A Doctor Who Makes Viral Medical Videos on His China Network and Early COVID Warnings

Vance Crowe [00:00:02] As the crow flies on the Vance Crow podcast.

ChubbyEmu [00:00:07] Cool,

Vance Crowe [00:00:09] Bernard, AKA chubby imu. Welcome to the podcast.

ChubbyEmu [00:00:14] Thanks for having me.

Vance Crowe [00:00:15] So it is April 16th, 2020. Coronavirus is all around us and right now the biggest word on the street, everybody is talking about China. When I had my flash briefing come over my Amazon Alexa this morning, they were talking all about China. And you and I have known each other for a few years. One time you told me something about China that was so staggering to me. I couldn't believe it, that the written language of Chinese has remained the same and so has in many ways the spoken language so that their culture can be much more uniform and that they can read things from much further back and understand what they meant in the more literal meaning.

ChubbyEmu [00:01:00] Yeah. So Chinese people today, at least the ones who can read traditionally written Chinese, they can read texts all the way back to 200 bc. So that is the Ching dynasty. So the very first dynasty, there was somebody he was called, he called himself the first emperor because he was the person who unified the entire area. Because traditionally, if you go before that time period, China was a bunch of different kingdoms that were fighting for powers, kind of like Europe, except you had one guy was able to consolidate all of that power and he was able to impose strict Marshall rule. And one of the rules that he imposed was a continuity in culture because he knew that everyone spoke just a slightly different version of the same language. That's why you have all these thousands of dialects of Chinese. But he forced everyone to write the same way so that there would be continuity within the kingdom. And so by the time his rule ended, which was only about 20 years, his son was really weak. And then another dynasty was able to capture power. And so then they imposed that same writing system, which persisted all the way until today. So if you wanted to read old texts from more than a thousand years ago, the people who can read traditional Chinese, they can, some of the words are a little bit different, but that's why when you're taught the classics outside of the mainland where they teach the traditional Chinese, then they're able to understand it.

Vance Crowe [00:02:40] You know? And language is one of those things that if you've never studied or learned a different language, it's hard for you to conceptualize that understanding a word from a different, using a different word to describe something often changes its meaning. It changes how you see it. And you know, it really change, it really describes how do we see this object? And it's hard to describe 'cause it's not like me saying, oh, dog and perro, you know, like, it's not like, oh, you're naming different nouns. It's the way that you use that language that really describes how your culture interacts with one another.

ChubbyEmu [00:03:15] Yeah. And I was like reading a couple of articles the other day about how in Dutch language swears and slurs are actually based around disease. So there's very possible that like coronavirus disease could become a slur in like the next two or three generations. It's just kind of the nature of humans is that so far, especially in the English speaking world, when we wanna have slurs, it's usually, you know, something based on religion or based on sex or based on disease. It's based on something that we would see as taboo. And then we use that as like a slur in language.

Vance Crowe [00:03:54] Oh, like an anti-vaxxer.

ChubbyEmu [00:03:56] I'm not sure about that one. But

Vance Crowe [00:03:58] That, that, that name in certain circles, if you throw it out there, it's a bomb on somebody. You know, it's like that person is an anti-vaxxer. Oh, they listen to anti-vaxxer ideas? Oh

ChubbyEmu [00:04:09] No, I, I mean like if you say the F word, right? The F word apparently had some different origins than what we use it for now. But you know, in, in terms of it having like a relation to sex and then having that be a bad word, it, it's related to a taboo subject that you wouldn't necessarily speak forthright about. At least a long time ago you wouldn't have, now it's a little bit different, but when you use words in that context, it's like Jesus f Christ. Right? That's putting both taboos together in one slur that would be considered offensive to a majority of people that would hear it. Right.

Vance Crowe [00:04:47] Wow. And it's definitely cultural and it will grab effect under certain groups that you've put those two very ideas that you would normally distance yourself from. You put 'em together.

ChubbyEmu [00:04:58] Yeah. I mean, if you say Jesus f Christ to a Chinese person, they don't, they don't care. I mean, they know who Jesus Christ is, but they don't have the same impact, especially had they grown up in Asia and they weren't Christian, then if you say it to them, it's not as shocking than if you say it to somebody here. Like let's say a grandma who, you know, doesn't like using those kinds of words in a public space, then, you know, that could be considered offensive. It's cultural for sure.

Vance Crowe [00:05:26] Yeah, I mean, the more you talk about this, the more I realize that the nicknames that people have for the groups that they don't want around in your community are usually pretty negative. Like when I was in Kenya, the, the Kenyans referred to the British whites as karu, and I still don't really know what this means, but it was like, it was not something they would say yelling at somebody or, you know, it would be after somebody walked away. And it would be if you treated somebody rudely or as though you were above them. So to call somebody karu was like dirty.

ChubbyEmu [00:06:05] Interesting. Okay. Yeah, there's, yeah, there's definitely places around the world where words used like that are negative, but there's also words that are like, say for example, in Chinese, right? So Chinese, the word for foreigner is a literal translation of outside from outside the, the kingdom or from outside the country, right? So it's outside country person is the, is the word for foreigner. And so that could be used in a way where let's say somebody who's not Chinese would find it offensive. They don't technically use it in a way that's offensive. But if, if you really wanted to be sensitive, you, you could be seen as that way.

Vance Crowe [00:06:50] So you have a YouTube channel that is extraordinary and it's, it's extraordinary because you found a particular niche where you have a formula for how you present information and you put it, you put these new ideas through this formula and you come out on the other end and the people that have watched your video have just gone on a rollercoaster ride. Like they've had emotional swings, they've had polarity, they have like ways of thinking about what you're talking about. And they get done and they've just learned something. And what you're talking about is medicine in a way that nobody talks about it that I had ever seen before. Tell me about the evolution of chubby imu and how did you hit on this style of communicating and yet having such a goofy ass name to chubby imu?

ChubbyEmu [00:07:47] Yeah, I'm pretty sure that name will never get me verified on Twitter at this point. So the, the point of having a name like that, it, it is really the, the, the videos are about the content, right? And it's not, I try to make a point that the videos aren't about me, they're about the person I'm talking about, right? And they're about the education and you know, the, the medicine and the physiology behind everything. Like that's, that's really the point behind it. And so the way I got to it was kind of strange 'cause back in 2014 is when I left academic medicine and I left Chicago, I, you know, grown up, born and raised in Illinois. And so I was thinking, you know, I, I gotta make a move somewhere at that point. And I was kind of not happy with the educational bureaucracy, so I went, took a corporate role. And so at the corporate level, there's also the same kind of bureaucracy. I thought I'd get away from it, but it, it still exists. It's a little different. And the, the main frustration in medicine was that everything that you do, especially when you're in a junior role, like I was, you, you're junior until around 50 in medicine. And so I, I think a lot of people don't realize that, but the youngest NIH funded investigator, I think is 48 or 49 years old. Whoa. And yeah. And that person is an absolute superstar. Like that is rising, you know, he's, he's gonna be candidate for the Nobel Prize. Like, like that person, whoever that person is, whatever practice setting, man or woman, doesn't matter.

