WEBVTT 1 00:00:11.679 --> 00:00:17.760 Hello everyone, and welcome to Talk Nerdy. Today is Monday, November thirteenth, 2 00:00:18.079 --> 00:00:22.120 twenty twenty three, and I'm the host of the show, Kara Santa 3 00:00:22.199 --> 00:00:26.719 Maria, and as always, I do want to thank those of you who 4 00:00:26.800 --> 00:00:31.839 make Talk Nerdy possible. Remember, Talk Nerdy is and will always be one 5 00:00:31.920 --> 00:00:35.640 hundred percent free to download, and in order to make that possible, I 6 00:00:35.679 --> 00:00:40.640 do rely on the support of listeners just like you. It's been a while, 7 00:00:40.719 --> 00:00:46.200 I think since I've given a full shout out to the patrons because I've 8 00:00:46.240 --> 00:00:52.479 been traveling so much since finishing my PhD and sort of readjusting before coming back 9 00:00:52.520 --> 00:00:57.000 home for good and starting my post doc. So I do want to make 10 00:00:57.039 --> 00:01:00.520 sure that I give an appropriate shout out to my top page trends this week. 11 00:01:00.600 --> 00:01:04.519 They include Daniel Lang, David J. E. Smith, Mary Neva, 12 00:01:06.079 --> 00:01:12.359 Brian Holden, David Compton, Gabrielle f Hadmio, Joe Wilkinson, Pasqually 13 00:01:12.439 --> 00:01:18.359 Gelati, and Ulrica Hagman. Thank you all, so so so much. 14 00:01:19.519 --> 00:01:23.359 I do want to also let you know that this episode may be slightly noisier 15 00:01:23.359 --> 00:01:26.680 than usual. I'm staying with a friend in Los Angeles. There's a bit 16 00:01:26.680 --> 00:01:30.920 of street noise behind me and my interviewe, doctor Jonathan Howard, is in 17 00:01:32.000 --> 00:01:34.680 New York, as you'll hear, and there's quite a bit of street noise 18 00:01:34.719 --> 00:01:40.000 behind him as well, So this is quite a city episode, but hopefully 19 00:01:40.040 --> 00:01:44.159 you can look past that. So yeah, I have a great one for 20 00:01:44.200 --> 00:01:49.280 you this week. It's an important topic, especially given that there is a 21 00:01:49.319 --> 00:01:56.040 new COVID vaccine available now. So I have the opportunity to speak with doctor 22 00:01:56.120 --> 00:02:04.359 Jonathan Howard. He is an associate professor of neurology and psychiatry at NYU's langon 23 00:02:04.519 --> 00:02:09.479 Health, and he's also the chief of Neurology at Bellevue. He writes often 24 00:02:09.479 --> 00:02:16.080 for science based medicine. He's quite prolific on social media, sort of debunking 25 00:02:16.120 --> 00:02:23.879 pseudoscience and offering evidence based, accurate, science based medicine information. And he 26 00:02:23.919 --> 00:02:29.280 has a new book available. It's called We Want Them Infected. How the 27 00:02:29.360 --> 00:02:35.599 failed quest for her immunity led doctors to embrace the anti vaccine movement and blinded 28 00:02:35.639 --> 00:02:40.000 Americans to the threat of COVID. So, without further ado, here he 29 00:02:40.120 --> 00:02:46.240 is doctor Jonathan Howard. Well, Jonathan, thank you so much for joining 30 00:02:46.280 --> 00:02:50.759 me today. Thanks so much for having me, I sure appreciate it. 31 00:02:51.280 --> 00:02:54.039 So we are going to be talking about your new book, We Want Them 32 00:02:54.240 --> 00:02:59.639 Infected, And really what we're going to be focusing on is I guess some 33 00:02:59.719 --> 00:03:07.599 of the difficulties early on in navigating the sort of commentary or the conversation around 34 00:03:07.599 --> 00:03:15.159 COVID, what maybe fueled some already existing anti vax rhetoric, what really confused 35 00:03:15.319 --> 00:03:21.560 a lot of consumers, And where things are now, what the role physicians 36 00:03:21.560 --> 00:03:24.319 have and sort of affecting change here. I mean, I think that this 37 00:03:24.479 --> 00:03:29.919 is timely because even though your book came out, you know, several months 38 00:03:29.960 --> 00:03:35.319 ago, there's a new vaccine out right now, and you see the whole 39 00:03:35.479 --> 00:03:42.439 kind of conversation coming back and just reiterating every time a new vaccine is released. 40 00:03:43.599 --> 00:03:46.039 Yeah, no, absolutely, an uptake for this new vaccine is horrible, 41 00:03:46.039 --> 00:03:49.159 and I'm worried we're going to pay a price for it this winter. 42 00:03:49.360 --> 00:03:53.759 We'll see. Yeah, So why don't you tell me early on? I 43 00:03:53.759 --> 00:03:55.360 mean, like right here at the top, because I think the title is 44 00:03:55.400 --> 00:04:00.240 a really bold title, we want Them Infected? Where did that come from? 45 00:04:00.280 --> 00:04:04.199 And what are you communicating there? Yeah? So the title comes from 46 00:04:04.280 --> 00:04:10.039 a quote by a doctor by the name of doctor Paul Alexander, who was 47 00:04:10.080 --> 00:04:14.639 an epidemiologist and official in the US Department of Health and Human Services during the 48 00:04:14.639 --> 00:04:18.519 Trumpet administration, and on July fourth, twenty twenty, before anyone had been 49 00:04:18.600 --> 00:04:24.279 vaccinated, he wrote an email which said, infants, kids, teams, 50 00:04:24.560 --> 00:04:28.560 young people, young adults, middle age, with no conditions, etc. 51 00:04:29.360 --> 00:04:32.839 Have zero to little risk, so we use them to develop HERD. We 52 00:04:32.920 --> 00:04:39.839 want them infected. So, while doctors like myself were treating and dealing with 53 00:04:39.920 --> 00:04:44.319 overwhelming COVID outbreaks in the spring of twenty twenty and a little bit less so 54 00:04:44.519 --> 00:04:47.079 in the summer of New York City in twenty twenty, there were a large 55 00:04:47.120 --> 00:04:51.800 number of doctors who were working at cross currents with us. We were trying 56 00:04:51.839 --> 00:04:57.439 to limit COVID infections and these doctors were trying to do the opposite. And 57 00:04:57.480 --> 00:05:01.079 these doctors did not treat COVID patients for the most part, but they had 58 00:05:01.120 --> 00:05:08.920 a plan to purposefully infect young people with COVID, with the idea being that 59 00:05:09.160 --> 00:05:15.279 once enough young people were infected, HERD immunity would arrive and the virus would 60 00:05:15.279 --> 00:05:17.480 go away. So it was this idea of getting rid of the virus by 61 00:05:17.560 --> 00:05:23.040 spreading the virus as widely as possible didn't work out. So well. Yeah, 62 00:05:23.079 --> 00:05:26.240 so I guess an important question, and I don't know how answerable this 63 00:05:26.360 --> 00:05:30.639 question is would be, you know, was this sort of plan, I 64 00:05:30.639 --> 00:05:34.160 don't know if you could call it a plan, but was this mentality a 65 00:05:35.480 --> 00:05:46.040 simply misguided or was it actually I don't know what's the I'm trying to think 66 00:05:46.040 --> 00:05:51.000 of just the right word for this, like not so much intentionally nefarious, 67 00:05:51.040 --> 00:05:59.120 but maybe neglectful, maybe not really taking into account all of the available evidence. 68 00:05:59.160 --> 00:06:01.839 Because obviously we think about when I was a child, we didn't have 69 00:06:01.959 --> 00:06:06.319 a chicken pox vaccine, there was no vera cello vaccine, and that's what 70 00:06:06.399 --> 00:06:11.120 we did. We counted on herd immunity. But people got really really sick, 71 00:06:11.759 --> 00:06:15.920 Like it wasn't healthy to do this thing that people used to do, 72 00:06:16.000 --> 00:06:21.240 which was like send kids to chicken pox parties so that they would intentionally get 73 00:06:21.279 --> 00:06:26.040 sick. Yeah. So, first of all, it was a formal plan 74 00:06:26.279 --> 00:06:30.319 to purposely infect people, and that was written up and published on October fourth, 75 00:06:30.600 --> 00:06:33.959 twenty twenty. It was called the Great Barrington Declaration. I'm sure we'll 76 00:06:33.959 --> 00:06:39.639 talk more about that, but the authors of this had already met with President 77 00:06:39.720 --> 00:06:44.000 Trump in the summer of twenty twenty, and the next day, on October 78 00:06:44.040 --> 00:06:46.439 fifth, twenty twenty, they were invited to the White House to meet with 79 00:06:46.720 --> 00:06:51.319 Alexander Azar and they later went on to advise Ron DeSantis, amongst other people. 80 00:06:51.560 --> 00:06:55.319 So it's interesting that you bring up the examples of chicken box because my 81 00:06:55.360 --> 00:06:58.360 mom took me to a chicken pox party when I was a kid. Not 82 00:06:58.519 --> 00:07:03.120 you really this a lot of thoughts. So when is it ethical to purposefully 83 00:07:03.160 --> 00:07:10.399 expose a child to a viral disease? I think four criteria have to be 84 00:07:10.480 --> 00:07:14.879 met, and two of them are met by COVID. So the first one 85 00:07:15.000 --> 00:07:17.279 is that you just can't avoid the virus the rest of your life, which 86 00:07:17.319 --> 00:07:20.439 is going to be true of COVID, right A newborn today can't hope to 87 00:07:20.600 --> 00:07:26.439 dodge COVID. That is number one. Number two, the virus has to 88 00:07:26.439 --> 00:07:30.759 be milder for children than for adults, which is true chicken pox and obviously 89 00:07:30.879 --> 00:07:34.639 true of COVID as well, with the exception of babies. Babies have a 90 00:07:34.759 --> 00:07:41.600 very high risk. The third feature which COVID does not meet is that but 91 00:07:41.680 --> 00:07:46.560 chicken pox does, is that one infection leads to permanent immunity. And the 92 00:07:46.720 --> 00:07:51.319 fourth feature which chicken pox met at the time my mom exposed me but does 93 00:07:51.360 --> 00:07:56.839 not meet today and COVID also does not meet today, is there has to 94 00:07:56.879 --> 00:08:00.879 be no vaccine for it. So I think my mom was relatively ethical to 95 00:08:01.000 --> 00:08:05.920 expose me to chicken pox in the nineteen seventies. It wasn't entirely risk free, 96 00:08:05.920 --> 00:08:09.680 and I'm at risk for shingles now children, my vaccinated children aren't going 97 00:08:09.720 --> 00:08:13.319 to be at risk for shingles. But under those very narrow circumstances, I 98 00:08:13.399 --> 00:08:16.759 think it can be ethical to expose a child to a viral disease. Now, 99 00:08:16.920 --> 00:08:22.079 the plan to purposefully infect children and young adults and young people, let 100 00:08:22.120 --> 00:08:28.839 me just state that case under the best terms possible. So the idea behind 101 00:08:28.879 --> 00:08:33.840 it was formulated actually very early in the pandemic, as early as March twenty 102 00:08:33.960 --> 00:08:37.879 twenty, and it was based on this idea, which is true of COVID, 103 00:08:39.440 --> 00:08:43.639 that young people have much less risk than older people. And the idea, 