Does it seem like everyone around you is coughing, sniffling, or under the weather? It’s no coincidence—we’re currently in the middle of cold and flu season. Join Donna DiMaggio Berger and guest Dr. Jason Mansour, Chair of Emergency Medicine at Broward Health, to learn the best ways to stay healthy even in shared spaces. Is loss of smell exclusive to COVID or indicative of other ailments? Donna and Dr. Mansour share how to distinguish between the common cold, flu, COVID, and RSV—without resorting to a barrage of tests. Learn how simple, everyday habits can serve as your armor against invisible threats, like Covid-19 and other viruses that could be lurking in common areas like the pool, lobby and on gym equipment.
Our conversation then pivots to everyone's enemy: MOLD. Given the inevitability of water leaks in multifamily buildings, Donna and Dr. Mansour explore the silent intruder of mold. Learn how to recognize the signs of mold in living spaces, how it can impact your health, and whether certain types pose greater risks than others.
Lastly, they look at mobile health services that can make your community healthier, especially as many residents choose to age in their own homes. Listen now for pointers on staying healthy for yourself and your community.
Conversation highlights include:
Does it seem like everyone around you is coughing, sniffling, or under the weather? It’s no coincidence—we’re currently in the middle of cold and flu season. Join Donna DiMaggio Berger and guest Dr. Jason Mansour, Chair of Emergency Medicine at Broward Health, to learn the best ways to stay healthy even in shared spaces. Is loss of smell exclusive to COVID or indicative of other ailments? Donna and Dr. Mansour share how to distinguish between the common cold, flu, COVID, and RSV—without resorting to a barrage of tests. Learn how simple, everyday habits can serve as your armor against invisible threats, like Covid-19 and other viruses that could be lurking in common areas like the pool, lobby and on gym equipment.
Our conversation then pivots to everyone's enemy: MOLD. Given the inevitability of water leaks in multifamily buildings, Donna and Dr. Mansour explore the silent intruder of mold. Learn how to recognize the signs of mold in living spaces, how it can impact your health, and whether certain types pose greater risks than others.
Lastly, they look at mobile health services that can make your community healthier, especially as many residents choose to age in their own homes. Listen now for pointers on staying healthy for yourself and your community.
Conversation highlights include:
Hi everyone, I'm attorney Donna DiMaggio-Burger and this is Take it To the Board where we speak Kondo and HOA. Does it seem like everyone around you is coughing, sniffling or generally under the weather? It should come as no surprise, as we are in the middle of cold and flu season right now. We're fortunate to have Dr Jason Mansour, chair of emergency medicine at Broward Health, back with us once again today to talk not only about how to keep yourself healthy when everyone around you in your common areas is sick, but we're also going to talk about everyone's favorite topic, mold, since water leaks are inevitable in multi-family buildings and mold is the byproduct of such leaks. How exactly does mold impact your health and are certain types of mold more dangerous than others? Lastly, we'll be talking about best sanitary practice for common areas like the pool, the gym, the lobby, as well as talking about mobile health services which can make your communities healthier. So, dr Mansour, welcome back once again to Take it To the Board.
Speaker 2:Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1:So what are the current numbers for flu, covid and RSV in your area?
Speaker 2:So it's very predictable that in the winter months those numbers spike. And when you look at the CDC data, we predictively spike in December, why people are gathering it's colder outside, more people are inside, so they're more close proximity, so these viruses have a better chance to spread to others and because the holidays bring this together, it's just like a perfect storm for these numbers to really rise. So when you look at the numbers, we really hit our peak in that week before Christmas, in New Year's, and I feel like we've kind of reached the peak and we're on our way back down, but it still means there's still. The numbers this time of year are still significantly high.
Speaker 1:So I didn't tell you this previously, but I got really sick. So I had my family coming in for Christmas first time ever. I found myself getting sick around the 21st. By Christmas day I put the food out on the table, I had to go lay down Like I was really sick and then I was sick for about three weeks. I tested negative for just about everything. Covid, rsv, flu distress play a role? You say it peaks, you know, around the holidays Can stress play a role in terms of depressing your immune system?
