, who goes by "Doctor Mike" on social media, is a board-certified family medicine physician at the Atlantic Health System's Overlook Medical Center in Summit, New Jersey.
In this video, Varshavski brings in his friend ZDoggMD to talk and vent about what's going on in the world. During this hour-long conversation, they hit on all things COVID -- like booster shots, masks in schools, mandatory vaccinations, tribalism, trusting Fauci, conspiracy theories, the Delta variant, and their prediction for where all of this is heading.
Following is a partial transcript (Note that errors are possible):
Mikhail Varshavski, DO: Here with my good friend, Dr. Zubin Damania, also known as ZDoggMD. He is not only a UCSF/Stanford-trained hospitalist, but he has also been putting medical content on YouTube for years -- since he has had hair, actually. He is unique in that he is not afraid to speak his mind.
ZDoggMD: We have been behaving like the most irrational species of animal on this planet.
Varshavski: I thought it was time to get my good friend and OG YouTuber to discuss the pandemic, mental health, tribalism, and even this: "If you don't trust him, I don't trust you because your knowledge comes from him." Things are about to get heated. Be-woop! Okay. We are recording, we are live. This is happening.
ZDoggMD: It can't not happen, two amazingly sexy doctors in the same place at the same, Mike. I mean, it took a pandemic to reignite a bromance that had to start in person, but it's going to end virtually.
Varshavski: I'm interested to hear your thoughts of where we're at now with this pandemic, where we're going. I want to discuss it, I want to argue a little bit, I want to laugh a little bit, I want to cry a little bit. I want to experience all the human emotions that we should experience as human beings, not as doctors, but then talk about some of the science stuff along the way. How do you feel about that?
ZDoggMD: Man, I just need to vent, dude, because this has been ... it's just, it's awful. The whole thing is awful and wonderful. If we don't come out of the whole pandemic like more awake, more attuned to what actually matters, more aware of our divisions and how things like social media have actually potentiated them, made them worse ...
Varshavski: Yeah.
ZDoggMD: How we've tribalized and how politics has insinuated its way into science in a way that it's so hurtful, dude. Because sometimes you just want to go "Stop!" This is not a political thing. This is "Let's just talk rationally," you know?
Varshavski: My worry is that we're going to come out of this pandemic not learning the things we should have learned, and I feel like I'm seeing it happen not just on the Twittersphere where people are arguing. Meanwhile I know [we all] want the same thing, and then maybe they just have different ways of going about solving this problem, and somehow it's making them feel like mortal enemies.
ZDoggMD: One thousand percent. Families are torn apart by the stupidest stuff, Mike. Like, "Oh. Do you believe Geert Vanden Bossche about vaccines?" Like, "Okay. First of all who is that? Second of all, why is that coming between me and my mother? Are you kidding me? Have we lost our minds?"
Honestly, I do think that if you've looked at the documentary "The Social Dilemma" it really kind of nails this idea that social media has hacked our evolutionary drive to be tribal in-group/out-group creatures, by giving us a little shot of joy, of dopamine, when we win a battle against a faceless enemy that feels like "other."
The beautiful thing about social media is it can make someone you care about feel like other because you're reduced to these little sound bites. Twitter is a great example of that, where you're reduced to so many characters. How are you going to come out with nuance? I have seen the same thing, man, people that I love going at it on Twitter and they act like each of them is the Devil.
Varshavski: Yeah.
ZDoggMD: I know you've talked to Jonathan Haidt on your show. He is one of my intellectual heroes. He has described that we really do not understand another person's moral taste buds and we just assume ill intent ... from his book, The Coddling of the American Mind. We assume there is just the world that is divided into good and evils, one of the great untruths.
Instead of going, "Hey, everyone is trying to be good based on the best they can do," with some exceptions like psychopaths and things like that. I don't care about that, but in general. If we came from a different angle, then we could assume good intent and then the dialogue would be different.
I see hopeful signs of it, but I'm with you, that I'm worried that on a mass we're not going to learn our lessons from this thing.
Varshavski: In taking the lessons from Haidt and his book, I feel like the whole country ... not maybe individually, but on a group level, we need cognitive behavioral therapy. Because the things that I see folks who are actually proponents of cognitive behavioral therapy, those who are calling black or white thinking a form of cognitive distortion, those who are calling catastrophizing a form of cognitive distortions, are actively doing it themselves on a large scale and then teaching it.
I'm like we've got to do a little introspection here, even when we're doing something for the good, if it's coming from a negative place and potentially hurting others, we need to think about that. Because too often it's like you're either on my side or you're on no side, but they know that to not be the reality. They know that if we don't follow the rule book exactly to this way you can't be all bad or all good.
It also doesn't mean the worst outcomes are going to happen. It doesn't mean a catastrophe is going to happen.
A lot of people said when Trump was going to be elected that the world was going to end. That didn't happen. The other side said when Biden's going to get elected the world was going to end. That didn't happen.
Biden, when he was running for office, said he was going to aim to cure cancer and eliminate this virus completely and all of these problems. That's probably not going to happen and we need to bring some of that rational thinking back, and I have no idea how to do it, Z. I'm scared. I don't know what we can do because we have an audience here.
ZDoggMD: Brother, brother, brother, I love you so much. You know that, right?
Varshavski: Yeah.
ZDoggMD: Like the first step to admitting there is a problem is admitting our humility in the face of the problem. Honestly, I have heard it said -- I forget who said this, but it's a brilliant quote -- which is that like truly understanding the nature of the problem, it's then already half-solved. You've already at least half-solved it by at least understanding the nature of the problem.
I think we're starting to understand it. It's this division, the black-and-white thinking, the cognitive distortions, that we have, and the fact that our current technology weaponizes it.
It didn't used to be this way when we had a single source of truth, like a Walter Cronkite, who just said, "Hey, this is the party line, this is it."
Now it may not even be fully true, but at least there was a unity around it.
(Watch the full video for the rest of their conversation.)
is a board-certified family physician and social media influencer with more than 17 million subscribers.