104 00:08:45.120 --> 00:08:48.200 which I've alluded to already is that once a certain amount of the population 105 00:08:48.440 --> 00:08:54.519 was immune, heard immunity would arrive older people who had been in theory sheltering 106 00:08:54.559 --> 00:08:58.759 in place and living at home for a few months, would be able to 107 00:08:58.879 --> 00:09:03.159 emerge into a world world where everyone had immunity to COVID and the virus sort 108 00:09:03.200 --> 00:09:07.240 of went away. Again. A lot of this was based on faith, 109 00:09:07.759 --> 00:09:13.360 faith that one infection led to permanent immunity, and that it wouldn't there would 110 00:09:13.360 --> 00:09:20.000 be not enough virus circulating in the community to that herd immunity would arrive essentially, 111 00:09:20.480 --> 00:09:26.279 which obviously didn't happen. So obviously, you know, we can look 112 00:09:26.360 --> 00:09:30.639 back after the fact with hindsight and say, you know, clearly that was 113 00:09:31.320 --> 00:09:35.399 misguided at best. But at the time, yes, COVID was new, 114 00:09:35.879 --> 00:09:41.960 but SARS type viruses were not new. Like we knew about SARS, we 115 00:09:43.000 --> 00:09:48.480 knew about mers, and we even knew about coronaviruses, the forms of coronaviruses 116 00:09:48.519 --> 00:09:52.879 that caused, for example, some proportion of the common cold. So I'm 117 00:09:52.919 --> 00:09:58.399 just curious, based on you know, immunologists, epidemiologists, virologists, best 118 00:09:58.440 --> 00:10:05.799 available assumption, why did they think that a single infection would cause extended immunity. 119 00:10:07.759 --> 00:10:11.159 I don't know. It was a little bit of an article of faith, 120 00:10:11.639 --> 00:10:16.360 I think, and even early in the pandemic in the summer of twenty 121 00:10:16.399 --> 00:10:20.240 twenty, there were doctors on Twitter essentially sort of saying that, no, 122 00:10:20.360 --> 00:10:24.840 it's unlikely that one infection is going to lead to permanent immunity. So this 123 00:10:26.000 --> 00:10:28.279 was all a little bit of an article of faith about a brand new virus. 124 00:10:28.360 --> 00:10:31.360 Here you go, I found it. There was a Twitter thread by 125 00:10:31.360 --> 00:10:37.919 a doctor Chad Pettit or Petit from July twenty fourth, twenty twenty, which 126 00:10:37.960 --> 00:10:43.639 he said, herd immunity requires that individuals who have been infected to develop a 127 00:10:43.679 --> 00:10:48.840 long lasting immunity. We don't know how long immunity lasts after infection with stars 128 00:10:48.919 --> 00:10:52.639 Cove two. If we use other coronavirus as evidence, it doesn't as guidance. 129 00:10:52.679 --> 00:10:58.080 It doesn't look good. Typically, the immunity that individuals develop after infection 130 00:10:58.279 --> 00:11:01.919 lasts about a year or two. This will become important. So a lot 131 00:11:01.960 --> 00:11:07.440 of arawogists were sort of signaling alarm bells that immunity might not last very long 132 00:11:07.519 --> 00:11:11.919 time, and unfortunately they turned out to be right for both the virus and 133 00:11:11.919 --> 00:11:16.559 the vaccine. And I should say, you said one thing about we got 134 00:11:16.559 --> 00:11:20.600 immunity, we got hurt immunity to chicken pox, just a slight correction there. 135 00:11:20.679 --> 00:11:26.679 Humanity has never gotten heard immunity to a virus without a vaccine, so 136 00:11:28.480 --> 00:11:31.399 that's like what we were aiming for, but that didn't happen, correct, 137 00:11:31.440 --> 00:11:37.080 And this is because newborns don't derive with natural immunity. So this is what 138 00:11:37.080 --> 00:11:41.759 would used to happen with measles before the vaccine is you would see the number 139 00:11:41.799 --> 00:11:43.639 of cases every year would go way up and down. It sort of looked 140 00:11:43.679 --> 00:11:48.480 like a sawtooth. A new crop of unimmune babies would be born, they 141 00:11:48.480 --> 00:11:52.879 would all get infected, and the cases would fall the next year until a 142 00:11:52.879 --> 00:11:56.320 new crop of babies sort of arrived. Not that babies arrive in batches, 143 00:11:56.399 --> 00:12:00.600 but whatever, But yeah, I mean that makes sense. The idea here 144 00:12:00.679 --> 00:12:05.120 is that obviously, if anybody in the community is carrying it, the babies 145 00:12:05.159 --> 00:12:11.919 are just like completely vulnerable to it. But if the community is fully vaccinated, 146 00:12:11.000 --> 00:12:16.399 or at least vaccinated above a certain point, then you're not going to 147 00:12:16.440 --> 00:12:22.240 see this kind of I guess the vulnerability is still there, but it's not 148 00:12:22.600 --> 00:12:28.759 as readily vulnerable like kids are. They're just less of a chance for a 149 00:12:28.799 --> 00:12:31.639 kid to get infected if like all the kids at school are vaccinated correct. 150 00:12:31.679 --> 00:12:35.200 And that's the state that we have now for measles and for chicken box. 151 00:12:35.240 --> 00:12:41.240 And there's still there are still occasional outbreaks where you have pockets of under vaccinated 152 00:12:41.519 --> 00:12:46.919 groups who cluster together. But an average newborn baby. Babies don't receive the 153 00:12:46.600 --> 00:12:50.720 measles vaccine until they're one years old. But an average baby can lead a 154 00:12:50.840 --> 00:12:56.799 typical baby life and not expect to get infected with measles, which is not 155 00:12:56.919 --> 00:13:01.440 the case with COVID and probably will never be the case with COVID. And 156 00:13:01.720 --> 00:13:05.960 let me just say, you know one thing about all of the doctors who 157 00:13:05.000 --> 00:13:11.759 formulated this plan, they really underestimated COVID. At the beginning. In March 158 00:13:11.799 --> 00:13:18.000 and April of twenty twenty, they wrote editorials in stat News and The Wall 159 00:13:18.039 --> 00:13:24.440 Street Journal predicting that COVID would kill less around twenty to forty thousand Americans, 160 00:13:24.759 --> 00:13:31.480 And as the death toll piled up, they didn't revise their initial predictions unfortunately. 161 00:13:31.720 --> 00:13:35.600 Instead, a lot of them started spreading what became basically QAnon, means 162 00:13:35.840 --> 00:13:41.159 that people were dying with COVID, not of COVID, that it was just 163 00:13:41.440 --> 00:13:46.840 old people who were dying anyway, that death certificates couldn't be trusted, or 164 00:13:46.919 --> 00:13:50.639 even worse, that it was doctors who killed patients through the inappropriate use of 165 00:13:50.720 --> 00:13:56.679 ventilators. So these ideas that became gospel amongst the right wing science denial US 166 00:13:56.679 --> 00:14:03.080 originated from doctors at Stanford, Harvard and UCSF and Johns Hopkins some of our 167 00:14:03.120 --> 00:14:07.120 top universities, which is really sort of astonishing. You know, I'm curious, 168 00:14:07.159 --> 00:14:11.960 like just to kind of go back a little bit to the timeline and 169 00:14:11.080 --> 00:14:16.200 this question that again I don't even know really how informative this question is, 170 00:14:16.279 --> 00:14:24.919 but of whether this rhetoric or this intentionality was misguided or sort of like neglectful. 171 00:14:26.639 --> 00:14:31.000 How far were we from the vaccine at the point where there's this massive 172 00:14:31.039 --> 00:14:33.960 public health crisis and these individuals are saying, like, how do we put 173 00:14:33.960 --> 00:14:39.039 a lid on this? Early on, We've got social distancing, we've got 174 00:14:39.200 --> 00:14:43.559 education about you know, hand washing and proper hygiene, but like, other 175 00:14:43.679 --> 00:14:48.320 than that, what the hell can we do? Yeah, there wasn't much 176 00:14:48.360 --> 00:14:52.279 to do in the spring of twenty twenty, and no one knew how quickly 177 00:14:52.320 --> 00:14:56.039 we would develop a vaccine that was by far the pandemics maybe the only sort 178 00:14:56.039 --> 00:15:01.279 of happy surprise of the pandemic, and really, I think the greatest medical 179 00:15:01.320 --> 00:15:05.840 achievement of my lifetime. To be fair to these doctors, they were worried 180 00:15:05.879 --> 00:15:09.600 about the consequences, and they were right to be worried about the consequences of 181 00:15:09.840 --> 00:15:16.639 prolonged school closures and prolonged lockdowns on people's mental health in businesses. For example, 182 00:15:16.960 --> 00:15:20.240 I always take great care to recognize that I was sheltered from the worst 183 00:15:20.320 --> 00:15:24.399 consequences of lockdowns. My kids had remote schooling for a year and a half 184 00:15:24.440 --> 00:15:28.159 they were teenagers, which was not ideal, but I was never lonely. 185 00:15:28.240 --> 00:15:31.759 I worked throughout the pandemic. I never had to worry about a mispaycheck. 186 00:15:33.200 --> 00:15:37.799 So I was very fortunate and very protected from the worst harms of lockdowns, 187 00:15:37.840 --> 00:15:43.240 and I always take great pains to recognize that. But again, rather than 188 00:15:43.360 --> 00:15:48.200 recognize that they had underestimated COVID, they started spreading these conspiracy theories, and 189 00:15:48.720 --> 00:15:52.559 they underestimated COVID. I think it was a little bit worse than that, 190 00:15:52.639 --> 00:15:58.120 because they underestimated in ways that were mathematically impossible. So let me give you 191 00:15:58.120 --> 00:16:03.159 an example of this, and I will name names for the first time. 192 00:16:03.559 --> 00:16:07.080 A doctor who takes up a large chunk of the book. Doctor John Ianides, 193 00:16:07.480 --> 00:16:11.000 who I imagine most of your listeners have heard of. He's maybe not 194 00:16:11.080 --> 00:16:15.159 exactly a household name, but he is one of America's most famous scientists, 195 00:16:15.200 --> 00:16:22.240 and he is extremely respected guru of evidence based medicine, and I had written 196 00:16:22.720 --> 00:16:27.080 favorably about him and some of my previous work. Seems like a very nice 197 00:16:27.120 --> 00:16:32.600 guy, but regardless. On April ninth, twenty twenty, he gave an 198 00:16:32.639 --> 00:16:37.799 interview to The Washington Post where he said he predicted that about forty thousand Americans 199 00:16:37.799 --> 00:16:42.279 would die of COVID this season, whatever this season meant. By that date, 200 00:16:42.840 --> 00:16:48.159 about twenty thousand Americans had already died, and two thousand Americans were dying 201 00:16:48.360 --> 00:16:56.480 daily, So unless COVID essentially vanished that instant, his prediction would be falsified. 