Speaker 2:It certainly can. There's a lot of factors that come into your immune system, because your immune system is there's layers and layers of protection, that your immune system is mixed up with your immune system, I should say, and certainly stress can put a strain on that system and make you more susceptible. It's one of many, many factors, but it certainly plays a role.
Speaker 1:I'm going to say that it was the stress of trying to cook a big Italian meal for my family that I think contributed to this. So are you seeing an uptick in emergency room admissions, though, or were you seeing an uptick for flu, covid or RSV?
Speaker 2:It depends on what you're comparing to. You know the pandemic levels. I mean, the hospitalizations were insane, you know. So if we're comparing the pandemic time, the numbers aren't comparable or much, much lower. If you're comparing, when we talk about the season, this of course is the season being winter, where those numbers are higher just because of the prevalence of disease in our community, meaning viral illnesses, hospitalizations will rise accordingly.
Speaker 1:Assuming you're not taking a test and we can talk about that in a minute. But what are the different ways to tell the difference between flu, covid and RSV?
Speaker 2:It's difficult without testing because the symptoms overlap quite a bit. We can kind of go over each one and talk about some of the distinguishing features, but all three of them can make you feel congested, with cough, with sore throat, with body aches, make you feel weak. Like you know, we call that a flu-like illness. All three of them can do that. So when you have those symptoms it's really hard to distinguish them. In general some of the hallmarks have influenza. The body aches are very prevalent. It really fatigues you and it hits you very quickly. I felt fine at two o'clock. By three o'clock I feel like I can't get out of bed. My whole body's starting to ache, where it just seems to descend on you like all at once. Covid most of us have had Covid now with the pandemic and usually in most patients it's another flu-like illness running nose, cough, congestion. Yes, it can also make you feel run down. It appears to be more contagious because it appears to be able to hang in the air longer than some of the other viruses and that's why it became a pandemic is it was so easily spread. But, like I said, the symptoms have overlapped quite a bit.
Speaker 2:Rsv is typically a cold. In most healthy adults. Rsv is a big problem in infants and really a problem in the elderly. It's, I think, the number one cause of hospitalization for infants, because in infants it causes a bronchiolitis where kids will be wheezing. It's a very respiratory illness. It can congest them and infants especially, they breathe through their nose. Think about a bottle in the kid's mouth. He's breathing through his nose so they get stuffed up and so they get poor feeding and it just kind of complicates on itself. Rsv is a big problem in the extremes of age early or late in age.
Speaker 1:What are those initial stand for Respiratory?
Speaker 2:Sinciscial virus. Respiratory is a Sinciscial virus.
Speaker 1:yes, Like many people, when I started feeling sick and it started out with a really sore throat, I actually thought I might have strep and I went and I took the government issued COVID tests and I subsequently lost my sense of smell. I wanted to ask you if that can happen with flu or any of these other illnesses, but I took my old tests that had been issued by the government and it kept coming back negative. Can we still rely on those tests? Are those tests viable for a specific timeframe?
Speaker 2:Well, certainly there's an expiration date on them and they're pretty accurate. Probably. If they're a little beyond the expiration date they're probably pretty accurate. There's no testing methods 100% accurate. Obviously they're pretty good, though we rely on them ourselves when patients come in. We rely on the results that we see. But we also know that every test has what we call a sensitivity and a specificity. So you have to sort of know those numbers to know how much you can rely on a result. In general those tests are pretty specific, meaning when they are positive you can rely on that. The sensitivity means can you rely on a negative result? In other words, you see it negative. Could I still have COVID? It's not as good but still pretty darn good when you compare it to other similar tests that you compare it to.
