Doctor Mike Has A Conversation About Combatting Misinformation Surrounding COVID-19

Dr. Mikhail Varshavski, commonly known as Doctor Mike, is a multifaceted board-certified family medicine physician, media personality, educator, writer and philanthropist. He believes in preventive care and in educating individuals on how small lifestyle changes can make a big impact. Through his rapidly-growing social media presence, Dr. Mike motivates, inspires and advises millions of followers and fans. The good doctor joins BUILD for a quick talk.

Video Transcript

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MATT FORTE: Hello, world. What is up? Welcome to "BUILD at Home." I'm your host, Matt Forte. And I'm coming to you from my home, as is our next guest. But before we jump in, I wanted to continue to highlight nokidhungry.org. Millions of children are losing the healthy meals they depend on as the coronavirus closes schools nationwide. According to their site, I just checked, it was 574 million meals have been lost. The good news is No Kid Hungry has a plan to feed them, but they need our help. So head over to nokidhungry.org, if you can, pitch in, and let's keep these kids fed together, all right? Thank you for that.

Our next guest is a multifaceted, board-certified, family and medicine physician. He's a media personality, educator, writer, and philanthropist. Lately, he's been creating some amazing and important content fact checking and providing concrete information, and has become a trusted source and he really scary and confusing time. I'm super excited to have him on the show. Please welcome truly great Dr. Mike Varshavski is here. Mike, how you doing, sir?

DOCTOR MIKE: Thank you so much for that very warm introduction. You know, it is scary times. You're absolutely right-- I'm blessed to be a physician during these times so I'm able to lend a helping hand to my patients, and to my viewers who desperately need accurate information, so they can continue making the best decisions for themselves and their families.

MATT FORTE: For sure. And I'm excited, one, just to have you. It's great to have you here. Thank you for being here, there, where you are, and hanging out with us. I was so excited dig into how all that works and how that came about. But first and foremost, most important thing right now, how are you doing? How are you, Doctor?

DOCTOR MIKE: You know, I'm tired. Definitely not getting as much sleep as I usually recommend to my patients. But that's simply a result of how much is changing in our health care system. I really consider it a privilege to be practicing medicine during this time, as well as informing the general public about COVID-19, because I think now more than ever, having accurate information is really important.

MATT FORTE: Yeah, the utmost importance, honestly. Super secondary important question, arguably more important to some people, how's your amazing giant dog holding up?

DOCTOR MIKE: You know, I think he's probably the happiest one of all of us?

MATT FORTE: I bring it up only as a dog lover myself. And then recently, you know, with the tiger at the zoo testing positive for COVID that blew a lot of minds, I was just curious what you thought when you saw that for the first time-- that animals were testing positive for COVID, as well?

DOCTOR MIKE: Yeah, I think it was interesting that of all the animals, the tiger got the most attention, probably because of the "Tiger King" documentary.

MATT FORTE: Yeah.

DOCTOR MIKE: I think it's really interesting that we see that dogs are not necessarily being infected by this virus, but cats are susceptible to catching it. But what we haven't seen, and the CDC has been quite clear about this, is that wild cats can get it from humans, we haven't seen transmission from cats to humans. And I'm hoping it stays that way, because it would be a really big problem with domestic animals start spreading this virus across species.

MATT FORTE: Yeah, just every day, there's some new bit of information. And that particular piece was pretty crazy to see.

DOCTOR MIKE: Yes.

MATT FORTE: You do tons a great content. You have a great series where you watch doctor shows, pop culture shows-- you just did a one on "House" and a pandemic episode. Outside of medical shows, what have you been watching? You just mentioned "Tiger King." Has there been a great distraction for you? Have you had time for a distraction as someone working in medicine right now?

DOCTOR MIKE: You know, it's very difficult to find a distraction, even when I put on some show on Netflix-- I'm a big fan of "The Ozarks" great show with Jason Bateman. But it's tough-- even when I'm watching the show, I'm half-distracted answering emails on my phone. And usually, I'm a big opponent of that. I'm saying that we should get away from our phones, but during a time like this when there's a pandemic and you need to make very quick decisions, whether it's for my patients or giving some accurate information to a news website or a newspaper, I think right now, that's what I trained for. To make myself available, to be able to contradict some inaccurate information that's put out there. And I'm proud to be sort of the go-to source, at least on YouTube, to help guide people in their medical decision making.