202 00:16:56.480 --> 00:17:02.159 And indeed, eight days later, COVID's death told exceeded forty thousand people. 203 00:17:02.480 --> 00:17:06.079 But rather than say oops, I underestimated COVID, as a lot of 204 00:17:06.079 --> 00:17:10.079 people did at the beginning, in good faith, and they admitted air again, 205 00:17:10.160 --> 00:17:14.920 he started spreading these conspiracy theories that it really wasn't COVID that was killing 206 00:17:14.960 --> 00:17:18.799 people, it was just old people who were dying anyway when you happen to 207 00:17:18.880 --> 00:17:25.440 swab their nose and find stars Cove two in their nose. So and that 208 00:17:25.480 --> 00:17:32.200 had a very damaging effect. So you know, I'm super curious because in 209 00:17:32.240 --> 00:17:34.799 my mind I have this sort of division and maybe this is fair, maybe 210 00:17:34.839 --> 00:17:40.680 this is unfair, sort of between like the Anthony Faucis of the world and 211 00:17:40.680 --> 00:17:44.400 then the physician that you just mentioned. So we know that the way that 212 00:17:44.440 --> 00:17:47.559 science works. We know that the way the public health works is that we 213 00:17:47.599 --> 00:17:52.279 operate with limited information, and we make the best decisions we can based on 214 00:17:52.480 --> 00:17:56.160 resourcing, based on available evidence, based on all of these different sort of 215 00:17:56.240 --> 00:18:03.400 variables, and then as new information comes in, we iterate and new messaging 216 00:18:03.480 --> 00:18:07.759 comes out. And so I almost see like, and maybe I'm oversimplifying it, 217 00:18:07.799 --> 00:18:11.200 but these two camps, the camps of the self correcting. Hey, 218 00:18:11.240 --> 00:18:14.640 guys, this is how science works. And I know it's hard to follow 219 00:18:14.720 --> 00:18:17.839 because I said this thing last week and now I'm saying something different this week. 220 00:18:17.960 --> 00:18:22.119 But we've got to all stay together on this and keep moving forward based 221 00:18:22.160 --> 00:18:27.519 on what we're learning and the sort of very I think American ideal of like 222 00:18:29.240 --> 00:18:30.920 what I said before, stands, I'm going to double down on it. 223 00:18:32.319 --> 00:18:37.799 If the new sort of information doesn't seem to match, I'm going to retrofit 224 00:18:37.880 --> 00:18:41.000 it to match and come up with a new narrative so that I don't have 225 00:18:41.079 --> 00:18:44.720 to have ever been wrong. And I think that this is like a big 226 00:18:44.759 --> 00:18:48.799 departure that I saw in the sort of bifurcation of public health messaging. Do 227 00:18:48.839 --> 00:18:56.079 you think that's a fair characterization? Oh? Absolutely, And I make this 228 00:18:56.240 --> 00:19:00.480 very explicit at certain points in the book. So I quote, for example, 229 00:19:00.519 --> 00:19:03.720 doctor Paul Offitt, who, again probably most of your listeners have heard 230 00:19:03.720 --> 00:19:07.960 of, one of America's most eminent vaccine experts, and he predicted on March 231 00:19:08.039 --> 00:19:12.200 second, twenty twenty, that COVID would cause less than quote one tenth of 232 00:19:12.240 --> 00:19:18.759 the damage that influenza causes every year in the United States. He immediately, 233 00:19:18.920 --> 00:19:22.400 I mean not immediately, but within a few weeks acknowledged his air, saying, 234 00:19:22.680 --> 00:19:25.279 if you're going to be wrong, be wrong in front of millions of 235 00:19:25.279 --> 00:19:29.680 people. Make a complete ass of yourself. So let me read a quote 236 00:19:29.680 --> 00:19:33.960 from my book. My aim is not to correct quotations from doctors who made 237 00:19:33.000 --> 00:19:37.519 good faith airs in the middle of a rapidly changing pandemic, only to later 238 00:19:37.640 --> 00:19:42.480 recognize their mistakes. The doctors I discussed haven't just minimized COVID in an air 239 00:19:42.559 --> 00:19:48.599 and tweet are two The airs and omissions I will describe are not isolated events. 240 00:19:48.720 --> 00:19:52.319 And I should say my book has all of my errors in it. 241 00:19:52.559 --> 00:19:56.359 I try to hold myself to the same standards that I hold others. But 242 00:19:56.400 --> 00:20:00.200 these were doctors who from day one said COVID was over and was nothing to 243 00:20:00.240 --> 00:20:07.359 worry about, and repeated that every month of the pandemic, whether new variants 244 00:20:07.359 --> 00:20:10.720 were coming, they said, don't worry about new variants. They said, 245 00:20:10.839 --> 00:20:14.359 now is not the time to panic, Now is not the time to fear, 246 00:20:14.759 --> 00:20:18.079 et cetera. Again, because they wanted them infected. I think once 247 00:20:18.119 --> 00:20:25.440 you grasp that reality that they wanted us young healthy people to get COVID, 248 00:20:26.079 --> 00:20:30.039 all of their statements make a lot of sense. Yeah. So, like 249 00:20:30.079 --> 00:20:33.279 when I mentioned Fauci before, would you put him in the same campus? 250 00:20:33.319 --> 00:20:37.559 Off it? Best as I can tell, Yeah, I mean he has 251 00:20:37.599 --> 00:20:42.319 made some goofs. He initially told people not to wear masks, and I 252 00:20:42.359 --> 00:20:49.119 think he later regretted that comment, and he has probably spoken more and more 253 00:20:49.160 --> 00:20:53.359 publicly about COVID than anyone else, and so the idea that he would get 254 00:20:53.599 --> 00:20:59.480 everything right is going to be zero percent, especially because this was everyone's first 255 00:20:59.519 --> 00:21:04.480 pandemic. The virus has changed a ton, the vaccines have changed a ton. 256 00:21:04.519 --> 00:21:10.000 I mean think about it. The world's leading virus expert, if he 257 00:21:10.119 --> 00:21:15.200 fell into a coma on New Year's twenty twenty and awoke today, would be 258 00:21:15.440 --> 00:21:21.039 useless at anything with regards to COVID. And you could even say that. 259 00:21:21.160 --> 00:21:25.599 Let's say you knew everything there was to know about COVID during twenty twenty, 260 00:21:25.680 --> 00:21:29.279 during the first year, and then you fell asleep into a coma and awoke 261 00:21:29.319 --> 00:21:32.200 today, you would be useless today. You would know nothing about Delta, 262 00:21:32.240 --> 00:21:34.880 you would know nothing about omicron. You would think the vaccines were ninety five 263 00:21:34.960 --> 00:21:41.279 percent defective, and unfortunately that wasn't the case. So yeah, anyone who 264 00:21:41.359 --> 00:21:45.839 comments publicly is going to make some mistakes. But I really think the measure 265 00:21:45.880 --> 00:21:51.000 of a scientist is exactly what you say that people who acknowledge their errors, 266 00:21:51.799 --> 00:21:56.599 they speak in a humble fashion and they don't become attached to their ideas. 267 00:21:56.640 --> 00:22:02.559 A lot of the doctors who I write about reacted, they couldn't separate themselves 268 00:22:02.559 --> 00:22:06.319 from their ideas, So if you criticize their ideas, they would say, 269 00:22:06.359 --> 00:22:10.000 oh, you're attacking me, you're trying to silence me, you're trying to 270 00:22:10.000 --> 00:22:14.599 suppress me. They were very good at the victim complex. Yeah, and 271 00:22:14.680 --> 00:22:18.079 so you know, I think the one thing that we haven't kind of dived 272 00:22:18.119 --> 00:22:23.359 into yet, which is such an important part of this, is the behavior 273 00:22:25.039 --> 00:22:33.640 change that these expert views enabled or affected. So I think that there's sort 274 00:22:33.680 --> 00:22:38.440 of again different camps when it comes to you know, I mentioned the bifurcation 275 00:22:40.240 --> 00:22:48.039 of that scientific view of like, you know, adjusting advice and adjusting information 276 00:22:48.079 --> 00:22:51.960 based on available evidence and doubling down and saying I've never been wrong, which 277 00:22:52.000 --> 00:22:57.359 is very political but also very American. But there's also this kind of I 278 00:22:57.359 --> 00:23:02.960 guess, maybe not so much a bifurcation, but a categorization of the sort 279 00:23:03.000 --> 00:23:15.079 of experts who are propagating misinformation, disinformation, pseudoscience, and then the sort 280 00:23:15.079 --> 00:23:19.920 of non experts who are also doing the same thing, and very often there 281 00:23:21.000 --> 00:23:26.359 is an agenda involved. But regardless, I think that it's hard as a 282 00:23:26.400 --> 00:23:33.799 consumer when you see a physician or an epidemiologist giving bad health information to know 283 00:23:33.880 --> 00:23:40.119 the difference between what's evidence based and what's not. When that person's also supposed 284 00:23:40.119 --> 00:23:44.279 to be an authority figure. It's very hard. And all of the doctors 285 00:23:44.279 --> 00:23:48.319 who I talk about mixed good advice with bad advice. So I've been studying 286 00:23:48.319 --> 00:23:53.480 the anti vaccine movement for a decade, and I've always been fascinated by anti 287 00:23:53.599 --> 00:23:57.319 vaccine doctors. A doctor who I trained with here at NYU, a woman 288 00:23:57.359 --> 00:24:03.079 by the name of doctor Kelly Brogan, morphed into one of America's most outspoken 289 00:24:03.160 --> 00:24:07.920 anti vaccine doctors. This was in twenty ten or so. However, she 290 00:24:08.160 --> 00:24:14.759 was not particularly influential, I think during the pandemic because people could tell that 291 00:24:14.799 --> 00:24:18.119 she was, you know, kind of on the fringe, so she would 292 00:24:18.319 --> 00:24:22.640 She's a germ theory deniaist. She doesn't believe HIV causes AIDS. She doesn't 293 00:24:22.640 --> 00:24:26.400 believe Star's Cove two killed people. She thought people were dying of an epidemic 294 00:24:26.440 --> 00:24:30.039 of fear. I mean, really sort of out their stuff. The doctors 295 00:24:30.079 --> 00:24:34.559 who I discussed mix good advice with bad advice, so they would say things 296 00:24:34.599 --> 00:24:40.319 which are true that for elderly people in nursing homes and for people with underlying 297 00:24:40.359 --> 00:24:44.160 conditions, they have to be very very very careful not to get COVID. 298 00:24:44.880 --> 00:24:48.960 It's can wipe out those those populations, but for everyone else, it's just 299 00:24:49.000 --> 00:24:52.279 the cold. You probably won't even know that you're going to get infected. 