Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to the Texas Tribune trib Cast for
March eighteenth, twenty twenty five. I am Matthew Watkins, editor
in chief of the Texas Tribune. We are recording early
this week. It's the Friday before as the Watkins family
prepares for our trek to Lego Land in California, and
this week, of course, as always, joined by our co
host Eleanor Klibanoff.
Speaker 2: Hello, Eleanor, Hello, I'm excited for you to go to Legoland.
Speaker 1: I'm very excited missing it. My son could not be
more thrilled. And my wife also told me last night
that she said that you are the better host of
the Tribe cast and that you do better banter than
I do. So I just want to this open the
floor for you for any banter you would like.
Speaker 2: To provide high stakes. Now, I will say, every time
I end up at a social event with your wife,
it is just me and her talking in the corner.
So I think she just likes me.
Speaker 3: That can be right.
Speaker 2: I'm not sure she's does not like me or doesn't
like you, but yeah, you know, I'm honestly, Lego Land
sounds pretty great. I've never been is that is your
daughter excited.
Speaker 1: It is my well, she's she's excited for my son,
who is younger and obsessed with with Legos. She was
also they were both very intrigued by the Legoland Hotel,
which apparently outside each elevator has a whoope cushion. So
they they've been talking about this for weeks. Okay, and
maybe I will report back in future episodes, and.
Speaker 2: Tells me there's gonna be like a big setup where
they like are tricking you into where you are well
aware you're being tricked into using a whoopy cushion. Yes, yes, yes,
well that'll be great, we hear meanwhile, recording this on Friday.
It is the bill filing deadline, so we're sort of
we're in the weeds, but we're so glad you're getting
some time off.
Speaker 3: Yes, yes, yes, it's good to be the editor. Yeah,
exactly sure, all.
Speaker 1: Right, and this week we are joined by a special
guest as well, doctor Peter Hotez, who's dean of the
National School of Tropical Medicine at the Baylor College of
Medicine and author of the recently published book The Deadly
Rise of Anti Science. Doctor Hotez, thank you so much
for joining us.
Speaker 4: Oh, thanks so much for having me.
Speaker 5: I'm wondering if you could have your kids when they're
a legal and make me a funded grant from the
National Institutes of Health.
Speaker 4: Out of legos.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, that may be the only ones left. So see
if you can work on that. I will, I will
see what I can do.
Speaker 2: Worst case scenario will give you a whoope question. That's
what we can offer.
Speaker 3: Do do medical schools good spring break?
Speaker 5: You know, that's the problem with the medical schools and
academic health centers versus you know, the typical you know,
four year colleges because every day, you know, it's just
it's all based on sponsored research and grants, the seeing patients,
and so summers, the summers don't mean as much in
that sort of thing.
Speaker 1: All right, well, we will do our lego work for
you and on your behalf in California. The reason we
have doctor Hotez on this edition of the podcast is
because it is March. Therefore, it is the fifth anniversary
of the sort of ramping up of the COVID pandemic
in Texas. It's the end of March where Texas really
started to impose the restrictions. It was the early part
of March where the first sort of cases started popping up.
It has been a challenging five years for many of us,
doctor Hotez in particular, in the aftermath of that, and
of course, now five years later, we are dealing with
another public health crime, at least not maybe not on
the scale of COVID five years ago, but still a
scale that is very concerning. This is, of course measles
and the large number of cases of measles as of Friday.
As of today, the day we're recording this, Texas has
had more than two hundred and fifty measles cases in
thirty four hospitalizations, one death. Eleanor you and the health
team have been involved in covering this. Let's just start
this conversation by telling us a little bit about what's
been happening with these cases in recent weeks and months,
where we sort of stand in this crisis right now?
Speaker 2: Sure, So, this outbreak started in West Texas in Gaines County,
which is a small rural county in West Texas, you know,
sort of southwest of Lubbock along the New Mexico border.
And it started in a Mennonite community, which is actually
pretty common for measles outbreaks. To start in, you know,
more tight knit, closed off communities. In this case, the
Mennonite community has very low vaccination rates, and you know,
it just spread from there. As I'm sure we're going
to get into. Texas has seen declining vaccination rates for
measles in recent years, which just means there's a lot
more people who are sort of susceptible to getting measles
is spreading really fast. Basically, the experts we're talking to,
we've not really been able to get put a lid
on this, as I think many people had hoped in
those early days.