Speaker 1:You know it's important what you said about COVID being more highly transmissible because of the length of time it stays in the air. I still don't know what I had. I actually lost my sense of smell for about 10 days. Is that loss of sense of smell or sense of taste? Is that always an indicator, Dr Mansor, of a COVID infection, or can there be other infections that cause that as well?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so loss of smell is very suggestive of COVID. But think about there are thousands and thousands of viral illnesses that could cause upper respiratory infections and each of those have different variants. You've heard of all the different COVID variants that are coming out all the time. Think about all the other thousands of viruses that are mutating and causing variants as well, and any of those can cause any of the symptoms that you describe. And as they mutate they develop new symptoms and what have you? We don't track those because none of them have caused a pandemic. In general they don't cause hospitalization. In general they're cold, they make your nose run and make you cough for a little while and you get better after five days, and so we just kind of lump them all together and call it cold or upper respiratory infection or URI. But certainly those symptoms like loss of smell and all the other things that we mentioned, they overlap amongst all of those viruses.
Speaker 1:You know, I said in the introduction that everybody seems to be sick. All I'm hearing is coughing and sniffling, and a lot of people are saying it's their allergies. I'm not sure. I believe that. I still don't know what I had. What are we looking at in terms of the COVID variants that are out there right now? Are they more robust than some of the variants we've seen in the past?
Speaker 2:It's a complex question. So when a virus mutates, the two things we really focus on has it become more virulent, which means does it make you sicker and cause increased hospitalizations, and is it more transmissible, right? So if you remember, we just do a little history of COVID. The Delta variant seems to be more virulent and then Omicron came out after that, less virulent but more transmissible, so more people were picking it up, but it wasn't causing the number of hospitalizations that previous variants were causing. The other factor that comes into play is our immune systems and the vaccines that come out right. So would Omicron have been more virulent if the vaccine had never come out right? All these factors come into play. So it's hard to kind of paint with broad strokes and answer the question with a big, broad answer when all these other things are coming into play.
Speaker 1:So, dr Mansour, what's the latest variant we're dealing with with COVID?
Speaker 2:The latest one spreading as of late is JN1, and it's thought to be either more transmissible or better at evading our immune systems than previous variants. But it's not thought to be an increased risk to public health, causing increased hospitalizations and other things. But that is making up the most of the COVID that's spreading currently.
Speaker 1:So, as always, I'm going to bring it back to our theme here and take it to the board, which is people living in shared ownership communities, in this episode talking mostly about multi-family buildings. So you have people. They don't leave their unit and just hop outside. They have to get walked down the corridor, they have to get in the elevator, they have to traverse the lobby to get out. I imagine you're going to tell me that there are some challenges with that when we're in the midst of a flu, cold or COVID upsurge, that whenever you're in these common areas and you've had sick people sharing the space with you, that that can present an increased risk, possibly of transmission.
Speaker 2:Yeah, of course I mean shared spaces, where we're all kind of grouped together. The virus has an easier opportunity to spread from person to person. There are other factors involved too, like ventilation and how much outside air is being pumped in, is there a filtration system and how close is the proximity. There's a lot of factors that come into play there. But when you bring a lot of people in close proximity, like a building like that, like a cruise ship, like an airport places where people are really in close proximity is really where the virus has an opportunity.
Speaker 1:So what can people do to? They can't prevent it completely, but what can they do to minimize the risk. Let's say listen, I'm healthy, I'm younger, but I don't want to get sick. I don't have time for the flu, I don't have time to be down like I was for three weeks. What can I do to reduce the chances, if I'm living in a multifamily building, that I'm going to get sick during one of these surges?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so one of the most important things you can do is wash your hands To really understand why that is so important. Let's talk about how the virus spreads. Most respiratory viruses spread by droplets, and so the size of the droplets tells you how long those droplets can hang out in the air, and that's why some viruses are easier to transmit than others. Just for a little historical perspective, tuberculosis and measles were two of the most transmissible diseases out there, because those droplets could stay in the air for hours, and so that person that gave it to you could have been out of that room for five, six, seven hours. You walk into the same room. You could pick it up. Luckily, because of public health initiatives, measles and tuberculosis aren't too big diseases that you hear about much anymore.