300 00:24:52.559 --> 00:24:56.559 So I think that confused people quite a bit. And they can speak in 301 00:24:56.640 --> 00:25:02.119 scientific jargon. They're intered the way you're going to introduce me with all of 302 00:25:02.160 --> 00:25:06.880 my credentials and so and so's and a professor of this and that at Stanford 303 00:25:06.920 --> 00:25:11.079 and Harvard and UCSF. And they appeared on Fox News, the Washington Post, 304 00:25:11.079 --> 00:25:17.240 the Wall Street Journal, the Atlantic Magazine seemed, you know, talking 305 00:25:17.480 --> 00:25:22.359 very professional, wearing suits and ties, and so the general public was very 306 00:25:22.400 --> 00:25:26.720 confused by all of this. Yeah, So I mean, how maybe you 307 00:25:26.759 --> 00:25:30.480 can help us, because I think for a lot of people who haven't been 308 00:25:30.559 --> 00:25:33.759 like deep in it, like we've heard stories. We sort of know about 309 00:25:33.960 --> 00:25:41.759 certain reactions, Like you hear about, let's say, the far out there 310 00:25:41.799 --> 00:25:45.279 sort of anti vax conspiracy theories about how like I don't know, there's like 311 00:25:45.319 --> 00:25:48.680 a chip in the virus, like you know, you get like the extra 312 00:25:48.799 --> 00:25:53.279 kind of out there. But then you also hear the conversations about like myocarditis, 313 00:25:53.359 --> 00:26:00.039 or you hear the conversations about like mass sell reactions like maybe you can 314 00:26:00.119 --> 00:26:04.359 help us understand a little bit, what were some of the conspiracies, What 315 00:26:04.440 --> 00:26:08.119 are some of the conspiracies that have sort of persisted, and like, how 316 00:26:08.160 --> 00:26:12.000 do we separate fact from fiction here? You know what's floating out there? 317 00:26:12.279 --> 00:26:17.400 Yeah, so there's a lot that's very hard to say it. And these 318 00:26:17.480 --> 00:26:19.759 days, myself, especially the way Elon Musk is running Twitter, I have 319 00:26:19.799 --> 00:26:25.720 a hard time separating fat from fiction myself sometimes. So I think maybe a 320 00:26:25.720 --> 00:26:29.279 better question would be our way to reframe the question. You know, how 321 00:26:29.319 --> 00:26:33.160 can you know when to trust someone? I think the first thing is that 322 00:26:33.200 --> 00:26:37.640 they tend to speak a lot on very narrow topics. So, for example, 323 00:26:40.240 --> 00:26:42.039 you know what expertise do I bring to the table? I think I 324 00:26:42.119 --> 00:26:47.279 bring two things. Number one is I worked throughout the pandemic. I saw 325 00:26:47.319 --> 00:26:49.920 what COVID could do with my own eyes. I saw how it could overwhelm 326 00:26:51.000 --> 00:26:55.640 hospitals. I saw that, yes, most people who died of COVID were 327 00:26:55.720 --> 00:27:00.799 older people, but not all. I learned that some survivors of COVID could 328 00:27:00.839 --> 00:27:03.000 be devastated. So it wasn't like you died or were fine. So that's 329 00:27:03.079 --> 00:27:07.799 number one, and the number two is my decade long interest in the anti 330 00:27:07.920 --> 00:27:12.200 vaccine movement. So I was really able to tell to see how arguments that 331 00:27:12.240 --> 00:27:18.119 were previously made against the HPV vaccine or the MMR vaccine were repurposed for the 332 00:27:18.160 --> 00:27:22.400 COVID vaccine. And we can talk about that with regards to my ocarditis in 333 00:27:22.440 --> 00:27:30.440 a second. Whereas and admit air. So I in my book, on 334 00:27:30.480 --> 00:27:33.680 my blog on science based medicine. On social media, whenever I goof, 335 00:27:34.680 --> 00:27:38.440 my initial reactions will say no, I didn't goof. But when I've been 336 00:27:38.440 --> 00:27:41.400 shown to make a mistake, I hope. I'm not always successful, but 337 00:27:41.440 --> 00:27:48.000 I try to acknowledge the air and do so very publicly. In contrast, 338 00:27:48.079 --> 00:27:52.599 as we've said, the doctors who I discuss have a very hard time admitting 339 00:27:52.680 --> 00:27:56.400 air, and they claim to be experts on every aspect of the pandemic, 340 00:27:56.759 --> 00:28:03.319 on transmission, on math, on ventilation, on the effects of school closures, 341 00:28:03.359 --> 00:28:10.200 on everything, and everything seems to fit their preconceived narrative. They'll never 342 00:28:10.359 --> 00:28:17.079 share information that undermines their idea that COVID is harmless for children and they don't 343 00:28:17.119 --> 00:28:22.039 need the vaccine. Against it for example. Yeah, Yeah, it's gosh, 344 00:28:22.160 --> 00:28:29.880 it's there's just such a c of rhetoric out there, and it's so 345 00:28:30.160 --> 00:28:36.079 unfortunate that some of it is presented in that very kind of classic pseudoscientific way, 346 00:28:36.480 --> 00:28:40.400 which is like I love the term pseudoscience right, like bad science or 347 00:28:40.440 --> 00:28:45.519 wrong science or not quite science, because I do feel like there's always in 348 00:28:45.559 --> 00:28:48.559 like good good pseudoscience, if I can say that I'm putting air quotes on 349 00:28:48.599 --> 00:28:52.119 it, like a kernel of truth, there's always like a little bit of 350 00:28:52.160 --> 00:28:59.799 like legitimate science, like encasing the the inaccuracies. And so it is really 351 00:29:00.000 --> 00:29:06.680 difficult for individual consumers to make good decisions because to me, at least, 352 00:29:06.720 --> 00:29:11.240 and maybe it's because I'm practiced in the skeptic community, the obvious bunk is 353 00:29:11.359 --> 00:29:17.839 obvious, but the less obvious bunk is where that in between areas like really 354 00:29:17.880 --> 00:29:22.839 really nefarious. And I think if you talk to any average American at least 355 00:29:22.880 --> 00:29:26.559 on the street and you maybe gave them a quiz about COVID information, a 356 00:29:26.599 --> 00:29:33.119 fair amount of misinformation would be mixed in with accurate information. Yeah, and 357 00:29:33.480 --> 00:29:37.519 that's a perfect segue to talk about vaccine side effects. In vaccine myocarditis. 358 00:29:38.160 --> 00:29:41.240 So one of the things that I that the book tries to do, like 359 00:29:41.279 --> 00:29:47.359 I said, is really show how old anti vaccine arguments were repurposed. So 360 00:29:47.839 --> 00:29:51.799 you mentioned that the vaccine can cause myocarditis, which is true. That is 361 00:29:51.880 --> 00:29:56.000 not a pseudoscience. So let's talk about that a little bit. So vaccine 362 00:29:56.000 --> 00:30:02.599 myocarditis usually occurs in young men between the of twelve to twenty five after their 363 00:30:02.720 --> 00:30:07.799 second vaccine dose. The exact rate of vaccine myocarditis isn't clear. There's about 364 00:30:07.799 --> 00:30:12.720 thirty studies from around the country, around the world that show some pretty different 365 00:30:12.799 --> 00:30:17.960 rates. But I think about one in ten thousand is a reasonable estimate of 366 00:30:18.000 --> 00:30:22.640 how often it occurs. So it's rare, but not zero. And then 367 00:30:22.640 --> 00:30:26.960 what about the severity of it. So with this, there is universal agreement 368 00:30:27.000 --> 00:30:32.759 that nearly everyone, upwards of ninety five percent of people have a mild case, 369 00:30:32.839 --> 00:30:36.880 meaning they spend a day or two in the hospital and they go home 370 00:30:37.319 --> 00:30:40.839 feeling fine. That's not one hundred percent. And there have been some cases 371 00:30:41.119 --> 00:30:44.279 of deaths around the world. I'm not aware of any in the United States 372 00:30:44.319 --> 00:30:48.759 from the vaccine, at least the mRNA vaccines. And you know, we 373 00:30:48.839 --> 00:30:52.759 have to be humble about the potential of long term consequences. So I don't 374 00:30:52.759 --> 00:30:57.160 want to minimize this vaccine myocarditis. But there were certain doctors who spoke about 375 00:30:57.200 --> 00:31:00.400 this, and I mean this very literally, as a fate worse than death. 376 00:31:00.759 --> 00:31:06.519 So there was one doctor who wrote an article in December twenty twenty, 377 00:31:06.759 --> 00:31:11.039 after about five thousand young adults had died of COVID. He said, young 378 00:31:11.079 --> 00:31:15.519 adults should not live in fear of COVID. Their risk of death is very 379 00:31:15.559 --> 00:31:18.920 small. Fear of death, you know, is not a good reason to 380 00:31:18.960 --> 00:31:22.720 avoid COVID, and he gave all the statistics. Oh, your risk of 381 00:31:22.799 --> 00:31:26.519 dying is one point zero zero or point zero zero zero zero one percent. 382 00:31:26.640 --> 00:31:32.680 Fine, Okay. Six months later he wrote an article saying vaccine myocarditis should 383 00:31:32.720 --> 00:31:37.240 be respected. So here's this doctor saying, don't fear death from COVID, 384 00:31:37.960 --> 00:31:45.519 but fear vaccine myocarditis. And this was extremely common that doctors spoke about vaccine 385 00:31:45.559 --> 00:31:48.759 side effects as a fate worse than death. And to give you an example 386 00:31:48.759 --> 00:31:55.400 of how ridiculous this was, there were several studies that took blood samples of 387 00:31:55.480 --> 00:31:59.720 children after they had been vaccinated and found that a small number of them had 388 00:32:00.079 --> 00:32:04.519 vada trapponin, which is a marker of cardiac injury, even though they had 389 00:32:04.559 --> 00:32:08.640 no symptoms of myocarditis. So listen, maybe that's a big deal, maybe 390 00:32:08.640 --> 00:32:13.680 it isn't, who knows. But they treated that as a fate worse than 391 00:32:13.759 --> 00:32:15.599 death. So they would say, you know, the risk of a child 392 00:32:15.680 --> 00:32:21.079 dying of COVID is much less than suicide, much less than drowning in car 393 00:32:21.119 --> 00:32:27.640 crashes, which isn't exactly true, but they would minimize literal death that way. 394 00:32:27.920 --> 00:32:31.200 But they would treat an abnormal lab value in a child who feels fine 395 00:32:31.559 --> 00:32:36.599 as a potential marker of some catastrophe. And again, these were not the 396 00:32:36.680 --> 00:32:38.759 Kelly Brogans of the world. These were not the German theory deniers. These 397 00:32:38.799 --> 00:32:47.839 were doctors from UCSF and Stanford and Harvord writing in mainstream publications, and myocarditis 398 00:32:47.920 --> 00:32:52.079 wasn't sort of the only one, right, Like I almost feel like I 399 00:32:52.119 --> 00:32:59.480 was seeing a theme where almost every time there would be rhetoric around some sort 400 00:32:59.480 --> 00:33:04.279 of vacu seeing side effect, so gian barret for example, or some sort 401 00:33:04.279 --> 00:33:13.839 of immune overreaction like a massed sell issue or something like that, that the 402 00:33:13.920 --> 00:33:21.599 actual virus the actual COVID virus was significantly a significantly higher risk factor than for 403 00:33:21.640 --> 00:33:25.079 those things than the vaccine itself. Yeah, I think this has to do 404 00:33:25.200 --> 00:33:30.240 with the fact that people tend to feel worse about problems that we feel we 405 00:33:30.480 --> 00:33:36.079 cause, rather than rice that we fail to prevent. So a naturalistic fallacy. 