March 23, 2020 • 11 mins
Cases of coronavirus only continue to rise especially here in the U.S. where we now have over 30,000 cases. But while we still face many problems ahead, we wanted to take a moment to talk to someone who has recovered from COVID-19. Carl Goldman, owner of KHTS Radio at hometownstation.com, was one of the passengers of the Diamond Princess cruise ship that docked in Japan. He spent time in quarantine on the ship, came down with the virus, was transported to Nebraska for treatment and finally tested negative. Carl joins us to tell us about how bad his illness was, the clinical study he signed up for, and what it is like to get back home.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
It's Monday, March. I'm Oscar Ramirez from the Daily Dive
podcast in Los Angeles, and this is your daily coronavirus update.
Cases of coronavirus only continue to rise, especially here in
the U S where we now have over thirty cases.
But while we still face many problems ahead, we wanted
to take a moment to talk to someone who has
recovered from COVID nineteen. Carl Goldman, owner of k h
(00:24):
t S Radio at Hometown Station dot Com, was one
of the passengers of the Diamond Princess Cruise ship that
docked in Japan. He spent time in quarantine on the ship,
came down with the virus, was transported to Nebraska for treatment,
and finally tested negative. Carl joins us to tell us
how bad his illness was, the clinical study he signed
up for, and what it is like to get back home. Carl,
(00:46):
thank you very much for joining us. Of course will
to be on with you. So we wanted to talk
to Carl about his journey with the coronavirus COVID nineteen.
Carl has come out on the other side of this thing.
He has recovered from it. Many people might know his story.
He was one of the first people who actually kind
(01:07):
of got this in all the hubbub. He was on
the Diamond Princess cruise ship that was docked in Japan.
They were quarantined there for about two weeks, and I
think right when you were getting ready to leave, you
had come down with a fever, Carl and then you
got diagnosed with COVID nineteen. Is that how it played
out for you? Diamond Princess was the first we were
in Yokohama, Japan quarantine. They're twelve of our fourteen days
(01:32):
of quarantine. The State Department put us on seven forty
seven military cargo planes. I had no symptoms when we
left the ship. When we got on the plane, I
took a nap because it had been all nighter to
get to the plane. Two hours later, woke up with
a hundred and three fever, which was really really strange,
but seems to be the common denominator for everyone. They
(01:54):
get a quick high fever unlike other colds, and the flu.
I had no atate, no sore throat, no sneezing, no stuffiness,
no body aches. And then even with a high fever
like that, no chills or sweats that you usually get.
And that's what a lot of people say. You know,
they're asymptomatic at first or something, and then if it
(02:15):
gets very severe, it happens very quickly. Also in all
of this, throughout this whole thing, because people that don't
know too much about it still, we just hear what
the symptoms are, everything at its worst, at the worst
of this illness that you had. How bad did he get?
For me? It was not that bad on a one
at ten scale. The fever lasted eight hours un till
we landed at Travis Air Force Base in Sacramento. Fever
(02:38):
was gone by then. I did develop a dry cough.
That cough remained with me for many weeks, but other
than that, if I wasn't contagious, I would have been
at work two days later. Unfortunately, it ended up being
a twenty nine day or deal with the quarantine, and
then in addition to that the twelve days a princess.
(02:59):
It was well over a month for us to be quarantined.
That's amazing. That's a ton of time. And people are
going through this whole self quarantining thing right now, and
the cities and states are starting to impose restrictions on
bars and restaurants and telling people to shelter in place.
So it's a very difficult thing that a lot of
people have to come up with, but you obviously had
to go with it. Right at the beginning, You've been
(03:20):
chronicling a lot of what's been going on at hometown
station dot com. Thank you for doing that because it
just provides a window into what's going on and what
really happens when you get sick with this. Just a
question because you are back home now, you were finally
tested negative for this, tell us about that process about
testing negative for this. The procedure protocol for the test
(03:41):
is to put a cotton swab deep up each nostril
for about five seconds. Tests that for a long time.
