everywhere

35:36

bouncing off of people's goggles and

35:38

what the, I think

35:40

I call it a cacophony of coughing

35:43

sounded like, you just walk through these corridors of people

35:45

coughing everywhere and hoping you don't get sick and what

35:47

are you gonna do when you leave and how do

35:49

you stay safe and what happens when you go home?

35:52

And then I think overnight my phone

35:54

just like was on a continuous seizure

35:56

and it was like a

35:59

bajillion likes. and retweets and I was like, what

36:01

did that happen? And I woke up in the morning and I

36:03

was like, I don't know how to engage with this, I gotta

36:05

go to work. People

36:09

have no idea what the hell is happening inside an

36:12

emergency department, which is why when I come

36:14

home and over this band of like 15, 20

36:16

minutes, just like truly write what I do at work,

36:18

I was like, this is what I did at work

36:20

today. So it's like anyone normally would be talking about

36:22

what they're doing at work today. And

36:24

it just hits end. I had

36:26

no clue that that was resonating so

36:29

much with people because people had no damn idea

36:31

what was happening. I had no clue. Like

36:33

I knew that people wanted to know, but I just, I

36:36

don't know, I just assumed people

36:38

knew that things sucked inside and it

36:40

was bad and people were dying. That was

36:43

all I was thinking about. How could there not be all

36:45

everyone else was thinking about and knew about it?

36:56

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38:08

Back. How credit

38:11

tweets about his experience as

38:13

he had after a New

38:15

York City and for many

38:17

reading. And account from the inside is

38:19

a harrowing wake up call. A

38:22

shock to the system and a

38:24

reason to be even more scared

38:26

to create even more distance. From other

38:28

people. A Craig and every

38:31

other front. My marker has to

38:33

keep going back. D.

38:35

N and Day Out. Was

38:38

there a moment where you sell yourself

38:40

certain in to get the kid overwhelmed?

38:42

Like when the fuck is this gonna

38:45

be over? Like how are we going

38:47

to get through that? Like did you

38:49

hit a wall at any point? What

38:51

was that? Experience. Like

38:53

or or maybe not your superhero you don't

38:55

have was the lot of lemme know M

38:57

S early get I had all those walls

39:00

you know from West Africa that I think

39:02

that those tools attend a better prepared me

39:04

for Kobe says that like a good works

39:06

on those gonna be tough with see people

39:08

die. I. Would you can have put

39:10

that aside And people? Also, I guess people

39:13

don't understand that, am I work in emergency

39:15

room? It's so pretty rare for me to

39:17

see people die like people just. Don't.

39:19

Die Be. What are you going to work every day

39:21

and people are dying left and right like no, no,

39:23

I mean I can go. For. Weeks

39:26

working without seeing. Someone.

39:29

Die. My colleagues were used to going into

39:31

a room and seeing someone into soccer twenty

39:33

minutes before seeing that person dad like. That's

39:35

just not something that were used to am

39:38

and having that experience unless I wouldn't

39:40

like then make it easier for me. It's

39:42

just made it easier for me that

39:44

like be able to cope and think about

39:46

how many minutes as later as a

39:48

person in that moment breakdown in a cellphone

39:51

churning prefer a lot of people. That to

39:53

say. Haven't done this to

39:55

see that day after day after day.

39:58

With. a lot and i'm I

40:00

remember one day working in one

40:04

of the smaller kind of satellite

40:06

hospitals that we had in northern Manhattan.

40:10

And the concerns that we had, because all

40:12

of the bed spaces that were next to

40:14

the wall where the oxygen was at, were

40:16

all taken by people on ventilators.

40:20

And we had a space inside closer

40:22

to where kind of the doctors and everyone else sat that

40:26

we wanted to put patients, but we didn't have a

40:28

way to get oxygen over there. We couldn't like string

40:30

it across the ground. So what

40:32

we ended up doing is connecting

40:35

the tubing to the wall and then stringing

40:37

it all the way up along the wall,

40:40

up through the ceiling, and then down

40:42

in the middle of the emergency department

40:44

so that these nasal cannulas, these little

40:46

oxygen things would be able to go

40:48

into people's noses. So they didn't

40:50

have to rely on a tank underneath them, which often

40:52

ran out and there just wasn't enough people to

40:55

know when that oxygen tank or head

40:57

run out and when people were suffocating. And

40:59

so we put this in place and I remember working

41:04

with a friend

41:06

and colleague, Dr. Lorna Breen, that day

41:09

on that. And

41:13

just thinking about like how horrible that was and

41:15

kind of the lengths to which we were going

41:17

to try to like keep people alive in the

41:20

emergency department. I remember her asking me, how

41:23

much longer do we have of

41:25

this? And

41:28

I think I remember saying something like, I think we have at least

41:31

a couple more weeks to get through the worst.