406 00:33:36.119 --> 00:33:37.200 And you can just sort of think about it this way. If you 407 00:33:37.400 --> 00:33:43.240 found if you looked in your pocket and found that a twenty dollars bill had 408 00:33:43.319 --> 00:33:47.759 vanished, you would feel much worse if someone had stolen that money than it 409 00:33:47.799 --> 00:33:52.680 if it had just fallen out of your pocket. And so there's this idea 410 00:33:52.680 --> 00:33:55.920 that when the vaccine causes a problem, it's the equivalent of someone stealing the 411 00:33:55.960 --> 00:34:00.279 money, Whereas if the virus causes a problem, even if it's a much 412 00:34:00.279 --> 00:34:05.200 bigger problem, even if a thousand dollars thought out of your pocket, you 413 00:34:05.359 --> 00:34:08.480 feel not as bad because it's natural. It's just how things are, that's 414 00:34:08.480 --> 00:34:13.239 how kind of it's meant to be, et cetera. So, yes, 415 00:34:13.639 --> 00:34:17.280 anything, atas amongst a certain class of doctors, anything the virus could do 416 00:34:17.840 --> 00:34:24.199 was minimized, again, including literal death, and everything the vaccine did was 417 00:34:24.440 --> 00:34:30.440 blown up way out of proportion, And again, this is exactly what anti 418 00:34:30.559 --> 00:34:36.119 vaxxers did with measles before the pandemic. So you can read an article from 419 00:34:36.159 --> 00:34:40.880 twenty nineteen from an anti vaccine blog minimizing measles, and they would say things 420 00:34:42.079 --> 00:34:46.840 like, before the MMR vaccine in the nineteen sixties, measles only killed four 421 00:34:46.920 --> 00:34:52.000 hundred children per year, which is both true and a lot of children to 422 00:34:52.079 --> 00:34:54.519 die every year from a vaccine preventable disease. And they would go on to 423 00:34:54.559 --> 00:34:59.920 say, more children died of you know, asthma, more children died of 424 00:35:00.079 --> 00:35:04.519 this or that, which again is true, but not a good reason to 425 00:35:04.599 --> 00:35:07.480 let four hundred children die of measles every year. And then fast forward to 426 00:35:07.519 --> 00:35:13.440 twenty twenty one and you would read doctors making that exact same argument about COVID. 427 00:35:13.639 --> 00:35:17.360 Only five hundred children died of COVID this year more children died of XYZ. 428 00:35:17.559 --> 00:35:22.760 So the exact same language, the exact same arguments. Do you think 429 00:35:22.760 --> 00:35:27.639 that there's a bias? And maybe this only applies to the first several months 430 00:35:27.639 --> 00:35:30.760 sort of when our hands were a little bit tied, when we were watching 431 00:35:30.800 --> 00:35:37.679 this horrific public health tragedy unfold and feeling this sort of wave coming at us 432 00:35:37.719 --> 00:35:42.480 that we were a bit impotent to do anything about. Do you think that 433 00:35:42.519 --> 00:35:45.039 there's sort of a bias, especially among experts, especially among those with a 434 00:35:45.159 --> 00:35:53.159 voice to I don't want to say minimize the risk, but to I don't 435 00:35:53.159 --> 00:35:59.519 know how to put this. Reduce like a fear that panic might be worse 436 00:35:59.519 --> 00:36:02.559 than the viral rus itself. Like did we see that early on? I 437 00:36:02.599 --> 00:36:07.480 don't know if we well, we saw doctors saying that. I don't know 438 00:36:07.480 --> 00:36:13.840 if that actually happened, but yeah, there's a whole chapter of the book 439 00:36:14.199 --> 00:36:21.039 which is devoted to just this. Doctors again mocking anyone who tried to avoid 440 00:36:21.079 --> 00:36:23.880 the virus, saying that there was a panic. They even current, They 441 00:36:23.880 --> 00:36:30.840 even turned coin new phrases coronaphobia, for example, about people who are too 442 00:36:30.920 --> 00:36:36.960 terrified of COVID. And again this echoes pre pandemic arguments and language that anti 443 00:36:37.039 --> 00:36:38.960 vaxxers would make against measles. They would say, oh, every tendre's and 444 00:36:38.960 --> 00:36:43.599 measles up break, Oh people are panicking. Oh there's such a fear. 445 00:36:44.280 --> 00:36:50.440 But fear is good at times, it's certainly unpleasant, But graveyards are full 446 00:36:50.800 --> 00:36:57.159 of fearless people. A lot of people live their lives without fear of COVID, 447 00:36:57.159 --> 00:37:01.800 and they're not here to tell us this story. And I think a 448 00:37:01.840 --> 00:37:06.119 lot of the doctors who use that rhetoric, you know, sort of what 449 00:37:06.199 --> 00:37:07.760 motivated them. That's one of the questions you're kind to ask me early, 450 00:37:08.159 --> 00:37:14.440 early on. I think a lot of these doctors got famous and made careers 451 00:37:14.440 --> 00:37:17.119 out of being a little contrary and being a little different, And there's value 452 00:37:17.159 --> 00:37:21.199 in that. We need people to think outside the box. And of course 453 00:37:21.280 --> 00:37:25.639 the best example of this this pandemic is Karina Coreco. I'm going to butcher 454 00:37:25.639 --> 00:37:30.719 her name. I always do that the scientists who just won the Nobel Prize, 455 00:37:30.719 --> 00:37:34.880 and boy she deserved it for her work on the mRNA vaccines. So 456 00:37:34.920 --> 00:37:38.800 we need people to think outside the box. But these guys just couldn't turn 457 00:37:39.039 --> 00:37:44.960 that off. So when everyone else was saying COVID is going to be very 458 00:37:45.039 --> 00:37:50.199 dangerous, it's going to be horrible, they couldn't not be different. They 459 00:37:50.280 --> 00:37:52.679 just had to be different. So I predict that if everyone else was minimizing 460 00:37:52.719 --> 00:37:57.360 COVID, they would have said, COVID is a big deal. We need 461 00:37:57.400 --> 00:38:00.320 to we need to worry about it. So you do think that there was 462 00:38:00.360 --> 00:38:06.880 sort of a contrarian bent there. Absolutely, absolutely, Again that's what I 463 00:38:06.920 --> 00:38:10.920 think motivates people like Kelly Brogan, Andrew Wakefield, Cherry Tenpenny, all of 464 00:38:10.960 --> 00:38:15.679 these sort of famous names in the anti vaccine world from before the pandemic is 465 00:38:16.000 --> 00:38:22.840 whatever mainstream medicine says they have to be against, and they will call that 466 00:38:22.920 --> 00:38:28.079 thinking for themselves. And I think that that infected a lot of other doctors 467 00:38:28.159 --> 00:38:34.639 during the pandemic. But sometimes the majority is right sometimes, you know. 468 00:38:34.760 --> 00:38:38.360 So when the majority said COVID is something to be feared, and when the 469 00:38:38.440 --> 00:38:43.559 vaccines arrived and they said, you know, everyone eligible should get vaccinated, 470 00:38:43.599 --> 00:38:47.760 including children, the majority was right. So I mean, I think it's 471 00:38:47.920 --> 00:38:52.960 an important question and something that I know you talk about in your book early 472 00:38:52.000 --> 00:38:55.679 on, and we sort of skipped over, but I would love to maybe 473 00:38:55.760 --> 00:39:00.360 hear just a little bit, you know, about your experience. I mean, 474 00:39:00.440 --> 00:39:02.280 you were there on the front lines, you were at NYU, you 475 00:39:02.360 --> 00:39:08.039 were seeing individuals who were coming in back when this virus was pretty mysterious, 476 00:39:08.119 --> 00:39:14.840 back before we had appropriate treatments available, and like, you know, you're 477 00:39:14.840 --> 00:39:17.960 not just speaking from as a person who has dug deep into the literature. 478 00:39:17.960 --> 00:39:22.559 But you're speaking as a person who was at the bedside of people who were 479 00:39:22.599 --> 00:39:25.440 actively dying from this disease. So I'm just curious, you know, what 480 00:39:25.480 --> 00:39:30.880 it was like for you personally being there on those front lines. Yeah. 481 00:39:30.920 --> 00:39:36.960 So I always described my COVID experience as I don't think I did a lot, 482 00:39:37.039 --> 00:39:42.079 but I saw a lot. And my COVID experience was pretty much every 483 00:39:42.159 --> 00:39:45.159 New York doctor will say the exact same thing. It was very intense in 484 00:39:45.199 --> 00:39:52.119 the spring of twenty twenty, but not much after that. So during April 485 00:39:52.199 --> 00:39:55.159 in May of twenty twenty, our hospitals were taken over by COVID. There 486 00:39:55.239 --> 00:40:00.599 was nothing else in the hospital other than COVID. Where I worked were located 487 00:40:00.599 --> 00:40:07.599 in Midtown Manhattan, relatively well off area. Our emergency room was never wus. 488 00:40:07.840 --> 00:40:10.480 Some of the scenes that took place in Queens and Brooklyn of you know, 489 00:40:10.599 --> 00:40:15.840 essentially people dying in the parking lot, we never had. But those 490 00:40:15.920 --> 00:40:21.199 hospitals transferred their patients to Bellevue, So we had about fifty to sixty new 491 00:40:21.360 --> 00:40:28.360 arrivals every single day. And are ICEEU there's usually one patient per room. 492 00:40:28.400 --> 00:40:35.079 There were two patients per room and every available clinical area was devoted to the 493 00:40:35.079 --> 00:40:39.199 care of COVID patients. We had gynecologists caring for men, we had pediatricians 494 00:40:39.280 --> 00:40:44.719 caring for seniors. We had nurses come from all over the country, So 495 00:40:44.760 --> 00:40:46.000 I heard a lot of Southern accents. I grew up in the South, 496 00:40:46.079 --> 00:40:51.960 and you know, a lot of accents reminded me of home, and so 497 00:40:52.000 --> 00:40:54.599 it was very different that way. And I saw more people die in the 498 00:40:54.639 --> 00:41:00.360 spring of twenty twenty than I probably my entire career. One thing about COVID 499 00:41:00.360 --> 00:41:04.320 in New York City was the sounds. So everyone heard, and you could 500 00:41:04.320 --> 00:41:08.679 probably hear through the microphone. There's some some signs, some sirens wailing through 501 00:41:08.719 --> 00:41:15.079 the you know, wailing through the windows, but the streets were totally empty 502 00:41:15.199 --> 00:41:20.320 other than just siren after siren after siren. And inside the hospital it was 503 00:41:20.639 --> 00:41:22.239 you know, code blue to this room, code blue to this room, 504 00:41:22.320 --> 00:41:28.119 code blue to that tomb uh that that pager usually goes off once per day 505 00:41:28.400 --> 