Covid-19: Bringing Rationality to the Conversation with Dr. Kirk Parsley

Chris Albert 00:00:00 (link to this point)

This is Chris Albert, and I'm here to remind you of one thing. Someday, you're going to die. Now that's not some morbid statement or scary idea. It's solid fact. Your time here on this earth is limited.

And we need to be reminded of this as much as possible for one simple reason, to live your best life while you can. This is the Warrior Soul podcast.

Kirk Parsley 00:00:38 (link to this point)

Alright.

Chris Albert 00:00:40 (link to this point)

Doctor. Kirk Parsley, how you doing today, man?

Kirk Parsley 00:00:43 (link to this point)

I'm doing well. How about yourself? Now we got those wheels turning on this thing.

Chris Albert 00:00:47 (link to this point)

Yeah. We're we're doing alright over here. I'm in California. Governor Newsom announced last night that we are to shelter in place.

Kirk Parsley 00:00:56 (link to this point)

Yeah.

Chris Albert 00:00:57 (link to this point)

And, you know, just I think everybody knows what's going on, but just to sum it up, over the past three or four days, it seems like there's a lot of fear, a whole lot of misinformation going on about this whole thing. And Yeah. People are scared. And, you know, I'm glad to have you on here because what I wanna do is kinda sort through fact versus fiction, talk about what this whole thing means, how long this whole thing is going to go on, and, you know, what we should actually be scared of, and then what we should actually, you know, what kind of measures we should actually be taking to protect ourselves, protect our families. I think more so, maybe from the virus, but also from government overreach and and other people, but

Kirk Parsley 00:01:44 (link to this point)

Yeah. Well, unfortunately, I think that's the bigger that's the more serious threat. And I I probably have less advice in that area than in than in than in the medical realm. You know, the the economic impact is is is the this is one thing that that makes me nervous about it. I mean, I I think as far as the the reaction to this, you know, by I mean, I'd it'd hard to argue against the idea that the media drives public sentiment on this.

And so, you know, what I've been doing in, you know, daily sort of post and podcasts and emails and all this is that I encourage people to go to academic and government sites that don't you know, where there's there's no spin on it. There's no agenda. There's no opinion. It's like, here are the facts. And then, you know, I I'm not a statistician.

I'm not an epidemiologist. I'm I'm a doctor. I have reasonable education in, you know, biostatistics, basic statistics, and, and rational thought around disease where, you know, that's just not on its own. That's not that common. Right?

I mean, every everybody, because what leads to irrationality is really just not knowing enough. Right? So, in the in the absence of of, certainty, we worry about the unknown, and we worry about the, you know, the data that's yet to come. And I think that's that's where we're at right now with this to some degree. Now I do believe everybody should take precautions.

Right? I reserve the right to be wrong, but I don't think this is going to be any major impact disease and health wise. I think it's gonna be a big impact economically. We're already seeing that. And, you know, a lot of the economy is driven by confidence, and confidence is gonna be shaken.

Whether you're losing confidence in the government or the medical system or your neighbors or whatever, you know, just, you know, that that's that's what I'm trying to mitigate against right there. It's like, alright. Let's let's just first take a step back. Like, look at academic sites. Look at so Johns Hopkins, if you're not aware of this already, has almost a real time tracker.

I've been watching that for the past week, watching every country, watching, you know, our country, obviously, watching the death rate, the resolution rate, the cases. You know, there's a lot of complexities to you know, in in, you know, in research, we say something is is multifactorial, right, which means that there are lots of things that influence whether or not you're going to contract this, whether or not anyone you know is going to contract this, whether or not you're gonna have a good outcome or a poor outcome. But the basic facts of it is that, one, there's only so much that you can do, and it's not really complex to do. Right? Wash your hands.

Don't cough on people. You know, keep your distance from people. If you're sick, definitely isolate yourself. Stay away from the elderly. Stay away from the infirm.

You know, it's about it, right? I mean, is there something else you can do? I mean, you have people telling you, oh, you go take vitamin C, go take this, go take that. It's like, yeah, okay, probably not hurting yourself if you wanna do your best to boost your immune system, but the best thing you can do to boost your immune system is to have a good life, to have a good lifestyle. Right?

So get good sleep, get some good exercise, eat good food, and control your stress. That's 99% of the battle. Like people pay me a lot of money to to work with them through the course of a year. That's 99% of what I tell high achieving professionals who are otherwise healthy and just wanna perform a little bit better. It still boils down to that.

Yeah. The metaphor I keep using with this is is is accident, automobile fatalities. So we could expand this into the transportation department and talk about trucking and shipping and buses and planes and all of the other stuff. But if you just look at automobiles, like automobiles are something we're in control of. Right?

Mhmm. To a large degree. We we control our own cars. If you look at, you know, the fact that that we've known we've had known coronavirus in The United States for over a month now. Right?

On Johns Hopkins sites themselves, the earliest I went back was February I wanna say February 11 to February 12, we had twelve cases in America. Those were known cases. People weren't as serious about testing for it or weren't as concerned about testing for it. The test itself is something I'd like to talk about. And, anyway, so from that point to now, we can say, wow.

There's this huge increase in cases. Well, there there are but there's a huge increase of cases because we're testing for it a lot more as well. So is it spreading? Yes. Is it contagious?

Yes. But, again, back to the back to the automobile accident accident thing. If you look at it, what do we we're at, two hundred and five deaths in America from coronavirus right now. Keep in mind that doesn't mean that they got coronavirus and therefore died. Means that they died while they had coronavirus, and there could've like, they might it may have died anyway, and and I'm not making light of it.

Yes. It does it does cause some serious health consequences, and so we should be cautious with it. But in that same period of time, three to four thousand people would have died in automobile accidents. Right? Right.

Right. Two hundred and five versus three to four thousand. So what do we do about that? We know that automobiles you know, I was at the gym this morning, I was talking to one of my buddies. I'm like, you know, I think oh, and by the way, it's a private gym if everybody everyone's gonna get spun up.

It's owned by my friend and and just has employees work out there. So so we're talking about him, like I was like, I wonder if when the freeway system really started growing and people started driving a lot more, if everybody was really concerned that ever that automobiles were gonna kill everyone in America. Right? Right. And I don't say that to be glib.

I just it says a frame of reference. Right? So if you if you think about three or four thousand people dying every month, that's about ninety people per day dying in an automobile accident. I I wanna say there's one point two million people roughly that died in in America last year, three and a half million seriously injured, six million serious car crashes. Right?

So if coronavirus just hit that, we would be dealing with exactly the same thing as an automobile. Right? If it over the course of the year, this killed a million people, everyone would lose their freaking minds. Right? But that would still be the same number of people who got killed by you get killed in car crashes.

So what do we do about that? Well, we don't tell people not to drive. We don't tell people quit using the freeway or drive 20 miles an hour on the freeway. What do we do? We build cars that are safer.

We crash test them. We put seat belts in them. We put airbags in them. We put laws around when you can go, when you can't go, how fast you can drive, which ways you can turn. We teach people and train people on how to operate automobile safely.

We put laws against people texting and having conversations and drinking alcohol and all this stuff, and we control the risk the best we can. And then we say, you know what? We need automobiles to sustain the way of life that we have and the growth that we're going, and we're accept and we're considering that an acceptable death rate, an acceptable risk. You could argue whether that's acceptable or not. That's not that's not my point.

My point is as a society, we have embraced that because you don't hear you don't hear people reacting to automobiles the way we're reacting to coronavirus. And to be clear, instead of three to four thousand deaths in automobiles, we've had two hundred and five deaths with coronavirus. Right. So if this goes anywhere near these doomsday predictions, we're still not going to be anywhere close to automobiles. So wash your hands and wear your seatbelt, you know?

Yeah. I mean, do both social distance, don't cough on people, don't text, don't drink and drive. Be a, you know, be a good, you know, be a good ambassador to the country, to your community, be a conscientious member of society, do what you can, but don't doomsday this. Like, again, like I said, I reserve the right to be wrong, but the way things are growing right now, I think really six months from now, everybody's gonna be like, that's it? And, you know, then there'll be the arguments of saying, well, that's because we did so much.