ChubbyEmu [00:09:20] But the youngest person is in their late forties, early fifties. And so in medicine, whatever you do is not really yours, especially when you're in a junior role. So I thought, well, what can I do to make something that I can call my own? Right? And at the time, it was what, late 20 14, 20 15. And so YouTube and internet video was like kind of the, the lowest hanging fruit. It's the easiest, lowest barrier to entry into something that you could say like, Hey, I've made it right. And that's because like, you know, traditional illustration and, you know, writing were, they were difficult to get into. Yeah, you could illustrate some stuff, but how popular would it be, right? You're, you're in a medium that wouldn't necessarily reach as many people that video had the potential to reach. And so for me, I, I had always thought, okay, I think video is probably the way to go. And now how do you enter that space, right? So you get in and, you know, you make a couple videos, nobody watches them. My first subscriber's, my mom, second one's, my sister, third one was my girlfriend at the time. And then, and what are you

Vance Crowe [00:10:24] Making though? But like what, what videos are you putting out when you first start?

ChubbyEmu [00:10:28] I was playing, so I played video games 'cause I had a, a, an unemployment lull in between the time I left Illinois and went over to the east coast. And so playing a lot of video games and girlfriend at the time had suggested, Hey, how about this? Why don't you just make videos of you playing the video game? Because that super popular right now that could teach you how to make a video. Doesn't need to be a good video, but it's a video. And from there you can start learning more. And so I thought about it, I was like, this is a no brainer.

Vance Crowe [00:10:58] It's very simple. So let's just be clear. 'cause you're, a lot of my listeners are literally getting onto tractors right now, polishing up their planters and getting ready. Some of them are already going out and getting their fields ready to be planted. And the thought that someone would watch a video that you made of you playing video games is would blow them away. They cannot imagine, first of all, they don't play video games, and if they did, they certainly wouldn't sit around and watch videos of other people playing video games. So it's shocking that that would be the path that somebody that's as articulate as you are got onto this. I, I wanna just highlight just how weird that would be, right?

ChubbyEmu [00:11:39] Well, it, it's weird to me because especially when I see those videos and, you know, just kind of the thoughts that I had circulating around in my head at the time, it was, it was a path to learning how to make a video, right? That was the most important one. But then also at the time, it was super popular. I mean, that was like kind of the heyday. It still is a heyday of what they call the genre of let's play YouTubers like the top 10 YouTube channels. I think four or five of them are let's play channels because these are people that will play video games. Each video will be 30 minute, 30 something minutes long, and let's just say it has a million views and everyone's watching for 15 minutes or more. And they do that twice a day. Like if you wanna see the top YouTube channels by watch time, you're looking at somebody who scores 250 million views every month on YouTube and multiply it by a watch time, average of around anywhere from 15 to 18 minutes per view. You're looking at several billion minutes of time spent by people watching this person play video games. And they might not even be good at playing that game. They're just entertaining to watch. And that the game is a medium for them to entertain people through.

Vance Crowe [00:12:54] So I mean, the, the thought of having billions of minutes of attention is one of those things where people are like, yeah, I know we're in the future, but they don't really understand that like the people that are doing that a billion minutes of attention have more sway over the people than the most powerful kings of any time, right? That they could have people watching them and hearing their voice and hearing their opinion on things and getting ideas out. Like the medium that you're talking about for many other people is like, they can't even imagine that there are millions of people wa watching these things at all. But then also the knock on consequences of that, which is these people, people like you have a really outsized voice once they capture attention.

ChubbyEmu [00:13:43] Yes. And also, no, you have to keep in mind the kind of action that they can put out based on what they have in the videos. So a lot of it's cultural action. So, you know, if, if they might say something, they might be able to sway an opinion over one thing or over another. But it depends on what space that opinion is. Like, you know, if a let's player was gonna talk about what they think of a clinical trial for COVID-19, people probably not gonna, you know,

Vance Crowe [00:14:13] Listen to what that person's opinion

ChubbyEmu [00:14:14] Is. Right? Although that's funny because that, that's me, right? Fair. If it was five years ago and I was talking about my opinion on a COVID clinical trial and a let's play video, prob people probably wouldn't have listened to me back then,

Vance Crowe [00:14:29] But you had to start somewhere if you had, because, so you do, let's play videos and then keep going with your evolution. I interrupted you.

ChubbyEmu [00:14:36] Oh, so I just saw my numbers drop, right? And it's, I think there was a whole year where, you know, I, I didn't like editing videos. I, I kind of lost sight of making a better video. And so I was just putting out videos just for the hell of it. And I, I kind of figured there would be a point where I would get into that kind of rut. And then when I finally realized it, I thought, you know what? I need to like, I need to step out of it and try something different. And I knew at the time, whatever I tried, I actually probably wouldn't do that well because one, it would've been a bad video, but two, it would've been significantly different than from the regular video game videos that I was putting out at the time. But I said, no matter what, let me try. So I think I put out my first medical video in like July of 2016, and it was about a hot topic at the time was loperamide overdose. So people were taking Imodium to get over like opioid withdrawal. And so they were, because loperamide is actually an opiate analog and it doesn't easily cross the blood brainin barrier, so you can't really get high from it. But if you take a bunch of it, if some of it will eventually cross into the brain,

Vance Crowe [00:15:48] Oh my God. But the cost would be that you're taking a, a Imodium, right? Like

ChubbyEmu [00:15:53] Yeah, yeah. The, the cost would be that it has the same side effects as opiates that you would be constipated to all hell. But it also stops your heart too. It stops your heart in a similar way to how an overdose of hydroxychloroquine would so bring, to bring it back to today's events, it does stop the heart. So there was people dying of cardiac arrest because they found out that they could take Imodium for heroin withdrawal and it wasn't good. And so there was a push to put Imodium behind the counter so that people couldn't access it, similar to how Sudafed was.

Vance Crowe [00:16:30] And, and you put this video out and how did your audience of people that have watched you, because, because to be fair, you hadn't just put out videos like this, you put out videos of you power lifting about you. Like the way that you and I came in contact with one another was that I was searching how much protein should you eat in a day? I, I had gotten into a weightlifting kick. I wanted to get fit and I found your stuff and you, you had these videos of you ma making and eating like, I don't know, a dozen eggs in a day. What was two dozen eggs? I don't remember what it was.

