The Truth is Complicated | Dr. John York - S.O.S. #272

A warship is built for uncertainty, but COVID demanded a different kind of readiness. We’re joined by retired Captain John York, the senior medical officer aboard the USS Theodore Roosevelt during the 2020 outbreak, to tell the story from inside the crisis: what the medical team saw, what leaders heard, and why the public narrative never fully matched the lived reality of thousands of sailors trying to stay safe while the mission kept moving.

We talk through the early warning signs before the Vietnam port call, the sudden shift once exposures emerged, and the hard operational truth that a carrier doesn’t have to lose dozens of sailors to be crippled. York breaks down why mass illness overwhelms manpower, space, and medical capacity, and why his recommendations centered on getting sailors off the ship fast even when testing and guidance were still evolving. We also unpack the Guam response, including how “quarantine” sometimes became a label applied to conditions that did not actually stop spread.

Then we go to the part that still stings: the letters, the leak, the breakdowns up the chain, and the investigations that followed. York shares what it feels like to be criticized for “overreaction” while also being asked for lessons learned, and how that contradiction can create moral injury and lasting disillusionment. If you care about Navy leadership, military medicine, crisis communication, and what transparency should look like in a public health emergency, this conversation brings the context and nuance the headlines missed.

Subscribe for more firsthand military stories, share this with someone who still debates what happened on the Roosevelt, and leave a review so more listeners can find the show.

Transcript

Truth, Messaging, And A Crisis

SPEAKER_03 0:01

There are stories that happen within the United States Navy that really shake the foundation of what we know to be true. And for me as a public affairs officer, the case that really started my path to a bit of disillusionment with our messaging was this case with the USS Theodore Roosevelt and the COVID outbreak. I was stationed at Carrier Strike Group 15 at the time, and I was in an assessment squat unit where we'd go out and assess the deployers before they go to sea. We had assessed Theodore Roosevelt prior to this incident. And after this incident happened and the fallout that happened, I never saw my community the same way, and I never saw messaging the same way. And I've had the privilege since that point to host the commanding officer from the USS Theodore Roosevelt in a prior episode. I also got to hear from the SECNAV, who was presiding during this period, Thomas Maudley, as well as Brett Crozier. And now today I'm so excited. I get to hear another part of this story with the medical officer who was on board called the SMO, the senior medical officer on board. And that was uh retired Captain John York. John, how are you doing today?

SPEAKER_01 1:13

I'm great. Thanks for having me on for this. This is uh it's a great opportunity. Appreciate it.

SPEAKER_03 1:17

Absolutely. And as we always do on the Stories of Service podcast, we try to get to where the truth lies and we try to get to the heart of the issue. And we're not afraid, and nor do we shy away from having those hard discussions because I believe that when we have hard discussions, we heal, we move on, we get closure, and we find out what really happened and we can solve problems that way. So, as I always do, welcome to the Stories of Service podcast. Ordinary people who do extraordinary work. I'm the host of Stories of Service, Teresa Carpenter, and to get us started, as we always do, an intro from my father, Charlie Pickard.

SPEAKER_00 1:50

From the moment we're born and lock eyes with our parents, we are inspiring others. By showing up as a vessel of service, we not only help others, we help ourselves. Welcome to SOS Stories of Service, hosted by Teresa Carpenter, here from ordinary people from all walks of life who have transformed their communities by performing extraordinary work.

SPEAKER_03 2:16

And when a crisis unfolds in real time, as I say, the truth is rarely simple. Decisions are made under pressure, facts are incomplete, and public reporting can shape the narrative before the full story is known. And without complete and impartial reporting, we're often left to speculate about what really happened, who made the right call, and what lesson should be carried forward. And today this is an ongoing effort to help clarify the historical records surrounding the USS Theodore Roosevelt COVID-19 outbreak and the leadership decisions that followed.

Meet Captain John York

SPEAKER_03 2:44

Now, today we talked to Captain John York. He served as the senior medical officer on board USS Theodore Roosevelt during the COVID pandemic. And the purpose of this conversation is to hear his perspective as the medical doctor on the ship, what he saw, what medical leaders were facing, and how the situation looked from the inside the crisis. Captain John York was born in sea level, North Carolina and raised on Army bases around the world. A 1988 graduate of the USS NA U.S. Naval Academy, he began his 33-year naval career as a naval flight officer, conducting reconnaissance missions during Operation Desert Shield, Desert Storm, and the Conflict in the Balkans. He later transitioned into medicine, graduating from the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences in 1999. He completed advanced training in diagnostic and interventional radiology at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital in Philadelphia. Throughout his career, he balanced demanding operational and medical leadership roles, such as the Navy Specialty Leader for Diagnostic Radiology, Interim Executive Officer at Naval Medicine Center, Portsmouth, and one of the first combat-deployed interventional radiologists in Kandahar, Afghanistan, commanding officer of the Expeditionary Medical Facility in Djibouti, Africa, and senior medical officer on board USS Theodore Roosevelt during the pandemic. And now, after retiring from active duty at the end of 2021, as a highly decorated veteran and award-winning educator, he joined the staff at the University of California San Diego Health, where today he balances his medical practice with hiking, birding, and time with his wife, Ruth, two adult children, and one slightly crazy dog. Welcome again, John.

SPEAKER_01 4:22

Thanks, Teresa. It's good to be here.

SPEAKER_03 4:24

Well, it's good to

Why He Chose The Navy

SPEAKER_03 4:26

have you. I always ask all my guests, because I'm always just curious about the origin story. Where were you originally born and raised? And what inspired you initially to join the Navy?

SPEAKER_01 4:37

So I was born North Carolina on the coast. Sea level is a tiny little town. My dad was in Vietnam. I was born there. My mom had moved down there to be near her grandparents, or her parents, sorry, my grandparents. And then we moved all over the place. Sort of standard military army bases, Midwest, East Coast, overseas. And as you get older, and I'm the youngest of five, all of us went into the military. My oldest brother went to West Point. The next two brothers went to the Air Force Academy. My sister was Army Razi. And it got down to it got down to me and my grandfather, my mom's dad, had gone to the Naval Academy. It's one of those of well, let's try balancing things out. Maybe I'll go to the Naval Academy. So that's where I that's where I ended up. And that started a very long career back in 19 June. Oh heck, we're almost at I Day, induction day, July 6th, 1984 is when this all started.

SPEAKER_03 5:31

Wow. So out of all those duty stations, I just I rattled off so many. Is there any one that particularly stands out that's you know beyond the Theater Roosevelt incident? But is there one that is particularly memorable?

SPEAKER_01 5:45

I think from a what is memorable standpoint, when you're in medicine in the Navy, well, I mean, so again, I was a naval flight officer first doing that stuff. Yes, flying operations for Desert Shield, Desert Storm was very unique. I was really young at that point. But then when I transitioned for the bulk of my career to medicine, the the memorable thing and what obviously what led sort of to the Roosevelt is that I really enjoy and like operational medicine, taking care of the young men and women we send downrange to faraway places. And so that led to being deployed to Kandahar. And Kandahar was easily the most professionally rewarding thing I've ever done in my life. And then I say that, and then I also have to step back and say, but it came at such a cost to the young men and women, but boy, we did everything we could, and we should be there at the front line with them from a medical standpoint at all times.