00:41:30.880 at Bellevue, and it was going off every every five to ten minutes, 506 00:41:32.079 --> 00:41:35.559 And it was a It was a very tragic time, but it was also 507 00:41:35.639 --> 00:41:38.199 kind of an inspiring time. People stood on their balconies and cheered for us, 508 00:41:38.679 --> 00:41:43.320 and they you know, sent us all sorts of food and nice cards, 509 00:41:43.360 --> 00:41:46.159 which was which was, which was appreciated. But there wasn't anything to 510 00:41:46.239 --> 00:41:51.079 do for these patients, right. So a lot of our patients, as 511 00:41:51.079 --> 00:41:54.599 I said, they came from other hospitals, and they came doctors were desperate 512 00:41:54.639 --> 00:41:59.800 to try everything. So they all were on a hydroxychloro queen and as if 513 00:41:59.840 --> 00:42:04.239 the omayas and these sort of hail married treatments. One rule that I had 514 00:42:04.360 --> 00:42:07.159 is that, because I eventually ended up running a COVID team during May of 515 00:42:07.199 --> 00:42:10.000 twenty twenty, I said, none of our patients are going to be on 516 00:42:10.079 --> 00:42:15.039 experimental treatments unless they're clearly dying and you have nothing left to lose. So 517 00:42:15.280 --> 00:42:22.039 I stopped all of those treatments. But you know, it was a horrible 518 00:42:22.079 --> 00:42:24.079 time. I would leave work every day at six or seven, and I 519 00:42:24.079 --> 00:42:28.079 would come back the next morning, and half of the patients so I left 520 00:42:28.679 --> 00:42:34.079 the day before had died or been transferred to the ICU overnight. So I 521 00:42:34.199 --> 00:42:37.199 just to repeat, I saw more death during that time than I had my 522 00:42:37.360 --> 00:42:40.960 entire career. And eventually those scenes played out at pretty much every hospital in 523 00:42:42.000 --> 00:42:47.079 the country. I don't think any hospital was spared those sort of scenes of 524 00:42:47.119 --> 00:42:52.000 mass death. There were these giant refrigerated trucks behind the hospital and used to 525 00:42:52.039 --> 00:42:59.719 store all the bodies. Some hospitals needed forklifts to move bodies into these. 526 00:43:00.440 --> 00:43:04.800 And there's a movement now to deny that this ever happened. They will say, 527 00:43:04.880 --> 00:43:07.039 you know, emergency rooms in New York City were empty, which was 528 00:43:07.119 --> 00:43:12.360 true for my emergency room. Very few people came in through our emergency room 529 00:43:12.400 --> 00:43:15.039 here at Bellevue, but again we had patients transferred from every other city throughout 530 00:43:15.039 --> 00:43:21.239 the hospital, or every other hospital throughout the city. Excuse me, so 531 00:43:21.400 --> 00:43:27.199 obviously you had never seen anything like it, And I'm just curious when you 532 00:43:27.239 --> 00:43:31.559 sort of started to do a lot of deep, more like journalistic work into 533 00:43:34.320 --> 00:43:37.880 documenting the different conversations that were had on social media, the different rhetoric that 534 00:43:37.920 --> 00:43:42.719 we saw both in sort of the public arena, like you know, official 535 00:43:42.760 --> 00:43:47.800 messaging from the White House and from different organizations within the US government, and 536 00:43:47.840 --> 00:43:55.800 also just individual people speaking out on social media or on their blogs. Did 537 00:43:55.840 --> 00:44:02.239 you get the feeling that a lot of the people who were intentionally pedaling let's 538 00:44:02.239 --> 00:44:07.159 say, disinformation as opposed to misinformation, right, so misinformation getting it wrong, 539 00:44:07.639 --> 00:44:16.039 which happens, and hopefully sometimes iterating disinformation agenda driven intentionally, you know, 540 00:44:16.480 --> 00:44:25.199 having spreading incorrect or pseudoscientific content. So did you get the feeling that 541 00:44:25.239 --> 00:44:31.960 those who are sort of peddling disinformation weren't there, that they just like didn't 542 00:44:32.000 --> 00:44:35.960 have this frontline experience, or do you think some of them had it and 543 00:44:36.000 --> 00:44:44.039 they still were pushing this information. So I think very few people who saw 544 00:44:44.079 --> 00:44:49.679 what COVID could do with their own eyes ended up spreading disinformation, And that 545 00:44:49.719 --> 00:44:54.079 takes a specific kind of maliciousness where for the most part, you're not going 546 00:44:54.159 --> 00:44:57.519 to wind up on their front lines in the first place, because you have 547 00:44:57.599 --> 00:45:02.119 to get through medical school or nursing school, are respiratory tech school in order 548 00:45:02.159 --> 00:45:07.920 to have been on the front lines. And so I think the malevolent types, 549 00:45:07.960 --> 00:45:15.239 that the pure disinformation types, were very unlikely to have ever treated COVID 550 00:45:15.280 --> 00:45:19.400 patients. And I will say their campaign against the COVID vaccine, this was 551 00:45:19.519 --> 00:45:24.639 unearthed later by journalists, began in February twenty twenty, even before the first 552 00:45:24.679 --> 00:45:30.880 person had died in the United States of COVID. They were already getting ramped 553 00:45:30.960 --> 00:45:35.000 up. In terms of the doctors who I speak about, again, yeah, 554 00:45:35.159 --> 00:45:39.079 very few of them treated COVID patients. And that shows, that really 555 00:45:39.239 --> 00:45:44.719 shows, because they say things that no one who treated COVID patients would have 556 00:45:44.760 --> 00:45:49.480 said, such as, these were just old people who were about to die 557 00:45:49.559 --> 00:45:53.719 of natural causes anyway when they happened to contract COVID, or you're not really 558 00:45:53.840 --> 00:46:00.320 sure that COVID killed these patients, or that hospitals were overwhelmed by people who 559 00:46:00.320 --> 00:46:05.239 were afraid they had COVID and they were just the worried. Well, so 560 00:46:05.440 --> 00:46:10.800 they said things all the time that no doctor who treated COVID patients would say. 561 00:46:12.039 --> 00:46:15.039 And I'll say it took me a while before I sort of realized, 562 00:46:15.079 --> 00:46:17.639 oh my gosh, these guys don't know what they're talking about, because I 563 00:46:17.920 --> 00:46:22.239 fell biased to or I felt prey to the exact same things that I was 564 00:46:22.280 --> 00:46:25.800 talking about. That they spoke with great confidence, they had amazing credentials, 565 00:46:25.840 --> 00:46:30.719 They were I thought, entirely trustworthy people. So when these guys were saying 566 00:46:31.239 --> 00:46:37.039 in April twenty twenty, in May twenty twenty that COVID is on its way 567 00:46:37.119 --> 00:46:40.320 out, that we think we're approaching herd immunity that were past the peak, 568 00:46:40.840 --> 00:46:45.519 that the virus was much more widespread than we already thought, and that half 569 00:46:45.559 --> 00:46:49.559 of the country they didn't quite say half, but you know, large numbers 570 00:46:49.599 --> 00:46:53.000 of people had already been infected without us even knowing it. I believed it, 571 00:46:53.119 --> 00:46:55.880 or I had no reason to doubt it. It was really only when 572 00:46:55.880 --> 00:47:00.800 the dust had settled and I went back and started rereading what people were saying 573 00:47:00.840 --> 00:47:02.000 at the start of the pandemic that I was like, oh, my gosh, 574 00:47:02.039 --> 00:47:06.119 these guys were just kind of making it up from the comfort of their 575 00:47:06.159 --> 00:47:09.239 couch. Yeah, And so, you know, I think that a lot 576 00:47:09.320 --> 00:47:15.800 of us saw the panic, the fear, the confusion in the early days 577 00:47:15.880 --> 00:47:22.679 when the vaccine was first released. Then we saw that people were getting vaccinated, 578 00:47:22.800 --> 00:47:27.719 and that the virus was changing, and that even though the virus continues 579 00:47:27.840 --> 00:47:37.400 to to mutate, that the the death toll has significantly dropped, the severity 580 00:47:37.639 --> 00:47:46.280 of the of the outcomes of of getting sick has changed because of a lot 581 00:47:46.320 --> 00:47:50.920 of things. Because we are getting vaccinated, because we do have things like 582 00:47:51.000 --> 00:47:57.119 packs livid and different medications available, because we aren't overtaxing our emergency you know 583 00:47:57.280 --> 00:48:00.360 rooms, our hospital systems. But I'm cure, you know, how do 584 00:48:00.400 --> 00:48:04.519 you think things are netting out now? Like? What do you see is 585 00:48:04.559 --> 00:48:12.519 the COVID landscape today versus how it was during the sort of I don't know, 586 00:48:12.559 --> 00:48:15.920 the intensity of it all early on. Yeah, obviously is nothing like 587 00:48:15.960 --> 00:48:20.960 it was in April of twenty twenty. And you know, perhaps the saddest 588 00:48:21.000 --> 00:48:23.920 reason that is is because vulnerable people have already died. There's a terminus and 589 00:48:24.039 --> 00:48:30.559 epidemiology collde mortality displacement, which is, you know, the virus has already 590 00:48:30.000 --> 00:48:35.000 sort of killed all the people that is going to kill, Although that's not 591 00:48:35.280 --> 00:48:38.039 entirely true. I think at this point in the pandemic, I don't have 592 00:48:38.119 --> 00:48:42.199 I don't know if anyone does has a really good sense of what what the 593 00:48:42.280 --> 00:48:46.400 virus is doing with the actual numbers are. I read that around one thousand 594 00:48:46.480 --> 00:48:52.280 people are dying of COVID per week here in the United States, which is 595 00:48:52.920 --> 00:48:55.920 much less than previously when two to three thousand people were dying per day, 596 00:48:57.000 --> 00:49:00.599 but you know, not an insignificant number of people. Well, and I 597 00:49:00.639 --> 00:49:02.920 think maybe at this point in the pandemic it can be hard to tell if 598 00:49:02.920 --> 00:49:08.119 someone is truly a COVID death. Meaning let's say, at fifty year old 599 00:49:08.159 --> 00:49:13.480 gets COVID and two months later has a heart attack. Was COVID to blame 600 00:49:13.559 --> 00:49:16.360 for that? It can be a little bit hard to tell. And I 601 00:49:16.400 --> 00:49:21.639 think at this point in the pandemic, we're worried not a lot as much 602 00:49:21.679 --> 00:49:25.719 about death as much as we are about disability and long COVID. And I 603 00:49:25.760 --> 00:49:30.920 think that people like myself who were kind of shell shocked from the mass death 604 00:49:31.000 --> 00:49:35.679 have maybe not paid as much attention to long COVID as possible because it's sort 605 