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How Danny Burstein and Diana Berrent are Helping Those in Need with Survivor Corps
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Oct 27, 2022
Danny Burstein, who was starring in Moulin Rouge at the time of the shutdown, survived a particularly brutal case of COVID-19 last month, and now he is set on helping others do the same. Just yesterday, the six-time Tony nominee joined founder of the Survivor Corps, Diana Berrent, to donate plasma- especially important since both have fully recovered and now have antibodies in their plasma that can attack the virus.
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Welcome, everybody, and thank you for joining me and my very special guest
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Broadway's Danny Burstein of Moulin Rouge and Diana Berent, the founder of Survivor Corps
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How are you both today? I'm great. I am super excited because Danny and I are going to go donate our convalescent plasma today
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So I just finished a spinach salad for breakfast, not your typical
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but I'm making sure those iron levels are up and hydrating away, ready to go
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I'm very excited. I actually, uh, Diana gave me a tip to have some spinach as well. So I had a
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chicken salad sandwich with lots of spinach on top. So I'm ready. I spared, I spared the liver
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that I made myself for dinner last night, which I assure you no one else in my family took part of
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Well, first of all, you two haven't met before, right? This is your first introduction to both
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of you, right? Exactly. We're going to meet later on today. Exactly. It's such a strange thing to
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you know, the people who are brought together through the most unlikely circumstances
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that we were both struck by this virus each in very different ways, but we're going to go
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help save lives together. This is so great. Explain to everybody what the two of you are doing today
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um dan you want me to i'll explain just since i've done it a bunch of times
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um so um when danny and i both got covid our bodies reacted exactly the way they were supposed
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to mine probably a little bit faster than danny's um he had a more severe um you know he had a more
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severe illness than i did um i didn't have to be hospitalized i was very lucky i was able to
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resolve at home, but my body and his body both encountered a virus that it had never seen before
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and it eventually produced the antibodies to fight it off. And those antibodies, at the end of the
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day, are like a superpower. And so now that we are both on the other side of it and we are both
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healthy, we are now in a position to share that superpower with others whose bodies were not able
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to mount their own antibody responses. So we at Survivor Corps, we are the largest grassroots organization
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in America right now. And we have issued a call to arms
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literally a call to arms, because inside the arm of every COVID-19 survivor
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are the antibodies that will lead us to a cure. So Danny and I are gonna go donate our plasma today
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That will, part of mine will go to research and part of it and the rest will go to patients
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who need it most. Danny, what does today mean to you, what you're about to do
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Personally, I went through a very difficult time, and I thought I might not make it while I was in the hospital
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And I hope that nobody ever has to go through that. And this is my way of giving back
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I was actually looking for a way to donate my plasma. And I asked some people that I thought might know
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And one of the producers of Fiddler on the Roof, Lawrence Holtzman
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And he said, you know, my wife knows something about this. And he put us in charge
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He put us in touch. And the ball started rolling about a week ago
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And they set up an appointment for me. And then all of a sudden I got to meet all the beautiful people
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internet that I'm going to meet in person today. And I had no idea that Survivor Corps even existed
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I just wanted to do something. I just wanted to give back in some way, especially to all those
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people who helped save my life at Mount Sinai Hospital uptown. Because Danny, you were, I know
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Diana, you were one of the first to come down with COVID. Danny, you were one of the first in
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in the Broadway area that we were following your story of what it was like
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but you didn't have anybody to actually text or go after who you could sort of relate to at the time
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because you were so early am I correct You are correct for the most part There was one a casting director Laura Stanzik who had mentioned that she was in the hospital on Facebook And so I immediately started texting her And there was a choreographer Michael Arnold who also had who was in the hospital as well And we were sharing stories and still stayed in touch because all of us had issues with our lungs
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I had double pneumonia and was coughing blood. And so it took a very long time
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My lungs, this is two months out now, and my lungs are just starting to feel normal
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It took forever. There were various little issues. Just walking down a flight of steps would win me
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And now I feel actually normal, and it's an amazing feeling. Yeah. So Diana, talk about the importance of putting Survivor Corps together and what it stands for
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So being one of the first people in my area, I live right outside of New York City, although I am a native New Yorker
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So I hate to even admit that I live outside of the city, but it is true. I was one of the first people in my area on Long Island to be diagnosed with COVID in early March