SPEAKER_03 6:42

Yeah. Was there any kind of challenges that you faced in terms of like your medical duties and what you had to do medically versus what I guess like like ethically? Was there any ethical dilemmas? I would think that just being a medical officer downrange in a war zone has got to be really, really challenging.

SPEAKER_01 7:02

Yes, I could yes, there are challenges to it. The challenges are more of trying to balance actually a a a brief a small small story. Some special operations folks brought some injured people into the hospital in Kandahar when I was there. And so inner and again, interventional radiology is what I was there for. We do surgical type procedures through tiny little holes in people's skin. So in a trauma setting, in a combat zone, uh we're putting small wires, catheters, balloons, things into people to stop bleeding internally, is typically what we're doing. Hadn't been done really in combat zones before. So this was a we were we're sort of expanding pushing the envelope of what is K what are we what can we accomplish for deployed? So some special operator guys, army types bring uh two people in. One is a bad guy that they've uh shot pretty reasonably, and one is one of their colleagues who was injured during this fight. And I remember, and this is just an interesting, and I see it from their side completely, because as they are leaving, they are yelling at the bad guy, I hope you die. Sure. And it's very interesting because for us from the medical side, I don't have that option, right? Right the patients patients get treated according to triage status, according to level of severity of injury, right? That is that's the basis of medicine. And we were able to do that even in the combat zone. But it was interesting to see that.

unknown 8:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 8:41

And actually not a not an ethical thing, but a challenge over there was seeing injured kids.

SPEAKER_03 8:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 8:48

Who who we would take care of because they got injured as a byproduct of what was going on, you know, but that's the reality of war. So it was it was a very humbling and rewarding time.

SPEAKER_03 9:00

Yeah, and not very many people actually see that. I mean, even those who serve don't often go down into our most dangerous areas and and and do that kind of work. So I'm sure that there was so many lessons learned from it. Did you intend when you joined the Navy to make it a 33-year career? Was that on the agenda for you?

SPEAKER_01 9:23

No. Um, no, I didn't, but but I'm not sad that I did. It worked out great for me. Yeah, it was one of these of sort of, you know, I was in for seven years and then I went to med school, and then that obligated me for another seven years or something, I don't remember. And then and then I went and trained in a civilian hospital for five years, and that obligated me more. And pretty much you you stop at some point and you go, huh, by the time I finish paying back these commitments, I guess I could retire. You know, it's it's right. I mean, it sort of just kept on adding up. And I was like you've heard many, many people say, it's like I was having a good time. The navy was putting me in good places, I was enjoying the work, I like the people. Okay, let's see what happens next.

SPEAKER_03 10:10

Yeah, that's that's that's really my experience too. Up until I'd say the oh four. When I when I say I made oh five, that's when I started saying, Oh shoot, I think I'm ready to go. But up until that point, I was, I was, I was happy. I was I was just like, oh, I'm gonna go to a carrier now. Oh, I'm gonna go to Nam Fib. Oh, I'm gonna go on Pacific Partnership, oh, I'm going to become an officer. I mean, whatever the next milestone was, I was just working up to it until I stopped, until it was like there was that point, like I said, where where I just I I knew like my my own personal ethics were conflicting with some of the things that I was seeing. And that's what really where I knew I was like, oh shoot, I'm on my way out because there's there's another path that I'm meant to go down.

Taking Orders To A Carrier

SPEAKER_03 10:52

But how did you get the orders to the Theater Roosevelt? Was that something that you wanted? Were you like, I just really want to be a SMO, a senior medical officer?

SPEAKER_01 11:05

So this is one of those situations where you know, be careful what you ask for. Sure. We wanted to get to San Diego, and I knew that I couldn't go to the hospital as an interventional radiologist because they were fully staffed, which was my own fault because I was the former guy who set all that up. Um, so I couldn't go there. So then I was like, well, if I get operational orders, I can get to San Diego. And based on my time to when I was gonna hit stats for a retirement, I knew if I got operational orders, those were two years, then I had a year and a half left of the Navy after that, and I knew they wouldn't PCS me. So that's how, and and I like I said, I like operational medicine. And I had I thought, you know, I've been in the Navy at this point almost 30 years. I've never been on a carrier besides as like a midshipman years ago, I think. I was like, that'd be that'd be an interesting, interesting tour. And so there there it was. And yes, it was an interesting tour.

SPEAKER_03 12:04

Right, right. The for the public affairs community, it's sort of the pinnacle tour. And it's interesting because it doesn't necessarily happen at the tail end of your career. It happens in your mid- your mid-career as an officer, you know, at the 04 level. So it's not even like the the most highest ranking job that we do, but it's really sort of the make or break of a of a PAO, is if they can do a carrier tour just because the demands on on our carrier PAOs are are so as you saw, are are are quite are quite a quite a quite a bunch of things and and different activities. So you get out to the Theodore Roosevelt, and it's funny because I went out and assessed you guys during Com2X and for for all that, and you know, had an office with the PAO, you know, shared shared her space and and everything. And at that point, I I believe you were just looking at a standard Western Pacific deployment when we went out to to see you guys, because that wasn't even when COVID had started. It was like the fall before, I think is when we did the Com2X, and then the COVID came around February or March of the following year.

Early COVID Warnings At Sea

SPEAKER_03 13:09

So at that point, everything was great. So you got you go to head out on deployment and and did tell me a little bit about how how you ended up becoming aware that this was going to be something bigger than this thing that's just happening in China.

SPEAKER_01 13:25

Yeah, so COVID. Let's see, and and this is only because I've done other talks to medical people about this. The end of December, I think was the first time it was reported in the New York Times, I believe. End of December, there was some case of some funny, funny virus out of China. And then it starts ramping up. The first, you know, uh it started becoming more common, I should say, or more in the news. We deployed the 17th of January or around there. Uh and our first port call was in Guam. And on the way to Guam, we're we're in communication with the fleet surgeons, so the Seventh Fleet and PAC fleet surgeons, and we're we're giving, I mean, obviously, I follow these things anyway because I'm a physician, and so we're starting to hear of this this virus that's out of China that started in Wuhan and seems to be spreading some. Uh, we get to Guam, there's no restrictions or anything, lots of people in Guam wearing masks, and we know we're going to Vietnam after that. And so, let's see, Guam would have been early February. We're going to Vietnam first week of March, and that's when things really start ramping up. Because I want to say, somewhere in early-ish February is when like the World Health Organization said this is a they have a name for it. It's a public health infection of interest or something. There's some name they have for it.

SPEAKER_02 14:53

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 14:55

And so it's in the weeks leading up to Vietnam where it is really ramping up. And now we're getting daily medical intelligence briefs that have the number of cases in all the countries in the you know, the South China Sea area where we are, and you just see the case numbers rising. And so we're looking at this saying, this is going to be a problem. And it was sometime during that point that I remember saying to the to the captain, I was like, Well, I know one way we'll never get COVID on the ship, which is never to pull into port again, and hopefully get stuff dropped here by drones or something. And about two weeks before we got into Vietnam, and this is an interesting sort of, and we'll talk about this sure some more, bias or blinder that people had on about COVID. About two weeks before we get into Vietnam, all of a sudden, Vietnam's daily cases stop rising. Every other country's cases rise for the two weeks before we get into Vietnam, except for theirs. And I bring this up and I was like to the medical chain of command. And I was like, this doesn't make sense. This is not right. And I am told repeatedly that no, they they have COVID completely under control. And these are the things that we want the medical department to do. You know, the standard military exchanges you do when you pull into port, all those things. These are the things we want to have happen and all that. And we're just like, I was like, you know, this is not a good idea. We shouldn't never mind the hubris of saying that the physician off a carrier from a country that theoretically doesn't have COVID, right? Because the US theoretically didn't have COVID at that time. That I'm supposed to go to a medical department or a hospital in Da Nang, Vietnam, and teach them how to handle COVID. I'm like, they have it in their country, we theoretically don't. But so that was sort of leading up to the whole Vietnam port call was the sort of linders people had on about it and pressure of we want to act like everything's normal and conduct all the standard things we do, because it's a high-profile visit. I get it. Fortunately, Captain Crozier agreed with me and said, No, we're not doing those. And by the time we got there, they were all canceled anyway, because of the threat of COVID at that point.