Speaker 2:Now most respiratory viruses, the droplets are rather large. So if I'm talking right now, there's droplets are probably settling on this surface in front of me. If I sneeze, I can shoot that droplet, maybe six feet away from me, right, but eventually that thing should settle if the droplets are large. What made COVID so dangerous was the droplets had the ability to hang in the air longer, right, and some experts say up two hours or something like that, but in general, because they were able to stay in the air longer, you could breathe that in and potentially get that that way, and that's why it was so easily spread from person to person.
Speaker 2:So when we talk about washing your hands, if I sneeze and there's droplets on this surface, or I touched my nose and then I touched a doorknob or I pushed a button in an elevator or something like that, now I put droplets on those surfaces that are commonly touched by many people. Now, if I could wash my hands before that happened, that's a great preventative measure. But sometimes you walk into the elevator after me. You push that button. Now it's on your hand, on your hand. It's not going to make you sick, right? But you scratching your nose or you rubbing your eye is how you just gave it to yourself off of your own hand. So a lot of people think when I'm washing my hands, I'm trying to protect others. But when you wash your hands, you're also protecting yourself, because you're going to have other pathogens on your hand. We have it at all times. You can't avoid it. Bacteria, fungus and virus is all around us. But your normal healthy immune system and safe practices like washing your hands are what you're gonna do to protect yourself.
Speaker 1:So we all became really familiar with the hand sanitizers during the pandemic. Everybody was stocking up on them. I still have a basket filled with bottles of hand sanitizer. Are they as good and as effective, Dr Mansour, as washing your hands?
Speaker 2:They're very effective, yes, and specifically when you touch something that's on your hand. Why it wasn't so great in COVID is because it had that ability to hang in the air. So even though I was sanitizing my, the air that I was breathing was giving me COVID-19. And so it was able to evade the hand sanitizers that way. But for most bacteria 99% and almost all viruses that are not airborne, that hand sanitizer is just as good as washing your hands and preventing transmission of the infection. There's other things, too. I didn't mention covering your mouth if you have to sneeze, wearing a mask, if you're gonna be in close proximity to other people, trying to stay in an outdoor environment or well-ventilated areas. Those things are important as well, but the importance of washing your hands towers over all those other measures.
Speaker 1:Well, I wanted to talk to you about ventilation, because I totally understand what you're saying. You've touched something and now you touch your eye, you touch your nose or your mouth and that's the portal, that's the transmission. But let's say I'm not touching anything because after the pandemic a lot of buildings installed automatic doors, some have elevators that now you don't need to push buttons. So there have been some upgrades post pandemic to try to minimize surfaces that people touch. But let's say I get in that elevator and somebody sneezes, okay, what about? I can't really protect myself at that point because I can't stop breathing, depending on what floor I'm on and how far I have to go. Right, that could be a transmission right there if I'm breathing in.
Speaker 2:Apparently yeah.
Speaker 1:So what about the ventilation? I mean, they said. I think experts said that there was not as great a risk on airplanes as they thought initially there would be because of the ventilation systems that planes use. Is that correct?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so they use, I believe, hepa filters which filter the air as it's being circulated, right? So the factors are how much ventilation is there? Are you pulling the air from the outside or are you recirculating the air on inside, right, and as it's going through the system, is it being filtered? Those are the things that are commonly common apply when it comes to transmitting viruses.
Speaker 2:Now, how does that translate to what's going on in your own home? Right Cause I'm sure that's where we're gonna head with this conversation is like, when you're at home, it's more difficult, right, and maybe in Florida it's easy to have our windows open. Most places in the country it's this time of year they're not. You're not gonna have your windows open, but there are ways to ventilate your home and there are filters you can put on your HVAC system that can help with this situation. If someone in your home, let's say, has COVID, that's not a bad idea to turn on those fans in your bathroom and turn on the hood above your stove, and all that's doing is moving air and just keeping it circulating, so it's not just hanging there for you to have the opportunity to breathe it in.