00:49:35.679 --> 00:49:38.119 of like, well, you're not dead, so right, It's like a 606 00:49:38.159 --> 00:49:43.000 triage bias, right, and now we're seeing like, yeah, really intense 607 00:49:43.039 --> 00:49:46.119 to I have a friend who has this like horrific long COVID, Like I 608 00:49:46.119 --> 00:49:50.440 guess it's a I don't remember what it's called. It's a bunch of letters, 609 00:49:50.440 --> 00:49:53.360 but it's like a mass cell reaction where her body just has these like 610 00:49:53.440 --> 00:50:00.199 horrific immune attacks and it's made her so incredibly sick, disabled, and it's 611 00:50:00.280 --> 00:50:06.280 just I cannot imagine living that way. Yeah. No, I know some 612 00:50:06.320 --> 00:50:08.920 people who've had to quit medicine for that reason. Not many, not many, 613 00:50:08.920 --> 00:50:13.199 but definitely some, And so I think the harms are a little bit 614 00:50:13.199 --> 00:50:16.079 more invisible now because you know, these people are probably sequestered at home, 615 00:50:16.159 --> 00:50:20.840 right, They're not out in the community interacting with us telling us how sick 616 00:50:20.880 --> 00:50:22.000 they are. I know, a lot of them look healthy, right, 617 00:50:22.119 --> 00:50:30.119 So it can be hard to see and it's impossible to see invisible disability for 618 00:50:30.159 --> 00:50:34.320 example. So, and I think we have to be humble about the potential 619 00:50:34.440 --> 00:50:37.800 for unknown consequences of repeat infections. You know, if a newborn is born 620 00:50:37.840 --> 00:50:43.239 today and they're infected ten times by the time they go off to college, 621 00:50:43.360 --> 00:50:45.960 what is that going to do. I mean, most kids will hopefully be 622 00:50:45.079 --> 00:50:51.599 fine, but hope is not a plan and time will tell. Yeah, 623 00:50:51.880 --> 00:50:55.119 So I'm curious, you know, for those who are listening to the show 624 00:50:55.280 --> 00:51:00.039 who are like, oh, okay, my vaccine card's pretty full. You 625 00:51:00.079 --> 00:51:02.800 know, I personally, because I was working in a hospital setting, I'm 626 00:51:02.840 --> 00:51:07.639 into my second vaccine card. We have this new vaccine that's available now in 627 00:51:07.679 --> 00:51:14.320 the winter of twenty twenty three that you can get alongside your flu vaccine that 628 00:51:14.639 --> 00:51:20.280 is an adjusted vaccine. You know, it's intending to sort of keep up 629 00:51:20.280 --> 00:51:25.039 with these mutations. But for those who are sort of weary or who are 630 00:51:25.719 --> 00:51:30.400 not weary but weary, like are like, I've been shot so many times. 631 00:51:30.599 --> 00:51:32.440 I've had the virus, you know, multiple times, Like I'm good, 632 00:51:32.559 --> 00:51:37.360 right, Like, tell us why it's important that we keep up with 633 00:51:37.360 --> 00:51:44.360 a vaccine schedule. So so far, I'm unaware of a vaccine dose that 634 00:51:44.599 --> 00:51:50.920 hasn't helped on average. This is especially true for older and vulnerable people. 635 00:51:52.000 --> 00:51:57.599 But people have a very strange attitude toward vaccines that they don't have towards other 636 00:51:57.719 --> 00:52:00.159 aspects of their health. Right, Like, if I told you I'm not 637 00:52:00.239 --> 00:52:05.000 going to the dentist because I've gone for the past ten years, you would 638 00:52:05.039 --> 00:52:07.079 say that that's crazy, right, Or why do I need to go to 639 00:52:07.119 --> 00:52:10.480 the gym? I worked out, you know for the past five months. 640 00:52:12.280 --> 00:52:15.920 You know, people recognize that certain health practices in order to be successful, 641 00:52:16.039 --> 00:52:22.199 need to be maintained. And I would say that getting a vaccine is much 642 00:52:22.320 --> 00:52:27.760 easier than going to the dentist or going to the gym routinely. Even though 643 00:52:28.360 --> 00:52:31.239 vaccines, none of us enjoy the actual process of getting vaccinated. We get 644 00:52:31.239 --> 00:52:35.719 a sore arm and some of us feel pretty rotten the next day. And 645 00:52:35.800 --> 00:52:39.760 at this point we don't have a ton of evidence that this new vaccine is 646 00:52:39.840 --> 00:52:44.760 going to be beneficial, and I think a lot of the doctors who I 647 00:52:44.800 --> 00:52:47.760 write about use that to their advantage. They will say, where's the randomized, 648 00:52:47.760 --> 00:52:52.840 double blind, pacebo controlled study showing that you need these sorts of boosters. 649 00:52:53.079 --> 00:52:57.679 But this is what happens, as we've learned, in a pandemic, 650 00:52:58.000 --> 00:53:04.679 is that you have to make decisions in real time without the luxury of the 651 00:53:04.679 --> 00:53:09.199 best, highest quality of evidence. For example, had we done a randomized 652 00:53:09.239 --> 00:53:15.679 controlled trial of the booster last year in twenty twenty two, we would have 653 00:53:15.760 --> 00:53:21.199 known in twenty twenty three, after the wave had already subsided, exactly what 654 00:53:21.360 --> 00:53:25.320 to do. So you have to make decisions with incomplete information. In choosing 655 00:53:25.519 --> 00:53:31.079 not to get a vaccine is a decision, even though, as we discussed, 656 00:53:31.079 --> 00:53:36.039 it's not often perceived that way. So listen. So, if someone 657 00:53:36.039 --> 00:53:38.679 has had six vaccines already, they've been infected four times, what is the 658 00:53:38.679 --> 00:53:43.920 benefit of an additional vaccine? Now? I don't really know, but I 659 00:53:43.960 --> 00:53:47.360 think that on app just to repeat myself, there has not been a vaccine 660 00:53:47.400 --> 00:53:52.559 dose that I'm aware of that hasn't been shown to be of some benefit to 661 00:53:52.599 --> 00:53:55.000 at least some people, and I think it's not super duper hard. Probably 662 00:53:55.000 --> 00:54:00.000 the hardest part actually is getting an appointment and finding available vaccine. The VACS 663 00:54:00.280 --> 00:54:04.719 role has been horrific, but if your local drug store has it. I 664 00:54:04.760 --> 00:54:07.440 live across the street from about three of them here in New York City. 665 00:54:07.079 --> 00:54:10.119 I just went across there and got a vaccine and my arm hurt that for 666 00:54:10.159 --> 00:54:15.480 the next day. It was not a big deal, right, you know, 667 00:54:15.639 --> 00:54:22.639 it's I worry sometimes that it's it's about more than just the how do 668 00:54:22.679 --> 00:54:27.119 I put this? So I just finished my PhD, as you know, 669 00:54:27.519 --> 00:54:31.639 and I am in between my internship and my postdoc, which means that I 670 00:54:31.679 --> 00:54:36.320 am one of the you know, many many Americans who sort of in between 671 00:54:36.320 --> 00:54:40.039 health insurance. Open enrollment has started. I'm getting I'm gearing up to get 672 00:54:42.320 --> 00:54:46.960 my sort of Obamacare to cover me until I start my postdoc. But I 673 00:54:47.079 --> 00:54:51.400 went down to like my local pharmacy and said, hey, I just want 674 00:54:51.440 --> 00:54:53.400 to get a flu and a COVID vaccine, and he was like, without 675 00:54:53.440 --> 00:54:57.239 insurance, it's going to be like two hundred and fifty dollars for both of 676 00:54:57.280 --> 00:55:00.599 those, and I was like, my mind was blown, Like you know, 677 00:55:00.639 --> 00:55:05.159 they all advertise free flu shot, but then in the fine print it's 678 00:55:05.159 --> 00:55:09.079 like with your insurance. And it used to be that COVID vaccines were covered, 679 00:55:09.079 --> 00:55:15.440 that we had government you know, money set aside to ensure public health. 680 00:55:15.440 --> 00:55:19.119 But I guess that that has now dried up. So I think that 681 00:55:19.239 --> 00:55:27.679 sometimes sadly, this this move towards vaccination and public health and wanting to do 682 00:55:27.719 --> 00:55:32.760 the right thing is squashed by finances. Yeah, no, you're absolutely right. 683 00:55:32.800 --> 00:55:37.920 And I'm halfway done with an article for Science Based Medicine where I talk 684 00:55:37.960 --> 00:55:43.519 about this, and I discuss how vaccine advocates like myself have focused exclusively on 685 00:55:43.559 --> 00:55:47.519 the science rather than on the economics of vaccines. And Fizer, even though 686 00:55:47.519 --> 00:55:52.039 they got oodles of public money to develop this vaccine or charged doing what companies 687 00:55:52.079 --> 00:55:55.280 do, they're charging as much as they can for it. And I was 688 00:55:55.280 --> 00:56:00.280 always kind of mystified why vaccine advocates were called pharmacie. Obviously this has earned 689 00:56:00.599 --> 00:56:04.760 you know, pharma gazillion dollars. You know, it was the number one 690 00:56:04.800 --> 00:56:10.960 best selling drug last year, but I was mystified this. But because vaccines 691 00:56:12.000 --> 00:56:15.599 traditionally save a lot of money by keeping people out of the hospital. But 692 00:56:16.280 --> 00:56:22.000 these drug companies, you know, they make people feel like they just want 693 00:56:22.119 --> 00:56:27.800 to extract every penny from everyone's wallet and by charging as much as possible, 694 00:56:27.840 --> 00:56:30.639 which they do. And I think vaccine advocates like myself have been kind of 695 00:56:30.679 --> 00:56:35.920 too silent on this, which is why we are called pharmaciew. So hopefully 696 00:56:35.960 --> 00:56:39.440 I will publish that article once I get all the sentences in the correct order 697 00:56:39.760 --> 00:56:43.519 and say, yeah, I think this has been a problem that skeptics and 698 00:56:43.599 --> 00:56:47.039 vaccine advocates have not spoken out as much about the economics of vaccines and the 699 00:56:47.039 --> 00:56:50.760 fact that a lot of people, Yeah, two hundred bucks is a huge 700 00:56:50.760 --> 00:56:53.559 amount of money for a lot of people, and I don't blame someone for 701 00:56:53.760 --> 00:56:58.519 skipping the vaccine when they can use that two hundred dollars to pay rent or 702 00:56:58.519 --> 00:57:01.760 buy groceries. Yeah, and it's the calculus is really difficult. Like you 703 00:57:01.760 --> 00:57:06.440 said, I need to eat now, I may or may not get sick, 704 00:57:07.440 --> 00:57:09.599 you know, And I think people often think that way, like it's 705 00:57:09.840 --> 00:57:13.800 so clear to us that, like, the way you're not going to get 706 00:57:13.840 --> 00:57:16.639 sick is to prevent yourself from getting sick. But a lot of people are 707 00:57:16.679 --> 00:57:22.559 willing to or sometimes are forced to take that kind of gamble or you'll see 708 00:57:23.159 --> 00:57:27.360 you know, I think the mentality and maybe it's important for you to help 709 00:57:27.440 --> 00:57:30.280 answer this of individuals who are like, well, the last time I got 710 00:57:30.320 --> 00:57:34.760 vaccinated, I got sick anyway, right, so why should I get vaccinated? 