41:36

And I think

41:38

it was just a couple of weeks later that Lorna

41:41

died by suicide. And

41:49

it was just really, it's

41:51

impossible to describe just how tough it was for

41:55

everyone that like came to work as much as

41:57

they could. Many people couldn't

41:59

anymore. worker, they got sick. We lost especially a

42:01

lot of our nurses very early

42:04

on because they were at the bedside the

42:06

most. We

42:09

lost one of our nurses who

42:11

got sick with COVID after coming out

42:14

of retirement. And

42:16

we came back to the front line to try to help and

42:18

got sick himself. And

42:22

a few weeks later. So

42:25

that, I mean, seeing

42:27

your friends get sick, seeing your

42:29

friend's side, the people that you work with, like, it

42:32

was all really, really tough and

42:34

really hard. But that was, by

42:36

far the hardest part of it. And still

42:38

hurts. So

42:40

sorry. So

42:47

here we are. We're in 2024. It's four

42:49

years after the pandemic first struck. And,

42:52

you know, my little person

42:55

who was toddling is

42:57

now a full blown kindergartner with opinions

42:59

and thoughts and feelings of his own.

43:02

You know,

43:04

time has passed. And

43:07

I think for a lot of

43:09

us who may not be immunocompromised or

43:11

have other preexisting conditions, it

43:13

feels like things have returned to, quote

43:16

unquote, normal. Or

43:18

in a lot of ways, the new normal. A

43:22

stuffy nose means swabbing and

43:24

testing. My nine-year-old's like, get the COVID test.

43:26

You know, I have a pickle, you know,

43:28

which is just wild. And so I guess

43:31

my question is, you're an

43:33

expert. How would you

43:36

describe the stage that we've been?

43:38

You know, time has

43:40

passed. And I think for

43:43

a lot of us who may not be

43:45

immunocompromised or have other preexisting conditions,

43:48

it feels like things have returned to,

43:50

quote unquote, normal. Or

43:53

in a lot of ways, the new normal. Where,

43:56

you know, a stuffy nose means Swabbing

43:59

and testing. Right. My Nine-year-old's in Europe Like typical

44:01

been tested. In I have a cynical for

44:03

the analysis. Which is wild and

44:05

so I guess my question is.

44:08

Your and experts. How would

44:10

you describe the stage that we find

44:12

ourselves and today? Like? is it actually

44:15

normal? Or is it

44:17

not normal? What's the actual reality?

44:20

Confuse. Air,

44:22

You know? So. As of

44:24

just. You. Know a few months

44:27

ago you have a thousand people dying

44:29

per week of cove It. So.

44:31

You talk and fifty thousand people per year

44:33

with so put it like in the top

44:36

in terms of killers in this country do

44:38

we. Think. About it like that

44:40

in the same. Same way as we did

44:42

a year ago. Two years ago through Go Know. Do

44:46

we take the same precautions? The majority of

44:48

us including myself as we did a couple

44:50

years before know even when I see patients

44:52

in the hospital I'm I'm not wearing a

44:54

mask for every patients. If I think it's

44:56

I'm on the essay corps and me a

44:58

compromise idea. but like if it's some the

45:00

some of the like you know maybe broke

45:02

her ankle, maybe I'm not an and so

45:05

even for us the of provider that were

45:07

so diligent a few years before access things

45:09

have changed. so it's a confused time. Because.

45:12

Yeah, lots of people are still dying

45:14

of cove It or the dying of

45:16

the same cove as of March twenty

45:18

twenty when I saw people coming and

45:20

struggling to breathe with their lungs. you

45:22

know, wait it out on a test.

45:24

tax rates know almost never and like

45:26

never see that anymore or the dying

45:28

because Koba does things to body like

45:31

may seem more dehydrated or me some

45:33

more likely for older people to fall

45:35

and had their had and bleed. And

45:37

yeah absolutely so cove it is continuing

45:39

to sounds and impact. it's still taking.

45:41

The lives of many people and still

45:43

remains again for what'll be the fourth

45:45

year in the row was one of

45:47

the top killers of Americans. Am,

45:50

which is again incredible given the

45:52

fact that it's been nearly a

45:54

hundred years. Sense and Infectious Disease

45:56

was among the top three colors

45:58

in this country, and so. Is

46:01

it normal? No, that's not normal.

46:03

Know is make an argument that normal

46:05

If they do, they're absolutely silly. But

46:07

have we reached a place in which.