And they'll be the people saying it was all a conspiracy, you know, and everything in between. Yeah. And and who knows who knows what the right answer is? My only point is, of all the things that are likely to kill you or kill anyone that you know, care, and love care about and love, coronavirus is an infinitesimally small piece of that. Right?

If you look entirely worldwide, we've lost ten thousand people in four months. Yeah. I mean, three to no. Like, four to five million people die per month in the world. I mean, that's kind of the average of the world.

So this is a very, very, very small risk. Again, don't be flippant about it. Don't say, well, this doesn't matter. I'm just gonna go do whatever the hell I want to. Take precautions.

Take it seriously, but do the best to live the most normal life you possibly can. As far as I know, toilet paper is not protective against this disease. It It doesn't cause diarrhea. Yep. You know, the the whole idea that you have people buying I mean, you you see it in social media.

I mean, people buying hundreds of rolls of toilet paper. You know, that that to me is, you know, evidence that this isn't being handled rationally. Like, there's no rational thought involved in that. Like, that I don't know about you, but for me, that's a that's literally a lifetime. The rest of my life, I won't use a whole 100 rolls of toilet paper.

I'm I'm sure of it, man. I mean, yeah. I'd have to live a hundred years to do that.

Chris Albert 00:12:18 (link to this point)

I hear you on that. And and, you know, I want I want to get into some of the things you said. Let's take one step back just just for the audience out there who who might not know who you are. Could you give, like, a just a quick synopsis to your background, where you're coming from on this?

Kirk Parsley 00:12:33 (link to this point)

Yeah. Just you know? Yeah. So, you know, I I am I'm originally out of so grew up in in Texas, joined the military right up high school, became a Navy SEAL, did that for a while, got out, went to college, went back into the military, went to the military's medical school. Actually, you know, we because of the military and how much they travel on that, get a pretty robust infectious disease, you know, education during medical school. I then went into becoming what's called a dive medical officer.

So I did a resident a navy residency in hyperbaric and dive medicine and went back to the SEAL teams as their physician. And, of course, the SEALs have you know, this was 2009 when I got back to the SEAL team, so they'd already been in combat for eight years. So they had they had their issues, but mainly their issues were performance. Right? They're, by and large, really healthy people.

There's some trauma, obviously, some injuries, but most of it is around performance optimization. So I got out, did a year of concierge practice in California, made twice as much money, brought home less money because of a state and federal combined tax. So I came back to Texas. You know, I I developed a product or I developed a formulation to help guys get off sleep drugs in the military because that was one of the big things leading to the performance declines that they were having and complaining about. And so when I left the concierge practice, I stood up a company to launch that.

And now I just do private consulting. So, I mean, I still lecture organizations, and I do some some programs, but I try not to do, like, big wellness programs or things. But, you know, I lecture d o g DOJ and DOD and professional sports teams and college teams and firefighters and law enforcement, any kind of group like that, mainly around performance optimization and health span, what we call health span. So not only like, I I can't guarantee you. I have no promises that anything I do is going to make you live longer.

Mhmm. You know, what I what I work with my clients to do is improve their health span. So how, you know, how how vital are you and how robust is your health during the years that you are alive and how capable are you? And and I think for most at least for most of my clients, and so probably I live in an echo chamber, but most of the people I know are much more concerned about being able to play with their grandkids and go hiking and, you know, take cool vacations and until they die than they are whether they live to be 80 or a 100. So Right.

That's the realm I'm coming from. Like I said, I'm, I'm not an infectious disease specialist. I'm not a statistician, and I'm not I'm not trying to pretend like I am. I'm a rational guy who's, you know, been a Navy SEAL in a physician and an entrepreneur and, you know, in a consultant. And, you know, I I just I feel compelled to speak out just because I I see so much irrational behavior.

And if I put myself in the position, like, say if they did this with the financial industry, and there was some kind of big spin up about the financial industry and how we were all gonna lose all of our money and everyone is gonna be in third world, I'd buy into it. Right? Because I don't know anything about the financial industry. Right. But I know a lot about the health industry, and I know a lot about, you know, biostats and stats and epidemiology and, you know, communicability of diseases and and those types of things.

I know the way, you know, I've worked in hospitals. I've, you know, been through some of that stuff. So, you know, hopefully, I'm just a rational voice in the in the storm.

Chris Albert 00:16:31 (link to this point)

I think the big thing here is is Tony, understand this. Like, as rational as you can be, if everybody else is irrational, the situation changes. Right? You live in a different world. It it changes the environment that you're acting in.

And that's some of the stuff I used to study when I when I was studying game theory, and we'd study, you know, Bayesian updating and things like that. And, you know, one of the things I think we're seeing here is

Kirk Parsley 00:16:58 (link to this point)

So hold on. Just just to interject, and I don't want you to lose your train of thought. But another reason I use the automobile metaphor Mhmm. Because you aren't in control of how other people act there either. You can do everything right, and some drunk driver can hit you at a 120 miles an hour, and you die.

Right? So keep keep going. Yeah.

Chris Albert 00:17:19 (link to this point)

And and you know, what I was saying there is, like, you know, I think that from a from a number of levels, we're seeing the impact of this thing going crazy. Number one, because people are scared. And because people are scared, politicians feel the need to act. And because politicians feel the need to act, the fear gets translated into policy, and then that gets translated into directives that get passed down from government. And so, you know, in a situation out here in California, you know, shutting things down, you know, trying to to basically slow this disease down.

While I think it's it's being done with the best of intentions, I also think that in a number of ways, it's it's it's creating more fear. And also at the same time, and I wanted to ask your opinion on this. Given the fact that, you know, people who get this, are people who get this going to be immune from getting it in the future? And and if so, is this whole thing we've got going on going to actually slow down the recovery process from which we can can all, you know, move on with our lives?

Kirk Parsley 00:18:37 (link to this point)

Right. Well, yeah. So there's I mean, there's a there's a lot to unpack in that. Right. But, you know, the the first thing to the first thing to to point out, and I won't go into too much detail that and we could talk about this for a couple hours in itself.

It's just the test itself. Right? So the what does it mean to have coronavirus? Now a lot of people know, but I've I've found out that far fewer people knew than I thought that coronavirus isn't unique virus. It's a category of viruses.

Right? And so there are hundreds, I don't know, upwards of probably five or 600 different coronaviruses. Now and a virus is not an active organism. Right? It's not it's not like a bacteria.

Right? It it doesn't it doesn't do anything. It what it is is it's a protein shell. So it's just think of it like, you know, a hollow ball, you know, made of a like a protein mesh on the outside. And then inside of that is some what we call RNA, mRNA.

And what it does is it it changes if that cell can if that virus can bind to one of our cells, it goes into our cell. And then the mRNA, the little bit of DNA information can get into the nucleus of our cells and it can change the genetic expression of what that cell is doing. So therefore, it can like, it you take the case of herpes virus. Right? So herpes virus lives in it lives in neurons.

And when it when it's affecting the DNA of the cell, it's making neurons make a lot more herpes virus. Right? And then it makes so many viruses that that that shell then erupts, and then you and then all of those infect more cells, and that's what a viral infection is. And in fact, when you feel when you feel run down and tired from a viral infection, it's not the actual virus that's making you feel sick. It's the fact that your cellular machinery is being hijacked, so you you have less energy, and you're mobilizing an immune system, takes a lot of your energy, your daily energy, you're mobilizing your immune system to fight a virus instead of, you know, using that same energy to do regular cellular functions that, you know, keep you robust and healthy.

So that's what makes you feel bad. The fever makes you feel bad, but it also kills the virus. So in most cases, what happens is if you're exposed to a virus, and coronavirus can be pretty tricky in how it presents itself to yourself, right? It comes to the front door, it comes to the front gate of the castle and says, hey, look, I'm your friend, you can see all these things sticking off of me that shows I'm your friend. And here's a Trojan horse, then they get inside and they wreak havoc.