Speaker 1:So are there things that people can do, behaviors they can adopt during cold and flu season, like eating better, exercising, reducing alcohol intake, things like that to strengthen their immune system?
Speaker 2:Yeah, certainly those things are really important. Exercise has so many benefits, including on your immune system, eating a healthy diet right. Your immune system needs certain factors that need to keep functioning at its top ability, and so eating healthy diet becomes very important. Trying to remain active is really huge Sleepy getting a good night's sleep. And avoiding stress, right, like we talked about to kick off the episode. All these things flare up, and trying to make sure that those things are in check keep your immune system working at its top function.
Speaker 1:So before we move on to everyone's favorite topic, mold, I have one last question. So are there certain surfaces in multi-family buildings that people should be more aware of? I guess it's just common sense Touching the elevator buttons, the pool handle, the railing on the pool, people typically grab onto those type of surfaces. Just be a little more mindful.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the frequently touched surfaces. They actually did a study in an emergency room where they took samples from, like, various places around the ER, trying to figure out what the dirtiest surface was in the ER. It was actually that little thing. You had to push to get the hand sanitizer, which is exactly what you expect. Like we're all going there to clean our hands, we know our hands dirty and that's where they found the most pathogens. So it's just common surfaces that people were touching is what you wanna watch out for.
Speaker 1:All right, are you ready for the mold conversation?
Speaker 2:Live it.
Speaker 1:So, listen, water leaks in multi-family buildings are inevitable. Okay, I don't care how well maintained the building is, pipe spray, appliances fail, we have water leaks. When water is leaking, there's a pretty high likelihood that there's gonna be mold as a result at some time. And then, of course, we've got people who really do get freaked out about their exposure to mold. What are the potential symptoms or health issues that residents might experience due to exposure to mold, both short-term exposure and prolonged exposure?
Speaker 2:So let me just start off by saying in most normal adults with normal immune systems, mold isn't a huge health problem. In most circumstances, most mold in most adults is not dangerous. A lot of people will come and say that I was in a place, there was mold. I'd read it. They wanna come to the emergency department and they want to be evaluated to see if there was any risk. With most adults with normal immune systems, your body just knocks it out. You don't have any sequelae. There's not a disease or anything caused by it.
Speaker 2:Who can get in a trouble with mold? Extremes of age, very, very young talk about neonates and infants and the very elderly and those that are prone to allergic-like diseases. So if you have allergies, you're the type of person who's got to take an antihistamine every day because pollen and pet dander and those things this is another potential allergen that can really trigger your allergies and make your nose run and make you sneeze and make your watery eyes and other things. Patients with asthma right, there's a lot of triggers for asthma and I just mentioned some of them and this can be another one of the triggers for asthma. If you're an asthmatic, you can expose the mold. You can have an asthma attack. Those patients are the ones that really are at most risk when it comes to mold. There are molds that pose more of a health risk. Black mold comes to mind. It certainly can cause a respiratory illness like an ammonia, but the vast majority of people, even exposed to black mold, are going to be just fine, because it's something your immune system typically will knock out.
Speaker 1:We've had people claim that exposure to mold has given them neurological issues, has created autoimmune type symptoms. In your experience, can what we call toxic mold create those sort of problems?
Speaker 2:I would imagine it could. It's not common and I'm not as much of an expert in the field to really elaborate much more in these more rare cases. In general, though, I'll say that it's less common, and much less common if it is a cause of the things you mentioned.
Speaker 1:If somebody does have an adverse reaction to mold, I imagine the cure is get rid of the mold. Is there anything else that they need to do in terms of antibiotics or any kind of protocol?