Speaker 1: Doctor you are one of those experts. I mean, what
are you watching when you see these cases in what's
happening out there in West Texas.
Speaker 5: Well, you know, I think the numbers are probably low
ball estimates. You know, from talking to some of the
public health officials in the ground and colleagues, I'm getting
a sense that the numbers are far higher than two
hundred and fifty because some are not seeking medical attention
and others, you know, trying to do remedies at home
and that sort of thing, So the real number could
be several hundred. And of course, the one thing you
cannot hide or hospitalization. So thirty four hospitalizations. That's pretty rough,
especially since probably most of those are kids, and most
of those are probably hitting one children's hospital in the region.
So the outbreak is centered on Gaines County on near
the New Mexico border, as you point out, but the
children's hospital is about one hundred miles away in Lubbock.
It's connected with Texas Tech. So they're getting hit pretty hard.
I would imagine those kids are sick. I mean, measles
is a bad actor. You know, roughly a high percentage
of hospitalizations. The reason they're hospitalized is because of measles.
Pneumonia causes the virus when it causes the rash. Because
the virus gets into the blood and goes to the skin,
it also goes to the lung and causes this very
severe It's called giant cell pneumonia because of a particular
type of cell that appears in the lung, and they
require respiratory assistance sometimes even in ICU ad mission in
debation of course to one death and encephalitis, permanent neurologic injury,
deafness from metals, measles otitis, and ear infection and dehydration
from from diarrheal disease. We forget that at one time
measles was the single leading killer of children globally, and
now it's hitting Texas really hard. So this is this
is a humanitarian tragedy of sorts because none of this
had to happen. These are almost all among unvaccinated kids
and adults that could have been prevented with an MMR vaccine.
Measles Monster Bell vaccines one of the best vaccines we have.
You know, I make vaccines for a living. We you know,
my our laboratory at the Text Children's Hospital Center for
Vaccine Development in Baylor. You know, we developed new vaccines
for virus infections, for parasitic disease vaccines. When we design
a vaccine, our gold standard is the MMR vaccine because
you can't do better, you know, that's our dream, that's
our aspiration to make something as good as the MMR vaccine.
We never quite get there, but that's the aspirations. But
just to give you a sense, that's how good the
MMR vaccine is. And the fact that it's been withheld
from these kids because parents have been victimized by this
disinformation wave is just so demoralizing and sad, and so
it's a lot of sadness all around.
Speaker 4: And then the last point.
Speaker 5: Before I'll let you get a word in edgewise, is
it's still going this evergreens every two weeks.
Speaker 4: The reason I say that.
Speaker 5: Is each time the number goes higher. Remember the incubation
period from the time you're infected with the virus to
you show the symptoms the rash and the three seas,
the cariiza, conjunctivitis, and cough. It takes about twelve to
thirteen days. So we know at least this epidemic will
lasts to the end of the month. And I think
at this point it's going to go well into the spring.
And so this rint for the long haul in this one, unfortunately.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: And one of the things they say about measles, right
is when you're not vaccinated, vaccinated, it's just kind of
unbelievably you.
Speaker 2: Know, so contagious. Yeah, so contagious. Yeah, It's like I
think it's like if you are unvaccinated and you're in
the room two hours after someone with measles has been there,
even ninety percent chance of getting it.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's there's there's two there's two factors in that
one the inoculum required to be for you to become infected.
That is, the number of virus particles is very small.
And as as you just pointed out, the virus can
linger in the atmosphere, so you don't even have to
be in direct contact with someone with measles. Someone could
have been there, coughed, sneezed, spread virus particles in the atmosphere.
Speaker 4: It aerosolizes.
Speaker 5: You can go in two hours later and then contract
the virus. And that's why the measles virus has one
of the highest what we call reproductive numbers that we
know about and infectious diseases. A reproductive number means the
number of people you'll infect.
Speaker 4: If those individuals are not vaccinated.
Speaker 5: So in the case of measles, it's twelve to eighteen,
which is even far higher than coronavirus, which itself has
a lot very high reproductive number, especially the omicrob. But
this is the mother of all reproductive numbers coming from
the measles virus.