But once those once enough of those are around and enough of those erupt, your immune system catches on to it and says, oh, we see what's going on now, and we can beat the virus, which is happening in ninety you know, somewhere between ninety seven and ninety nine and a half percent of the time, people are getting this virus, their immune system's overwhelming it, beating it, so on. Okay, we got your numbers now. And it creates these little structures called antibodies, which then are sort of in reserve around the rest of your body so that if you ever exposed to this virus again, those antibodies will attach themselves to that virus and say, you know, stranger danger, like, is a bad thing, and then your immune system attacks it, and you're less likely to get expressed the symptoms of the of the of the viral infection. So the point of all that is that if I get say if there's one coronavirus viral on my desk right here, and I touch it and I touch my tongue, did I just get the coronavirus? I don't know.

Like, I it's in my body right now. Right? So you could say I have it. When would you say I have it? Well, would say you have it once you start expressing symptoms of it, right?

So once I start having symptoms of it, and I could test it, and I could say, this is definitely what's causing your symptoms, then okay, now you have coronavirus. Unfortunately, because there are 500 some odd coronaviruses and and even bacteria that have that same mRNA. So we're we're not saying it's a shell with a little bit of, you know, genetic material in the middle. That genetic material is what we're testing for, and what's called the PCR, polymerase chain reaction. And we're trying to find out does this little bit of genetic material exist in your body?

Is it floating around in your bloodstream? If it is floating around in your bloodstream, do we know that it's coming from COVID nineteen? Absolutely not. You can go to CDC's website, read their guidance. They have guidance for doctors you know, out in the field doing this.

It is not layouting and stuff. This is alright. Here's the test we're using. This is what we're considering positive tests. This is what a positive test means, and this is how we're gonna treat it.

Like, it's guidance from nationwide for physicians. And in their document, they say that it doesn't necessarily mean you have COVID-nineteen. It means that you have one, you know, that you have the genetic material that's expressed in that, that can also be coming from lots of other places.

Chris Albert 00:24:06 (link to this point)

So a lot of these tests could be leading to false positives.

Kirk Parsley 00:24:09 (link to this point)

Right. So in in in the medical world, you know, in in biostat, what we're looking for is we're looking for a sensitive test, meaning that everyone who has the disease will be diagnosed by this test. That would mean it's really sensitive. But I could also say, well, everybody who has everyone who has a coronavirus right now has two legs. And so everybody with two legs has coronavirus, and I would be right a hundred percent of the time.

Right? Sensitivity of a hundred percent. However, it was not very specific because a lot of people who have two legs don't have the coronavirus. Right? So what we don't have, it it has a high sensitivity, meaning that it's because it's dangerous, we do the same thing with something like HIV.

We did we're not gonna we're gonna we're willing to have more false positives to avoid the risk of having a false negative, like not catching it. So we're catching a lot, and this is just the best test we have right now. We'll develop better tests. But right now, the best test we have doesn't tell you for sure that you have it. It just tells you it's more likely that you have it.

And the original guidance was I'm not sure if it's still the same way, but the original guidance was if somebody presented with a flu like symptoms that you were suspicious, you know, could possibly be this, you still first test them for the flu, for influenza A and B. And if they come back positive for influenza, then you stop there. If they come back negative for influenza, then you're you know, you weigh your you know, there was some clinical judgment in there. It's like, alright. Well, you're 30.

You're healthy. You live alone. You work from home. You know, who cares? Like, I could I could do the test.

And I don't know what the false positive is, but, you know, let's say it's twenty percent. Right? I mean, could be that high. Could be higher than that. Could be lower than that.

But just throw a ballpark out there. Alright. Twenty percent. Well, twenty percent of the people that you tested actually don't have it, but think they do. The more important question is how many of those people will experience symptoms?

Oh, we think only about fifteen to twenty percent will actually experience the symptoms. Does that mean they aren't contagious? No. That's why you brush. That's why you wash your hands.

That's why you don't sneeze on people. That's why you don't cough on people. That's why you social distance. Like, yeah, get it clear. Like, let's not give other people this.

So if we said, alright. We wanna know everyone in America that has that little piece of genetic material in them, which could be coronavirus, and we come up with ten million people. Well, what do what do we do differently at that point? What we need to be looking at is the morbidity and mortality. Like, how sick are people getting?

How many people are dying? How much medical care do they need? So, you know, the way the media seem to be doing a disservice is, you know, if you look at the headlines of, CNN, I look at that one just because it seems to be the most sensational. You know, it'll say, coronavirus skyrockets. You know, and what they mean by skyrocket is fifteen hundred more cases.

Right? Well, yeah, that's a lot of cases relative to what we had, but relative to the population is still really small. You know, coronavirus soars by forty percent. Well, we also increased testing by three hundred percent, and soaring still only went up two thousand twenty five hundred people. So is, like, okay, is that legitimate?

You know, there there are people, and they're saying fifty percent of all jobs in America are are potentially going to go away. A million people are going to die from this. I'm like, alright. Pump the brakes, man. This is not reality.

You cannot possibly be talking about the same thing I'm talking about.

Chris Albert 00:28:03 (link to this point)

Right.

Kirk Parsley 00:28:04 (link to this point)

Go read, you know, CDC's website. Go look at National Institute of Health. Look at Johns Hopkins. Look at the real numbers. Worldwide, we have 220 some odd thousand.

Let's say I got this up right now. What do we have? Worldwide. No. Whatever.

I can't get back to the page. But it's somewhere 225 to call it 250,000. 250,000 out of 7,000,000,000 people.

Chris Albert 00:28:33 (link to this point)

What's the name of that page, doc?

Kirk Parsley 00:28:37 (link to this point)

It's it's John Johns Hopkins is actually the one who publishes, but it's it's arcgis.com.

That should do it. If you just so if you just search Johns Hopkins COVID nineteen, it'll pop up too. Okay. And and it's it's basically a real time counter. It'll tell you.

There you go. When is that? COVID. So Yeah. So in mine, it's that goes well, this is a mobile word.

You know, just just Johns Hopkins. Yeah. So that's on the left there.

Chris Albert 00:29:24 (link to this point)

This one here?

Kirk Parsley 00:29:26 (link to this point)

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that that's that's all of them. I that's just a television channel, though, I think. Gotcha.

Are you on media or something?

Chris Albert 00:29:40 (link to this point)

Or This is the CDC

Kirk Parsley 00:29:41 (link to this point)

dot Yeah. You gotta go go for that one. I think they may be linking to it. There. Now let me see if I can get the URL.

So mine mine's on an app, so maybe that's why it's giving that because it's arcgis.com//appsopen- blah blah blah. Oh, there you go. Now I'm getting there. Yeah. Clicked in an active map there.

Man, you need to feed the hamsters. Yeah. Internet's been slow, slow, slow, slow since this whole thing started. I think everybody No. So there we go.

Two two hundred and fifty four thousand cases. Gotcha. Right. Ten thousand deaths. So, again, you don't need to be a statistician here.

The part over the whole, so two hundred and fifty thousand divided by seven billion, which we're being generous both ways here, be a point zero zero four percent of world has contracted this disease. And if we did the deaths, and we said ten thousand divided by seven billion, We're at point zero zero zero one, four zeros and a one, point zero zero zero zero one percent of the world has died from coronavirus at this point in the past four months. So, again, does that mean it's not serious? Of course not. But right now, we don't there are a few things we don't know.

So, you know, how how easily is it to transmit this? So you've probably heard wild data on on all sides is, you know, how long does this last on metal and cardboard, on your countertops, on your skin? And and, you know, I don't think the numbers are really well really well known right now. We do know that it seems to exist on metal pretty easily, especially steel, I think. I think copper kills it or something.

It doesn't last on your skin very long. I mean, in your skin, it's going to be minutes to maybe hours on cardboard. Think cardboard and paper, I think, is, like, twenty four hours, maybe something like that. And it's not alive. It's just is it viable still.

You know, the protein structures will degrade, and it will no longer operate as a virus if it does get into your body. So it with it laying around, is it possible that every single one of us have already, you know, been exposed to this to some degree? Possible. I mean, probably not. But, you know, if you look at something like the herpes virus, I think ninety eight point six percent of the world has been exposed to the herpes virus.