MATT FORTE: Yeah. You know, talking about great videos that you've done, you've just had another amazing one us about-- I want to say on the 8 you posted it, where you interviewed over 100 doctors and health care professionals. It was outstanding just getting all-- seeing all these different people, incredible people on the frontlines, answering these important questions. How did that all come together-- the logistics of the hundreds of pieces of footage and scheduling those calls? How did that video happen?

DOCTOR MIKE: Yes, so for me, that's probably the most proud I've ever been about a piece of content that I've created. And, you know, it takes a team to make that happen. So I have to give a huge shout out to my editor or producer, Sam Bowers, on that one, my management team who helped organize the lists and all the logistics I got behind the scenes.

But what's crazy about this and most people don't know is we're able to start that idea on day one and publish it on day seven. That was a seven day process of getting doctors these five questions, getting them recording it. And then each doctor, these 107 physicians, answered five questions, which means we had over 500 answers that we needed to condense into a 10 minute video, put it into some sort of meaningful storyline so that the community is learning something, it's not repetitive information, it tells an emotional story.

It highlights the uniqueness of physicians-- that we're not all from the same area, that we're not all of the same ethnic background. We have different specialties. And I think this video did a great job in educating not only on what we're going through on the front lines as physicians, but showing how unique doctors truly are. And I'm so proud of this video for coming together. And I really have to thank all the doctors that despite this being one of the most hectic times of their lives, they made the time to answer those five questions. And over a million people have watched this pretty much everyone has been moved by it.

And the other thing that came about is that we're able to raise over $50,000 for the CDC foundation in helping the battle against COVID-19.

MATT FORTE: It's incredible. Yeah, I was seeing all the revenue from that video, every cent, is going right to the CDC foundation. And it's only been a couple of days, it's already over a million. But you raise a great point, and that is that they found the time to do it with all the amazing work they were doing in the ungodly hours that they're keeping. And so you guys as the creators of that content, you got to respect that time, and you've got to watch every single response, all five questions. It's just so much to go through to to get us that piece of content. It's a Herculean effort. I can't believe you did it seven days. That's wild.

DOCTOR MIKE: Yeah, very, very proud of that. And what made it even more difficult I feel like it's worth mentioning is my partner, and videographer, and editor, who started this channel with me, Dan Owens, he unfortunately lost the life of his father right at the outset of that project to COVID-19, and we actually ended the video with a warm wished his family in loving memory of his father, Donald Owens. So that obviously made the project even more difficult, but also motivated me to make sure that we put it out there to celebrate the life of an amazing father and human.

MATT FORTE: Absolutely. Well, I'm very sorry to hear that and my condolences, of course. Everybody, it seems, does know somebody or is feeling the effects of this pandemic and feeling it happen. You know, just to go back to that video and talk about one of the things you guys really highlighted-- being alert and not anxious-- I've been speaking with a lot of people not just on the show, but of course, you know, offline as well-- everybody sort of is in the same space of this heightened awareness, where it's like, oh, my throat tickles, is that something? It's like, are you warm in here, it feels warmer, is that a fever?

Like, everyone's on edge, where the slightest thing triggers a mild panic attack. I imagine as a medical professional, you've been less neurotic about it. What's your personal bar? What's something for you that if you detect is the turning point and concern actually sets in?

DOCTOR MIKE: You know, I have to constantly remind myself that same slogan quite often, because there are times where I do feel warm, or I feel a little bit more fatigue throughout the day. I have to remind myself that let's wait and see where this progresses. I have to tone down that anxiety. And, you know, it's very difficult being a physician that's not only guiding patients, but also someone that's guiding a lot of viewers during this time to understand how do we balance this fine line of keeping people alert, meaning that they're learning new information and they're not going out, and thinking this virus is no big deal, but at the same time, not fueling into this panic, and making people so anxious that that's also creating a negative result.

And I found that this middle ground really comes from that slogan-- alert, not anxious. Where you're listening to your body, you know what's normal for you, you know what's not normal, you know when to seek help. But then you don't let emotions guide you because whenever you start getting anxious, whenever you start panicking, that's when the bad decisions start rolling in.