SPEAKER_03 17:06

Oh, so the med you never did have to go into the okay, good. Now, did you at that time think that the numbers might be rigged to give you guys okay? So even at that point, you were like, I don't think we're getting the proper information.

SPEAKER_01 17:22

No, because Teresa, I was just like, look, you know, to to use the sex nav's words, I'm not an infectious disease expert, but for every country to have rising cases of COVID, sure, for a rest a novel respiratory spread virus, except for the one country that's anticipating a carrier visit, it's a big deal. Uh right. The day we left Vietnam, their cases started going back up again.

SPEAKER_02 17:44

Right.

SPEAKER_01 17:45

I was like, come on, I could see I could see this. You know, it's not that hard.

SPEAKER_03 17:49

Yeah. So I think this might be a good time to bring in at least one of the media clips about this. And so for those of you who haven't listened to my other conversation with Thomas Modley, he broke down sort of how all this went down from his perspective. And he wasn't directly involved, I believe, until a little bit later on, not necessarily during the port visit. So we might be jumping ahead a little. I'm just letting the audience know. And we might, there might be some things in this first clip that we'll address later on as you tell the story. But I know that that was one of the first things he says in this clip. And it is three minutes and nine seconds. So I do want to apologize to my audience for those who who need to kind of listen a little bit for uh longer or or shorter. They can certainly fast forward through some of this, but I think it's important that we hear the whole context of it. So I'm gonna play it. Uh, there's only two clips I'm gonna be playing. I'll play the other one a little bit later.

SPEAKER_04 18:45

Any other issues or any other ship except this one? Um including uh the Ronald Reagan, which also, you know, which had also had some COVID cases out there in Japan, but uh they had it. I spoke to that CEO, and I mean they had everything, everything was calm, everything was, you know, they were they were working on it normally. So I don't really know exactly what happened. I mean, I've read a lot of actor after action on this stuff, but I think frankly, I think the ship's doctors scared a lot of people. They had sent a memo also that said that within 10 days, the first the first line in this memo was the this is two days or one day after getting into Guam, that the battle against COVID on the Teddy Rose Well has been lost. And that if we didn't evacuate all the sailors immediately, that within 10 days, 50 sailors were going to be dead from COVID. So I think throughout the entire COVID crisis, we lost one sailor to COVID, active duty, is what I've been told. So this is an extreme overreaction by the doctors. I don't blame them for not knowing any better. I do blame them for not seeking advice from people higher in the military chain of command to in terms of how to deal with this. None of these doctors were infectious disease specialists or immunologists. You know, they were basically flight surgeons and dentists and, you know, physical therapists and those types of things. And so I the in this memo, the thing that caused the greatest alarm for me was that in the last line of the memo, they said that it was their intention to make this information known to the public so that basically the world understood what was happening on the Teddy Rillsville. And I think that that line, I mean, Captain Crozier told me when I spoke to him in Guam that he told the doctors not to send that letter. And and he was he he he they were sending it to the head of the Navy military medical command and I think the CNO, I was not on distribution on that. And he said he told them not to do it. I said, Well, you know they did it, send it, right? He goes, Yes, sir, I do know. I said, Why are they still there? Like you're the commanding officer of the ship, they disobeyed a direct order from you. And he really couldn't answer the question, you know. And then it when I when I asked him about the why he sent his letter through unsecure channels, and I I believe that he didn't leak it. I don't think he leaked it. Someone that he sent it to leaked it to the media. But he didn't take take care that it would not be leaked. There's all kinds of secure communications channels on that ship that he could have used, to include calling me, because we'd already reached out to him a couple days before. But he said that I asked him why he didn't talk it over with the strike group commander, who's the admiral on the ship. And he said that he knew that the strike group commander would not let him send it out. And so he just decided to do it anyway. And so to me, that's premeditated and subordination. And it was it was kind of and and then the strike group commander later confirmed that he told him that too.

SPEAKER_03 21:43

Yeah. So it was a breakdown between the two of them. Okay. So now we'll go back to your story and where you were in this, because it does sound like, according to his account, that you were one of the first or the medical team was the first to raise the alarm. About the port visit in Vietnam and then what happens from that point.

Vietnam Port Call And First Exposures

SPEAKER_01 22:05

Yeah, so we raised the alarm. Captain Crozier and the ship's leadership agreed with us. There was some pushback from Pac Fleet saying, no, you're gonna do these things. And Captain Crozier said no, you you actually work for me, so no, if you think it's so we raised the alarm, but it's we get there, and it's interesting that the we get there and and you know the vast majority of our ship is ashore. The vast majority of things in Vietnam are closed with signs everywhere saying COVID or whatever, however, it was written in in Vietnamese, but that's what things were closed everywhere. So it's you could tell the place was on lockdown. But does that stop US Navy sailors? Well, no, in general it doesn't. And so we have our port visit. We go to leave the night before we left. We get woken up about one o'clock in the morning because 39 sailors were exposed to COVID from two British tourists, was the what we're hearing from the Vietnamese. And then there's this whole whole saga of the Vietnam, they did not want to let them out of the country. There's a whole saga with this. That's a whole nother, that's a whole nother story. This was very Cold War-like. And so we had these big meetings with their government, and we finally managed to get them out of the country. Part of the way we managed to get them out, truthfully, is I was tasked by the defense attaché of I'm gonna be the medical rep for these. Like think of Cold War movies from the 70s, like tables, the Communist Party people come in, we come in, only one person can talk on each side. I mean, it was it was fascinating. But I was tasked as the medical rep for this, and I talked to my Vietnamese counterparts, physicians, and I said, we would like to get them all tested. And they had testing facilities. Now, I can guarantee they know, and we knew that the tests were gonna be negative, but this gives them the opportunity to say they were negative and they left the country. And the reason they were gonna be negative is because they'd only been ex exposed in the past 12 hours, so nothing was gonna show up on a test. And I talked to Captain Crown about him like, if we get a negative test, then we can take them back to the ship. Sure. So we did, and it worked. And so we leave and we put them all. I mean, we had even before we got into Vietnam, we had mapped out what were going to be the quarantine and isolation spaces on the ship. We thought about using the brig, but then we thought the optics of that might not look so good if we put people in there because they had COVID. So we we we backed off that one. I think it was the CMC was like, Yeah, I don't think this is gonna look so good.

SPEAKER_02 24:37

Sure, sure.