But how many people actually have herpes? Right? How many people have symptomatic herpes? How many people who have ever had symptomatic herpes current, you know, continue to have that, and it becomes problematic. So, you know, that that crew that Grand Princess cruise, like, was that was a great example of of this concern.

Right? So if this were something that were so virulent that it would be like that movie with Dustin Hoffman and, know, like, if you weren't wearing a spacesuit, like, got like, everybody got it. And it was blowing in the wind, and it was unavoidable that everyone was gonna get it. You know, that would, you know, that would be, like, the most contagious thing out there you've ever heard of. But we rank these.

Like alright. So how communicable something is, like, if you're if if we know that you've been exposed so if you've ever have you ever been on a cruise? Yep. Yep. A lot.

So, I mean, I think it's pretty safe to say that if if, several people on the cruise have it, every single person is exposed to it. Right? Because especially if it's airborne, it's going through the ventilation system, everything. You know, there's metals everywhere to be touching handrails, you know, where you eat the silverware, like, everything. I think it'd be really unlikely that anyone on that ship wasn't exposed to it.

And, I don't remember exactly. I think, would they run it for a month or something or a couple weeks? I don't know. They run it for a while. Yeah.

And, 21 people out of 3,500 people got it. Right? So that's that that doesn't sound like something that you have to, you know, worry about not being around anybody else. And and, you know, the other thing to consider is that cruise ships characteristically represent an older population. Right?

There there aren't a lot of 20 year olds and 30 year olds going on cruises. It's usually people who have more financial means and more spare time, you know, later on in their lives. That tends to be on there. So, you know, the fact that we we didn't have, like, this huge transmissibility on that one where every bird every single person on the ship came down with it, You know, the death rate was pretty high given how many people how many people contracted how few people contracted it, and how many people died. So may actually, I'm gonna back up on that.

I I might be I might not be remembering that statistic correctly, but I I know, like, around 2121, '22, maybe '23 people got out of thirty five hundred. And I I wanna say that there it was either there, you know, there there's some like, how severe it was. I yeah. I think it was death rate. I think it calculated out to be, like, four percent.

If you look worldwide, so that map you're looking at, ten thousand cases over or two hundred fifty thousand cases, ten thousand deaths, that works out to be about four percent, which is astronomically high. Right? Yeah. Like, if you travel anywhere in the world, if you think that everyone in the world is catching every case out there right now, like every country in the world is catching every case right now. Yeah.

I mean, that that's being ridiculous. But, you know, we just we have to assume that everyone's data is flawed or everyone's data is right. And the truth is neither. Nobody's data is completely correct. The more data we have, the more we'll know.

But you've seen I've seen reports anywhere from, you know, half a percent of people who get this will become severely ill and die, up to three to four percent, which would be really high. Influenza is like the common flu. Now that we know how to treat it, now that, you know, we take a lot of other precautions, we're familiar with the disease. It's only around point three, I think, point three, point four. But, you know, ten thousand deaths over two hundred and fifty thousand people, that's what I think that's what's scaring people.

But what's not making the headlines is the fact that, you know, China built 16 coronavirus specific hospitals during this outbreak. Well, they've taken down all 16 of them. And why they take down 16 of them? Because they didn't have enough cases that warranted anymore. You know, China seemed to have this uncontrolled rise, and then all of a sudden, it plateaued.

And China didn't do anything specifically. You can't attribute it to, well, they started doing therefore it went down. Like, it just spiked up really high really quickly. It flattened off. It started going back down.

It spiked up again. It flattened off. It started going back down. Now they're on a really long downward trend trend. Mhmm.

I think on the nineteenth, I don't know about today, but yesterday, for the twenty four hours prior, they'd they'd had no community transmitted ones, which is different than what we call nosocomial. So nosocomial means that you're getting it in the hospital. Obviously, you wanna you wanna avoid the hospitals because that's where all the sick people are. Yeah. So if the highest concentration of of of people with coronavirus is gonna be in the hospital.

Right? So, you know, they they you know, they've taken down all all that, and they had zero new cases in the community. And so, you know, I think they had a few, maybe 10 or 15 that were traced to, like, happening in the hospital, which means by and large that infection's dead. Now that needs to go on for another week or two before anyone will have any real comfort around it. But I think that's you know, what we're gonna see.

I mean, if you look at our numbers are so small right now. You know, some and other things that the media is doing, would say, like, you know, they they they take something that the CDC puts out, which is the best evidence out there. Like, it's a it's a, you know, it's a synthesis of all the information that we currently have, and the CDC very openly and blatantly admits over and over again that we don't have enough data to have any confidence in this. But what we can say right now is that, you know, this age group is experiencing that, and this age group is experiencing that, and that age group is experiencing that. And so the media will say things like, you know, a headline would be like, we have 40 year olds on ventilators.

Chris Albert 00:39:24 (link to this point)

Mhmm.

Kirk Parsley 00:39:24 (link to this point)

Like, okay.

Chris Albert 00:39:26 (link to this point)

Yeah. I heard that yesterday.

Kirk Parsley 00:39:28 (link to this point)

It's like, okay. So let's dig into that article. Was it one 40 year old? Was it a 44 year old? Was it a 49 year old?

Did that person have emphysema and diabetes and high blood pressure? Like who knows? Like we don't know and how many people? Yeah. They're saying the same thing about this percentage of people in New York required hospitalization, and this percentage required intensive care.

Well, intensive care isn't isn't a matter of fact. Yeah. You know, that that there's just there's a discretion on the health care providers to whether or not you take someone into intensive care. But either way, they start saying, well, it's this percentage, and it's this and we're risking this overwhelms, like, and I was like wow that that actually sounds pretty high. I'm I'm I'm maybe I'm totally wrong about this and I dig into it a little bit.

It's like alright. We're talking about over there a 120 people total. So of course there's gonna be skews and it's small numbers. And then the other thing is, well, there's a lot of anxiety about this. And, you know, earlier you said, you know, the the population is scared and the government's scared.

Well, you know, people are scarier than the government's scared, I think, is what you said. Well, the government's people too, and health care providers are people too. So, yeah, everybody's being scared by by, you know, this spin. I mean, I I can read headlines and hear certain things that I like, Oh, holy smokes that causes me a little pause like that's surprising, and then I dig in. It's oh, okay.

Well, Yeah, there were 20 people admitted to the ICU. Alright. Well that you know as a percentage that was that was significant or 24 people like, wow, that's a lot of people. I wouldn't expect that 20% of the people would be, oh, okay. Well, it was only 24 people total.

Okay. Well, that could be totally skewed. And then the other thing is, you know, if we're in a hospital right now and I'm your doctor and you're 70 years old and you have flu like symptoms and I test you and you don't have the flu and I test you with PCR and say, you know, it looks like you do have the possibility of having the coronavirus. You know, you live in you live at home alone, your kids live in another state. You know what?

Why don't why don't we hospitalize you? Like, you know, let's just keep an eye on you for another day or two. And if, you know, you you're looking like you might get really sick. Let me move you over to this more intensive area. Or, you know, hey.

No smoke. No kidding. This person's super sick or that's a critical care unit. We're gonna put you in there. You're going on a ventilator.

Like, this is bad news. So, you you know, there's human discretion in there is the point. So to say that a certain percentage of people will need to be hospitalized or certain percentage of people will need to be admitted to the ICU, keep in mind there's discretion. And as things become you know, if if things grow and there becomes a, like, a real competition for resources, then, yeah, fewer people will get admitted. A lower percentage of people would get admitted.

The same number of people overall would get admitted because it'd be whatever your resources allowed if you were overwhelming the system. But, again, we need to keep that in perspective that right now, we had fewer deaths in the last twenty four hours than we had the previous twenty four hours. So we had, like, sixty five deaths two days ago and fifty five deaths yesterday, lady up until this morning when I checked. So, again, this could be serious, but what are you gonna do differently? You know, here's another axiom in medicine is you don't do a test unless you're going to do something about the result.