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and I was also one of the first people who came forward with my identity and told my story. At
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the time, there was such a tremendous stigma and still remains in many parts of the country
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And so I realized that by bringing together the entire community of people, if I was going to be
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one of the first to get the virus, if all went well, I would also become one of the first
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survivors. And it did go well, as you're seeing, I'm on the other side of it, free and clear
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And the potential that one person has is incredible. I mean, how many opportunities do you have to save a life in an entire lifetime, let alone three to four in a 28 to 32 minute, you know, how many subscribe to it as the best map you ever took when you donated plasma
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And so if you can multiply that by the, we have 45,000 members of our Facebook group, and that's not touching any of our website traffic
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So we set ourselves up as basically a one-stop shop because navigating the COVID landscape, the post-COVID landscape is so confusing
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It makes trying to read through your health insurance policy look like a breeze by comparison
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So we've set up a one-stop shop that is very simple. It's updated daily
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It gives you all of the options of how to donate your convalescent plasma to go to other patients, how to direct it to scientific studies, other studies you can participate in online
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I just signed up with one that tracks with my Fitbit. So to track my heart rate over time post-COVID
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All these different studies, we encourage people to participate in every single one
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because there's so many mysteries to this virus that need to be solved
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And the answers are in the blood of survivors. Interesting. Because like you were saying earlier, and Danny was saying
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this COVID virus hits so many people in so many different ways because over the past few weeks
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I've had a lot of Broadway actors and behind the scenes people who have all had it and it's
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affected them in totally different ways. Completely. And there's no way to know which
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category you are going to be in. That's what's so frightening about it and what's so anxiety
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producing until you are truly on the other side. I have been exceedingly careful going into the
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situation because my husband has MS. And so I was, everyone said, Oh, you know
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it affects the elderly and the immunocompromised and MS is, you know
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immuno, you know, a disease of immunocompromised, using the right words. And at the end of the day, I was, you know
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I didn't have nearly as bad of an experience as Danny did, but my husband had a much milder experience than I did
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And so, really trying to figure out, you know, are there correlations between the people
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who present first in their lungs versus first in their gut? Is that determine the severity
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Is it determined by the amount of viral load that you taking on which is why we seeing 40 nurses die at a staggering rate out of proportion to 40 women out of the general population So at Survivor Corps we built this community
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We have overflowed the pipeline of convalescent plasma to go to other patients. We are working
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to get that pipeline rerouted to the scientific community. And we are also working along with
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scientists and researchers, major hospitals and organizations trying to figure out a lot of the
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answers to these questions of who is passing it to whom? Is it children to adults? Is it adults to
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children? Are there inflammatory diseases that we need to worry about long-term? How is this going
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to affect our bodies in the long term? And being able to track those things for our own health and
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for the sake of science, and to also be able to know for when that second wave hits, and it's only
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a matter of when, not if, how people like Danny and I will figure that now that we have antibodies
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are they the right antibodies to protect us? How long will they protect us for? These are all
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questions that we need to figure out answers to. And so by, you know, gathering this tremendous
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group of motivated individuals. And, you know, like Danny, I can say it's, I mean, this has been
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an if you build it, they will come moment, because there's nobody who has been touched by COVID at
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any point, to any degree, who comes out on the other side, and whose first inclination is not
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I need to do something to help solve this situation, to help prevent this from happening
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to another person. So we're just sort of setting up the road
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but we have masses of people who are following us, who are following our lead
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And by someone like Danny with his profile donating today, I will be a tremendous inspiration for so many other people to join
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and to realize what they can do in the aftermath of their own COVID experience
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be it mild or severe. Yeah. Danny when you came home did anybody else in your household come down with anything
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Yes actually my wife had been exposed to me for a week and a half when and I'd been
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a week and a half before and into the hospital and she had a very mild version of it as well
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and she has ALS yeah so I was like what wait a minute you know she's always been much stronger
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than me in general anyway. But she, yeah, she had about three days of a mild fever
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and body aches and that was about it. And, you know, it didn't hit her too hard, thank goodness