ChubbyEmu [00:17:01] Yeah, yeah. There was, there were those videos. So that was over the summer. I figured, you know, to litter throughout like the regular content that I would try to put out every day, I would litter it with, you know, different kinds of videos of like, I dunno, 14 eggs for breakfast or something about like, I ate like a whole tub of chicken breasts or something, you know, just, just for fun, right? And then I, I think at the beginning of 2016, I made a video about how I lost 60 pounds in 16 weeks. And that was the first time that I had worked with my fat loss coach at the time. But I mean that what I worked with him in like 2007, 2006 I think. So it was like a good 10 years out. And so I had remember I had contacted him because we had kept in touch throughout those 10 years and I said, Hey, I'm a YouTuber now and let me, can I make a video about how I lost all the weight? And he is like, yeah, that'd be great. And I said, I'll, I'll, I'll plug you. And I think at the time I had like a thousand subscribers or something and he is like, Hey man, like, and any word getting out would be great. So I made that video and it like, it, it didn't, it did well at the time for having a thousand subscribers. And then it subsequently died in like the next nine months of 2016. But around like the fall is when it started to pick back up. And I remember like fall winter 2016, the thing was getting like 10,000 views a day. And you know, to me I would, that's more subscribers that I had. And I thought, you know, this is great. And so by the end of 2016, I gained a bunch of weight because I was doing things like, you know, eating 28 eggs for breakfast for the hell of

Vance Crowe [00:18:34] It, for YouTube video.

ChubbyEmu [00:18:36] But also at the same time the YouTube was, it was really starting to not, it was becoming apparent that whatever I was doing was not worth the effort. So the, the reality was is that you had to change the effort, not necessarily put more effort in. You just need to take an entirely different approach. And if people don't like it, you just don't listen to it because you have a, a further sight for what you wanna do. And you know, this is kind of like a you looking after yourself type of thing. So by the time that you had contacted me in, in late December of 2016, I thought, hey, this is a good opportunity to start losing weight again because I think I was like already, like I, I was starting to, you know, get really heavy and there's pictures of it. And so the beginning of January, 2017 is then when I started doing the fat loss flog. And that did okay for the first couple episodes and then subsequently died again. And so I remember it was hard for me to keep up doing one video a week. And for me I was changing the effort, not necessarily doing more, but changing the way I wanted to approach it. But then that got stale too. And so by the end of the 16 weeks of me losing the weight, I kind of just like stopped caring about the videos and I said, what do I do now? Because every time I upload a video, I lose like a couple hundred subscribers, people, you know, watch for like 10 seconds to see the beginning to see how much I progressed since the last week.

ChubbyEmu [00:20:07] And they click off the video and that's it, you know, it, it's over. And so I, I took a good two or three weeks off for making videos and I said, you know what, either I quit now two years in, or I just, I I just look around my room and thought, well what do I do? And so I, I looked down at my desk and there was the computer that made every single like, 200 of those videos that I had posted by that point. And I said, you know what, why don't I just make a video about this computer just for the hell of it? And so I made a, it was a, by then it was seven years old. And so I thought, okay, you know, let me, I, I have footage of me building this computer in 2010, why don't I repurpose some of that footage and that way that's a different approach. I'll tell the story of this computer what I'm gonna do with it next and how it's benefited me since. And so I think I titled the video, I, I paid or I bought this PC for 1360 in 2010. This is how I'll

Vance Crowe [00:21:05] Throw it in the show notes for sure. Yeah.

ChubbyEmu [00:21:07] Yeah. And so I used the footage from when I built it, I, I built it with my buddy. And so like we, we were doing all this stuff and I, I wrote like, I wrote out a formal script, you know, talking about, hey, like if, if you're like me my age, you know, you remember computers and you know how they progressed throughout the nineties and two thousands and it kind of seems like it's stagnated now a little bit. And so that video, it, it did okay at first, and I remember I went to Chicago for a cancer conference and then as I was at that cancer conference, it was getting like, I think two or 300,000 views a day. Like it just kind of exploded all of a sudden. And I'm like, okay, so this is a new format, like this would be that different effort, what else can I do it on? So I figured, well that's about that computer. I still have computers I, from 20 years ago that I brought with me from Illinois, no idea what I was gonna do with them, but I still have them. Why don't I just make a video about it? And there was a good computer I got in 99.

Vance Crowe [00:22:03] Well, and to make it so everybody's clear, you live, I don't know if you wanna say what city you live in

ChubbyEmu [00:22:08] DC

Vance Crowe [00:22:09] You live in DC and space is at a premium, right? Like it is expensive to have carried around the things that you have. And I, I mean I live there, thank God I'm not on, on Coronavirus because when I lived there, my wife and I lived in a 480 square foot apartment that looked out on a brown brick wall. It would've been this, this pandemic would've been terrible. So for you to take the precious space that you have and be lugging around computers meant they had some meaning for you, but you dug them out and found a way to turn 'em into learning gold, really, right?

ChubbyEmu [00:22:42] Yeah. And so for me it was like learning how to tell a story of a, of a computer, right? I mean it, that's like probably the one thing that a lot of people would just say like, what the hell's the point? You know, it's a thing that you bought in 1999, like why do you still have it? Right? And so that the 1999 video was, I think the last computer video I made. I I, there was one where I got like a, a laptop for free in 2008 because I joined some survey panel and they were like, we're gonna give you a laptop for free. And so I remember like at the time I was using it and you know, I have some footage from back in like 2008, 2009. I had like one of those flip cameras and like, you know, video to has always had like importance to me. Like I have videos of me talking into cameras since like 2004. And then I have a video of myself from like 93, which may never see the light of day, but you know, you see, what is it, 93? I was nine, you have a 9-year-old me in this video. And so that was, that was basically the template. But I figured I don't really have as, as much of a future to tell stories of computers because I don't have that many computers, right? I got four or five of them. How many videos could I possibly make, Right? And so when I made the 1999 video, I had been thinking about this since I moved out of New York down to DC and I thought, hey, why don't I, why don't I do a, a medical case that I had been thinking of and this kind of materialized, I think around in April.