Right? If you came to see me and you said, hey, I have this cough. I have a fever. I think I might have the coronavirus. And we talk a lot about your health and your family dynamics or whatever.

It's like, at this point with media hysteria, all this yeah. My my hands would be kinda tied. I'd have to I'd have to test you on it.

Chris Albert 00:43:35 (link to this point)

Well, that's that's the whole thing. Right? Because and what's essentially because of the fear, then then government's hands get tied. They've gotta do something about it. Your hands get tied.

You gotta do something about it. And and, essentially, what happens is we corner ourselves into these behaviors that that are essentially going to lead to more more restrictions, more fear, and then and then when the media reports on this, it sounds sounds horrible. It sounds like it's the end of the world. You know?

Kirk Parsley 00:44:03 (link to this point)

Right. And, you know, and again, like, they they the media never reports the denominator. Right? It's always like, you know, I guarantee you in, you know, twenty five, thirty percent of the people who see the headline, you know, coronavirus soars forty percent, they're like in New York City, I think it was.

They're like, holy smokes, forty percent of New York City's has coronavirus? You know, that like, it's like, alright. Well, forty percent of what? Right? How many people are we talking about?

How many people get the flu? How many people die from the flu? How many people like, compare this to the swine flu. Right? We had seventy million cases of swine flu.

We had twenty five thousand deaths. We had a thousand deaths of swine flu before it was declared an emergency. And now we have two hundred deaths over the course of a month. And so here's what I think is that and of course, that's accelerating. Most of those deaths have happened recently.

So that's got people scared. But here's what I think. If if they tell people, hey, stay at home until we figure out what's going on, it's gonna be a couple of weeks, people will go, okay. But if they say stay at home until we say differently, then people are gonna start looking at these numbers a lot more harshly and say, alright. Wait a second.

Here it is, May or June, and we have five hundred deaths, seven hundred deaths, and we've shut down the economy for two to three months. That Yeah. Does not sound like a good

Chris Albert 00:45:29 (link to this point)

You're gonna have more suicides in that case than you would from anything. You know?

Kirk Parsley 00:45:34 (link to this point)

You're gonna you're gonna you're gonna have a lot of civil unrest. Right? Because if if you tell me that a thousand people are gonna die in America from using plastic water bottles, Mhmm. Okay. Maybe I'll I'll quit using plastic water bottles.

But if you tell me a thousand people are gonna die in America, so I don't want you to drive your car anymore. I'd say, woah, hold on a second. Like, you know, people people are gonna die from anything anyway. Like, really, I can't drive my car and be a responsible member of society. So it's it's like the society is going to agree on, you know, as a society, we're not willing to stay home and lose our livelihood and, you know, diminish, deplete our savings and, you know, drive our our kids crazy and our kids drive us crazy and, you know, whatever else is coming out of this.

Like, we aren't willing to do that anymore to save five hundred deaths over the next six months or something like that. You know, and it sounds callous, but I guarantee you, if the media took the approach to traffic accidents that they're taking to this, that every morning you woke up to a national plot of where ninety people had died the night the day before, and you had the human toll story. They were talking about this was a grandmother on her way to see her grandchild for her fifth birthday and, you know, and everybody would be losing their minds. Right? Like, oh my gosh.

Like, everybody's dying of car crashes. Well, guess what? It hadn't changed at all. Like, that's what we've always had. Right.

But the attention can be spun on it. And again, if this were to get as bad as automobile accidents, it would be a miracle. Right? It's just very unlikely. I mean, it's almost inconceivable to me that we could get a million deaths when worldwide we have ten thousand deaths, and it's been around for four months that we know of.

It's probably been around much longer. Now when they say a million deaths, so they you know, this could be political terms. They could be saying a million deaths over the next ten years. Okay. Maybe I'd buy that.

I got that's still hard to justify. Right? So if you you know

Chris Albert 00:47:44 (link to this point)

Let me ask you this because, you look at the numbers coming from Italy. They've got about, forty four thousand five hundred, confirmed cases. And they've got about four thousand five hundred deaths. That ends out number wise, that's like eight percent eight percent fatality. Why are your things so high over there compared to everywhere else?

What's going on?

Kirk Parsley 00:48:08 (link to this point)

There there are several things to consider. And, you know, the most important thing is I don't know. The most important answer. But but a few things you could speculate on. One is that it's one of the oldest cultures.

It's one of the oldest countries on on the planet by by pretty big margin. I wanna say that eighty eighty percent of everyone who's died has been over 75. Ninety nine percent of people have had comorbidities, meaning that they have some other disease that they're dealing with. The Italians are very social and very warm, and they touch and they hug and they kiss. And, you know, their grandparents and their parents, you know, tend to live in the same house with, you know, the kids.

And, you know, it they do a lot around food, a lot around community, a lot of religious activity, smaller spaces, you know, a higher density of living certainly than America. And, you know, they still upset people if I say this, but, you know, there's also a major port in China, one one of, I think, their their most major point the most major the busiest international port they have in Italy is actually controlled by China, but it because of some agreement that they have there. And I'm and so I'm not saying that it's because of the dirty Chinese. I'm just saying, well, if if that's a major port of entry and is controlled by the country that this port originated from, it makes more sense that they would have, like, a higher concentration, like a faster move of all this. And, definitely, they're overwhelming their medical system.

But the other thing is when you look at the country's medical system is an ability to respond, you know, and this is based on resources and education, geography, and, you know, all sorts of assets, hospital beds, all this other stuff. But when you rank the countries for how how capable are they at handling some sort of major medical crisis like this, I wanna say Italy is around fifty third, 56, something like that. America is number one. So we're simply more capable of handling it. We don't live in as dense of an area as we social distance ourselves routinely more anyway.

You know, we don't tend to live across the age stratification. Most people don't live with their parents, and certainly, most people don't live with their grandparents. And, again, that's very common. The elderly seem to be more susceptible to really bad outcomes. And because we don't seem to have any innate immunity to this, everybody's getting it.

Right? So everybody's gonna get exposed. Everybody's gonna develop some immunity to it. But, you know, the kids are gonna be giving it to their parents, gonna be giving it to their parents, gonna be giving it to their parents if they're all living in the same household. And now you have, you know, a a not overly robust medical system to begin with, a very old population, and a lot of your old population has contracted the virus now relatively quickly.

I mean, yeah, that that's a recipe for disaster. And, yeah, I'm not saying they could have avoided it. I'm not saying anybody did anything wrong. That's just some speculation as to think why things would be different. And then there's, you know, there there's, you know, there's there's all sorts of reasons to suspect that, you know, a virus is going to be, let's call it potent, make it a simple word out of It's gonna be more potent in in certain populations than other populations.

And there again, it's multifactorial. There's a million things that are going into it. It's like, you know, something like, you know, genes that we know are associated with cancer. It's like, well, everybody who has this type of cancer has this gene. But the more important thing is not everybody with this gene has cancer.

Right? So it's not cause and effect, it's correlation. And the more factors that are in there, how good your immune system? How good is your sanitation? How good are your health care?

How good is the local nutrition? You know, there's there's just so many things that could be weighing into that. I think they're been hit exceptionally hard, and I didn't do the math on their cases today. But intuitively looking at the numbers, it seems like they had fewer new cases over the last twenty four hours than they did the twenty four hours before that. So let's hope that trend continues.

Chris Albert 00:52:44 (link to this point)

One other thing, you know, just going back to to what you do and some of the perspectives on living a healthy lifestyle. I mean, I've heard people talking about the fact that something like sixty five percent of adult men in China smoke cigarettes and then like really high rates of smokers being really susceptible to this disease. And it kinda goes back to what you were saying initially is you the the moral of this story shouldn't just be, Disease control. Let's social distance. It should also be, let's take care of ourselves.

Let's take care of our health. Let's sleep more. Let's let's eat healthier. Let's drink more water, and and let's exercise more. Right?

Kirk Parsley 00:53:30 (link to this point)

Yeah. And, I mean, there there's a part of the optimist in me. Is thinking, maybe this is a really good thing. Right? Because not that I want people to die from a disease that they maybe they wouldn't have died otherwise.