SPEAKER_01 24:38

So we found some spaces and we we did all that, and those people ultimately never they weren't the ones who popped positive 15 days later, but we'll get to we'll get to that part of the story. But going back to the video you played, the the uh the interesting thing from that video is hearing from uh senior leadership, acting secretary of the navy. Uh he mentions at the very beginning about the Ronald Reagan, and that the Reagan had COVID also, and the Reagan was just fine and had no issues. The and this is why I reached out to you, is because I had some, you know, when you tell the story, if you leave out certain tracks, the context matters. Uh the Reagan, yes, another aircraft carrier, but there's two important facts that the second have left out. One is that the Reagan was in port in their home port in Japan, not deployed. The other one, more importantly, is during that time, say March to May of 2020, the Reagan had 51 cases of COVID. We had 1,271. So that's so signaling. To not put those facts in makes the story seem like, wow, Theodore Roosevelt, to continue his his opinion, really overreacted, including the doctors, you know, and and and we get we get I've been criticized for saying that, you know, the letter we sent, I'll talk to them about that ending in a second. I've been criticized for the that letter that said there's gonna be you know 50 dead within 10 days. But those were simply the the mortality rates of the age ranges of on our on our ship. We weren't making up these numbers. That's just we just took the simple the mortality rates and do the math. And it's uh interesting that that is what people focus on. And they focus on the fact that as the second I've said, there was only one dead. Yes, Chief Robert Thacker died on our ship from COVID. That misses the point, though, because in operational medicine, it's the injured and sick who put more of a burden on a unit than the dead. And so I said this to the warfare commanders in the strike group battle repeatedly. If if mortality is your metric of success from this, you're doing it wrong. Because if we have a thousand people who are sick or injured or whatever from COVID, the manpower and the resources to take care of them is going to cripple this ship in a heartbeat, as opposed to if you had even 50 dead. That's easier to handle than a bunch of people who are sick. So, all right, I've talked, I've talked to a bunch there.

SPEAKER_03 27:08

No, no, I mean that that makes sense and it it helps to kind of clear up what the the the fact that maybe perhaps comparing those two ships in a different space and time and circumstances and number of cases just doesn't doesn't necessarily equal equal the same this the same situation.

Guam Conditions And Quarantine Failures

SPEAKER_03 27:29

Can you bring me back to also when you wrote your letter to Bumed? Because that was as I understand it, that was long before Captain Crozier wrote his, correct? It was around the same time.

SPEAKER_01 27:42

It was it was um a day or two after.

unknown 27:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 27:45

Was it a day or two after? Yes, I'd I'd already sent an email before, let's see, within a couple days of pulling into Guam of we've effectively lost the war because we had missed our window of opportunity. All right. This was one of these of there's a guy, I forget his name from the World Health Organization, has a quote, something along the lines of In this situation, act fast because if you're waiting for perfect answers, you're never going to get them. The problem we ran into, because our initial recommendations right off the bat, I mean, I sent an email to Cap Crossier the day after our positive cases, and I said, if we want to stop this, we're gonna need about 4,000 hotel rooms when we get to Guam. Period. That's the only way we're gonna stop it expeditiously. Because to try to let it burn out and burn through on the ship or whatever was never going to work. And there was just so many variables, uh, truthfully, so many variables we didn't know because it's a new virus. We don't know anything about it. We have like three months of data at this point. So I had already sent an email though saying, you know, we've kind of lost, we've we've lost the battle because we missed the window. The window should have been our initial recommendations were get in, get everyone off the ship, isolate or quarantine for two weeks, get them back on the ship, don't test them. This is don't do testing. This is this was my recommendation from the up front. Because I was like, that's what we know right now, the timeline of COVID, that's what we know. About 10 days, people are either going to be okay or they're not. Vast majority are gonna be okay. Okay, and then just go right back to sea and we'll figure it out from there. That didn't work, and then you know, that didn't work, and then everyone wanted everyone tested and all the issues with testing, and that's a whole nother long saga. But no, so the letter I sent to Bube, the one that Second was referencing that caused all the hate and consternation. I sent that 31st of March, 1st of April, something like that. And yeah, that sentence at the end about taking it to the media, that one speaking to a public affairs officer, that's the one that okay, so you know, and not in my defense. I I should have taken it out. What I did say though, when I sent it to the Surgeon General, was we're not gonna release this to the media, and we never did, it never made it into print anywhere.

SPEAKER_03 30:07

But unfortunately, that's all anyone can focus on is that statement, which that one that one line, which you were doing to to cause to to to basically raise the alarm and to raise the stakes. And and I understand why you did why you did it. Yeah, if if you didn't feel too that they were acting fast enough to try to stop the spread, which obviously, as as we saw how many cases developed over the course of time on that ship, I think it's fair to say that you were just doing you guys were doing what you thought was the best way to keep the sailors safe. And one of the things that Brett and I talked about when he was on my show, too, is that you really didn't know for sure how bad COVID would affect people of a certain demographic. Like at that time, it wasn't just something that we we thought only the elderly were were dying from, or older people. We we didn't know. We thought even young people, how how was that part of it? Trying to manage the sailors worrying, their anxiety. Like, I would think that if everybody was coming down with it, they were probably freaking out too at the same time.

SPEAKER_01 31:15

Absolutely. And we were so now we're in Guam, right? And people have Wi-Fi, we have internet, so they're hearing from their families back home how the US is shut down because now we are heck, we're three weeks into a state of emergency global pandemic at this point. Yes, people were freaking out to to be fair. And for us in the medical department, we're reading out of stories out of Italy and Europe where medical people are at getting infected at higher rates because they're exposed to it every day with all the patients they've seen. Yeah, that was a challenge. And I mean, I just you think of the, you know, back to my my my ill-advised statement about the media. It is something that I've thought about is are we such a fragile institution that we cannot be transparent with the moms and dads of America about their young, young kids that they send to us? And you know, we send those kids to faraway places and bad things happen to them all the time. And here we are with a global pandemic. Their kids, not dumb at all, know what the rest of the Navy and DOD is doing with respect to COVID. Quarantine, isolation, restriction of movement, all those things. And then their kids see what's happening with us on the ship, and they're being put into rodent-infested warehouses and gymnasiums and places with asbestos and told that this is quarantine.

unknown 32:40

Right.

SPEAKER_01 32:40

The kids can see through it, they're not dumb.

SPEAKER_03 32:43

I'll never forget the pictures I saw on social media of like the lunches that the kids were getting. I think, I mean, that that those pictures went went viral, like pictures of these just terrible sandwiches, and and it was just it was a public relations disaster the way it was being portrayed. And there were reporters who were speaking directly to the sailors, like mainstream, you know, national correspondents who were getting directly from the sailors on the ship what was happening, and it wasn't matching the precautions and the things that that that people were saying officially. So trying to manage that had to have been obviously a disaster for for for the public affairs staff as well to try to stay ahead of that and and figure out what was going on. And so as this starts to play out, how much time elapsed between the gymnasium and the photos and the the viral things and then the letter being late? Like, was that within days? I think that was like within days of each other.

SPEAKER_01 33:50

Probably, I don't know. Right.

SPEAKER_03 33:52

It was still in port.