Speaker 2:Yeah, most of it is remediating the mold and what's happening on site In terms of whatever the consequence of breathing in the mold was we deal with. We mentioned that if it's triggering your allergies, we treat your allergies. If we're treating your asthma, we treat your asthma. If it's causing an ammonia, we treat it with specific antimicrobials. But it would depend on what we're seeing in terms of what the mold costs. I'll say again, it's not a common thing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think in some cases this is anecdotal data that we've gathered and whether or not it was the mold that was creating the problem and the person just believes it was that exposure or something else entirely different. You know an underlying health condition and autoimmune disease. But it is an issue that does come up in our multifamily buildings because, as I said, there is mold in most of these buildings at some point or another. But I wanted to circle back to the amenities. So things like the gym or the pool. You've got people using the free weights. Let's talk about free weights. If somebody has a virus, how long would a virus typically last on a hard surface like a free weight or a machine in the gym?
Speaker 2:There's a lot of factors that go into that, but in general we're talking about hours, some viruses days, but most of the time it's hours, and you know, just protecting yourself by wiping it down hand sanitizers, those sorts of things can protect you.
Speaker 1:You know the amenities in some of these communities, Dr Mansour, it's not like a commercial gym where they've paid somebody to clean up. You know, in a lot of these communities they're relying on the people. You know the residents using these facilities to clean up after themselves. As we know, some people are a little more conscientious than others. So I would think for our boards, who are listening, and our managers, that when you mentioned December as a peak for a virus season, basically maybe spend a little more time in you know, in the gym cleaning up, knowing that you've got more people sick and more people probably on the cusp of being symptomatic or using those facilities.
Speaker 2:Certainly For all the reasons we talked about. Yeah, I mean using some antimicrobial or antiseptic wipes, especially the surfaces that are commonly touched. December being the peak, you know, it's a great strategy.
Speaker 1:So we're talking about hard surfaces. I want to transition to holes and spas. Things can be transmitted by water, right? I remember years ago a community had a Legionnaires outbreak through the use of the spa. Can you tell us how that happens?
Speaker 2:So Legionnaires can live in systems like AC units and things like that, where there's can be standing water and it can circulate right. So there's a classic case that they talk about in medical textbooks where there was a convention and it was spread through the AC units. When it comes to the pools and the spas, if they're properly maintained meaning they're chlorinated or there's something like that that should not be much of a concern, because the chlorine really kills those pathogens that we're talking about. But you're right that the Legionnaires can be spread that way. But there usually has to be an error that is occurred in terms of maintaining the unit in order for that to occur.
Speaker 1:For people who don't know what Legionnaires is, can you just give us a quick overview of what this disease is and what it does?
Speaker 2:The Legionnaires is one of the causes of pneumonia. It's an atypical cause of pneumonia, so it can cause fever, cough, shortness of breath and can also cause GI symptoms like diarrhea, and that's one of the things that distinguishes Legionnaires from other types of pneumonia.
Speaker 1:Well, listen, we know COVID and flu can be fatal. I'm assuming RSV could be fatal if it hits one of a person in the vulnerable category of infant or very old Legionnaires disease as well. All right, well, all good news, or bad news, depending on one's perspective. I want to talk to you as long as I have you. I want to talk to you about services inside communities, because we've got millions of people living in these community associations and some communities do a really good job of bringing in medical services into the community, and I've actually talked about this before in an article that as people age in place I think today, in 2024, people are less likely to want to go into a nursing home or assisted care living facility.
Speaker 1:There's a real strong movement. We're seeing where people want to live in their homes. They want to live where they are for the rest of their lives, but they're going to need help to do it and in one way it's bringing in outside medical services. So we've got communities that bring in mobile units that blood pressure testing. They may do flu shots and COVID shots and maybe they even bring them in and they do a blood drive. So can you tell me your experience with this. Does Broward Health offer those type of mobile services?
Speaker 2:Certainly yeah, broward Health offers something called Broward Health Point, which is a variety of community services for folks living in Northern Broward County. Those involve multiple community clinics and that also. They also offer a mobile unit it looks like a big bus essentially and they can do blood draws and blood pressure screenings and medical exams and they can bring that out to the community, especially to those that have some sort of restriction to access to health care or the underserved, where if you can't come to us, we can come to you. So it's great. I mean, there's a ton of these resources available and Broward Health website BrowardHealthorg can list all those things and explain more.