ChubbyEmu [00:24:15] And so we did the video about the woman who drank three gallons of water in two hours. And so based it off of the story that happened in California. And so I thought, you know, there's a lot of interesting stuff in there, right? What is water poisoning? How does it necessarily kill you? Right? And it's actually a very intricate process and there's a lot of things to explain about how it swells up into your brain and you could die from that. And why didn't she vomit or urinate out any of the water, right? There's all reasons to why it happened the way that it did. And so I thought, why don't I post this last computer video on the Saturday August 5th and then on Monday August 7th I'll put up the three gallons water video. I think I had sent you that video before I published it like a week before I published it. And so you, you thought it was interesting. You're like, oh yeah, this would be good. So I, I put it up on that Monday and you know, it got some decent traction. People thought it was kinda weird. They're like, I thought you were talking about computers. Why are you talking about a woman drinking three gallons of water? And so I went to Cleveland for work to talk with some people at the clinic. And then I remember, I think it was like Wednesday or Thursday, the thing started spiking at like 25,000 an hour, right? Then it went to 60,000 an hour. And like the jumps were, I I had never seen that before. I had never gotten 60,000

Vance Crowe [00:25:37] People. I remember it was like watching a guy hit a gold mine or something because I was like clicking in and watching this video rocket forward it, it was, it was awesome. We were checking in every couple hours 'cause the numbers were going so fast.

ChubbyEmu [00:25:51] Yeah. And so for me, like then I thought, you know what, like this is, or originally I thought how do I, how do I create something I can call my own and would it have to end up being in my working field? And so originally I, I did the video games 'cause one games are fun. Medicine is not necessarily fun, right? And so by the time you got there, I, I had to make a choice to say like, do I want this channel to be about just fun or do I wanna actually talk about some serious stuff and try to make it fun? And so that was then when the change happened. And so once I saw that video do pretty well, I said, you know what, this is the format I want to stick with. And from there I wanna learn how to make a better video every time. So I, I have all these different cases that I saw in the emergency room when I was in practice. So, you know, all these different ones. There's also ones that I can't talk about on YouTube because they talk about very, very sensitive issues. And so, just to give you an example, last fall I made a video about a boy who ate only potato chips and french fries. And that was something that came out in a news story. And it's a story of a vitamin B12 deficiency. Well, I had a case of vitamin B12 deficiency I wanted to release in December of 2017. The problem is, is that there's child abuse and there's suicide involved. So because of that, I think YouTube would find it unpalatable. And it, it is very sensitive story. Like it, it's a, it's a terrible story, but it's an important one.

ChubbyEmu [00:27:24] But I took the B12 deficiency from the boy who only ate potato chips and french fries because it's, while it is still a tragedy, it's not the same level of tragedy as what happened to that girl in the original one that I wanted to put out.

Vance Crowe [00:27:37] And it's strikes me that you've been learning and, and honing this craft and the things that you can talk about and how you've gotten better and better and better. And I don't know what it was a month and a half ago you ended up doing a collaboration with other people in China, I presume, I don't know. But it was a coronavirus video in your standards. So for people that don't know Bernard's videos are like Dr. House on, on cocaine or something. It's, it's the, instead of having all the drama around where there's like romances and things like that, Bernard's videos are like, a woman did this and this is what happened to her brain or to her liver or to her whatever. And then he goes through and describes the medical case for what happens. So it is a whipsaw like rollercoaster of emotions for what's happening because oftentimes he describes it in a way where you're like, I probably wouldn't do that, but whoa, it'd be bad if it happened to me. And he ended up not only building a US audience, but also a Chinese audience. And he just recently, not, not just recently way before the curve, put out a video on Coronavirus and about what it does to your lungs. And it was one of those things that like really woke me awake.

ChubbyEmu [00:28:57] Yeah, I'm lucky because back in 2017 there was a person, he was a resident I think in Guzo Province or Guzo China. And so he, he was translating my videos and posting it to Chinese social media with subtitles. So it would be English, like English words with Chinese on top. And so the people who wanted to listen, they could learn some English from it by both listening to what I'm saying and also reading and correlating with the Chinese characters. And so he had asked my permission to repost it at the time and I thought, no, I, I like, I don't know what happens on Chinese social media. 'cause you know, they don't have Facebook, they don't have Google, they don't have Twitter and that kind of stuff. So then I, I looked a little bit further and I'm like, well this guy was really asking for forgiveness because he had already done all of it translating

Vance Crowe [00:29:49] And posted. And

ChubbyEmu [00:29:51] So I, I saw that and I'm like, okay. And so I told him, I said, sure you can, but you, you do have to make a a chubby IMU channel. You can't put it under your name David lie, right? Because I'm not David lie. And so he agreed. And what, what ended up happening, and that was in 2018, is that this team exploded into like a group of I think like at least 15 or 20 people. And so what ended up turning out is that I hopped in a, in a WeChat with them and it turns out that they were all, you know, doctors and scientists all throughout China and they were interested. They're like, they were at the university, you

Vance Crowe [00:30:30] Created your own gravity well before you even got there of people that would, the type of person that would wanna translate your videos and make him available is the type of person that's like you, he just not making those videos, but he's in another location. You created a place where people could congregate. That's a gravity. Well

ChubbyEmu [00:30:46] Yeah, it was interesting. So I, I think he's now a full attending physician, but he didn't see like huge amounts of coronavirus. 'cause he is in the south part of China. And so when the coronavirus hit, I remember I had went back to Illinois for the Chinese New Year and like, you know, we had all these announcement oh coronavirus and you know, people, people were still joking about it at the time, they're still joking about it, but it's a little bit different now than it was back then. And so he had told me, he said, yeah, Wuhan is probably going to get locked down. And I think they, they had the suspicions of it because it seemed like it was pretty severe. And so I said, I'm like, do we have anybody on the team from who's from Wuhan? And so they had a couple people from the province that Wuhan is in. And then what happened was they were like, yeah, we know a bunch of the, we know some pathologists and radiologists and critical care doctors that are in the Ion 10 hospital. And so I thought O okay, can we get in touch? And so we were able to get on with them and talk about what was going on as it, it started to get crazy. And so they were starting to, they were able to pull some of the cases from the database to say like, you know, these are some pretty severe cases. And they said, you know, as long as we're not giving out the patient information, it's fine, but this is the message that we wanna get out. And so for me at the time, it was hard to get it out right in January. So I ended up, I think releasing it at near the end of February.

ChubbyEmu [00:32:18] And that was as the news was starting to get big here in America, I mean it didn't really get huge until probably what, late March. So we had like a whole month worth of,

Vance Crowe [00:32:28] So when around did you start working on this video with those guys?

ChubbyEmu [00:32:33] So that started January 23rd, so it was probably like a month before it was posted.

Vance Crowe [00:32:39] And what happened when you posted that video? How did people respond to it?

ChubbyEmu [00:32:45] It was good at first, so things kind of wax and wane on YouTube. And so for probably the last year it, it's a lot different now than it was two years ago, which is to be expected when you think of this kind of medium. So at that, at that point, a lot of people were wondering, you know, what, like why is this a serious thing? Like what, what is this virus doing? And are people like, should they, should we really be taking it seriously? Like is it just the flu? And so the answer is no, it's not just the flu, but also you shouldn't be like, like you should be alert, but you shouldn't be freaking out about it. You should be alert and you know, if you don't need to go somewhere and you don't need to, you know, get up close to somebody, you probably shouldn't. And that holds held true back then and it definitely holds true now.