But we tend to do a lot more for others than we do for ourselves. Right? We'll do more for our kids than we'll do for ourselves. We'll do more you know, we'll we'll begrudgingly do things for people we care about, and we'll blow off our own responsibilities because we just don't feel like doing it. But we'll we'll take care of their their issues.

Right? So, I mean, I think there's been I mean, in my lifetime, I can think of at least three decades of, you know, beating the drum around health and wellness and fitness and obesity and exercise, and there's no shortage of information around that. I mean, nobody nobody is not nobody is obese and broken and inflamed and sick because there's not enough information out there. Right? They're they're like that because, yeah, they've made certain choices, and certain things haven't been worth it to them.

So, you know, the the optimist in me is, well, maybe people will be more socially responsible with their health knowing that, hey. If my immune system's really good and I get the coronavirus, I get infected with the coronavirus. The only if if I'm young and healthy and fit and strong, my immune system's good, there's not a whole lot of risk to me. Right? The risk is that I give it to somebody who can't handle it as well as I do.

Right? So I don't want to give it to anybody else. So I'm gonna be socially responsible about that. So I'm gonna not cough on them, not sneeze on them. I'm gonna wash my hands.

I'm gonna social distance. But more importantly, I'm gonna keep taking care of myself. Right? Because the better my immune system, the less chance I'm going to give it to somebody else. Right?

Let's say if everybody who gets it becomes contagious to some degree. Well, the better your immune system is, the faster you're gonna fight that viral infection off, the fewer viruses that that are going to be able to infect your cells and cause those cells to produce more of those viruses, which means fewer virion in your body that you could actually express by the time your immune system is caught onto the trick and completely gotten rid of the virus. We assume that'll happen. There's no evidence to suggest it's gonna live in nerve cells forever like herpes or something like that. It's very likely to be like every other coronavirus and, know, the cold is a coronavirus.

It's just gonna come and go, and you're gonna get it maybe multiple times a year. Who knows? Once some sort of immunity is developed over that. But if I can reduce my risk of spreading it to somebody else by taking care of myself, and I can reduce the risk of me being seriously ill from it, and I can reduce the risk of it impacting my economics because I'm getting better quicker. Right?

Why wouldn't I do that? And so now there's the motivation of keeping myself healthy, keeping my, you know, sanitation good because I'm worried about other people. You know, one of the best things is everybody's staying home, so I'm hoping everybody's sleeping. And there's nothing there's nothing you can do that's better for your immune system than sleeping. If you look at your immune function, the peak immune function you have is during deep sleep.

So most people are familiar with the hormone cortisol, and cortisol is called the stress hormone, and that's a simplistic way of thinking about it. It's an easy way to talk about it. So, it gets this rap is like, cortisol is bad. Well, no, actually cortisol is necessary without any cortisol, you're dead. You die immediately without cortisol.

And what wakes you up in the morning is a cortisol level. Right? We're being simple, but let's just ride the meta, you know, the metaphor out with me. You know, your cortisol comes up over the course of the night, and at some point, it hits a concentration in your blood where your brain and your body want to be awake. And then you're awake, and it continues to go up throughout the day, and then it has a little dip, which is we that afternoon dip we all know about.

And then it just it pops kinda back up, and then it just slowly declines over the course of a day, all things being equal, like we're living the right way. We aren't getting, you know, in into extreme situations where we need cortisol, and it will gradually decrease over the day until it's lower than the point that wakes us up. And then we'll fall asleep, and it keeps going down into the deep sleep. Most people have heard of fight or flight. Right?

So when you're awake so the point of that is cortisol is good. Cortisol keeps you awake. It keeps you alert in proportion to your environment. When you're asleep, you can still smell, you can still hear, you can still taste, you can still see, you can still feel sensation, you can feel touch, heat, pain. Your brain's not paying attention to it.

What cortisol does is it makes your brain pay attention to your environment. So if somebody's shooting at you with a gun, you have a lot of cortisol going because your environment is very, very important. It's way more important than your taxes or your marriage or your broken ankle or anything else that's a big deal to you. Nothing is as important as your environment because that guy is trying to kill you right now. So you have a super high cortisol level, and we call that the fight or flight, which basically just means that's the highest kind of level your body's capable of launching cells and your physiology into.

And it causes all sorts of great things. You get stronger, your endurance increases, your pain threshold increases, your reflexes get faster, your pupils dilate, you take in a wider field, you take in more light, your lungs dilate, your heart rate goes up, Your blood pressure goes up. You become superhuman. Right? But you're not digesting.

You're not doing any repair. You're not fighting off infection. You're not fighting off parasites. You're you're you're not developing long term memories. You're not categorizing emotional events.

There's all sorts of things that you aren't doing well, and that's because you're putting all your resources into your body to get yourself out of that situation. Well, deep sleep is exactly the opposite. You're completely safe, right? You don't need your body. And it's you, you know, you don't need your limbs.

You don't need to be able to see, smell, taste, feel. You don't need to be able to run or fight or any of that other stuff. Now's the time I'm going to repair myself. I'm going to restore. I'm going to make anything damaged.

Know, most people know when you exercise, you damage your muscle cells, right? They actually rupture. You can actually just explode these cells because you overuse them and then they get repaired. At night while you're asleep, they get repaired and then they repair themselves stronger. Right?

If you're lifting heavy weights, they make the next day there. Well, once they're recovered, which might take multiple days, but once they're fully recovered, they'll be able to handle more weight. That's the whole idea. Or if you're, you know, an endurance athlete, they'll be able to contract more times over a longer period of time, and you'll have more endurance in their cells. So the the whole idea of stress hormones, well, let me say this way.

The most apart from getting good sleep, the next most important thing is to not stress out over this too much, which is why I'm talking so much about keeping it in perspective. It's all about context. Like, relative to what else? Can I die from coronavirus today? Yes.

Relative to what else? What's my risk? It's really, really low. So that's not what I'm gonna worry about. I'm gonna do what I can.

I'm gonna wear my seat belt. I'm going to wash my hands. Right? I'm not going to text and drive. I'm not going to cough on people.

Like I'm going to do what I can, but it's still not the most likely thing that's going to kill me. It's not the most likely thing to get my way. And so if I can decrease people's anxiety and decrease their cortisol level, and I just told you maximum cortisol level, you have no immunity. Minimum cortisol level, you have the highest immunity. So you have the highest immunity through the day by having lower cortisol levels.

So don't stress. Now the other the other part of that is when you stress out, you have a problem sleeping. When you don't sleep enough, you have more stress hormones. So now you aren't sleeping well because you're stressed, which means you're gonna be more stressed because you aren't sleeping well. Right?

So now you're in this self propagating downward spiral. There's nothing you can do about this other than get rid of the stress. So that's why I'm harping on everybody so much about, you know, let's put this in perspective. Let's be rational about it. There might be a time to panic.

Now's not the time. You're trying to be scared. Now's not the time. Now's the time to be cautious. And now's the time to be alert, vigilant.

Alright, let's do what we can. Let's wait until we get all the information. And all evidence suggests that it's not it's not the end of times, man. Mean, it's just not going to be that.

Chris Albert 01:02:23 (link to this point)

Well, it's not the end of times unless we make it the end of times. Right. And that I think that's an important point to bring up here because I mean, goes back to that idea that irrationality is going to tie people's hands. And the more rational we get, the more rational the governance is going to get. And I think, you know, as far as everything goes, you know, I Ryan Michler, my friend from from the Order of Man, he put up a picture the other day, and it was a a piece of art, and it had a guy who he had a McDonald's thing on his lap, and he was looking at his cell phone, and he had a bunch of pills in the back, and he was overweight.

And and he said, this coronavirus looks a little dangerous. You know what I mean? And and the thing is, I think, you know, if anything, we have to we have to take care of ourselves. We have to take care of our health. And I think, you know, it brings up that idea that if we want to see less of these crises, if we want to be able to react better to these crises on all levels, through our immune system, through our stress levels, We've got to take care of ourselves, and that needs to be a constant thing, not just a time at a time when there's an infectious disease out there.