MATT FORTE: Right. You know, it's just funny-- we talk about this anxiety and all this coming just from the pandemic, but also, in general, the shelter in place situation for a lot of people is bringing stuff to the surface. You know, what about mental health? For you, what are some best practices right now in managing mental health during these really weird times that we're all experiencing?

DOCTOR MIKE: Yeah, you know, I'm a family medicine physician first and foremost. And I would say 70% to 80% of the visits I come through my door, whether they're for diabetes, low back pain, heart disease-- there is an emotional component, there is a mental health component to it. So we have to explore that. And during this pandemic, it's even more important to explore that, because we have less ability to treat patients. More patients are reluctant to come into our practices, because they don't want to get sick, rightfully so.

But there are ways we can sort of take some of that power back to us. And there's two things I recommend my patients do. First and foremost, you have to create a routine. Because of the pandemic, many people are out of a job. And that job usually is what gives us a little bit of discipline. When to wake up in the morning, when to go to sleep at night, when to exercise. And now, because we have so much freedom, it actually creates some bad habits.

When you do not have a routine, that actually drops your willpower and motivation significantly. In fact, one of the biggest mistakes people make is they assume that motivation and willpower come first and then your action, like going the gym. But in reality, you have to force yourself, have some sort of discipline to go to the gym. And then the next day, you're going to have some willpower to go back again. So it's the action that first has to happen and then the willpower follows.

So by creating yourself a routine, by saying even though I don't have to wake up for anything specific, I'm going to wake up at 8:00 AM. Even though I don't have to wake up at 8:00 AM, I'm going to go to sleep at 10:00 PM to make sure I get my seven to nine hours of sleep a night. That sort of regimen is going to help you stay sane for a much longer period of time and keep you motivated in your daily tasks.

The second thing you want to be doing is you don't want to be idle, because an idle mind is truly the devil's playground. The human mind actually has a baseline level of anxiety, and that level of anxiety is developed throughout the ages to keep us safe. But right now, staying home, there's very little risk if you're truly quarantining yourself. So you want to get rid of that anxiety. How do you do it? Read a book. Pick up a new hobby, whether that's painting, juggling-- something to keep your mind occupied.

And we have to remember-- humans are social creatures. We're social beings. And right now, since we can make physical contact with everybody, let's utilize social Media We've demonized social media for so long for disconnecting us, now's the time to change it. FaceTime a friend. Go on a Skype date. Get a Zoom call with all of your family members. Now is a time to stay social. And that will prevent you from really being idle.

MATT FORTE: Are you yourself a juggler, by any chance?

DOCTOR MIKE: I am not a juggler, but I've actually tried learning with oranges the other day, and I've realized how hard it is. So big props to people who can do it.

MATT FORTE: Shout out to the jugglers of the world. It's not as easy as you make it look. A core tone of your channel-- first of all, thank you for that advice. That's amazing-- I really appreciate that. But I want to talk about, too, the thing that you're doing that we talked about at the very beginning-- the fact checking, the providing information, the factual science-- that's a core tenet of your channel. It always has been. It's kind of why you started things-- was to put out factual information that people can count on and rely on. How hard is that job gotten for you as things change every minute? There's politicians telling people to blow dry their noses. How do you viably fact check in a situation where things are just moving at a breakneck pace?

DOCTOR MIKE: Yeah, I think it puts a big weight on my shoulders to make sure we're telling the story as accurately and honestly as possible. I think step one is you have to approach medicine with a level of humility-- to know that you can get things wrong, because things evolve so quickly. I mean, just take a look at the CDC initially saying masks were unnecessary, now we're telling everyone to cover their faces with a piece of cloth. So things evolve, things change.

Something that I've done to combat this is to make sure that when I make my YouTube videos, I explicitly state when I'm putting out this content, meaning that the information I'm giving is accurate until this day, but moving forward, things can change. And whenever there is an update, I make sure to mention it in one of my more recent videos.

Now as far as politicians, media figures, even other doctors, I have to do a really important job of making sure that I explain where they're coming from, but at the same time, explain why medically or scientifically, that's not accurate. And I never want to attach any kind of ill will to these mistakes, because I'm a fan of charitable thinking.

I like to think people have good intentions behind their statements or their actions, but what I do is I just present the evidence. And I allow the viewer to make their decision based on the evidence I presented to them-- do they believe the person who said this or does the scientific overwhelming evidence sort of negate that? And I've really been blessed with an audience that's intellectual, that's interested, that's curious, and they've done a great job understanding fact from fiction.