Speaker 1: Doctor, I hear your frustration, right. It's such an effective vaccine.
When people who are not vaccinated catch the illness and
get sick, it feels like something that was preventable, should
have been prevented, and things like that. I wonder if
you could help me try to understand as I kind
of grapple with the context of this is, of course,
and we're going to talk more about this. We are
coming off of a pandemic right where vaccine skepticism hit
kind of all high new levels, where public officials have
in some ways encouraged that skepticism. We're also talking about
an outbreak within a kind of you know, contained religious
community that has perhaps been traditionally you know, you know,
dating back even before COVID, you know, somewhat suspicious of
modern science and things like that. I'm wondering what since
you have of how different this individual case is because
of what's happened, you know, during and post kind of
the worst part of COVID, or how much of this
is just a type of outbreak that we see sometimes
from very particular communities that might not be as vaccinated
as the population as a whole.
Speaker 5: Yeah, so a lot to unpack there, So let me
let me start unpacking. The First of all, I'm told
I don't have a deep knowledge of the Mennonite community.
I'm told they really do not have prohibitions against vaccination
that in general, but that some anti vaccine activists somehow
got to them and convinced them of this. So so
park that thought for a minute. But let's go back
about ten years. So the point is that the anti
vaccine movement in Texas, which is probably the most active
of any state in the country and maybe the world,
started about a decade ago. And in fact it was
a decade ago. I wrote an article in the Public
Library of Science more or less predicting this. It was
called Texas and its Measles Epidemic, and the reason was,
if you remember twenty years ago, over twenty five years ago,
the original assertion against vaccines was false claims that vaccines
caused autism, and that started with the measles mumpsterbella vaccine
and then pivoted to thimerosol and a lot.
Speaker 4: Of other things.
Speaker 5: And that's how I got involved with this, fighting the
anti vaccine movement because I'm a vaccine scientist developing low
cost vaccines for global health. But then I'm also the
parent of four adult kids, including Rachel, who has autism
and intellectual disabilities, and I wounded up writing a book
called Vaccines Did not cause Rachel's autism about my daughter,
which wound up making me public enemy number one or
two with anti vaccine groups, but it also gave me
a front row seat to seeing what this thing was
all about. And what I saw about ten years ago
was kind of a shift or a pivot in the
nature of the anti vaccine movement from the main focus
aroun of fears that vaccines cause autism, which had actually
started to dissipate a bit until our good friend Robert F.
Kennedy Junior just became Healthy Human Services Secretary. Now he's
resurrecting it, but it was actually going down in favor
of a different aspect to the anti vaccine movement, where
it became more political in nature, around the spanner of
health freedom, medical freedom, where it got picked up by
And this is where it gets hard to talk about
because we're not supposed to talk about politics, at least physicians.
Scientists are not supposed to talk about politics, right, We're
supposed to be politically neutral or not. But you know,
I haven't found a way to talk about it other
than to talk about it.
Speaker 4: So I talk about it or I write about it.
Speaker 5: Not because I care about politics that you're right as
an American citizen, your right as a Texan, but to say,
let's uncouple the anti science stuff from it, because it's
so dangerous. But about ten years ago it got picked
up by the Republican what was then called the Republican
Tea Party in Texas and it started giving pac money
political action committee money to anti vaccine groups because they
were rallying around this concept, which I consider it kind
of a propaganda concept around health freedom, medical freedom. You
can't tell us what to do with our kids. And
these anti vaccine groups were, you know, convincing parents that
vaccines were instruments of political control. You don't need to
get vaccinated. They were dompling the severity of the diseases
they're designed to prevent. They were exaggerating the side effects
of the vaccine, and basically working on our state legislature
to you know, file anti vaccine language to make it
easier to exempt kids out of vaccinations and put in
a lot of onerous language around the legislation and even
support candidates to run an anti vaccine platforms. It made
no sense, but I guess it made sense because that
this became kind of a platform of the far right
and the consequence of that was, starting around twenty fourteen
twenty fifteen, you started to see this very steep rise
in the number of parents requesting non medical exemptions for
their kids to the point where we got it. You know,
now over one hundred thousand kids in Texas not getting
their full complement of vaccines. And this doesn't say anything
about the homeschool kids. We have no idea what's happening
with the homeschool kids because they're homeschooled, and probably hundreds
of thousands more. And it had this unique kind of
flavor to Texas. But Texas is now being the tip
of the spear for the rest of the country, or
at least the rest of the Red States. And that's
and that took us up to the pandemic. So things
were already bad for the fibrus six years prior to
the pandemic, and then during the pandemic, COVID hit and
it even became more political and more dangerous. So you know,
I wrote about this in the book The Deadly Rise
of Anti Science. It got picked up at the SEAPAC
Conference of Conservatives in Dallas in twenty twenty one, where
you know, they were in there and this is after
mRNA vaccines became available for COVID. There was a big
pushback around vaccine mandates, which you could kind of understand.
