I want to address the 2 Keto Dudes fans here as we close a chapter of the 2 Keto Dudes history book and open a new one in 2022. I also posted this on our Facebook page.
To summarize what @richard and I expressed in the last episode of 2021, “The Airing of Grievances”:
a) We are disappointed in the way that some thought-leaders in the low-carb community have embraced (and perpetuated) conspiracy theories and ignored real science. We believe they have done this to keep their brand relevant in the COVID times or because it fits conveniently with their personal interests.
b) We expect those who claim to follow science to be self-examining and self-skeptical. “Only a Sith speaks in absolutes.”
c) The pandemic has been inconvenient for us, but we are not going to pretend it doesn’t exist. We are putting our show on ice indefinitely while Mr. Morris goes back to school and the low-carb community gets a chance to come back to reality.
d) We have canceled KetoFest 2022 but will still gladly maintain a mailing list of those interested for when the next one is announced. You can sign up at https://ketofest.com
We received a lengthy email today from an ICU nurse who gave me permission to share it anonymously. Here it is. I hope you take the time to read it. Keep in mind that we (the dudes) are not putting this out there to make money, become more popular, get a book contract, or anything like that. We just shut down our show because it cost too much. That should tell you about our financial gains from being Keto Dudes. I have only corrected spelling and basic punctuation, otherwise, this is exactly what she wrote.
Subject: Applause!
I just wanted to thank you for your sane discussion of the Covid vaccine. I applaud your bravery for speaking logically in a firestorm of ridiculousness.
As an ICU nurse who has seen first-hand the value of vaccination in reducing hospitalization and critical illness, I took a deep sigh and was bracing myself to scream against what I feared you were about to say when you broached the subject.
As a 5-year Keto chick and a 2 year Carnivore (still keto but animal-based)… I, like you, have been so disappointed by the unsubstantiated group-think, lie-repeating conversations I have heard coming from the mouths of those in the low-carb “space” that I respected. It is so disheartening to hear false claims repeated that are directed at me as a nurse. Like the idea that all hospitals have changed records and test results to garner a larger death toll from Covid.
Anyone who knows anything about the responsibilities at the bedside in the hospital knows that the deceased patient’s nurse is the one who completes the paperwork, calls in the death information to the required agency and/or coroner. We are the ones who prepare the bodies and help take them to the morgue.
We are the ones who collect, label, and send the tests. We are the ones who help with the portable chest X-rays and travel with the patients to get chest CTs. So we see with our own eyes the images on the screens that immediately depict the horrible pattern of devastating Covid pneumonia that is distinct from other lung ailments. And we see with our own eyes as those same patients desaturate, struggle to breathe, require intubation and eventually succumb to Covid…regardless of what their initial complaint, admitting diagnosis, or co-morbidities were. Covid killed them.
We are not making that up.
And it is surreal enough to have to combat that crazy belief that would have taken the mass conspiracy of nurses worldwide at the onset of Covid. And for what gain to us? We were too busy busting it and exposing ourselves to very difficult conditions to keep our friends and neighbors and family members alive!
But to hear it repeated even from doctors in the space that I once respected. It’s such a stab in the heart. Shame on them! They are the ones twisting things to gain an audience for their own profit.
When I listened to a “doctor” being interviewed on one of my favorite low-carb podcasts who was spouting all this conspiracy nonsense, I waited for the one doing the interview to at least question some of his claims. Crickets!
The doctor was claiming to have successfully treated several hundred Covid patients with his treatments that were not being provided by mainstream medicine. (As a new virtual practice, of course) And he was claiming all this success with his patients.
The guy is an ophthalmologist!
The interviewer did not ask him one question about his actual qualifications and experience in treating real hospitalized Covid patients. He wouldn’t have any. He’s an EYE DOCTOR!.. profiting in his new role as a savior from Covid against the evil medical establishment.
Voices like this have caused such harm in my eyes. It has come home to roost for me in so many ways.
As I type this, my son who flew home for Christmas is recovering in the other room from a nasty case of Covid. He had refused to get vaccinated based on faulty information about the development of the vaccine. And for “freedom” reasons. Thankfully, as a young man who is metabolically healthy, I suspect he will recover without long-lasting effects. But what about the people on the plane with him when he flew 3,000 miles to get here? What about his 80-year-old grandmother and 62-year-old mom who were exposed to him before we knew he had Covid?
We had a great conversation yesterday, masked and outside on my porch as I replayed your Covid segment for him. He has been apologizing to me all week for being so stubborn and said that if Covid made him this sick and miserable then he can’t even imagine what it does to older folks or folks with other conditions. And he is so guilt-ridden that he might have made his grandmother sick. Would vaccination have prevented all that? Maybe. Maybe not. But there’s evidence that it would have at least reduced it.
I have been telling folks since the start of this that there is so much we don’t know. And that we just need to do our best to love one another by protecting and preventing critical illness as best we can. And that things can, should, and will change as we adapt to new science. It should not be a political, cultural, team/party, or faith decision. It should be a health decision.
I am one of those red-state people in my political leanings.
A constitutionalist. A “personal responsibility” type over a “throw money at everything” type. And I live in that one blue state you mentioned that was an outlier. That’s because we had a seemingly fluke election result that is in question in a perpetually red state. I suspect that there might have been election fraud but then again it might have been the ridiculous personality of our last choice of a leader.
But my politics nor my faith as a devout Christian dictate my health decisions. They are science-based and first-person witnessed. My God can definitely send a vaccine into a plague. And when He did, I accepted it extremely gratefully. Because of the devastation I have witnessed, the people I’ve put in body bags after horrendous suffering, and the grieving family members I’ve encountered are striking evidence to me of the risk/benefit accounting that everyone should be doing when it comes to the vaccination decision. It isn’t the small overall percentage of suffering and death that matters when it’s you or your loved one enduring it. The severity and level of suffering in the critically ill should weigh heavily in the balance.
I had Covid myself before there was any vaccination. It was miserable and scary and took many weeks to get beyond. And I suspect that if I had not achieved metabolic health through Keto several years back, I would have fared far worse, as several of my co-workers did. 
Now I’m vaccinated and boosted and have a strong bias towards being first in line for any and all recommended upcoming boosters.
Might I be proven wrong on some level at some point? Sure.
But each week when I go into work in the ICU and I see that 80% or more of our Covid patients are unvaccinated, I know that at least at this moment and for the past year, as you pointed out in the numbers you cited, I am on the sensible, considered path.
So I can’t thank you enough for the encouragement it gave me to hear some voices of reason out there. I’m going to miss you on your hiatus, as I did during your last one. But I so look forward to what the two of you (and Carrie Brown) will bring to the world. And I hope I can be privy to more of that in the future.
Prayers for many blessings to come your way.
Happy New Year Dudes!