711 00:57:35.000 --> 00:57:37.239 Like, how do you answer your patients when they come and they ask 712 00:57:37.320 --> 00:57:40.639 that question. Yeah, So the main disease that I treat actually as multiple 713 00:57:40.639 --> 00:57:46.000 sclerosis, and with one exception, all of the MS drugs are designed to 714 00:57:46.079 --> 00:57:50.559 prevent bad things from happening. So I have this whole sort of speech that 715 00:57:50.599 --> 00:57:53.360 I give, which is to say that these medications, and this is true 716 00:57:53.400 --> 00:57:59.519 of vaccines, are like an like an invisible suit of armor. If you 717 00:57:59.559 --> 00:58:01.400 were in a fight, that would be weird. But let's say someone cuts 718 00:58:01.480 --> 00:58:06.119 you and then you put on your invisible suit of armor. That suit of 719 00:58:06.239 --> 00:58:08.760 armor would not feel good. It would not heal the cut that was already 720 00:58:08.800 --> 00:58:15.119 there, but it would protect you from future sword blows. And if you're 721 00:58:15.119 --> 00:58:19.199 in the middle of a sword fight, you would notice the armor protecting yourself. 722 00:58:19.199 --> 00:58:22.880 But the good that the vaccine does is invisible. So let's say you 723 00:58:22.880 --> 00:58:27.519 saw someone who gets vaccinated and they get COVID and they don't get hospitalized and 724 00:58:27.559 --> 00:58:30.800 they don't die. You can tell that person there's a perhaps a chance we'll 725 00:58:30.840 --> 00:58:36.480 never know for sure that it was the vaccine that made your illness much milder 726 00:58:36.519 --> 00:58:38.639 than it was. So that's how I tried to say it. Or it's 727 00:58:38.679 --> 00:58:42.000 kind of like a seat belt, right. If I was driving from New 728 00:58:42.079 --> 00:58:45.559 York City to Boston this week, I would probably be fine if I chose 729 00:58:45.599 --> 00:58:50.880 to make that ride without a seatbelt, But wearing a seatbelt just puts the 730 00:58:50.880 --> 00:58:58.159 odds of a healthy, safe trip in my favor. Obviously. It's the 731 00:58:58.159 --> 00:59:00.599 benefits of a seatbelt are playing for all to see, whereas the good that 732 00:59:00.639 --> 00:59:05.039 a vaccine does is invisible. So I think that's why you have a hard 733 00:59:05.119 --> 00:59:08.960 sell. Yeah, And I think the other question that is sort of the 734 00:59:09.000 --> 00:59:15.480 obvious follow up, and maybe the last question that I've got for today, 735 00:59:15.000 --> 00:59:25.360 is what's the difference in protection between vaccine immunity and natural immunity. So for 736 00:59:25.440 --> 00:59:30.280 individuals who are either both vaccinated and have had the virus several times, or 737 00:59:30.280 --> 00:59:32.960 those who are vaccinated and who have never been sick, or those who have 738 00:59:34.039 --> 00:59:37.239 been sick a bunch of times, but haven't really been vaccinated that many times, 739 00:59:37.519 --> 00:59:40.840 Like, how do you, as a physician think about that calculus and 740 00:59:42.360 --> 00:59:45.760 you know how we can be best protected? Yeah, so everyone uses the 741 00:59:45.760 --> 00:59:52.880 phrase natural immunity myself as well, but we should know that the immunity induced 742 00:59:52.920 --> 00:59:58.079 by vaccines is completely natural, right, the immune responsor trigger, don't worry, 743 00:59:58.119 --> 01:00:01.519 I use an well. I mean so I tend to think about them 744 01:00:01.960 --> 01:00:07.079 in pretty similar terms that if you're vaccinated or you're getting over a COVID infection, 745 01:00:07.840 --> 01:00:13.719 you likely have very good protection, but for a relatively short period of 746 01:00:13.760 --> 01:00:19.400 time. So I think that future generations will just get used to their annual 747 01:00:19.480 --> 01:00:22.920 COVID shot the way we're used to an annual flu shot. Are We're used 748 01:00:22.920 --> 01:00:28.199 to going to the dentist every year. We're used to doing many things on 749 01:00:28.239 --> 01:00:32.280 an annual basis, And I hope that the COVID shot becomes normalized in that 750 01:00:32.320 --> 01:00:37.239 way, because, as I've said, every dose so far has been shown 751 01:00:37.280 --> 01:00:40.599 to help keep people alive and out of the hospital. Again, it's much 752 01:00:40.599 --> 01:00:45.360 more beneficial for people who are older and have underlying risk, but there's some 753 01:00:45.440 --> 01:00:49.519 benefit for younger people as well, and the risks are so low. The 754 01:00:49.599 --> 01:00:52.280 risk of myocarditis from the boosters. There's like one out of one hundred thousand. 755 01:00:52.320 --> 01:00:57.840 I mean, it's extremely low. So it's just a question. You're 756 01:00:57.920 --> 01:01:02.599 kind of a gambler, right, where's the downside? A sore arm and 757 01:01:02.679 --> 01:01:06.280 maybe feeling sick for a day, that's the best I've got. Goot the 758 01:01:06.320 --> 01:01:08.440 downside. And even if that I found, and maybe this is anecdotal, 759 01:01:08.480 --> 01:01:14.360 I don't know, but that each booster that I've gotten, my reaction like 760 01:01:14.440 --> 01:01:16.920 that feeling of being ill, because I was quite ill from the second dose 761 01:01:16.960 --> 01:01:21.400 of the first shot, and then each subsequent booster I would get ill, 762 01:01:21.440 --> 01:01:24.159 but it was like less and less and less, to the extent that my 763 01:01:24.280 --> 01:01:28.679 very last booster, I think I felt sick for like an hour, which 764 01:01:28.760 --> 01:01:30.360 was amazing compared to how, oh my god, I was sick for like 765 01:01:30.360 --> 01:01:35.719 a whole weekend during the first vaccine. Yeah no, me too. My 766 01:01:35.800 --> 01:01:40.800 last booster, I noticed nothing. So if there's some potential benefit and there's 767 01:01:42.440 --> 01:01:45.719 virtually no downside, I say, why not? Right if someone was going 768 01:01:45.800 --> 01:01:49.039 to hand me a free lottery ticket, I'd say it's probably going to be 769 01:01:49.119 --> 01:01:52.400 worthless, but hey, why not? So Okay, I know I said 770 01:01:52.400 --> 01:01:54.440 that was gonna be my last question, but I have another follow up. 771 01:01:54.920 --> 01:01:59.199 What are the odds do you think, like, what is it looking like 772 01:01:59.400 --> 01:02:02.519 for having some sort of multi valent shot in the future where we don't have 773 01:02:02.559 --> 01:02:06.599 to get two jabs for flu in covid but we get an all in one 774 01:02:06.679 --> 01:02:08.880 vaccine. Oh, I will plead the fifth on that. I don't know 775 01:02:08.920 --> 01:02:14.000 the exact answer to that. Are you hopeful? Maybe I'm What I'm really 776 01:02:14.000 --> 01:02:20.559 hopeful about is a pan coronavirus vaccine, so like a cold kind of resistance 777 01:02:20.599 --> 01:02:24.159 as well, or a sterilizing vaccine kind of like we have for measles, 778 01:02:24.199 --> 01:02:29.440 meaning that you can't get infected and you can't pass it on. So something 779 01:02:29.519 --> 01:02:34.800 that really induces immunity not just deep in your lungs, but in your sinus 780 01:02:34.880 --> 01:02:38.760 passages as well. That's what I'm really sort of hoping for, and it's 781 01:02:38.800 --> 01:02:45.039 a reason to try to avoid COVID infections for now. I think I'm not 782 01:02:45.119 --> 01:02:47.280 the most careful person on the planet, that's for sure, but I'm more 783 01:02:47.320 --> 01:02:52.320 careful than most people. Just got done flying and I wore a mask on 784 01:02:52.360 --> 01:02:58.000 the airplane, and I'm hopeful that in a few years we'll have much better 785 01:02:58.079 --> 01:03:02.800 vaccines available. Time will tell, so you know, before we before we 786 01:03:02.840 --> 01:03:06.679 sign off. I'm just curious. Obviously there's so much to cover, There's 787 01:03:06.719 --> 01:03:09.840 so much in your book. Is there anything that we didn't discuss that you 788 01:03:09.920 --> 01:03:15.400 feel like it would be really important to bring up? I would just say, 789 01:03:15.760 --> 01:03:19.360 you know what, what can we do about all of this? And 790 01:03:19.480 --> 01:03:23.800 I think I've been a little bit dismayed at my own profession. Ninety nine 791 01:03:23.840 --> 01:03:30.840 percent of US doctors behaved admirably. We rushed in to treat COVID patients fearlessly, 792 01:03:30.960 --> 01:03:34.880 and decent number of us paid for that with our lives. But I 793 01:03:34.880 --> 01:03:38.119 think when it comes to misinformation, there's just this sort of attitude of I 794 01:03:38.119 --> 01:03:43.000 think David Gorsky called it shruggies, meaning people to sort of, eh, 795 01:03:43.079 --> 01:03:45.519 whatever, some doctor says something, You know, what am I going to 796 01:03:45.599 --> 01:03:50.400 do about it? And I think that you know, we all need to 797 01:03:50.639 --> 01:03:53.199 do what you do on The Skeptics Guide to the Universe and on this podcast, 798 01:03:53.239 --> 01:03:58.159 which is not to sign once anyone, not to try to get anyone 799 01:03:58.199 --> 01:04:02.400 fired, but just to speak up about gross misinformation and say this is not 800 01:04:02.519 --> 01:04:05.599 acceptable. And I do think the tide is turning a little bit that way 801 01:04:06.360 --> 01:04:12.079 in that certain doctors are receiving pushback for spreading misinformation that they didn't used to, 802 01:04:12.239 --> 01:04:15.519 and we just need to say this is unacceptable for our profession any more 803 01:04:15.519 --> 01:04:19.920 than it's acceptable for a firefighter to start a fire. Yeah. Yeah, 804 01:04:20.679 --> 01:04:26.119 good points all around. So everybody, the book is so, I have 805 01:04:26.199 --> 01:04:30.320 it queued up here. I want to read the full subtitle the book is 806 01:04:30.320 --> 01:04:33.719 we Want Them Infected. How the failed quest for herd immunity led doctors to 807 01:04:33.760 --> 01:04:40.960 embrace the anti vaccine movement and blinded Americans to the threat of COVID by doctor 808 01:04:41.119 --> 01:04:44.639 Jonathan Howard. Jonathan, thank you so much for spending time with us today. 809 01:04:44.840 --> 01:04:45.920 Oh my pleasure. Thank you so much for having me. I sture 810 01:04:45.960 --> 01:04:49.880 appreciate it. Kara and everyone listening, thank you for coming back week after 811 01:04:49.920 --> 01:04:54.519 week. I'm really looking forward to the next time we all get together to 812 01:04:54.599 --> 01:04:55.280 talk to Ernie