SPEAKER_01 33:54

Yeah, we got into Guam 26th, 7th of March, roughly. We were put onto we're put onto base because once we pulled in, we started getting people onto base because we had figured out these are the critical people, reactor people, and so on, that we want to get into quarantine or whatever we were calling quarantine. And then shortly after that, it was an interesting uh sequence of events in that the Navy wanted us to be happy with calling that quarantine when we were putting people in gymnasiums six feet apart with the same bathroom. And we started having positive cases in the gymnasiums. And shortly after that is when Captain Crozier and the CMC and I think XO made the decision of we're not calling that quarantine, we're calling that disembarked birthing, which I think probably ruffled a few feathers. Um, but it was true. I mean, they they wanted us to believe that this was what the rest of the Navy was doing, and I get it, we're in we're in Guam, it's hard. I understand that. But at least be open and honest about it. We know what the rules of engagement are for COVID at this point. Everyone knows what the rules are that you're supposed to do. All we were asking is can we just follow the same rules? That's all we wanted to do. And then Captain Crozier's letter got leaked, and then the day after there was a contract for hotels.

SPEAKER_03 35:31

Yeah, and it's hard make your own decision on that one. Yeah, yeah, make that make sense. And and I agree. Like it's hard for me to think, oh, it was already in the works, it was gonna happen, and the letter had nothing to do with it. But that's sort of the the story that that is told from from that is the official that is the official story, yes. The official story is it was already gonna happen and he jumped a gun. But it's it's hard for me to square that, like you said, from a timing standpoint of okay, it wasn't happening, wasn't happening. Then the letter leaks, then the next day the contract happens. So you have to think that that letter had something to do with the contract making itself available.

SPEAKER_01 36:10

You you just have to think of pressurized it, you pressurized the system. So I guess if you if I'm gonna be charitable and say that it was in play, it was in those things were happening already. They were getting caught, the Navy was getting contracts because the Navy cares about that, they care about their people. I understand that. I'm gonna be charitable and say that the contracts were in play and they're working on getting those rooms. By the same token, if that is the case and you somehow neglect to tell the strike group admiral and the CEO of the shipping crisis, where's the strategic breakdown in communication here? That is an absolute, in my opinion, a failure of communication at that point. And that is not that's not brought up. It's just that, oh, his letter was the horrible thing. Well, why didn't you how did why did he not even know if this was uh in play?

SPEAKER_03 36:55

Right. Well, and that's something that I talked to about with Zach Navin. I do want to also caveat that this is no way slamming any of the people who've come on my show or to say that someone's right, someone's wrong. It's really to kind of get at to the truth of what went down and how this played out.

The Letter, The Leak, The Backlash

SPEAKER_03 37:14

And good people did what good people do in very stressful and highly pressurized situations. And and I'm grateful that I got to see this story play out from so many different perspectives. So by no means am I slamming the acting sec nav, am I saying that Captain Froger did anything improper? I'm saying that I think that there was just so many things that were going on at the same time, and everyone had their own bubble of what they thought was going on, that there was no shared understanding of everybody on the same page. And I do believe there was a breakdown. And I mean, you can say whether or not please feel free to share what you want or what you don't want to share. But it does seem that there was a breakdown between the strike group admiral and the captain, like a communications breakdown between the two of them in in some way, shape, or form that influenced the course of events. And how if if that relationship had been stronger, I I would think that maybe a different outcome could have happened. Is is that a fair question?

SPEAKER_01 38:13

I I don't know that that was again, these are these are my opinions, right? I don't know that that was the breakdown as much as the breakdown from outside the ship. Okay, going echelons above. And I'll say settled fleet and pack fleet. I mean, I to give you an example. So I send my letter. I get called the same day by the pack fleet surgeon, a guy I know, and he was rather hot that I had sent the letter, and we're having a discussion about this back and forth, and he wants to know why I sent it. And I and I told him, I said, the main reason I sent it is I had real concerns that the severity of the crisis on board the ship is not being conveyed properly up the chain of command. And we go back and forth talking about this, and finally, after giving him more examples to him of what's going on on the ship, and he's on daily conference calls that I'm on. He says, I didn't realize things were so bad on the ship. This is, you know, I mean, he's the advisor to the four-star admiral who's directing the Navy's COVID response for the Theodore Roosevelt. And I'm like, what else am I supposed to do? I don't know how else to get this message across that this is a public health disaster, besides the fact that I'd use those words repeatedly in a variety of conference calls that he was on. I don't know what other word to say.

SPEAKER_03 39:35

Sure, sure. That's fair.

SPEAKER_01 39:37

So so I don't know that it was uh on the ship. And Admiral Baker, strike group admiral, who I like, we were in lockstep. He he and I had a very good relationship, and he understood the you know, obviously he's got pressures from his bosses. I understand that. But I don't, I I my feeling is it was more outside the ship than onside in inside the ship was the issue.

SPEAKER_03 39:59

Okay. Well, I'm gonna go to the second clip that I have where we talk about it from Admiral, I mean Sheknav Modley's uh perspective of what he saw. And then as we know, we'll we'll go into the next step of this, which is that ultimately they decide to take remove the the CO from from the Theater Roosevelt at at and and and and did they decide to make a determination about whether or not he's going to come back on board the ship. I mean, that's obviously what happened.

SPEAKER_04 40:29

Surely it certainly was. That's their job to make sure there isn't one, you know, particularly in a crisis. Yeah. So, you know, to me, the the solution in Almogilde, and and I was uh admittedly very frustrated with Almogilde because I implored him to pick up the phone and call the captain. Yes, that's in your book multiple multiple times. And he just didn't feel like that was his job to do that. He wanted to rely on the chain of command. And frankly, no one in the chain of command, either Bill Merse or Accolino, any of those guys, called me and said, don't do it, don't, you know, we'll we'll work. No one said anything. No one was really defending him. And I don't even think that Admiral Gilday was defending him. I just think he wanted to sort of you know put it aside so it wouldn't be an issue anymore. But the the strategy they came up with was to suspend him until the investigation was over. And and I said, investigations like this take weeks and weeks of days.

SPEAKER_03 41:25

Oh, it would have taken months.

SPEAKER_04 41:27

Yes, and and he said, no, it'll be over in. I said, how long? And he said, it'll be over in days. I said, okay, well, you obviously are either not being truthful or you haven't been in the Navy very long. Because we we know how long this h how long this takes. And I just felt like the ship needed to get back in control, they needed to get back out to sea, they needed to execute the plan that we had put in place on Guam to get the sailors clear the virus and and go. And I felt like if we had him there sitting in some BOQ in Guam on suspension, I think the crew would have been still looking at him as a CEO. He would have been viewed as a martyr. It just was, it just, it wouldn't have ended. And it just really needed to end so that we could get the thing back at sea. And we brought Rick Sardiello, Admiral Sardiello in. He had been the previous CEO and the ship was back at sea like in a week and a half or something, and you never heard another word.

SPEAKER_03 42:19

So that's the part of the story that nobody talks about either. It really is. Like and then that's why I'm so appreciative of the fact that you wrote the book because I think that there are still to this day, I wouldn't be surprised if people at the Naval Academy and joint staff, college, or wherever else are studying this whole incident as a case study, and very similar to like any other big Navy issue, like Fat Leonard, you really need to hear things from all sides. And I think that's one of the things I really strive to do on the Stories of Service podcast. I don't want to see things from a partisan lens. I don't want to see things from just one person's point of view. I really want to know what happened and what was the bigger picture going on. And you filled a lot of those gaps.

Leadership Change And What Improved

SPEAKER_03 43:04

So I think the thing that I want to know from your perspective was is he says, Oh, we took off Captain Crozier and within a week and a half the the CO came on and everything was fine. Did the circumstances change? I mean, what I would think too that there might be more at play than just a new person coming on board.