Vance Crowe [00:33:38] So as you think about the way the US reacted, there's a bunch of people that wanna talk about politics and about, you know, whose fault it was. But I'm really interested in at what point in somebody's network that they started talking or communicating about Coronavirus, did they start taking it seriously? Was it when it hit the mainstream news? You know, the, there's a guy, strange donuts guy Jason Bachman talks about when they shut down the NBA, that's when I knew things were serious. But for, for me, I remember I actually watched a video of a guy that used to live in China and he was making videos that seemed almost conspiratorial about how dangerous Coronavirus was in China. And he said, but if you're worried about all that nonsense, the, you can't get a vaccine for coronavirus, but you can get one for the flu, just go out and get your flu vaccine. 'cause that'll be, it'll increase the odds that you won't get the, the influenza in addition to coronavirus. And so I was like, oh, all right, I'll go do that. And I think about those moments where you see information that changes your behavior in the real world. And I'm wondering how where, where those places were that people heard about the disease that made them start taking an action.

ChubbyEmu [00:34:55] Yeah, I'm not sure. I think the NBA was a big one and then the governments doing what they were doing and then you see the stock market falling, I think it was March 11th or March 13th when you saw like the major drop more than 7% and all of a sudden they had the halt trading for 15 minutes to let everyone cool off. And I think people then were still probably unsure of the panic. I think around that time Elon Musk put out Coronavirus panic is dumb, right? And that turned out to have not aged very well just because the thing is in America, because we, I I mean I'd America is kind of strange because it's like, it is a, a confederation of states, right? And so states are able to do things fairly independently of the Fed but also not really. And so the, the Fed is able to, you know, flex its strength and be the big coin, so to say, to keep states in line. But states do have relative autonomy to say, you know, if you don't wanna close down all the schools and put it at the county level, then you can do that if you wish, right? So it, it's a little bit different. But once the governors started declaring the states of emergency, first one being I think Washington state on 2 29, 20 20, then people started thinking, oh you know, this could be something. I remember I was supposed to be in San Francisco on March 6th and I ended up canceling the week before while I was at a melanoma conference here in DC. And the reason I canceled was I didn't know what was gonna happen.

ChubbyEmu [00:36:28] And back then, I'm just thinking about this now, one of my colleagues texted me, we had a dinner that night and it was packed in downtown DC and just imagine three weeks later you wouldn't even be able to sit down in a restaurant like that, right? And it was only three weeks later, you know, it's like what changed? Because the virus, it, it was already here by then, right? It just hadn't infected as many people. And so that was what prompted I think a lot of people is like when the officials started taking action to say like, look, if you don't do something now, it's, it can get a lot worse. That's the thing with medicine is that there's a huge unknown behind it. And so there's, because there's an unknown, it can breed fear and it, it depends on what kind of personality person handles that fear. That is what the outcome is gonna be.

Vance Crowe [00:37:22] You know, I get together with a group of guys on Thursday night when you've been in town, you've been able to cruise by there. And I remember the night that we decided like, hey, this is probably the last time we're gonna get together in a group and we're gonna make sure that we don't shake hands when we see each other. There's no like pats on the back, like, we're gonna be distant. We're gonna, we're gonna have this one last time together. And it was still a surreal time for me when that happened because it wasn't until I got back home and, and a couple of days went by and then the city put in the order, it might have been a week later that you, you had to do a stay at home that I was really like, this is real, that we won't just be able to go over to our friend's house anymore. Like I knew it was happening, but it didn't really fully hit me. Now you really can't go to that crowded restaurant e even if you did and you didn't get arrested there, nobody else would show up with you. No one responsible would show up with you.

ChubbyEmu [00:38:23] Yeah, yeah, exactly. It, it's really changed a lot, especially when I saw the text from that person. I'm like, holy, you know, I haven't seen this person for what, six or seven weeks at this point. And the last time I saw him, he was at a restaurant with me and you know, we were with all our colleagues for melanoma research and I was like, you know, this is, yeah, I remember canceling that San Francisco trip and telling another one of my colleagues, so he is a surgeon out at Stanford and saying, 'cause we were, I was gonna meet up with him, we were gonna make some YouTube videos. And so after that I said, you know, with what's happening in San Francisco, I don't think I'm gonna be able to go, I think it's probably better if I don't, and maybe we can reschedule for some time later. I thought sometime later would be early summer. That definitely doesn't seem like that'll be the case now.

Vance Crowe [00:39:10] Yeah, I was definitely, I was supposed to be on to do a tour a week across Canada and when it got canceled I wrote the guy that that we canceled it with and was like, Hey man, let's meet up in a couple weeks after all this stuff passes, the flights will be really cheap. Like I, I, I figured like, hey, this is serious and I'm not going out. But I really did not understand, and I don't think most people did, we weren't entering a coronavirus. Like my buddy Nick Cizik says we weren't entering a coronavirus blizzard, we were entering a coronavirus winter and that it's actually gonna be a longer period of time.

ChubbyEmu [00:39:47] Oh yeah, yeah. It'll be, it'll be pretty long. And especially with like the economic recovery and all that, all our medical conferences are canceled. Right. And so I'm supposed to be at one right now in New York. It, it's, it's weird looking at my work phone and still having it on my calendar and just thinking like I I should be at like a precision medicine conference right now, but you can't go to New York.

Vance Crowe [00:40:08] Oh yeah. I was supposed to be speaking at the American Baking Association, and this is where all the bakers from all over the United States get together. So big, big brands and they think about how are we gonna provide the baking needs? And my whole talk was going to be this week on the breaking open of the Overton window. And I was saying right now you guys are on the inverse side of people thinking, hey, keto protein, high protein, no carbs, baked goods are bad. You know, and, and I was gonna be talking about how, you know, someday that may flip and you may be on the, on the opposite side of that. And that day actually happened with coronavirus because people are buying so much flour, yeast, you know, things that, that they can make bread and carbohydrates with that they can't keep it on the stores. And when I was scheduling my talk, if I had told those people, this is what I'm gonna talk about, they would've said, you're a crazy person, you can't come here to give a talk.