But what they did was they went the next measure
and falsely discredited the effectiveness and safety of vaccine. So
the rhetoric at that SEAPAC conference, you know, Matthew Catherine,
the representative from North Carolina, who is there, you know,
to paraphrase them, I don't remember the exact words, was
more or less to the effect of, first they went
to vaccination and then they're going to take away your
guns and bibles, which is again this health freedom medical
freedom concept. But then they paraded out all of the
most toks anti vaccine activists to falsely discredit the effectiveness
and safety of vaccines. And that was what was so dangerous.
And then the pylon came from the US Congress, you know,
you know, congress or Margery Taylor Green you know, called
people like me medical brown shirts, comparing vaccines to the Holocaust,
or Lauren Baybart, you know, started calling them fauci auchies.
And and then you had Senator Ron Johnson and Wisconsin
hold these phony blowny vaccine injury round tables and Ran
Paul was piling on and then Fox News joined in.
And this was documented by two groups, Media Matters, a
watchdog group, and in a research group out of the
Federal University in Switzerland documented how Fox News during that
delta wave, you know, that started around the time of
the Seapac coffers. Unfortunately, when vaccines were widely available every night,
Tucker Carlson, Laura Ingram, Sean Hannity were falsely discrediting the
effectiveness and safety of vaccines. And then there was another
amplification effect with Joe Rogan podcast at that time. He
was not really very anti vaccine at all prior to
this and decided to flip to that and started pushing ivermectin,
which does nothing for COVID in lieu of vaccines. So
it became this whole ecosystem. So people in our state
of Texas started, you know, going down that rabbit hole.
And then I'll stop in a second, and the point is,
you know, Texas had the worst experience with COVID of
any state in the country terms of total numbers of death.
It's tied with California with one hundred thousand deaths. Although
Texas is a considerably smaller population. But of those, half
the deaths were needless deaths because just like the measles cases, now,
those fifty thousand unnecessary deaths were in people who refused
to take a COVID vaccine because they went down that
rabbit hole on Fox News and everything else and made
an executive decision not to vaccinate. And that's what we're
dealing with. This is you know, it's not some academic
discussion or theoretical discussion. This anti vaccine activism in our
state of Texas is a lethal force right now.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, I think back at some of the
public health crises I've covered as a journalist while while
living and working in Texas. The first one that comes
to mind for me is I was at the Dallas
Morning News covering County government when the Ebola scare happened, right,
And I remember the very sort of unified and together
approached that Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkin's a Democrat, and
the governor at the time, Rick Perry, took in terms
of fighting this illness.
Speaker 3: I mean, I think if I remember, yeah, he was terrific.
Speaker 5: I actually, Governor Perry invited me to serve on his
Infectious Disease task Force right right there you go, And
that was it was all hands on deck, and you
know when and Governor Perry was all into the universities
and proud.
Speaker 3: Of that, and.
Speaker 5: Yeah, so it was it was a point is it
was normal.
Speaker 4: It wasn't crazy, right.
Speaker 1: And then you have COVID right, and and in the
early days you have Governor Abbott, you know, giving regular
press conferences, you know, shutting down businesses and in schools
and everything like that.
Speaker 3: He then, you know, as.
Speaker 5: And I was on his task force then, and it
was normal.
Speaker 1: The normal response was exactly yeah, you know that he
he loosened a lot of those restrictions later on, of course.