46:11

Most people have. Gone

46:13

back to some sense of normal where

46:15

we're sending your kids back to school

46:17

and knowing that like if they're sick,

46:20

it's probably something other than covered and

46:22

right most of the time. yeah, I'm

46:24

are we. Better. Prepared than

46:26

we were Four years ago. Three years

46:29

ago. Two years ago like sore and

46:31

we have vaccines and we have therapeutic

46:33

sick. Were in a much better place

46:35

than that. Doesn't mean that we're in

46:37

a perfect place, so I know it's

46:40

really, really tricky for a lot of

46:42

folks to think about what this moment

46:44

means for them, because four years ago,

46:46

what it meant for everybody was the

46:49

same thing he was scary as to

46:51

potentially impact you, your family, your loved

46:53

ones. We've had over a million people

46:55

die. In this country so many people

46:57

have lost a family member and the

46:59

past four years and ten you losing

47:01

family members. It's

47:07

really hard to reconcile

47:09

those tendons. Dr.

47:12

Jekyll and Hyde sides of

47:14

this virus where. People.

47:16

As a Psych, were ready to move on and for

47:18

the majority of people. Unlike that's okay,

47:20

You know we've done this. we've

47:23

been vaccinated with nearly everyone has

47:25

got has been infected like. Just.

47:28

Like you feel safe to move on but at the same

47:30

time. We. Can overlook the fact that like

47:32

it's it's not. It's. Not normal.

47:35

There are so many things that we can

47:37

take from this moment. To.

47:39

Think about how we prevent the similar moment.

47:42

In. The Future. We saw a member in

47:44

April of Twenty Twenty looking at the

47:46

maps of who was being infected with

47:48

cove It in New York City and

47:50

who was dying and. I

47:53

I. I feel convinced that I could.

47:55

show this you know a teenager and say

47:58

look at these maps and to me the

48:00

wealthy people live and where the people

48:02

that are less well-off live and

48:05

have that correlate to infection rates and death rates.

48:08

The inequities that we saw had been

48:10

built in and we have so many of the

48:12

same problems. We still have a

48:15

bunch of states that have not expanded Medicaid.

48:17

We still have millions and millions

48:19

of uninsured people in this

48:21

country. We still have a healthcare system that

48:24

spends trillions of dollars a year and

48:26

where you are lucky, if you're

48:28

lucky enough to get the best healthcare in the world,

48:30

you can. But you still

48:32

have neonatal and maternal mortality, especially

48:34

in communities of color, higher than

48:38

developing countries around the world.

48:41

We have so many other

48:43

massive health threats that

48:45

might make COVID at this moment

48:48

look less dramatic and horrible than

48:50

it is. But that's

48:52

only because those are really, really,

48:54

really bad. That's because COVID necessarily

48:57

isn't. I mean,

48:59

when you put it in those terms, it seems

49:01

like it's

49:06

so demoralizing because what that

49:09

suggests is that when we look into

49:11

the future, we are

49:13

still in great danger. I mean,

49:16

it's until we fix those systemic

49:18

inequities and so

49:20

many other things that are broken, like if it's

49:23

not COVID, it has to be something else. I

49:25

mean, I don't know. How

49:28

do you get out of bed every day? Well,

49:32

because I'm encouraged. I'm encouraged by the

49:34

fact that we have those maps from

49:36

April 2020 to say, look at the

49:38

experience of Hispanic and Black New Yorkers

49:41

and what happened. We

49:43

have people who are committed to

49:45

making sure that this is highlighted

49:48

at each and every stage, that

49:50

makes sure that data reflects

49:53

the realities, not just for wealthy

49:55

white Americans, but for everyone in

49:58

this country. people

50:00

in communities and centers and schools

50:02

and universities and

50:04

labs focused on highlighting these

50:07

inequities. Has

50:09

there been change undoubtedly? I'm

50:16

optimistic about the recognition of

50:19

the things that are wrong, the people who

50:21

are committing their whole life and all of

50:23

their energies to reversing and

50:25

addressing those, the changes

50:27

that have been made and the challenges ahead, like,

50:30

yes, there'll be another

50:32

COVID or there'll be another something else

50:34

that's going to take disproportionately the lives

50:36

of people who are poor or

50:39

communities who are more vulnerable or marginalized.

50:43

But there will now always be a

50:45

light on those communities. There will be

50:47

people focused on fixing those inequities. And

50:50

I am confident that there

50:52

will be change, that we

50:54

will continue to make progress in addressing these

50:56

issues and other issues that have plagued medicine

50:59

and public health and really our society in general.

51:01

So that's how I get out of bed. I

51:04

work with, like, awesome students that

51:06

are so fixated on this.