MATT FORTE: Yeah, you've got you've got a chance recently to interview the man himself, Dr. Fauci. And just coming off the idea of staying current and staying up to date-- that was about two weeks ago-- are there questions now that you have for him that you wish you could have asked two weeks ago?

DOCTOR MIKE: Yeah, absolutely. I wish I was a part of the CDC coronavirus task force meetings secretly in the back listening just to understand what their plans are. But I really applaud Dr. Fauci. You know, he is the contributor and author of one of the textbooks that we religiously use, not only as medical students, but even as doctors. So he is, like, the god of infectious disease for all doctors, because he's written some of the most important pieces of research and information that we know to this day.

So interviewing him was obviously a huge landmark achievement for me and my YouTube channel. He gave really good quality information-- understandable, reassuring. And again, I think he toed that fine line of keeping us-- knowing that this pandemic is quite serious, but without getting it to the point where we're panicking and making bad decisions.

MATT FORTE: Yeah. I think that's why a lot of people have responded to him and his delivery of all of this. You know, as a New Yorker, I watch-- you know, every day, I try to watch a little bit of the Cuomo briefings and just kind of get a read of where we're at. And right now, the big topic everybody's talking about today is reopening the nation, and everyone's really anxious to reopen the nation and whatnot. Taking politics, taking gut instinct, and all that out of it, what is for you, the scientific turning point? What is the piece of data that we're waiting for that will indicate it's actually safe to start rolling things open?

DOCTOR MIKE: Yeah, there's no magic answer to this, and there's no and that's going to work for every place and every person in the United States. We have to treat this like a medical decision, so it needs to be individualized. When a patient comes into my office, I don't just give them the same dosage every single time. Because it depends on how much that person weighs, what their other medical conditions, are what other medications they're taking. It's a very individualized piece of advice.

I think what's going to happen here with the COVID-19 pandemic is much the same. We're going to look at different areas of the US, and look at the numbers of infected patients. We're going to look at how much social distancing naturally happens. Like in some rural areas, people don't interact as often as they do here in New York City, so what Dr. Fauci has communicated to me and I really understand is, we'll go to those areas, we'll start loosening the social restrictions. And monitor how much the hospitalizations go up, if at all. And if we see promising results in those areas, we can slowly start expanding it.

But the one thing we must do is not stop research. We must not stop reassessing how our actions are affecting the numbers of who are ill. Because the last thing we want is to open up the country too soon and have a run on hospitals, where not only are we overwhelmed with COVID-19 patients, but we're going to have limited beds available for those who are involved in car accidents, those who need cancer treatments, heart attack patients. All sorts of issues arise when there's a run on hospitals. So we need to do it slowly, we need to do it carefully, and individually.

MATT FORTE: Since the very beginning, everyone's looking for the vaccine, we're all waiting for the vaccine, and it's 12 to 18 months is what we're hearing. The Gates Foundation stepped up in a massive way and they're pursuing multiple vaccines, and hopefully, one of them works. You know, what is the biggest bottleneck in that process? What's holding us up there? Why 12 to 18 months?

DOCTOR MIKE: You know what's really interesting is before this coronavirus pandemic, people would constantly make comments about how vaccines aren't safe and they don't want to use them anymore. And now it seems like the conversation has completely shifted-- everyone wants vaccines. So I'm actually very happy that's happening. We're talking about vaccines in a positive light. We need to do that more often, because at the end of the day, vaccines save lives, their benefits outweigh the risks.

And for that precise reason is why it takes 12 to 18 months to make a vaccine happen, because guess what-- we already have some of these vaccines available now. The question is, are they safe? Are they effective? And we need that year to figure out if that's true. So we're actually holding off on launching the vaccine, because we want to make sure it's safe and effective. And that's really something I want the audience to be aware of-- we don't just put out treatments, FDA approvals willy nilly. We test them thoroughly first to make sure that we're giving patients safe and adequate advice. In fact, hydroxychloroquine is probably something that most people have heard of, and that's a medication that right now is a center of a big controversy, because it's not yet FDA approved to treat COVID-19, but yet so many people are using it.