And then but you know, when the vaccine came, I
remember him, you know, giving a press conference receiving the vaccine,
you know, on on television cameras, everything like that. But
of course, this backlash that you just described continues to
grow and emerge and everything like that. Fast forward to
this measles pandemic andreak sorry excuse me, measles outbreak.
Speaker 2: I call it an epidemic diaesels epidemic outbreak.
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, and you know, Eleanor you have written about
this just even just the public response to this has
been very different, right, and it's been largely silenced.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I think our government officials have been
pretty publicly quiet about this, like we should say, like
the state has mobilized. They've sent you know, the Department
of State Health Services have sent folks out to West
Texas to help. They've launched vaccine clinics. They are doing
a lot on the ground. But you know, Governor Abbott
has not really addressed this publicly at all. He has
tweeted out his statement at a certain point, but saying
that the state is responding. But you know, the leaders
from that area, elected leaders from West Texas have not
said anything about this. You know, these are people who
are very active on social media. Right there, They're talking
about a lot if what we have heard from certain
lawmakers is the opposite, right, I mean Representive Nate Shatt's
line from Fort Worth, which has not yet been hit
by measles, but he was on Twitter this week bragging
about how his child's children's school district is the has
the lowest MMR vaccine rate in the state, and was
you know, really bragging about that and saying, you know,
thank you for being patriots, thank you for honoring medical
freedom of moms and dads and not you know.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean I don't know where this comes from.
But well, I mean I don't know where it comes from.
Speaker 4: It started ten years ago.
Speaker 5: Amplify with COVID, and now it's spilling back over to
childhood immunization. So the Gallipol did a survey in August
last year, August twenty twenty four, and you're now seeing
the same partisan divide among parents in terms of making
vaccine decisions. So the question they ask is do you
think the vaccine is more dangerous for childhood vaccines? The
childhod vaccine is more dangerous than the diseases designed to prevent.
And there's that clear partisan divide.
Speaker 4: And and you're right.
Speaker 5: The Texas Health Department has been great. I mean, both
the state Health Department and the County Health Department. They've
been good all you know, no criticisms at all. They've
been setting up vaccination clinics there. God, it's it's you
have no idea how hard it is to combat a
measles epidemic because it is so highly contagious. I don't
even know how you do contact tracing. So they're they're
doing a terrific job. But how do you now start
walking this back? How do you say? And this is
my biggest struggle. Everyone's in your entitled your political views.
I don't care about your political views, you know, but
don't adopt this one because it's so dangerous to you,
the health of your family, to you. And and and
this concept of medical freedom health freedom, it's it's it's
really pernicious. And I do think you see it not
playing out with what RFK Junior is saying in.
Speaker 2: Public, right. And I do think, like you know, so
many people got brought into this medical freedom movement into
all of this not I mean, yes, in part because
of the COVID vaccine, but also because of real and
perceived vaccine mandates, right, the idea that I am being
required after months of you know, anger growing about COVID lockdowns,
COVID restrictions, you know, all these things, then it was like,
here's another thing you have to do to go back
to your job as a healthcare worker or a pilot
or And I think that brought a lot of people
into this movement that maybe otherwise would not have been
you know, they didn't care before they would just get
their kids the vaccine because they you know, vaccines, because
they were told to. So I do think that was
like a pivot moment in a lot of ways that
you know, and it's hard to know, like it's hard
to say in hindsight, you know what could have been
done differently, But I do think that is what galvanized
a lot of people.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I would say, like when we talk about
Governor Abbot, right, I think, correct me if I'm if
any of you think I'm wrong here that there is
a slight difference between what Abbot has said. He has
maybe been more skeptical of vaccine mandates, but has not
been out there saying like don't get the vaccine or anything.
Speaker 3: No, Right, I do wonder.
Speaker 5: I've spoken to the governor about vaccines. Here's no problem.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he got the COVID shot, right. He did also
sue the federal four times over vaccine mandates, right, Like
that's the gap.
Speaker 3: I think.
Speaker 1: I do wonder though, Like I mean, one of the
thing about the COVID vaccine was, of course COVID we
knew disproportionately affected older people. The risk when a younger person,
particularly a child, got it, the risk of transmission appeared
to be lower. The risk of kind of serious illness
was lower when a kid got COVID measles. Seems to
sort of be the opposite, right, and it is very
dangerous for these young children. Is there any indication that
this incident, this case is inspiring people to rethink their
aversion to vaccines, or are people getting their children vaccinated
when they might have otherwise. Not, because this is such
a particularly scary thing for children.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you'd like it.