Kirk Parsley 01:03:41 (link to this point)

Right. I mean, nature you know, crisis and nature favor the prepared. Right? And we know this, we experience this all the time. I mean, I don't like, yes, we should be prepared as a country, but we we run the risk of generalizing crisis.

I mean, look at hurricane Katrina, it's a completely different crisis. Right? Look at, Puerto Rico. It's a completely different crisis. Right?

But it's still a crisis nonetheless. Right? Right. So we we only have so much resources. We only have so much time.

So my my concern is that this gets blown out of proportion to where there's so much fear that everyone's just willing to give away all their power and say, I need the government to take care of me, and we need to spend, you know, 10% of the GDP on ventilators in case this ever happens again. Like, well, what if the next crisis is dysentery, and and it's all you know, and everybody is just having so much diarrhea, they're dying. So alright. Well, now we need resources to handle, you know, half of all Americans if that happens. I I mean, know death's an uncomfortable subject, you know, but you've been in the military.

I've been in the military. You've been around death. People die. Good people die. Great people die.

Young people die. Like, there's there's all sorts of badness in the world, and people do die, and that's unfortunate. But at some point, we can't wrap ourselves in bubble wrap and and live in a vacuum sealed container. You know? I mean, it it's there's only there's only so much you can do.

But the good news is no matter what the crisis is, the the same things to do to be prepared. Right? So, you know, one of them one of the things I always say about sleep is the the purpose of sleep is to get you ready for tomorrow. Right? And your body is going to get you ready for tomorrow based on what you did today.

So if you exercise hard today, your body is going to try to be ready to exercise hard tomorrow. If you used your brain intensely all day today, your brain's going to, your body's going to try to have your brain ready to do that again tomorrow. Now, if you don't get enough sleep, you still have to do tomorrow. And if you look at, alright, eight hours of sleep is the price that I'm paying to completely restore myself and be ready for tomorrow, but I only got six. What what happened to those other two hours?

What what where's that price come from? Well, that comes from my overall health. That comes from me taking resources from other places that could have been used to maintain my immunity and my health and my muscle mass, my mood, my, like, my cognition, all this stuff. Well, I'm now gonna have to strip some of those resources just to keep myself alive and capable to some degree. And, you know, sleeping a good like, really well is super important to being ready for the next day, but so is nutrition, and so is exercise, and so is controlling your stress.

Right? So is not living in a toxic waste dump and not living in a mold infested home and, you know, all these other types of things. But all of the lifestyle stuff is the same to get me ready for tomorrow, whether it's the corona zombie apocalypse, and I, you know, I need to, you know, fight for my family's lives, or, you know, it's a economic crash, or it's a flood, or it's, you know, a bankruptcy, or it's a divorce, or it's my child being sick, or, you know, whatever it is, making myself the most capable I can be is really simple, man. And it's the same thing no matter what I'm going to do. If I want to be smarter, like, all I need is to be 10% smarter.

Guess how I do that? Exactly the same way. Right? The smartest I'll ever be able to be is when I'm physiologically optimized.

Chris Albert 01:07:22 (link to this point)

Right?

Kirk Parsley 01:07:22 (link to this point)

Right. And and I'm doing everything that I can possibly do to maintain my health to the best that I can possibly have it. Physical health and mental health are inextricably linked. Right? So it doesn't matter what I wanna be ready for.

This is just another word for performance. You know, my clients are worried about, you know, selling their company for $500,000,000 next year, and, that's what they're driving for. They're professional athletes, and they wanna get one tenth of 1% better so that they can make $20,000,000 instead of $200,000. You know? So these are these are still performance metrics.

It's like what the crisis for them is not being good enough that they're Right. Day. And, you know, once I once I help these people reach sort of an optimal health and an optimal performance, that goes across all areas at that point. Right? And, like, they're more capable of changing the flat tire on their car in the rain than they were before they started working with me.

They're more capable of dealing with the death of their parents. They're more capable of dealing with famine. They're more capable of doing anything else because they've optimized themselves. And all people aren't created equal. Right?

Some people are going to be better at it no matter what. You know, that's why we have the Olympics like not like nobody wants to watch me run a 100 meter dash against Usain Bolt. Right? It's like Yeah. Tie me with a calendar, you know, so you know, that that's that's my, diatribe amount that my time

Chris Albert 01:08:46 (link to this point)

Yeah. No. No. I I I think it's needed right now. And, I think people people need a dose of sanity, and people need to be brought back to the basics because in all honesty, I think the emotional and I guess you could say mental ramifications of this whole thing are I think going to be more severe than the virus itself.

You know?

Kirk Parsley 01:09:09 (link to this point)

Unquestionably. It already is.

Chris Albert 01:09:11 (link to this point)

Economic situation and everything like that. We are going be in a time when people are going be going through a lot of stress for months from now, even after this whole virus thing subsides. And and you've got to take care of yourself through that. You got to take care of your family through that. But in order to do that, you you you've got to be at an optimal level.

And I think that's so important. The stuff you just outlined is so important as well.

Kirk Parsley 01:09:35 (link to this point)

Yeah. And it and it doesn't matter, you know, what what the cost of this is to you, whatever you as an individual, you and your family have to recover from. It's again, it's the same lifestyle stuff. Right? If if this forces you into bankrupt you know, bankrupting your private your business that you own and having to go back into the employment sector, Yeah.

That's stressful. But guess what's gonna make you the most employable? What's gonna make you the best employee? What's gonna get you out of that rat race back into your entrepreneur ventures again? What's gonna get you back the quickest?

Being healthy. Right? Saying, well, I'm I'm I'm not gonna sleep until I get a job. Really bad idea. Would you you know, I'm I'm gonna short myself two hours sleep every day until I get back out of this mess.

It's like, god, you're you're reducing the risk. You'll even get out of the mess, and you're definitely delaying getting out of the mess. Same thing with exercise. Right? It's like how many people you know, all my clients are I mean, they're hard hard charging, smart, capable, educated people, and they get out of shape just because, you know, I cannot I'll I'll get to that tomorrow.

Right? Like, right now right now, the elephant in front of me is the one I need to worry about. That's the one that's gonna kill me, and I need to worry about my business. And so everything goes towards that business or their profession or whatever it is. And they're like, well, you know, I'll I'll I'll do a little more next week.

I'll, you know, you know, I'll quit eating french fries, like, whatever. And they just negotiate with themselves, and it's always down the road. And then twenty years later, they wake them like, look at this mess I created, and I have all this wealth. And now they gladly give all the wealth to have the health back. And why is that?

Because they believe they could make the they could make the wealth again. They could make the money again. They could have the achievements and the accolades. They could get that again as long as they had their health. If I told you, I'm gonna take everything away from you right now, everything you've achieved and every dollar you've ever earned, I'm but gonna make you 20 years old again.

Would you be willing to take that? Like, I'm I'm gonna do that. I do have no problem. Like, where do I sign the line for this? Yeah.

Well, that's the same thing we're talking about. Like, how you're more capable at 20 years old. You have higher energy. You're more optimistic. You're you're less jaded. You're

Chris Albert 01:11:57 (link to this point)

Got more possibilities.

Kirk Parsley 01:11:59 (link to this point)

Yeah. There's more possibilities. There's more options. And and now you're wiser. Right?

So, you know, we we have this idea that, you know, the external world is where we're gonna get our satisfaction from. But, no, it's like it's the internal capabilities that we're building. So our our capability to stay calm during this, you know, this perceived crisis, our capability is to stay focused and do the right things and not overreact and do our best for ourselves in our community. And, like, you know, let's let's do our best to come out of this stronger. What you know, the sequelae or whatever the sequelae are.

It's gonna you know, I don't have any control over whether or not they open the schools back up or whether they open up international traveling. Like, I have no control over that whatsoever. All I can do is say, I'm gonna spread the word out there, try to get as many people to put this into the proper context as possible, encourage everybody to take good care of themselves and take care of their, you know, their brothers and sisters. Take care of their communities and their families. You know, be responsible.