They were also doing you deep down the throat, but
found that was not quite as accurate, and then I,
in addition it signed up for a clinical study that
they're still doing on me, where they've been taking a
lot of blood seeing how the virus or if the
(04:01):
virus travels through my blood. They've swabbed everything I've touched,
from my computer to my iPhone to the toilet seat.
They put a device in the collect air samples to
see how the virus traveled through the air, and then
as additional bonuses, I had a swab under each eyelid
and one deep up my rear end. So I took
one for the team here. Thank you, Carl. The eyelid
(04:26):
one is the one that creeps me out a little bit. Um.
It's funny. I think you should do a poll on
your show here to see which people would dread the most,
the eyelids or the rent. Yeah, totally, I A'm gonna
have to do that one. Have the doctor's given you
any instruction on how to operate now that you're back home?
Is the virus completely out of your body? Can you
(04:48):
get it again that they indicated any of that to you.
The virus is completely out of my body. I'm no
longer contagious, I'm fine, and I'm also immune to it
for many, many, many months, so i can go out
if I choose. But however, I've decided to stay quarantine
for an additional fourteen days just to be not necessarily
(05:09):
out there, particularly as things are getting crazier and crazier
up there with everyone. But doctors don't know if I'm
going to be immune a year from that, all five
years from now, or perhaps a lifetime, like is true
with some ailments, they're not going to know that they're
going to continue to study me the clinical study I
signed up for. It isn't going to help me, but
(05:31):
hopefully it will provide many more answers or speed up
the processes they try and unravel the clues to a
COVID main team. So, just to clarify, because I think
this is very important. You're immune for many months to
come because you beat this quote unquote particular strain. So
if it mutates and it comes back a season from
now slightly different, then there's a possibility you can get
(05:53):
that again. Correct And this clinical study that you're participating in,
how long is this going to last for you? I'm
told there'll be many months, at least six months. They'll
test me here in California and probably do follow ups
for a while because as we all know, so little
is known about the virus. And if I can provide
a few answers, then I'm all for it. How was
(06:15):
the treatment while you were there at the hospital, And
also tell us about the medical workers that you got
to know. I know you wrote about it a lot
on your website, but tell us a little about the
medical workers and then the in the treatment that you
were going through, despite the symptoms not being that severe.
They were my angels there in Omaha, Nebraska and Nebraska Medicine.
I ended up in the bio containment room. The whole
(06:38):
bio containment wing of the medicine Obraska Medicine was set
up right after nine eleven when the antrax scare hit.
They never used it for antrax. Fifteen years later they
used it for the first time with the Ebola outbreak.
The patients there then I was patient number two set
up now for Corona. In that room was like a
scene out of the Andromeda Strain. No one entered without
(07:01):
full hazmat suits, looking like Neil Armstrong landing on the
Moon with air pumps behind them. They had two cameras
on me at all times to video monitors so I
can communicate back to central command. I was hooked up
to monitors. The doors and windows were all specially sealed,
so I was in there like a fish inside an aquarium.
(07:24):
Was that stressful for you now? I think the biggest
stress was a friendly trouble with two friends on the
Diamond Princess and Jerry Jordansen was the first to come
down with the virus. She was given an hour to
get off the Diamond Princess, then taken by ambulance for
four hours to a hospital in Fukushima, Japan, because by
then all the hospitals around the Diamond Princess were stuffed
(07:46):
to capacity. It was an unknown period when she was
taken away, separated from her husband, a big language barrier,
so she had was her Google translator on her iPhone,
and then of course the unknown of what the virus
was going to do for her. When realized she was
going to be okay, and by then there was enough
evidence out there that of the population, we're getting the
(08:08):
virus similar to me, like a mild cold, So I
was not that concerned. By the time I got to
the bio containment center. I did get to spend my
sixties seventh birthday there in bed alone. And then the
funny thing is, it's not so funny, but there's absolutely
no cure for the virus right now. So all they
could do was give me a little bit of ib
(08:28):
profen for a fever that I no longer had, just
to make sure it didn't come back. And then I've
written about this in my journal. Galons and galons of Gatorade.
I've been through every flavor of Gatorade multiple amounts of times.