SPEAKER_01 43:25

I think the two things that changed. Let's see, Captain Sardiello, now Admiral Sardiello came back on the ship around the 6th of 6th of April, because that was he he flew over from to the yeah, he flew over to the states or from the states with the acting sec nav on the same flight.

SPEAKER_03 43:44

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 43:45

And he took over and he had been our seal, he'd been my SEO before, so I'd known him before. And he came back and not a week and a half, but almost two months later, we went back to sea. Because it takes that long when When there's a testing program implemented that that that we did not recommend. But so the two things that happened was once we started getting people off the ship, and there are there have been articles published in medical literature about this, the cases started dropping. Things started, I mean, that's just how it works when you when you when you follow. Yeah. So I don't know that Captain Sardiello was was great. He I don't know that it was any he's he's a different style of leader than than Captain Crozier, but he was great. He knew the ship. It was good to, it was good to have a known face, I will say, back on board. Though his first words to me is that he was told that he should fire me. So that was that was fun. But and and I just told him, you know, okay, and he he told me that and I said, Okay, okay. And then he said, you know, he just wanted to know if I was all in. And I told him, I was like, you know, I've been all in from day one. This is I've been all in for what is right for the sailors on the ship from day one. And I didn't get fired. Interesting, but that's another story. So I don't know that there was I don't know that there was anything different that would have happened because even before Captain Sar Sardiella got back, it was Captain Keeler, the XO had fleeted up to acting CO.

SPEAKER_03 45:16

Right.

SPEAKER_01 45:17

And at that point, the wheels were in motion.

SPEAKER_03 45:20

At that point, you were getting the appropriate quarantine for these sailors, so things were happening as the case was playing out, the case was just playing out, and several weeks had passed, and now you were moving forward. But the interesting part about all this, and as we know, there was talk for for weeks that they were going to reinstate him, and then Mark Esper, I believe it was, with uh Trump's recommendation, had made the decision that this was not going to be a reinstatement. And I think the thing that upsets me about this case, and and what little I do know about it, is that there was one investigation written, and then when the case went a different way, another investigation was written. And it kind of makes people wonder like, well, where's the truth then? If we're just gonna write an investigation to suit the narrative of what people want, and we see that play out. I mean, I don't know if that's your perspective, but that seems to be mine because I've seen that play out in other cases I've covered on the podcast.

SPEAKER_01 46:23

Yeah, once once they said, because yes, the expectation was is that Captain Crocher is going to be reinstated. And yes, this was gonna be a big deal. This was gonna be the first time in the history of the Navy something like this had happened, probably, or close to it. Um and that was the expectation. And then that expectation was no, there's going to be a further more detailed investigation. And once that happened, we we could all read the writing on the wall. It's like, okay, now we know where this is gonna go, they're not gonna reinstate him. And so, yes, that that is what happened, and then the final investigation came out in June that said, no, he is indeed not going to be reinstated, and also that that investigation recommended I be fired. So, yeah, it was it was great to see that in writing.

SPEAKER_03 47:14

So, yeah, and that and that kind of goes to to to where to where you you kind of come in, and now you're in a position where you did what you thought was best at the time, and now your career is on the line. How did that how did how did was that surprising to you, or did you kind of expect it, or how were you feeling at that time?

SPEAKER_01 47:36

Disillusion's a good word. It's one of those of when you and I'll and I'll put it so from a medical standpoint, there was a article published in Military Medicine, which is a peer-reviewed journal, about a year after we left the ship. There was an article published of what COVID would look like on an aircraft carrier. And it was a statistical analysis saying what would it really look like if you had a full-on infection or an epidemic on the ship. They estimated we would have had probably a thousand more cases than we did. And I want to say six times more, 20 more, 20 times more hospitalizations, six times more deaths. But the reason we didn't is because we lobbied hard in perhaps ways that were unconventional, people don't like to get people off the ship. And that's when we saw the precipitous decline in cases. Okay, so from a doing what's right for the sailors and getting the best outcome we could with a massive outbreak on a ship, it worked. And then we continued our deployment with no further cases. It worked. So then to see in writing from the you know, the VC and O, well, he did the investigation and signed off by the CNO, that I should be detached for cause. And then farther down in the same investigation is also that Navy Medicine should conduct a debrief with me for lessons learned and best practices. Those two things juxtaposed together was was disappointing, is the the nicest way I can say that. Because truthfully, uh in my opinion, I mean the second nav's clear about it. He he said to Captain Crozier I should have been fired, he said I disobeyed a direct order. I did not, for the record. Uh Captain Crozier probably wouldn't have been my guest speaker at my retirement had I done that. Uh so you know, if the second nav wanted me fired, if Captain Sardello told me he was advised to fire me, the CNO says I should have been fired. If we talk about an American legal system of, you know, speedy trials and all those sorts of things, if you're going to execute justice, execute it expeditiously. They didn't, and then it all played out over the course of my next year and a half on active duty.

Investigations That Shift The Narrative

SPEAKER_01 49:44

When, you know, idealistically, I like to think that they didn't fire me because they saw that you might not have liked the way I made recommendations, but they were right. That's the idealistic part. Realistically, I think they didn't because they went, wow, we fired Captain Crozier, and that didn't go over so well in the press. Probably shouldn't fire the senior physician on board at the same time.

SPEAKER_02 50:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 50:08

Because I mean, I thought, heck, if the secnap's flying out to fire 106, why don't you just fire another one while you're at it? Because what they did instead, I've left the ship. I'm now attached to the hospital here in San Diego. And, you know, I left the ship with a 5-0 detaching Fit rep. Okay. Three months after I've left the ship, I get to have a face-to-face meeting with a four-star admiral to deliver my report of substandard performance, which then triggers the whole show cause and everything. But it's a funny sequence in that I had I had retirement orders in hand, like six, eight months after that, because I was getting near statutory retirement. I had retirement orders in hand, and two days or three days after that, I got the notice of, oh, now we're going to have your board of inquiry to determine if you should be retained in the Navy.

SPEAKER_03 50:58

Um why do you think they even push forward with that? Like they could have just not done any of that. What what who whose face were they saving or whose whose whose axe to grind were they accomplishing by even doing that? Because at this point they had already gotten rid of Captain Crozier. So they already had the proverbial lamb. What was even the point of taking you through the board of inquiry process in your mind?

SPEAKER_01 51:25

I think they did not want to say no to the four-star admiral who recommended that I be required to show cause. That's what I think.

SPEAKER_03 51:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 51:35

And so they, so they and now we're at, you know, this is fall of 21. They wanted me to waive some of the requirements for the board to make it to have like the medical corps admiral show up via Zoom because it was hard to get him there. And my lawyer was like, no, if they they're gonna do this, let's let's make them fly the person out. Um so yeah, so so I have my I have my board, and now I've as a friend of mine said, I clearly want to experience the full sides of the Navy because I've been on both sides of a board now.

SPEAKER_03 52:08

Oh, because you've you've sat a board of inquiry as well.

SPEAKER_01 52:10

I have, I have before, yes. Yes, um, and so now I've experienced the full the full spectrum. Um and you know, I have my board of inquiry, Teresa, I'm not lying two days before I started turning to leave to determine to determine if I should be retained in the US Navy.