Speaker 1:That's great, and I see, as the population ages, maybe even an expansion of what those mobile offerings will be Given, that you operate a trauma center. How frequently do you need blood donations, and is there a different demand depending on the time of year?
Speaker 2:We have an ongoing need throughout the year. Certainly in setting of a mass casualty or some sort of unanticipated event like that, we would have a higher need, but at that point the blood length really needs to be stocked. So it's not. It doesn't help us as much after the fact because those patients are all sort of being rushed in. We've had some mass casualty events here in Fort Lauderdale that were well publicized and it's really a credit to our blood bank and the folks donating blood that we had all the resources that we need to resuscitate those and save the lives that we could. So I don't think there's a particular seasonality to when we especially need it. It's just a constant ongoing need. So for those that are willing to donate, it's greatly appreciated by the physicians and the patients.
Speaker 1:So a lot of people donate blood because they feel it's the moral thing to do, they're being a good citizen. But for those people who are still on the fence, are there any health benefits that we can tell them about that might encourage them to donate blood?
Speaker 2:There are certain illnesses where your body makes too many red blood cells and in that case donating blood is actually therapeutic for those patients. For a normal healthy adult, when you do donate blood, your body's bone marrow and other parts of your body are making new blood to replace, and that's just good that your body does that recycling of the old and bringing in new blood. I don't know if there's any specific huge health benefit there. It should really be the benefit you get from the goodness of your own heart and feeling good about helping another indeed, Is there a different procedure for donating plasma and is there a greater need for plasma?
Speaker 2:Well, there's a different procedure. Plasma is the liquid left when you spin out all the red blood cells, and in the plasma there are clotting factors and other things. So to the patient really there's not much of a difference, because they still have to draw your blood to get to the plasma and then the way it's processed is really where it is. So there's also a need to donate plasma as well, and that's ongoing, doesn't have a seasonality either.
Speaker 1:Do you know if, when you donate blood, you get a report on your cholesterol or anything else?
Speaker 2:They have to test it for blood-borne pathogens like HIV and hepatitis, and so the blood has to be screened for that, to make sure it's safe for the recipient, and so you can get the report of those tests.
Speaker 1:Well, I want to thank you again for coming on. Is there anything that I should have asked you, that I didn't ask you, that you think our audience needs to hear?
Speaker 2:I think we covered most of it and what we discussed already. I just want to reiterate there's a common sense. Things like what, covering your mouth and washing your hands and those sorts of things that you're taught from a very early age. They're so, so important in terms of public health and it takes all of us you hear that phrase a lot. It really takes all of us because if we're all doing those things, then transmission of a lot of these pathogens are minimal and it just takes one person that's kind of not following the rules and kind of dismissing some of these recommendations and they can cause a problem. So I just want to encourage everyone to pitch in. Do your part and keep yourself and others healthy.
Speaker 1:Well, I love that final thought because I have to tell you, for quite a while now I'm noticing open mouth coughing and sneezing without covering. So yeah, it's a great reminder. There's a really good reason to cover your mouth when you're coughing and to cover your nose when you're sneezing, or put it in the crook of your arm and then immediately clean your hands.
Speaker 2:Certainly yeah, and that's why I keep hand sanitizer with me. So when I do cover my mouth and I go right for the sanitizer just to make sure that I'm not the person spreading anything, and I think it's good practice for everyone.
Speaker 1:Well, everybody, thanks again to Dr Mansor for coming. Hopefully everybody listening is going to sail through cold, flu and COVID season without any terrible results. So thanks.
Speaker 2:Thank you, john, I appreciate you.
Speaker 1:Thank you for joining us today. Don't forget to follow and rate us on your favorite podcast platform, or visit TicketToTheBoardcom for more ways to connect.