The light blue is the bomb. Stay away from that great,
that's nasty, Carl. What was the first thing that you
(08:49):
did when you finally got home, and if you can
comment kind of on what you've seen now that you've
gotten back. Obviously, were you know, people making runs on
the grocery store, toilet paper and clean supplies out of
stock all over the place. Comment on that if you
can also, sure, And I think people just need to
calm down and realize that of the folks, this thing
(09:11):
is not going to be that serious. Get a good
digital thermometer. We're getting to springtime. Allergies are going to hit,
So don't freak out with a little sniffle or a cough.
Take your temperature because the cases I'm aware of, the
virus hits very very fast with the fever and that
seems to be the common denominator for everyone. When I
(09:31):
landed off the plane in Los Angeles, a friend of
mine picked me up and he had gotten a giant
container of my favorite ice cream, Cold Stones, peanut butter
and chocolate so I dug into that, not realizing how
much I missed it all those two months away. So
that was fine. Then, of course, get coming home, seeing
(09:52):
my wife hugging her and seeing my dogs letting them
lick me for many, many minutes, and that was just
an ultimate life. I think quarantine for everybody now in
this craziness, the best thing to do is not stress,
take it one day at a time, don't look back
at the past, don't make up fantasies about what the
(10:12):
future is going to be like. Just live with the
present and make lemonade out of lemons. My wife looked
at her quarantine. She never got the virus, which is weird.
She came on that two and a half weeks ago
and has been running a radio station. She looks now
back at her quarantine as a gift for many many reasons.
I've only been home two days, so I'm not quite
(10:34):
seeing it as a gift yet. But I did realize
that the number one chore that I hated, cleaning up
the dog poop, is no longer something that I hate.
I actually look at it and say, hey, it's cool
and I'm able to do this now. Well, Carl, thank
you very much for joining us. I'm happy that you
are healthy and you are over this now and you
(10:56):
can get back to your normal life again. Carl Goldman,
owner of k HTS Radio hometown station dot com, thank
you very much for joining us. You got it. Thank you,
Take care. I'm Oscar Ramirez and this has been your
daily coronavirus update. You don't forget that. For today's big
news stories, you can check me out on the Daily
Dive podcast every Monday through Friday, so follow us on
(11:19):
our heart radio or wherever you get your podcasts.
It's Monday, March. I'm Oscar Ramirez from the Daily Dive
podcast in Los Angeles, and this is your daily coronavirus update.
Cases of coronavirus only continue to rise, especially here in
the U S where we now have over thirty cases.
But while we still face many problems ahead, we wanted
to take a moment to talk to someone who has
recovered from COVID nineteen. Carl Goldman, owner of k h
(00:24):
t S Radio at Hometown Station dot Com, was one
of the passengers of the Diamond Princess Cruise ship that
docked in Japan. He spent time in quarantine on the ship,
came down with the virus, was transported to Nebraska for treatment,
and finally tested negative. Carl joins us to tell us
how bad his illness was, the clinical study he signed
up for, and what it is like to get back home. Carl,
(00:46):
thank you very much for joining us. Of course will
to be on with you. So we wanted to talk
to Carl about his journey with the coronavirus COVID nineteen.
Carl has come out on the other side of this thing.
He has recovered from it. Many people might know his story.
He was one of the first people who actually kind
(01:07):
of got this in all the hubbub. He was on
the Diamond Princess cruise ship that was docked in Japan.
They were quarantined there for about two weeks, and I
think right when you were getting ready to leave, you
had come down with a fever, Carl and then you
got diagnosed with COVID nineteen. Is that how it played
out for you? Diamond Princess was the first we were
in Yokohama, Japan quarantine. They're twelve of our fourteen days
(01:32):
of quarantine. The State Department put us on seven forty
seven military cargo planes. I had no symptoms when we
left the ship. When we got on the plane, I
took a nap because it had been all nighter to
get to the plane. Two hours later, woke up with
a hundred and three fever, which was really really strange,
but seems to be the common denominator for everyone. They
(01:54):
get a quick high fever unlike other colds, and the flu.