ChubbyEmu [00:41:10] Yeah. It's, it's definitely changed a lot. And I, I remember saying in one of my own podcast episodes is that it's permanently warped the psyche of people, whether or not they realize it. Because once we're able to go back out, the question is, is that, is it really safe to go back out? Right? And then the other one is, you know, who knows how, how much is gonna happen because it's like, what is it? I have friends who help me with my videos, they're production assistance, they work on TV sets, they're dark until at least the fall. And so these are people who rely on paycheck to paycheck, they rely on TV shows going through and these TV shows aren't going through, right. So how do you, how do you survive? Right? I mean, if if the person just had two kids last year, right? And he's relying on this paycheck on a TV show, that's not gonna happen. How do you live? And Right. And that's just one person. Think about all the other people who do some kind of media production here in DC and let's just say some people might be okay with some of the newer organizations, but some other people probably not gonna be okay if they do, you know, other kinds of media production

Vance Crowe [00:42:21] Well and that's going on in parts of the economy that people don't even realize. So I have a friend that is a part of a, a dairy co-op and he said, Hey, we had to let go of some of our lobbyists. You know, we have people that we pay to go a, you know, go advocate for us now we really need people to advocate for us. But unfortunately we do it based on, we have them a budget based on how much milk are we selling? And right now with the restaurants being shut off, we're not selling that milk. We've, we've lost 30% of our market. And so you wouldn't think about it, but in a place like DC a whole bunch of lobbyists being laid off takes people that normally would've been at the top of society and throwing them out and saying, you gotta go find something else to do.

ChubbyEmu [00:43:05] Yeah, exactly. And then you see like, what is the cruise ship industry and you know, lots of other different things that, what is even sports, like think about it, if sports are gonna be shut down until next year, think about all those people that were working at the baseball stadiums, you know, if they were working at the tickets or working at selling some of the concessions.

Vance Crowe [00:43:25] Think about all the people. I mean, what fills up a baseball stadium in St. Louis is that people have business connections there. It's a way for you to be able to meet up with somebody that you're selling to or you're buying from or you're trying to get a partnership together. So a lot of people, they go for fun, but there are a lot of people at those games because that's the way you get two guys together to talk about something. Or you get a, a whole booth and you have a bunch of people from a department show up and they mix together and they get to talk. All that stuff ends. Those networks where they slam together and there's some amount of randomness and you do it for sports. Like all of those business relationships are gonna have to be picked up and built in some other way. And I I I wonder who moves into the post coronavirus world first and able to adapt and make up for the fact that you can't do business over a Cardinals game.

ChubbyEmu [00:44:20] Yeah, that one's gonna be interesting. I mean, I have colleagues out in Boston at Harvard and they, I don't think they've announced yet in Boston, but there's a good chance it's coming that the fall semester is gonna be all virtual. Yeah. And so a lot of the universities, 'cause think about it, Boston being the number one educational city in the entire world, you have everyone from every different country there. How do you have contact precautions in that case? You can't, how do you do freshman orientation in that case you can't. Right. So a lot of, they haven't announced it yet again, but it's likely that they would be moving to online.

Vance Crowe [00:45:00] I mean, we've made the joke a bunch of times on this show about how cities, apartment buildings are CAFOs confined animal feeding operations that people make fun of in the city or they think are so terrible. But they, they are. That's, you know, we think about, well the, the, you have all these apartments people stacked on top of each other. They eat in a central location. They bathe, they get connected. What is a dorm other than a giant cafo and you're taking this population that you want them to be, you, you figure most of them are resilient. They're probably not gonna die, but you put them there that you're not gonna let 'em home for Thanksgiving. You're not gonna let 'em home for Christmas when they come home and infect the family and grandma and all those things. Like unless we have stopped it from being endemic in society, even if the prevalency rate is low, the stories that come out of, of the kid that went away to college and came back and killed grandma are gonna be too scary for people to, to accept.

ChubbyEmu [00:45:58] Yeah, exactly. And so, you know that that's all part of warping the psyche of people now. And it's not just here, it's Europe, Asia, right. Asia had a scare 20 years ago with the first SARS outbreak. I think this is a lot worse now. And so, I mean, even when you even cancel the Olympics, right? So what do you think or delay the Olympics?

Vance Crowe [00:46:20] What is, what is your read on how the Chinese people feel about this? Because in American media we're watching like, oh, it's slowing down in Taiwan, it's better in Hong Kong, it's getting well in China. They're flattening the curve. So are Chinese people like basically living ordinary lives now? Or what happens when they open up this stuff in cities and let them go back to the way they were?

ChubbyEmu [00:46:42] So I talked with some of them when they lifted up the lockdown orders in Wuhan back last week, I think it was April 7th when they relaxed it. It was a lot of people wanted to leave the city because they weren't from there. And they got stuck there with the lockdown. 'cause January 23rd, 10:00 AM there was military style lockdown tanks at the borders, at the train station were police, they stopped the trains. You couldn't get out of the city. And the reason for that was that probably somebody that got out would be infected and then they would spread it to the other provinces. Right. And so a lot of people who weren't from there, they said, Hey, we gotta get outta here. Right? And so when they got out, there's in the media here, like we hear about, there's fears that it could potentially be spreading. Again, that's not what I'm seeing, but I, I don't know, talking with them, some people there is some like dis, I don't even know if discrimination is the right word. It might not be. There's people who, they're, if they're coming back and they're originally from Hube province, they're like, they're not allowed to go back to like their apartment building in whatever other province or other state.

Vance Crowe [00:47:57] Wait, say that again? The the who is not allowed to travel or how is that? So

ChubbyEmu [00:48:02] Somebody, so, so an hanis person, if they live somewhere else technically, but they're from UAN and they were in UAN during the lockdown, their landlord might say, no, you can't come back. You can get your stuff and leave.

Vance Crowe [00:48:17] Wow.

ChubbyEmu [00:48:18] Yeah. Just because they don't know, like w does, does the infection have something to do with specifically UAN people? And there there's, there's a lot of that stuff. And so we don't really know the exact specifics because you know, somebody in that situation's not gonna report it in English. But you know, there's, there's definitely stuff like that happening. 'cause some of my translators are from Hubei province. You

Vance Crowe [00:48:39] Are a doctor and you have been in patient care. One of the things that I'm interested in is this fact of that the liberty that people have to go to church, right? They wanna get together, it's enshrined in the Constitution. It appears to me that you have the right to do it. But at the same time, people bring up with me, Hey, you go to church and you spread this disease, you are adding a huge number of people that could get really, really sick and take that into a hospital and infect more medical workers because they're right now way behind on, on protective equipment. And you that, you know, that's so bad that we should create a rule that says you can stop people from going to church. I wanna do the right answer. But it feels to me like liberty is the bigger risk than getting people sick. But if it's me, if my wife were a nurse, I would be like, hell no, don't let them go and do that. So how should I think about this more objectively?

