Is Public Health Messaging Designed For Dummies? Dr. Lucy McBride Calls For An End To COVID Catastrophizing

The Unspeakeasy With Meghan Daum

Meghan Daum

Society & Culture

4.7 • 855 Ratings

🗓️ 2 May 2022

⏱️ 76 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

If your doomscrolling over the past few years has led you to any of the so-called "dissident doctors" who are calling for more clarity and less catastrophizing when it comes public messaging around COVID, you might be familiar with Dr. Lucy McBride. When the pandemic lockdowns began, Dr. McBride, a practicing internist in Washington, D.C., began sending her patients email blasts explaining what was known (and unknown) about the virus and what they could (and couldn't) do to try to stay safe. Those emails evolved into a popular newsletter that has put Dr. McBride centerstage in the call for a more reasonable, evidence-based approach to COVID measures. This week, Dr. McBride talks with Meghan about what the latest data says about COVID safety and why she thinks the public has lost perspective on what constitutes normal risk. She explains why the drug Ivermectin has been politicized and therefore weaponized, why the CDC has scared parents into seeing kids as germ vectors, and, above all, why it's urgent that we prioritize mental health and stop fantasizing about "zero COVID." She also talks about her new podcast, Beyond The Prescription, which debuts this week.

Guest Bio:

Dr. Lucy McBride is a practicing internist in Washington, DC and the author of the popular COVID 19 newsletter, which you can find at lucymcbride.com. She attended Princeton University and Harvard Medical School and trained in Internal Medicine at the Johns Hopkins Hospital. Her new podcast Beyond The Prescription debuts this week.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Harm reduction is what we call it, where we acknowledge that people inevitably face risks,
0:10.8	that humans cannot be, you know, sealed off from risk that's not compatible with living.
0:16.6	And to meet people where they are, and then to arm them with the tools they need to live their lives healthfully and safely
0:23.1	without an expectation of zero risk.
0:25.4	So when we tell everybody in the population
0:28.0	that you're at the same risk for HIV,
0:30.1	then all of a sudden, no one's at risk, right?
0:31.8	If we tell everybody that you're at the same risk of COVID,
0:36.4	whether you're a nursing home resident or a vaccinated
0:38.8	10-year-old, then all of a sudden, no one's at risk. What I mean is we lose trust when we don't
0:45.6	tell people exactly what's happening.
0:51.8	Welcome to the unspeakable podcast. I'm your host, Megan Down. My guest this week is Dr. Lucy McBride.
0:58.8	You just heard her voice, and I'm going to introduce her in a minute. But first, a quick
1:03.5	announcement about an event coming up this summer, a real-life in-person event that I'm
1:10.0	involved in. On Saturday, July 16th in San Francisco,
1:13.9	I will be part of a day-long heterodox healing gathering and mini-conference. What is heterodox
1:21.6	healing? Well, it's a way of coming back to sanity and regaining a sense of perspective about the world.
1:28.9	And you can do that by joining me and some amazing thinkers and like-minded or maybe even
1:37.5	not so like-minded peers, since this is about heterodoxy, who want to challenge the status
1:43.7	quo and just kind of cut through the nonsense that you're
1:47.5	familiar with as a listener to this podcast. This is a collaborative event between me and
1:53.2	Janara Nurenberg of the Neurodiversity Project. She's been a guest on this podcast. Another
	...

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