MATT FORTE: Why-- why is that? I mean, that was brought up and I believe-- you know, again, not trying to get political, but the president got excited, and I think overstated the potential of this drug. And it's led to-- there's a really sad story of the husband and wife who ran out and bought the fish tank version of it, and he unfortunately passed away from that in the hospital. You know, why are we even talking about this drug? There's so much that we don't know about what it can or can't do yet.

DOCTOR MIKE: You know, it's funny-- there became too extreme camps in this situation. One camp is just very fervent in saying that we should all be using this medication, even if the risks are there. And then there is another group who are saying that, you know, it's way too dangerous, and we shouldn't consider at all. And really, neither of these groups are correct. I'm happy that the president is optimistic, that he's sharing some potential positive news, but when we share this news, we have to bring a level of humility with it. We have to understand that medications have side effects.

Even, like, ventilators, right? We're talking about how we need ventilators because they help patients breathe who are in respiratory failure. We could actually do harm with ventilators. There's a condition known as ventilator-associated lung injury. So if we don't set the settings just right, which we've learned over the course of our research, we can actually harm patients more than the illness itself. So the same thing goes for hydroxychloroquine. If we just willy nilly prescribe it to everybody with no regard for its safety profile or who would actually benefit, we're going to have worse outcomes than better outcomes.

So we definitely need to do more research on it. And when I say research, we need randomized controlled studies. It's not enough to just give it to patients and see if they improve, because we have nothing to compare it to. We need a control group. We need a group that gets a placebo and thinks they're getting it, so that we can remove that placebo effect out of the equation. You know, another thing that sort of upset about is the way the press has handled the hydroxychloroquine situation. I want them to stop asking President Trump about his personal opinion on hydroxychloroquine.

Ask Dr. Fauci. Ask the FDA. They made their stance quite clear. There is an EUA in place, which is an emergency use authorization, meaning that if doctors think that a patient has no other choice but to take on the risk of using this untested medication for its potential benefit, we can do it. Now that we know that bit of information, stop trying to ask the president for grabby headlines, because it's not helping anyone.

What we need instead is to be asking the president, why are health care providers not having proper equipment that they can protect themselves. Why are residents not being compensated fairly for working such long hours in the hospital? What are our plans to reopen the country? There's just better questions to be had instead of asking the same question over and over, which to me is just a gotcha question.

MATT FORTE: Right. You're incredibly good at what you do, Doctor Mike. Regrettably-- I could sit here and chat with you for another hour and a half and ask you a million other questions, but I do have to wrap things up and let you go. You're a very busy man, of course, and I don't want to keep you from what you've got to do. But one, thank you. Not just for being here and answering all my questions real quick like that-- that's amazing-- but for all the work you're doing. For being on the frontlines, for making sure you're getting proper information out there, and trying to educate all of us, and keep us grounded, and keep us informed in a way that we can all understand and relate. You're doing incredible work, I really appreciate what you are doing. So thank you for that.

But then also, thanks for hanging out with me. It was nice to have you here today. I really appreciate it.

DOCTOR MIKE: Of course. I appreciate your giving me the voice to educate people at home. And while I am accepting of your thanks, I also want to reflect that thanks to my fellow health care providers on the front lines. They're doing a great job working night and day, bruising their faces with the personal protective equipment. We owe them a huge debt of gratitude as a nation.

MATT FORTE: I don't know that we'll ever be able to thank them enough, frankly, for what they're doing for literally keeping us afloat. But thank you. I'm happy to see that you're all right, Doc, and that you're doing well, and to hear that your dog's doing well as well. Keep doing what you're doing. Anything else you want to tell everybody before we get out of here and wrap this up?

DOCTOR MIKE: Check out my YouTube channel. It's just Doctor Mike. Doctor is spelled out. We put up two educational videos a week, putting out accurate info, so you can be alert, not anxious during this COVID-19 pandemic.

MATT FORTE: 100%. You're in New York, right? You're New York based?

DOCTOR MIKE: Yeah.

MATT FORTE: When everything does get back to whatever normal looks like, you got to come down to the studio and we'll do one of these in person. I'd love to have you back on.

DOCTOR MIKE: Absolutely. I can't wait for that to happen.

MATT FORTE: Awesome. Everybody, thank you so much. Check out his YouTube channel if you aren't already, Doctor Mike. Wherever you are, make some noise, and thank him for being here with us. Thanks, Doc.

DOCTOR MIKE: Thanks.

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