SPEAKER_03 52:28

So even if you let's just say you went through the board of inquiry and we'll talk about what the results are. And by the way, there's a really, really good podcast, Star Chamber from Walk the Talk Foundation, and they also interviewed you and they go into a lot more detail about the Board of Inquiry process and how and how and how you went down this road. But my thing is this like, even if you had had the worst possible outcome from the Board of Inquiry, could what would they have done? They would have they would have they would have retired you as a commander, right? That's like the worst thing they could do.

SPEAKER_01 52:59

That's the worst. Okay, but they couldn't do that, they couldn't do that because they have to prove that over 50% of your time as an 06 was not dishonorable, but unsatisfactory standards or what whatever the word is, and and they couldn't because I've been in 06 at that point for seven years or something.

SPEAKER_03 53:18

Oh shoot, so they didn't even have that.

SPEAKER_01 53:21

No, they didn't have that. It's it was funny because my my lawyer had to lay it out for them of if you vote to retain in the U.S. Navy, that means he gets to execute his retirement orders. Okay, I already had orders in hand, okay, and that meant I was retiring the end of December. If you vote to not retain in the Navy, then it goes through a much longer process, and I will be kept in the Navy after my retirement date to go through the appeal process.

SPEAKER_03 53:48

So they would just keep paying you even more money to go through the appeal process because you would appeal to non-retain. But even if they voted to not retain you, you would still retire anyway, and you would still get your 06 captain retirement because of the fifty you didn't meet the 50% threshold, most likely. So it just would have been it would have been in like a paper sanction that wouldn't have even held any weight. But I think it's interesting because I did listen to that podcast on Star Chamber, and something that really struck out at me was sort of the reaction of your board members. Were you actually at the board?

SPEAKER_01 54:26

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 54:27

What was it like the board?

SPEAKER_01 54:28

Okay, it was surreal, it was surreal. Okay, so there's three admirals because that has to, and since I've been in the Navy long enough and in Navy medicine long enough, I know a bunch of them. So the so one of the admirals is a guy they brought back from retirement, great guy for this board. Another one of the admirals, this is one that we, my lawyer and I had some issues with. She was the two-star admiral who was the fleet admiral for the four-star admiral who wrote the report of substandard performance on me.

SPEAKER_03 55:00

Yeah, so it's a little bit of a conflict of interest, but okay.

SPEAKER_01 55:02

We tried to we tried to bring that up, but come to find out if you're an admiral and you say you have no conflict of interest, you have no conflict of interest. Gotcha.

SPEAKER_02 55:10

Um okay, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 55:11

And then the other admiral turns out he's the son of the guy who was the commandant, my commandant at the Naval Academy. That was pretty funny. So the board happens, and then when the board is over, the surreal part of the whole thing is they all come up and shake my hand and thank me for my service. And and and even one of them said, you know, something to the effect of don't let this, you know, ruin your opinion of the Navy or whatever kind of thing. And I just said to him, I said, You know, I would do everything I did on that ship all over again. And he he looked at me and I've known this guy for a bit, and he was like, Yeah, I know you would have. I was like, Yeah, this is what we should do for our sailors, period. Full stage.

SPEAKER_03 55:49

And what and what was their vote? What was the outcome after you presented?

SPEAKER_01 55:52

So the outcome was all right, so there's three things, and actually, I just I I have the hard copy I just found the other day. Um the outcome, so they vote on leadership and they voted three to nothing. I did not meet expected leadership leadership expectations of an 06. Okay. Then the next one was professional performance of duties. That one they voted three to nothing that I did meet those professional performance of my duties as a physician on this ship. And then the last one was deportment, which I really didn't know what that meant. Deportment, they voted two to one that I did meet deportment or did not. I think it was did not meet deportment. I think it was no two to one that I did. And I asked my lawyer, I was like, what does this mean? And he said that deportment, he'd never really he was kind of surprised by that because he said, Well, that one is usually like if you fail your PRTs. And I was like, Yeah, that's not something I do. So I don't really know if that is. He didn't know either. But then they voted to retain me in the Navy and voted, though they didn't have to. This is not they voted that I should be allowed to retire, you know, honorably as an 06. So the board happens. I'm like, oh good, we're all done. I'm gonna retire here two months from now. I'm gonna try to leave the next day or date two days. Sure. The next day I'm at work, I get called by PERS because there's one more hurdle that purrs tells me, yeah, we still have to do a retirement grade determination on you. And that is because I had adverse paper on me within two years of retiring.

SPEAKER_02 57:18

Wow.

SPEAKER_01 57:19

I was like, Yeah, and that's another to your point. And my my lawyer was and my lawyer is on active duty, a good guy, and he he was rather heated. He called Purrz because he's like, No, no, you guys can just to your point of you can just simply let this go, you can just let it go by the wayside. It's not right.

SPEAKER_03 57:34

You don't have to do this, you don't have to make to make this an issue.

SPEAKER_01 57:38

Yeah, but they did, and then I retired, and then six weeks, eight weeks after I retired, I finally got notification from the sex NAD that I was allowed to retire as an 06. Yeah. That's the it's it's the behind the scenes way of handling justice. I'm like, really? If you want to do this, then just have at it. Not go ahead, do do what you're gonna do, you know. But but it serves their purpose, and it the message gets out of hey, don't poke, don't poke the bear. They don't like it. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 58:06

I mean, the sad part about this is that they're using paperwork and legal mechanisms instead of having conversations. I mean, in instead of just hashing out the issue and determining what happened. None of this ever the the the paper, I mean, the letter, the uh letter should have could have showed up to the San Francisco Chronicle and it just could have been handled. It could have said, Yep, we never meant for that letter to get out. But just so you know, Joe NCQ public, we we're taking care of the issue. As you can see, we've got these hotel rooms. That could have been the end of it.

SPEAKER_01 58:40

It could have been a good news story.

SPEAKER_03 58:42

It could have been a good news story. Hey, this captain was sounding the alarm, he was doing what any good captain can should do in these circumstances. Unfortunately, the letter was leaked. We don't know why. We're doing an investigation to try to find out how the letter was leaked, and then you know what? It would have died in like two, I bet you in two or three days, the media would have moved on. Yeah, they would have nobody would have been the wiser, they would have, but instead, they they they they ruined lives. I mean, not ruined, but just really made lives painful for a lot of people and lost, you know, a very, very good 06, in my view.

SPEAKER_01 59:16

Yeah, and and and Brett was great. Oh my gosh, he was great.

SPEAKER_03 59:19

He would he would have made it, he would have made flag, absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 59:22

Yeah, the I I would love to see the study look at retention rates of the crew that was on a Theodore Roosevelt during that time. I would love to see what it looks like five years down the road or five years now. Uh, because I it it had to have had an impact because boy, there were a lot of disillusioned people on that ship.

SPEAKER_03 59:41

I bet the rewritten investigation was what disillusioned me to the public affairs community. Like I always point this out when people ask me, you know, how how I went down the road that I did as a truth teller and a podcaster. I I I usually I I can now pretty much pinpoint it to this being the first case that although I wasn't directly involved in it, I knew people who were involved in it. And it changed the course of how I how I saw my profession because of the way it was handled. And then once I was attuned to the fact that this is the way things get played out, that opened up a whole nother door for me to go, wait a minute, what about this case? What about the case on the fire on the USS Boxer? What about Fat Leonard? And I started like looking at some of these other cases and sort of piecing together what goes on in the military. And it was really unfortunate. And and then I started understanding too how little Congress will act and and and really step in and do anything unless they're really forced to by by being shamed. And so that was that's also, and and I guess that's also another good question.