51:09

I work with people at

51:11

local levels or at the

51:13

federal level, in government, in

51:15

nonprofits, that are like, this

51:17

cannot stand and work their ass off every

51:19

single day to make that

51:22

change a reality. And

51:24

we are far away

51:26

away from being able to, like,

51:28

scoff the next time a new respiratory

51:31

virus comes to our shores and say, ah,

51:33

you can't, you know, you

51:35

won't kill any of us. Like, we're going to make mistakes

51:38

and we're going to see other

51:40

threats, whether chronic diseases or infectious diseases. We

51:42

should be humble enough to admit that

51:45

we're not perfect. But, damn it, we need

51:47

to work all of our asses off to

51:49

addressing those inequities and to fixing those issues

51:52

that have plagued health, public health

51:54

for quite some time and do our part

51:56

to reverse those trends. All

52:00

of us really exist now in

52:02

this strange space where

52:04

we are holding two mind-bending ideas

52:08

at the same time. One,

52:11

that we have experienced incredible loss

52:13

and crisis over the past few

52:15

years. And two, that

52:18

we have come out the other side, which

52:20

means we can hope

52:23

and we can plan for a

52:25

better, more equitable future. Well,

52:28

if you've been listening to this show, for a

52:30

while, you know that we call

52:33

a space like this the happy sad. And

52:35

after everything Craig has witnessed and

52:38

experienced, I wanted

52:41

to hear about his. My

52:44

sad is pretty clear in that

52:46

spending 19 days in a tiny little box on

52:49

the eighth floor of a hospital in New York

52:51

City, where it wasn't clear that I was going

52:53

to make it out to the other side, was

52:55

definitely a low point. Definitely a

52:58

sad. I'm

53:00

glad that I did. I'm super glad that I

53:02

had access to like unbelievable care in great people,

53:04

in great food from the nurses, like all that

53:07

stuff was so great. But

53:09

it was still really, really sad. It

53:11

was sad to think about the care that I received

53:13

and how it was so different from the care that

53:15

I was able to give. Like that's

53:18

what hurts me, I think the most to

53:20

this day. So

53:22

maybe like, well, how in the hell do you turn that

53:24

around, Craig, and make that into something happy? You know, that

53:26

experience showed me a lot. It showed me that one, I

53:30

could use a platform like when

53:32

I got out of the hospital and was

53:34

able to say, hey, I'm ready for my book

53:36

deal. Instead say something

53:39

like, hey, stop focusing on me.

53:41

I'm not important. What's important is

53:43

the people that are continuing to

53:46

die today that represent an

53:48

ongoing loss of life to something that should

53:50

not happen and that should get access to

53:52

the exact same care as myself. And so

53:54

I think that instilled in me this

53:57

sense of purpose, the ability

53:59

to live. ability to kind of

54:01

share other people's stories and

54:03

play that like the podcast mic or

54:05

the camera or the radio was not

54:07

necessarily focused on. So that was one

54:10

thing. And the other thing is

54:12

that in the ensuing time I

54:15

have recognized that, oh

54:18

my gosh, there are

54:21

so many unbelievable people just like

54:23

those doctors I worked with in

54:25

Guinea that work their ass off

54:27

every single day. Not knowing

54:29

if they were gonna get paid, not knowing if they were

54:31

gonna get sick or what was gonna happen

54:34

to them if they got sick or if one

54:36

of their family members got sick. Like showed up

54:38

every day, taught me everything that I ever knew

54:40

about Ebola. Who did it the next time that

54:42

I went and worked in some other place where

54:44

they were there and their family was there. Or

54:47

did it here over the past few years when

54:49

I saw so many people sacrifice so much

54:51

to put themselves on the line to fight

54:54

for a better things, to raise their voice for

54:56

better things. And my

54:59

sad moment was sad. The happy moment

55:02

of seeing how many freaking incredible people

55:04

are out there committed to doing the

55:06

right thing despite

55:08

their risks to themselves, despite the

55:10

risks of their reputation, of their

55:13

politics, of their followers on social

55:15

media. Like damn if that

55:17

is not so cool and

55:19

something that I'm just like elated to

55:23

be part of. To talk with students

55:26

that can hear my story that can be like

55:28

that's not okay and to say yeah you're right

55:30

it's not okay and then I have them get

55:32

fired up to go do something about it and

55:34

to be committed to a career in public health

55:37

where they focus on these things. I

55:40

don't know that I would have had

55:42

a similar platform as

55:45

in 2014 I know it's been infected.

55:47

That sad moment sucked. But

55:49

like so many of the people that I've worked with that

55:51

have found a way of translating their fad into

55:53

something impactful, I

55:56

hope that's what the last I guess

55:58

decade has been. Sorry. But

56:01

that makes me happy. That makes me happy.

56:12

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57:19

Thanks for listening. Xmayo

57:34

is a comedian, writer, producer, and when

57:37

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57:39

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