Speaker 5: But you know, if you look at a map of
COVID vaccination rates in Texas, and you can get this
from the New York Times, it looks just like a
geopolitical map of Texas. So what is the geopolitical map
of Texas? Looks like you got these big blue blobs
in the shape of a triangle right the cities, and
then you've got South Texas mostly in blue, and then
there's a sea of red on top of that. And
that's what the COVID vaccination rate looks. It's I mean,
it's almost a mirror image of really low vaccination rates
in West Texas, the Panhandle, East Texas, the rural counties,
everywhere except for South Texas and the cities. And it's
not a coincidence that measles is accelerating now in West Texas.
That's you know, if you were to predict where that
was going to happen, this is where it would either
be in East Texas or West Texas in the Panhandle,
and it began it in the Mennoni community. But I
think it's now continuing to accelerate. And this is like
a hurricane over warm water. I mean, as long as
the hurricanes over warm Caribbean water, it'll continue to accelerate.
And here the warm water in the unvaccinated rates, which
are substantial now in many parts of West Texas. So
I don't so the only hope for bringing this to
an end is to as the state and local health
departments are doing, setting up vaccination clinics, mobile clinics, and
encouraging people to get vaccinated. The only thing that stops
this is of enough parents agreed to vaccinate their kids.
Speaker 2: And I think anecdotally there are stories from West Texas that,
you know, I think Lubbick last time we talked to them,
had seen you know, a couple hundred families come out
to get vaccinated. I think a lot of families who
maybe weren't as ardently bought into this idea. They just
sort of hesitated when their kids were young to get
the shot, and now are like, hang on, like, you know, okay,
there is a real measles threat out there, detrue.
Speaker 1: Does I wonder just like if you could put this
threat into context for us, like you know we talked earlier.
I have two kids, both of whom are vaccinated. Both
of them go to public schools. We're about to go
to a busy airport and fly to you know, and
hang out with a bunch of other kids.
Speaker 3: And make my lego and make your lego. Yes exactly.
Speaker 1: I mean how much do I, you know, using me
just as an example for you know, millions of other
families in Texas right now? How much do I need
to be concerned about the immediate or even mid term
health and safety of my children with this going on
right now?
Speaker 3: Well? How old are your kids? So I have a
third grader and a sixth grader. Yeah, so you're fine.
Speaker 5: I mean because after the late nineteen eighties, kids got
two doses of vaccines. So your first dose, which you
typically give at one year of age, is around ninety
percent protection protective. Your second dose is gives you up
to ninety seven percent protection. That's about as good as
it can get, and even if there is some breakthrough measles,
it'll be greatly mitigated. The most problematic one right now
is if you have an infant child and you're that
infant's not yet old enough to be get their first
Meetzel's dose. So if you have particularly between six and
eleven months of age, because prior to that, you know,
four months, three months, the infant will still have maternal
antibodies on board because if mom was vaccinated, But then
there's that window period of vulnerability evening six and eleven
months where maternal antibody is waning and you don't give
the first dose yet. We don't give the first dose
earlier because the maternal antibody will interfere with the vaccine.
So that's what I worry about an hour the parents
with infants six to eleven months, and then what do
you do? Well, if you're in a measl's endemic area
right now, if you're in West Texas, the state Health
Department has issued an alert to encourage parents and pediatricians
to vaccinate earlier, starting between six and eleven months, depending
on how old they are, and then you wind up
getting three doses of the vaccine instead of two doses
of the vaccine. See, you vaccinate now you don't know
how well the vaccine takes because there might be still
maternal antibodies on board, and then vaccine again at twelve
to fifteen months, and then four to six years of age.
Speaker 1: So we've talked a lot about the vaccine hesitancy, the
politics about this, but there's also just the general public
health apparatus. There was a lot of talk, you know,
when the COVID vaccine hit about hit sorry, yeah, well,
well when COVID and the vaccine came about about the
the underfunding of public health departments, you know at the
state and local and maybe even federal level, about you know,
the exhaustion of these folks having to work with this
for years. How do you feel like that apparatus, that
government system, maybe below the politician level, is holding up.