Moral Injury And Life After Service

SPEAKER_03 1:00:43

Did you ever contact your congressional officials or did you ever try to go down that road for any of this?

SPEAKER_01 1:00:49

No, no, okay. Don't have a book either, but you know, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:55

But but but what you do have is you have this post-military career and and life goes on. And and tell me a little bit about what what that was like for you. I mean, uh that that is a good question. So did you feel like you had to do any kind of therapy or healing, or or how has that been for you?

SPEAKER_01 1:01:12

That's a great question. I don't, you know, no, I haven't. My my my wife might say maybe I maybe I do like going on these really long endurance hikes that I do, and maybe that's my therapy. I don't know.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:24

I think that's great therapy.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:26

It is great therapy, yeah. But it is what's the what's the term moral injury. Yeah, yeah, it is moral in the loss loss in trust in the system kind of thing. And it's it's not, I don't know, you know, it's not that I have lost trust in the Navy. I just think they were I think the the there were people at that time who I don't view it as a systemic thing, I view it more as a you know, we felt we had the right group on the ship at the time. I think there were people outside the ship who maybe weren't the right people in those positions. And and I think that but but it's it's bigger than just the navy because it was a okay, go back to that time, right? Two weeks to flatten the curve, you know, that the whole thing was and and I'm gonna say this because these these words bothered me a bit from the uh from the acting sec nav. The fact that he said that we were, you know, that the ship was part of the whole great national freak out about COVID. That I think is a little dismissive of a global pandemic. And and it's dismissive of the, you know, what is it, a million in the US died, and seven million total worldwide, I think, and 15 to 20 excess or 15 to 20 million of deaths attributed to excess mortality because the healthcare system was overwhelmed. So I don't know if it's a great national freakout, but if people in positions of power have that opinion, then you could see how those opinions and their thoughts on how you're handling something get get carried down. True. Um but but no, I didn't I didn't I didn't have to go back to your original question. Sorry, it's a sidebar. I didn't have to go through therapy, but but it was disappointing. Yeah, a good friend, a good friend of mine said, he's like, look, your your career has been a great movie. Unfortunately, the ending of it sucked, and they should have left that in the cutting room floor, you know.

SPEAKER_03 1:03:27

That's a good way to look at it.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:28

Yeah, and I'm like, Yes, that is that is the that is the way I that is the way I view it. And and I uh to to a line I heard from a buddy recently, which was great, people ask me, because people ask me all the time, because I'm at so I'm at UCSD, there's several of us that are retired Navy docs there, but I people ask me all the time, do you miss the Navy? You know, and everything. And my line is now I've adopted this line from a friend of mine is I don't miss the circus at all, but I miss the clowns, which is true.

SPEAKER_03 1:03:56

Yeah, yeah, I like that.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:59

The Navy is a circus, and I don't miss that, but I miss the people I worked with, and that's what that's the that's what you come away with this. And and I try to that I had way more good than bad, so I'm not gonna be not gonna be upset about it. And I've been very happy that I go back to my med school every year to do a case study on this very for the med students, which is great, which is how how it should be to your point. Of we should learn from this. Nothing we did was perfect, no one was perfect. It was the proverbial medical fog of war, but we should learn from this from a system perspective and also individual perspectives, and how can we be better at this? Because boy, the the Navy wasn't it. I was repeatedly asked, so what do you need to solve this? And I remember saying, I'm a doctor on a ship, aren't there? I thought there were big Navy plans for these things, you know. This is my own ignorance, you know. I was like, I would have thought we were we would have thought of viruses on the ship before, you know. And we have what's that?

SPEAKER_03 1:05:00

I said, and we have, we just didn't understand the scope of what this would mean. And I think the biggest problem with COVID was the fact that it was so politicized, and because of that, it wasn't like there was a shared understanding across all demographics, all political views of what this was. And and you know, you had I I've covered many stories of the soldiers and sailors and service members who who refused the shot. So there was always there was a big contingent of those people too, and how they were fighting their fights, or the ones who got vaccine injured. I mean, there's so many aspects to this issue. And I think that as you said, it was the it was the fog of a medical emergency that unfortunately caused people to not necessarily work as well together as as you would like for them to be under a normal kind of circumstance. And then the letter was just kind of like the the spark, you know, the the letter to the San Francisco Chronicle that was like. It was already a pressurized situation. But then once that that that letter went out there, that was like you know, that was like throwing the care, you know, the kerosene onto the fire, and and now it's this big, big crisis, but it was already kind of boiling up to a point where it was going to go there anyway. And it's and it is it is unfortunate. And I do hope that one day this is looked at more holistically. And that was the point of me doing all three of these shows, was because I really wanted people to see this episode, if they really want to study this issue on the Theodore Roosevelt, watch the podcast I did with Brett Crozier or read his book, then read the book from Thomas Maudley or watch the podcast, then watch this podcast or your podcast on Star Chamber, because there really is a lot to be gained from understanding how this was impacting each person involved at their level. It'd be interesting, even the strike group admiral, if he would ever speak publicly on this one day. I don't know if he has, I don't think he has, but I I think it would be interesting to hear here from his perspective as well. But I I do appreciate you taking the time to come on the show. Was there anything else that I didn't cover as we discussed this that you want to address?

SPEAKER_01 1:07:14

I was writing notes when we were watching that, watching those clips. Yeah, I don't think so. You know, I think it's it was challenging.

Medical Uncertainty And Final Takeaways

SPEAKER_01 1:07:22

You're right, because it was politicized, absolutely. The other challenging part was the fact that it was it was novel, right? We had three months of data, and it was a very interesting dynamic of and I was a former line officer, right? But the line wants certainty. I understand that. And and I kept on having to say, we don't know. We have three months of information about this, we don't know the long-term effects, we don't know how long antibodies last, we don't know, you know, all that. So that was a for me, that was an interesting dynamic to watch how that plays. And I think because in medicine we deal with uncertainty all the time because every human is different in response, and with COVID, every human responds differently, you know, and so we deal with that all the time. We're like, I'm I don't know, let's have we'll see how it plays out, you know. So that yeah, that made it I think that made it frustrating as heck for the line guys because that's they they want certainty. I got it, I understand that. And then for us not to be able to deliver certainty was an interesting part of the dynamic with this as well.

SPEAKER_03 1:08:23

So right, right. There was just so many unknowns that you guys didn't know, and and good people tried to do the best they could under less less than ideal circumstances. Well, I do appreciate you taking the time to come on. I think it, like I said, I think this is an important chapter in our Navy history and one that should be studied and re-examined. It will happen again. We will have another pandemic, and we can only hope that the lessons learned and the things that that we could gain by studying these issues can be applied uh to future public health crises. But I'll go full screen to say goodbye to the audience um and meet you backstage to say goodbye. But thank you so much, John.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:58

Thank you so much, Risa. I appreciate your podcast. Appreciate what you do. Thanks for having me on.

SPEAKER_03 1:09:02

Absolutely. All right, guys. Up actually, on me, that is a wrap. Hope you enjoy the rest of your evening. I do believe, yes, I do have uh back to back shows each week now, starting for the next few weeks. So please stay tuned. And as I always do, to close out these calls, please take care of yourselves, please take care of each other, and enjoy the rest of your evening. And bye bye now.