ChubbyEmu [00:49:36] That's a good question because it should just be any kind of hu like people gathering it should be subject to needing that distance. Right? I mean, it, it doesn't matter what setting it's in. And I know that, you know, for some of the people who are, you know, into the worship and all of that, like, they wanna go to church, right? Especially Easter was just this past weekend, right? So for that case, I mean it it, it should just be kind of all around that, you know, you need to be socially distant, preferably isolated from one another for the time being. I mean, there's some people who are afraid that it might become permanent, but for religious, I, I don't think it should like, it shouldn't become permanent like that provided that, you know, these people who are enforcing the policies are true to their word. And so the, then the question is, is that if we can't get together to do business or to do, to do the normal things that we would've over the last, you know, my entire lifetime up until now, that church, I mean it, it's the same thing, right? That if you abstract it to the highest level to say these are still people that are getting together and we're trying to stop that by isolating and separating people for the time being, then they would have to be held to their word. To say that for the time being is the crucial clause there. 'cause it can't just be like, well we don't like your religion, so we're just gonna say you can never get together ever again.

ChubbyEmu [00:51:09] Right. Then that would be overstepping the bound. But this is for the time being. We can't do business. We, there's a lot of things we can't do. I think there was a special on tv, what is it? One of the big churches in Texas, they did like a televised session for Easter. Obviously it's not ideal, it's not optimal, but nothing is optimal right now.

Vance Crowe [00:51:30] Yeah. You know, I hadn't thought about it until you're saying it like in this way. It's not like they're letting some people go to church and not others. It's not like they're saying, Hey, the Catholics over here, they're cool, but the the Jewish people, they're not allowed to go like that. That's not happening. And so I I will give it credit that it does seem to be at least along religious lines, evenly applied. And then you just have the question of essential services versus church. But I I I take your point, I don't think people should, I'm not going to do it. I, I think my biggest concern is, and this is the concern a lot of people have, is are we sure the disease is so bad that we should give up liberties? And are we certain that we're gonna get them back and that's what people are afraid of. That's the context. And I ha I would love to just let it pass and hey, by July, you know, we're gonna get all our rights back and everything's fine. But I am concerned that maybe it's just easier to govern people if they're locked in their house. I, I, how, what do you think of that?

ChubbyEmu [00:52:35] Well, it's easier to govern people when they're locked in their house, but it's not easy to govern them when they don't have food to eat and when they're not generating any revenue. So that would probably be the counterpoint to it because it, you know, just thinking about it, I, this is the one time that we're living through this. When people talk about, what is it, the 1918 flu and, you know, how people got through it or whatever. Nobody alive today was alive back then, right? There's probably a couple people who are in, what is it, over a hundred years old now, but if they are that age, they probably don't remember the year 1918. So no, like none of us have actually lived through something like this. We've read accounts of it having passed. And so I, I think you would, this, the vigilance would need to be on the other side. It would be what is, how, how do we get everything back when life returns to normal? The question is, is that what is it gonna look like when life is normal? Because how do we know whether or not that virus is gonna start spreading around again? Right? We don't know. And so those are all the questions. And I would say the easiest way is to keep your eyes on China to see what they're doing because they're the ones that are furthest ahead in time on this. Right? Just like on social media back in January and February, you saw a lot of haha, look at China, look at what they're doing. Haha. Look at this response. Right? And then if you look at the reality just beyond the words, we're doing it now too, right?

ChubbyEmu [00:54:08] And so it would be reasonable to suspect that those other countries who have gotten past the point that we're at now are probably doing the same thing on their social medias to us saying, haha, look at this response. You know, and laughing. And that's just because they were watching what was being done here back then. And then if we, we, we have to look at how they're doing it because they're furthest ahead. Do we wanna exactly replicate what they're doing? It probably wouldn't work given the differences in culture here, but we have to kind of see the principles of what was being done, why it was being done, and then if parts of it can be applied here, which parts would it be?

Vance Crowe [00:54:48] I have to imagine that the Chinese crackdown, or at least the Chinese stay at home order, was much more thoroughly enforced than what it is here. I don't know, but I can tell you that when I drive from point A to point B for a very limited task, I see, I think there's maybe a 15% reduction in the number of cars that I used to see out and about. Now I'm on main thoroughfares. So it could be that often the, often the arteries or on the veins that are way away from regular commerce, they're a lot lower. But man, there are a lot of people out there.

ChubbyEmu [00:55:23] Yeah, it's, it's interesting, like even sometimes, like if I need to go out and get lunch or something, right? For pickup, you know, you just drive by the target and the parking lot is packed right? On a Saturday afternoon and you're just like, that's, I, you know, I, I think inside the store they probably have nice precautions, but you know, the the point is, is that you don't want that large gathering of people, right? And so over in China, I know some people that were on my translation team were telling me they had community leaders that they had to report into and like a community leader would, you know, check the seals on the doors to make sure that people weren't like leaving their place. And so I don't know if those community leaders were associated with government or if they were volunteer that were given down by like the local government, but it, they did that over there. I think they can do that over here. We would not be able to get away with doing that here, that's for sure. So, well, so the

Vance Crowe [00:56:21] Impression, and this is interesting to hear about what your perspective is because the impression is that the reason that it worked in China to have the limitation measures they did is because either they used force or that the people were afraid of their government, that they would have to do that. But there is the perspective that they also have a more community minded spirit, right? Like the idea of disappointing the community because you were the lone person that just kept going out doing what you wanted to do, you would be socially isolated much faster. There. Is that, is that accurate or fair does.

ChubbyEmu [00:56:57] So to your point on fear, I actually, when I talked with those people, and I have family there too, it doesn't seem like there's fear of government over there. What it seemed like was fear of endangering others. And so in a community sense it was a little bit different. They have more of a, a mindset to say, you know, this is, they, they have more of like a, a community mindset rather than here we have more of an individual mindset. So it's, it's a little bit different culturally, but you know, like when they saw stuff like the initial campaign here, 15 days to limit spread, I remember some of their comments were, I'm afraid it's gonna have to be a little longer than 15 days. Right? And the reality was is that if they were being honest about it, it wasn't 15 days. We understand they were trying to stage expectations. So they say 15 days back in March. But reality is is that it's probably closer to 75 days to limit spread is what the, the full campaign would probably be if they were to put it that way. But over here, you, you do kind of wanna stage the expectations problem with staging. The expectation is now we don't actually know when it's gonna end. So like in Virginia, I think they, the stay at home orders until June 10th. I don't know why, but it's, it, I would say that's probably a little bit more realistic just saying with how things are. But I mean, when

Vance Crowe [00:58:29] Virginia, it's been my expectation. So, you know, my wife and I were, she's, she's got a physical therapy business and she's trying to decide, she's like, gosh, I just wish I'd, I know when we'd go back. And I was like, you know, in real, in reality what you should be thinking of is if, let's just say there aren't any rules that you can't go back, when would you want to, right? Like at what point would you need to see something that would make you confident that it's a good idea to go back and that you wouldn't be pulled into the, the vector of the virus to either get it or to, to have negative things happen and you can't go to the hospital and it's better for you to make the realization that I've gotta pivot my business because the world is gonna be different. And you really just wanna think about it in like a post coronavirus way. Do you agree with that? Are we do, are we inevitably going to be in a post coronavirus world and people should start pivoting their business or their activities?