I had no atate, no sore throat, no sneezing, no stuffiness,
no body aches. And then even with a high fever
like that, no chills or sweats that you usually get.
And that's what a lot of people say. You know,
they're asymptomatic at first or something, and then if it
(02:15):
gets very severe, it happens very quickly. Also in all
of this, throughout this whole thing, because people that don't
know too much about it still, we just hear what
the symptoms are, everything at its worst, at the worst
of this illness that you had. How bad did he get?
For me? It was not that bad on a one
at ten scale. The fever lasted eight hours un till
we landed at Travis Air Force Base in Sacramento. Fever
(02:38):
was gone by then. I did develop a dry cough.
That cough remained with me for many weeks, but other
than that, if I wasn't contagious, I would have been
at work two days later. Unfortunately, it ended up being
a twenty nine day or deal with the quarantine, and
then in addition to that the twelve days a princess.
(02:59):
It was well over a month for us to be quarantined.
That's amazing. That's a ton of time. And people are
going through this whole self quarantining thing right now, and
the cities and states are starting to impose restrictions on
bars and restaurants and telling people to shelter in place.
So it's a very difficult thing that a lot of
people have to come up with, but you obviously had
to go with it. Right at the beginning, You've been
(03:20):
chronicling a lot of what's been going on at hometown
station dot com. Thank you for doing that because it
just provides a window into what's going on and what
really happens when you get sick with this. Just a
question because you are back home now, you were finally
tested negative for this, tell us about that process about
testing negative for this. The procedure protocol for the test
(03:41):
is to put a cotton swab deep up each nostril
for about five seconds. Tests that for a long time.
They were also doing you deep down the throat, but
found that was not quite as accurate, and then I,
in addition it signed up for a clinical study that
they're still doing on me, where they've been taking a
lot of blood seeing how the virus or if the
(04:01):
virus travels through my blood. They've swabbed everything I've touched,
from my computer to my iPhone to the toilet seat.
They put a device in the collect air samples to
see how the virus traveled through the air, and then
as additional bonuses, I had a swab under each eyelid
and one deep up my rear end. So I took
one for the team here. Thank you, Carl. The eyelid
(04:26):
one is the one that creeps me out a little bit. Um.
It's funny. I think you should do a poll on
your show here to see which people would dread the most,
the eyelids or the rent. Yeah, totally, I A'm gonna
have to do that one. Have the doctor's given you
any instruction on how to operate now that you're back home?
Is the virus completely out of your body? Can you
(04:48):
get it again that they indicated any of that to you.
The virus is completely out of my body. I'm no
longer contagious, I'm fine, and I'm also immune to it
for many, many, many months, so i can go out
if I choose. But however, I've decided to stay quarantine
for an additional fourteen days just to be not necessarily
(05:09):
out there, particularly as things are getting crazier and crazier
up there with everyone. But doctors don't know if I'm
going to be immune a year from that, all five
years from now, or perhaps a lifetime, like is true
with some ailments, they're not going to know that they're
going to continue to study me the clinical study I
signed up for. It isn't going to help me, but
(05:31):
hopefully it will provide many more answers or speed up
the processes they try and unravel the clues to a
COVID main team. So, just to clarify, because I think
this is very important. You're immune for many months to
come because you beat this quote unquote particular strain. So
if it mutates and it comes back a season from
now slightly different, then there's a possibility you can get
(05:53):
that again. Correct And this clinical study that you're participating in,
how long is this going to last for you? I'm
told there'll be many months, at least six months. They'll
test me here in California and probably do follow ups
for a while because as we all know, so little
is known about the virus. And if I can provide
a few answers, then I'm all for it. How was
(06:15):
the treatment while you were there at the hospital, And
also tell us about the medical workers that you got
to know. I know you wrote about it a lot
on your website, but tell us a little about the
medical workers and then the in the treatment that you
were going through, despite the symptoms not being that severe.
They were my angels there in Omaha, Nebraska and Nebraska Medicine.