And what are we learning about that system from from
what's happening with measles in West Texas right now?
Speaker 5: Well, I know a lot of people who work in
state and local health departments, you know, feel a bit
demoralized because they feel like they can't have open discussions
like we're having here and uh and and they feel
a little bit under siege. There's an added problem that
I only learned about recently. So I do a weekly
phone zoom call with some amazing colleague. I mean, I'm
more of a laboratory science guy and making vaccines and
infectio disease in the laboratory. But I do this weekly
call with Mike Osterholme, who's who's an amazing epidemiologist the
University of Minnesota, together with Margaret Hamburg, former FDA commissioner,
and Penny Heaton and Eric Topel and Ruth Berkeleman from
CDC and others. And one of the things that I learned,
I didn't realize this that most state health departments get
the lions share their budget from the CDC, and I
didn't It wasn't aware of that, and now that's being
cut dramatically in many states. I don't know what's happening
in Texas, So that could be another big problem that
we're that we may be facing as well. So it's
just getting tougher and tougher to implement public health measures.
You know, my experience with the state Health Department. It's outstanding.
My experience with you know, here in Houston, we have
two public health departments because we have to have two
of everything, right, we have county and city, So the
county and city health departments are top, top notch. I
often wonder why they stay with it, you know, given
the you know that the low pay and the stress
and everything else. But they're amazing people.
Speaker 4: So we actually are.
Speaker 5: The two The heroes in Texas are the public health
experts and the journalists and people like you.
Speaker 4: Or I think.
Speaker 5: I tell because I come from the Northeast and I
and I tell people that the smartest, most committed journalists
and reporters I've ever met her from the state of
Texas and part because you.
Speaker 4: Have to be right.
Speaker 5: I mean it, and it goes across. It's not just
the text tribute is wonderful, but it's also true of
reporters from every paper I've met, you know, San Antonio,
Dallas Morning News, in Houston Chronicle, I mean, Austin Standing
an incredible group of people. That's why I'm willing to
spend time with you guys, because I'm so impressed with
what you do.
Speaker 4: I appreciate that.
Speaker 1: I want to ask you just briefly too. I you know,
I follow you on Twitter. You mentioned kind of being
the target of a lot of these vaccine skeptics, you know,
from from even the days before the COVID pandemic. It
seems like due to technological issues, political issues, and maybe
cultural issues with with our country right now that that
abuse has it, it's alarming, right. I mean, I see
some of the of what you're subjected to for saying
these things publicly. I mean, tell me just about like
what this has been like for you as someone who
advocates for these things and believes that these things are
our messages that the public needs to know.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean, I'm the for for my adversaries, I'm
the trifecta. I'm a scientist. I'm a vaccine scientist and
a Jewish vaccine scientist. So I check all the boxes
for attack, and and uh, it's it is gotten to
be a very scary place. And you know, part of
it is because I've spoken about the anti vaccine movement
in such direct terms. I don't use euphemisms. I I
I write the same way I'm speaking to you, and
and I try as hard as I can't to thread
the needle to say, look, don't think of me as
a political political figure. I don't care about politics. You know,
I that that's not what I'm interested in. I just
want you to uncouple the stuff that's going to put
your family and harms away. Does a matter how much
I swear up and down about that, I still get
attacked And and one of it's interesting. One of the
things major the ways they attacked me is they claim I'm,
you know, in bed with the big pharma companies and
I'm taking millions of dollars from pharma companies, in which
my wife n says, if only but and and and
the answers I don't. That's the opposite we've made, you know,
we might have devoted my life to making being a
pediatrician scientist that makes low cost vaccines for the world,
proving we could bypass the.
Speaker 4: Big pharma companies. And we did it.
Speaker 5: And I did it because I'm in Texas and the
resources being part of this amazing Texas Medical Center at
Balor College of Medicine, Texas Children's Hospital. Our COVID vaccine
proved we could bypass big pharma companies. We administered we
you know, made a low cost for combatant protein COVID
vaccine that reached one hundred million people in India and
Indonesia bypassing pharmac But you know, the assertion stills out
there on Elon musk X that I'm a shill for
the pharma companies no matter how, it just wear up
and down, and then it takes on other dark turns.