ChubbyEmu [00:59:29] Yeah, they probably do wanna look at how to, how to do things a little bit differently just because the, it's gonna linger in people's minds for a while. Like it's probably by the end of this year, people will still be thinking about it. I mean the, if you think about it, like every year between April and December, things just seem to fly by every year, right? So the next thing we know it's gonna be fall time, right? What, what is the fall gonna look like if the kids in college are still gonna be home but doing online lectures? How are we gonna be working? Like we don't know, right? Like if you're doing your speaking events, how are those gonna be structured? Right? Which ones are you gonna be able to go to? And when you do go to them, how far apart are the audience gonna be from one another? Right?

Vance Crowe [01:00:12] Yeah. And what's the benefit? I mean, so many people say the networking all it's, it's all done at the bar, but it's not like you're gonna want to encourage people to go to a, a gathering and then get together and have drinks and, and party. Like you may have an interest in doing that to make those business collisions happen. But you sure would hate to be the, the group that went and knocked out all of its members or a significant number of members. That'd be real, real hard on your brand.

ChubbyEmu [01:00:39] Yeah, exactly.

Vance Crowe [01:00:42] So as you look out into the future, the next two weeks, what do you think the world will look like two weeks from today?

ChubbyEmu [01:00:50] That's a good question. So I know here in DC the stay at home order lifts on the 24th, I doubt that they're actually gonna lift it. They might change it, but it, I you won't be able to go to the gym on the 24th. I'm pretty sure speaking, probably speaking of gyms, I

Vance Crowe [01:01:09] Think they, speaking, speaking of gyms, my gym, Gold's Gym that I was using here, 'cause just up the street, they just announced in the entire city of St. Louis, they're gone. So all those gold gyms are just gone

ChubbyEmu [01:01:21] Wait, they're closed forever, they're

Vance Crowe [01:01:22] Closed, then they're not coming back.

ChubbyEmu [01:01:26] Wow, that's tough.

Vance Crowe [01:01:30] I mean that's gonna, that, that's so within the two weeks, you know, you'll start seeing the banners come down and the, you know, the space come up for rent and you know who's gonna rent. Right now a whole bunch of community space storefronts are gonna be impacted by this. See, even if you were open, even if you were allowed to sell things, people don't want to go to stores.

ChubbyEmu [01:01:49] Yeah, yeah. That's interesting. So the, the gym that I go to, they asked me to keep my membership 'cause they said, you know, we're a local business, we'd appreciate it if you kept the membership up right now during these hard times. And when we can go back, we can credit your account. And you know, I I, it's it's not that expensive per month. So I figured why not? So it, it's, it's good to support the business 'cause you know, if one day they go under, that's the only gym I can walk to, right? And so wouldn't be a whole a point of saying, Hey, I wanna pull that membership right now. But I don't think in the next eight or nine days it's gonna lift. I think the national guideline had said May 1st, and so I know New Jersey announced today that the schools are gonna be closed until the 15th of May. It's probably gonna go a little bit further than that. I just think that the kids are, are done with school now, right? They might be doing their assignments, but for all intents and purposes don't expect to be going back to school. 'cause once you in another month, who knows what the real landscape is gonna be. And you know, there are, are other hotspots gonna show up? You don't know because if you go to one of the stores here in Northern Virginia on a weekend, it's packed. So, right. What's to say that there isn't something going on there? I don't know. Right. I think, I

Vance Crowe [01:03:13] Can't say for shit, if I, if I were the parent of a kid in high school, I would be trying to figure out how am I gonna get this kid into a program that they can keep their athletics up because you're gonna, there's no way they're doing fall football and, and basketball at the high school level. Like maybe they are in some places, but they're not gonna put all these kids on a bus and have 'em travel from one, one city to the next to go share sweat with other people. Like all that stuff is done for the next fall. So now if you could pick that up and, and you know, make sure your kid's not too depressed and figure out how am I gonna keep them athletically centered so that in a year when we come back they're not outta shape and didn't, didn't advance their skills.

ChubbyEmu [01:03:58] Yeah, exactly. I mean there's, there's a lot of stuff 'cause it's like, it is hard to stay productive right now. 'cause every every hour there's some kind of new announcement and you don't know like what to do. Right. And so even in that face of it being hard to keep productive, it's like, you know, did you, like, you feel pressure constantly that you need to like maybe use this time to learn something new, but how do you do it with so many distractions? Like it, it, it's really hard to balance. Like I think most people alive throughout history haven't necessarily lived through a pandemic disaster. Right? And so we have something in common with the people from a hundred years ago and from the Black Death Europeans from 700 years ago, right? And so that's just kind of the experience that we're gonna have to log and, you know, make sure people are taking accurate accounts of it day by day.

Vance Crowe [01:04:52] So I'm gonna, I'm gonna let you go man. I'm so glad you gave me time in the middle of your day. But you were talking about news and how much is valuable to you. Where do you find news and information that matters? Or who is somebody that you think worth following that people would be like, oh that's a good place to learn from?

ChubbyEmu [01:05:14] I'm a little bit biased because when I'm looking for medical information I go to the medical journals. And so the medical journals aren't necessarily the ones to get the news out first. But usually the ones that they do get out, they have some degree of accuracy to them that doesn't exist in the news. That has to come out hour by hour. And so New England Journal Landset, but you also have to be skeptical of those sources too because this thing is moving so much faster than how medicine normally moves. Medicine's usually pretty slow at moving on things. And so when you have these studies that are getting published, there is some degree of accuracy to them, but there's also some degree of skepticism that you need to have too. Because when you look at it and think, is this something that they would've normally published in normal times? And if the answer's no, then you need to have an extra degree of scrutiny applied to when you read it. And so that's where I get my primary news because you know, day by day, you know the numbers are gonna go up, they're not gonna go down at least for right now. And so you need to know more for at least from my perspective on the science and what the conversation is in the scientific world. So that's where I get most of my news.

Vance Crowe [01:06:25] All right man. And if people wanted to find your YouTube videos or find you on Twitter, how would they do that?

ChubbyEmu [01:06:31] It's at chubby IMU and it's all one word E is not capitalized and you can find it on YouTube as well. Just type in chubby imu one word.

Vance Crowe [01:06:41] Alright. And I will throw your coronavirus chubby IMU video in the show notes. Man. Thanks for hopping on here. This was great.

ChubbyEmu [01:06:49] Perfect. Thanks so much for having me.

Vance Crowe [01:06:51] Be safe out there man.