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But yeah, with me, it was much more difficult. And thank goodness my younger son, Zach
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was here to help out and help take care of her. So, yeah, and the most important thing
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is about giving back. That's all I wanted to do. That's all I wanted to do since I got better
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I've been looking for a way to do that. And if everybody, I hope everybody has that attitude
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Just like Diana said, you go through this. You don't want anybody ever to have to do that
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And you can help out, you know. Yeah, I mean, right now, Survivor Corps exists in two places, mostly right now as a public group on Facebook
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just survivor core um anybody can join and we have a website survivor core.com but what we're
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seeing on the survivor core group or we call it the survivor core family um is that the motivation
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of helping others is what's getting people through some of the darkest times of their lives they're
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home and they're sick and they're scared and they're alone and having the prospect of being
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able to donate at the end is a light at the end of the tunnel. And they're literally counting down
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the days until they can donate. And, you know, again, in Survivor Corps parlance, we refer to
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people who donate their plasma as superheroes. And so to see people posting those donation
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selfies as a badge of honor is an extraordinarily powerful thing to see and so motivating to others who are really they ill right now And they really they they scared they scared and they alone And so this is I think
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you know, as a, as a country, we are being told the best thing you can do is to literally do
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nothing. And in many respects, that's true. Stay home. Absolutely. If you don't have to leave the
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house don't. But to tell people that there's nothing that they can do to help, it really goes
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against the core of the human spirit. It is antithetical to who we are as people, not as
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Americans or New Yorkers, but just as a human person. There's such a desire to help. And this
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So this is tapping in to what is best about humanity, about the desire to help
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And there's no more direct way that you can help by then giving your actual plasma
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And again, I just want to reiterate what a painless and extraordinarily gratifying experience it is
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They actually give you your blood back at the end. So you're not even dizzy at the end. It's amazing to see, Danny, you're going to be like blown away by this
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It's so cool. Oh, because I was going to ask you. I'm really looking forward to it
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Danny, you were giving a shout out to all the people that took care of you at Mount Sinai
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My sister is a nurse. She's been on the front line. So she's been through this whole pandemic
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So I would just like to ask you, please give a shout out to the people who took care of you
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I loved everybody. I had many doctors. I had two specifically the first time I went in
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And they were named Dr. Krishna and Dr. Gandhi, which I took as a very good sign
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And I actually went back a second time because I thought I was having heart issues
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And I got an EKG from a lovely woman there, a Dominican woman, a nurse
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And as she was putting on the EKG, she asked if I had ever been in the hospital before
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And I said, I was actually there five weeks ago in the COVID unit
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And she said, you survived? And I said, yes. I put her hands together like this and bowed down to me
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And I said, I should be bowing to you because you and everybody in this building saved my life
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And then she got quiet. And she started putting on the electrodes all over my body
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and she said, I've lost five members of my family. And it was heartbreaking
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And she told me that her mother cries all the time and that only the day before had she allowed herself to cry
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And by the end of our 15 minutes together, it was like we were like old friends
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and we were laughing about other things. And it was just a wonderful, beautiful moment
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of terrible things that can happen and beautiful humanity at the same time
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In a way, we helped each other. Because they needed to see people who had survived
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who'd made it out of the hospital. All they were hearing about were the people that didn't make it
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And so she was unbelievably kind. And I give a shout out
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I never got her name, but God bless her. She was an amazing human being
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Well, that is a beautiful story. I am thrilled that the both of you are healthy. I am thrilled that you are doing this today, donating your plasma
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I know you're getting ready to head over there right now. I thank you both very much for stopping by at Broadway World
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Let me just remember, remember, it's not just one donation. Today will be my fifth. And Danny, I hope that this is just the first of your eight allowable donations over 12 weeks
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he's got Broadway muscle he's got Broadway muscle believe me seriously thank you for doing what you do
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this will just enlighten so many people watching this Broadway world of what the future
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will look like when people survive being COVID so I thank you from the bottom of my heart
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have a wonderful day today over there and just it's great that you both stopped over
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thank you Richard really appreciate that
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