I ended up in the bio containment room. The whole
(06:38):
bio containment wing of the medicine Obraska Medicine was set
up right after nine eleven when the antrax scare hit.
They never used it for antrax. Fifteen years later they
used it for the first time with the Ebola outbreak.
The patients there then I was patient number two set
up now for Corona. In that room was like a
scene out of the Andromeda Strain. No one entered without
(07:01):
full hazmat suits, looking like Neil Armstrong landing on the
Moon with air pumps behind them. They had two cameras
on me at all times to video monitors so I
can communicate back to central command. I was hooked up
to monitors. The doors and windows were all specially sealed,
so I was in there like a fish inside an aquarium.
(07:24):
Was that stressful for you now? I think the biggest
stress was a friendly trouble with two friends on the
Diamond Princess and Jerry Jordansen was the first to come
down with the virus. She was given an hour to
get off the Diamond Princess, then taken by ambulance for
four hours to a hospital in Fukushima, Japan, because by
then all the hospitals around the Diamond Princess were stuffed
(07:46):
to capacity. It was an unknown period when she was
taken away, separated from her husband, a big language barrier,
so she had was her Google translator on her iPhone,
and then of course the unknown of what the virus
was going to do for her. When realized she was
going to be okay, and by then there was enough
evidence out there that of the population, we're getting the
(08:08):
virus similar to me, like a mild cold, So I
was not that concerned. By the time I got to
the bio containment center. I did get to spend my
sixties seventh birthday there in bed alone. And then the
funny thing is, it's not so funny, but there's absolutely
no cure for the virus right now. So all they
could do was give me a little bit of ib
(08:28):
profen for a fever that I no longer had, just
to make sure it didn't come back. And then I've
written about this in my journal. Galons and galons of Gatorade.
I've been through every flavor of Gatorade multiple amounts of times.
The light blue is the bomb. Stay away from that great,
that's nasty, Carl. What was the first thing that you
(08:49):
did when you finally got home, and if you can
comment kind of on what you've seen now that you've
gotten back. Obviously, were you know, people making runs on
the grocery store, toilet paper and clean supplies out of
stock all over the place. Comment on that if you
can also, sure, And I think people just need to
calm down and realize that of the folks, this thing
(09:11):
is not going to be that serious. Get a good
digital thermometer. We're getting to springtime. Allergies are going to hit,
So don't freak out with a little sniffle or a cough.
Take your temperature because the cases I'm aware of, the
virus hits very very fast with the fever and that
seems to be the common denominator for everyone. When I
(09:31):
landed off the plane in Los Angeles, a friend of
mine picked me up and he had gotten a giant
container of my favorite ice cream, Cold Stones, peanut butter
and chocolate so I dug into that, not realizing how
much I missed it all those two months away. So
that was fine. Then, of course, get coming home, seeing
(09:52):
my wife hugging her and seeing my dogs letting them
lick me for many, many minutes, and that was just
an ultimate life. I think quarantine for everybody now in
this craziness, the best thing to do is not stress,
take it one day at a time, don't look back
at the past, don't make up fantasies about what the
(10:12):
future is going to be like. Just live with the
present and make lemonade out of lemons. My wife looked
at her quarantine. She never got the virus, which is weird.
She came on that two and a half weeks ago
and has been running a radio station. She looks now
back at her quarantine as a gift for many many reasons.
I've only been home two days, so I'm not quite
(10:34):
seeing it as a gift yet. But I did realize
that the number one chore that I hated, cleaning up
the dog poop, is no longer something that I hate.
I actually look at it and say, hey, it's cool
and I'm able to do this now. Well, Carl, thank
you very much for joining us. I'm happy that you
are healthy and you are over this now and you
(10:56):
can get back to your normal life again. Carl Goldman,
owner of k HTS Radio hometown station dot com, thank
you very much for joining us. You got it. Thank you,
Take care. I'm Oscar Ramirez and this has been your
daily coronavirus update. You don't forget that. For today's big
news stories, you can check me out on the Daily
Dive podcast every Monday through Friday, so follow us on
(11:19):
our heart radio or wherever you get your podcasts.
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