Be a good steward of the power, you know, of the power that you've been entrusted with, which is part of being part of society. Right? And, you know, be as capable as you possibly can whenever this whole thing blows over, whenever it goes away, or even while it's still going. Like, be as capable as you can.

Chris Albert 01:13:16 (link to this point)

Absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, this could be if if you map it out right, and you do the right thing right now, this could be the best thing that ever happened. You can make COVID nineteen the best thing that ever happened. Yeah.

If it's a turning point in your life.

Kirk Parsley 01:13:29 (link to this point)

It could. Yeah. You very you very well could. I mean, it it could it could be the it could be the wake up call that you need that, hey. Maybe my priorities have been askew, whatever that is, whatever that means.

I I think I mean, just a little glibly and calmly, I I think they're gonna have some of the biggest problems are going to be, you know, well, you know, all the all these people in in the population were able to work from home for a month and a job that we've been telling him they couldn't possibly work at home with. Yeah. And now they are. And, you know, all these all these kids are managing to take, like my son's at UCLA, and he's still continuing all his courses. He's just doing it online.

Right.

Chris Albert 01:14:15 (link to this point)

Oh, I think universities are in trouble.

Kirk Parsley 01:14:18 (link to this point)

Right. It's like, alright, well, hold on. I can still get the same degree. I can still get the same. Yeah.

Go there. Don't have to live there.

Chris Albert 01:14:25 (link to this point)

Out on a lot of the things. You know what I mean? And then and then it's I I I think a lot of I mean, and there's some benefit to that too.

Kirk Parsley 01:14:33 (link to this point)

Mean, we have so many people who are in debt because of student loans and Yeah. I mean, it's gotten out of hand. A lot of it, you know, just you know, it's the competition of life, and you say, oh, well, that seems to be the path. So I wanna go there. And then and then the other you know, the gatekeepers of that are like, oh, well, if more people wanna get in, we're gonna make it harder to get in.

We're gonna charge more money. We're gonna make the criteria. You know? And, you know, for for a while, all that worked, and, you know, this this might cause us to reassess things. Right?

Yeah. I mean, it it it should have happened already because we know that a college, you know, or is it I think, like, 80% of people don't work within their college degree or something. So you're just basically going to prove that you're employable. You know, it's not colleges college has never been job training school. It was just proving that you're, you know, responsible and willing to work hard enough to get reasonable reasonably good grades and that you're interested in a certain subject.

That's kind of all it's ever been. And now, you know, we've gotten kind of out of that corporate machine and they get into this gig economy where people can just, like, do little bits of this and that and kind of explore multiple interests and hone in over. Do you need an you know, do you need a college education for that? Like, you still need it if you wanna be a lawyer, if you wanna be a doctor, you know, you wanna be a licensed professional. Yeah.

You you still have to go through that pipeline. But, yeah, I think it could be a good reality check.

Chris Albert 01:16:03 (link to this point)

It could be an awesome thing for all of us.

Kirk Parsley 01:16:05 (link to this point)

Right.

Chris Albert 01:16:05 (link to this point)

And we'll see only the future will tell. I think in the meantime, we just we all have to stay stained. We all have to take care of each other, take care of ourselves. And, you know, let's let's let's use this thing. Let's let's use it to make us better, you know.

I gotta sign off, doc. But number one, want get running too. I I I really appreciate you coming on and going through this with us. Could you you just give everybody a you know, where can they find you online? Where can they follow you and stuff like that?

Kirk Parsley 01:16:39 (link to this point)

Yeah. I mean, I I get confused on my social media handles because I set them all up over such a long period of time. I think most of them are doc Parsley, d o c p a r s l e y. But docparsley.com is my website. Like, all of my social media links are on there for, you know, face chat, snap book, and all that other stuff.

Like, you just go click all of the things down there. Do any of that you want to. Yeah. I I'm writing I'm writing some on this, you know, what when I'm doing interviews with people, we're we're trying to cross promote them from my side. We're just, you know, doing what I can to get the word out to the best, you know, many people who are willing to listen.

Everybody reserves the right to assume I'm an idiot and not know what I'm talking about. That's fine too. But I just feel compelled to share what, you know, what I think is the rational truth right now.

Chris Albert 01:17:33 (link to this point)

Well, I think it's honest, and and I think it's it's stuff that people need. It's perspective that people need, you know, especially when people are turning I think we're in a place where people are turning more toward independent media. And in times like this, people turn toward the network media. And Right. When the network media is is spouting gloom and doom, it's important that we get other perspectives.

Kirk Parsley 01:17:55 (link to this point)

Yeah. Yeah. And and, obviously, they're not held accountable. I mean, I I don't think you should be allowed to have someone come on your show and carry them as a headliner and who says there's gonna be a million deaths. And when at that point, there had been significantly less than ten thousand worldwide.

Right. I mean, that that kind of hyperbole doesn't do anyone any good.

Chris Albert 01:18:16 (link to this point)

Not at all. Not at all. So well, doc, you're out in Texas. So you have much more freedom than I do right now.

Kirk Parsley 01:18:25 (link to this point)

And Well, I'm in Austin. It's a pretty liberal city. So you know, where our restaurants are shut down to Yeah. Our schools are closing. So I mean make myself some bone broth and open up a good book. Yeah. We're we're not under house arrest here yet, but it is that so what what is the what what is the ruling there in California? I know they have

Chris Albert 01:18:54 (link to this point)

It's shelter in place.

Kirk Parsley 01:18:55 (link to this point)

Shelter in place, but does that does mean does that mean you can't go to the store?

Does that mean you can't go pick stuff up?

Chris Albert 01:19:01 (link to this point)

You can go to the grocery store. You can go to the gas station. You can walk your dog, you can exercise outside as long as you're six feet away from anybody else. But you cannot go to like, you can't just go someplace without a purpose. Right?

Like, so if they catch you out there and you're with a group of people, or if you're just driving around, I'm under the assumption that it's a misdemeanor charge, and they can fine you for it. But but, you know, right now, I mean, I live right really close to the freeway. It's pretty quiet. Yeah. It's more quiet than it's been a long time.

So, you know, I I think they were very they were very nonspecific when they they announced this stuff. I there's some informational sites out there about what you can and can't do. But I think a lot of us are still trying to figure that out. Yeah.

Kirk Parsley 01:20:00 (link to this point)

Well, here's my prediction. You you know, hear it here first. Right? I I think that the momentum of this is going to be significantly lower by next weekend. Awesome.

So I think I think we're on a downward trend. We might have a few more days of hysteria, and I think it's gonna start coming back down. I think by the end of March, we're gonna start increasing liberties again. It's my that's my prediction. You know, the numbers would have to change significantly.

The math would have to change a lot for that not to be true. Like I said, at some point, everybody's under house arrest, and they're going, what? To save 500 lives?

Chris Albert 01:20:36 (link to this point)

No. Yeah. Yeah. I gotta we gotta pay our rent. We gotta pay our bills, things like that too, you know, and and that's the that's the interesting thing.

And then we also have to talk about if California is gonna want their tax bills on time, because the federal government already said, you know, we'll pull it back, but California's got their own tax situation too.

Kirk Parsley 01:21:00 (link to this point)

Yeah, and then and then can they send anybody out to enforce it? You're endangering the community by sending the IRS to my house.

Chris Albert 01:21:08 (link to this point)

Exactly, or, you know, if you're if you're hosting a press conference and you got reporters who are going to travel throughout the nation afterwards and they are cramped into a room shoulder to shoulder while you are giving your press conference about how you going to have everybody shelter in place. The logic behind that's a little bit weird too.

Kirk Parsley 01:21:28 (link to this point)

It's crazy world, man. So I'm gonna have to sell tickets. Yeah. Alright, man. I need to get rolling.

Chris Albert 01:21:33 (link to this point)

Alright, doc.

Kirk Parsley 01:21:33 (link to this point)

Good chat with you. Shelter in place, and I'll talk to you soon.

Chris Albert 01:21:39 (link to this point)

Care, doc.