It claims I'm secretly making the COVID virus. And you know,
Alex Jones goes after me, says, I'm part of the
what do they.
Speaker 4: Call it plandemic?
Speaker 5: They don't call it pandemic, to call it plandemic.
Speaker 4: That it's all, you know, designed to disrupt society.
Speaker 5: And and of course I'm doing this because I'm Jewish.
I'm doing it with George Soros and one of the Rothschilds,
and they've got me and and apparently the laboratories at
Davos at the World Economic Forum, but I tell them, look,
the labs are better in Texas. And you know, but
and and the crazier the conspiracy, the more the more
pileon there is.
Speaker 4: That's it.
Speaker 5: And that's and that's something very dark also, that that's
something I never thought I'd see as a as a
you know, I went into this because I thought it
was the most noble thing you can do with science
and the pursuit of humanitarian goals.
Speaker 4: Making low cost vaccines.
Speaker 5: For the world. Never occurred to me I'd be treated
as a public enemy or a cartoon villain, and and
that that's very tough.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I'm involved in my new position as editor in chief
in the planning for the Texas Tribune Festival, and we
were just having a conversation. I realized about a week ago.
We were talking about security issues and one time you
doctor spoke at the Tribune Festival and there was a
report of someone kind of outside the panel looking to
kind of stir up controversy and in anger about it.
And that man is now our Secretary of Health and
Human Services are fk Junior. He had he had appeared
kind of uninvited at the festival, and so.
Speaker 5: That was that was, you know, like one of those
dreams you have when you drink too much red wine
the night before, you know, at dinner and correct and now,
and I had I had this dream that Robert F.
Kennedy Junior came to my cat discussion and the doctor
told you that to drink so much of red wine,
but but there was actually happened.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, that's really strange.
Speaker 5: By the way, we have a notebook coming out in
the fall in September and hope maybe.
Speaker 4: You'll invite me back.
Speaker 5: I'm doing this with Michael Mann, the climate scientists who
gets beat up like I get beat up on the
climate science side, and we're comparing notes and the book
is called Science under Siege, and we look at the
overlap between the attacks on climate science and biomedical science,
and there's a surprising amount of commonality, which is quite interesting.
Speaker 3: We will prepare our invitation.
Speaker 1: That's on the day, fifteenth eleanor speaking of upcoming works,
will be running kind of a series of stories on
the fifth anniversary. Those will be launching, hopefully the day
this is appearing in your podcast feeds on Tuesday till
it's just quickly what to look for in that coverage.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, you know, we realized so much has
changed in Texas in the last five years, and we
thought this was a good opportunity to look back, not
just on what happened during COVID, but lessons we've learned
and the whole Health Team has contributed to this. So
our first story is coming out today and looks at
you know, how prepared Texas is for the next pandemic
spoiler alert, not as prepared as we might hope in
certain ways. And we are also going to in the
future look have stories looking at the death count, you know,
really what the human toll of this all, was, looking
at ARPA funding where that all went, and yeah, just
an opportunity and really you know what the impact has
been on Texas politics, So an opportunity to sort of
take stock of five crazy years.
Speaker 5: Absolutely, Okay, I mean the story, the story that I
would really want to see get out more is the
story of this extraordinary Texas Medical center where I work
at Bala College of Medicine, Texas Children's Hospital. You know,
you know, when I was going on the cable news channels,
going on c in A, MSNBC, I was even going
on Fox News for a while, un though I didn't
go get I wouldn't go along with the hydroxy chloric
when nonsense, and then the invitation stopped there. But but
you know, one of the frustrations that I always had
going on the cable news channels is you know, the
way in the Northeast. They want to portray us here
in Texas, and all they want to do is talk
about the wackadoodle, and I would try to explain, No,
wait a minute, I came to Texas to up my
game for science and medicine. I mean, I can do
things in our Texas Medical Center in terms of life
saving interventions that I couldn't do anywhere else. It's been
the most productive time of my scientific career. But that
story doesn't get out enough.
Speaker 4: And and and.
Speaker 5: That's and I don't know how how we do that,
but you know, we were. We tend to be very
inward looking in terms of our public outreach. But there's
something also very special going on here. I mean I
didn't really come because of the climate. I mean, well
I did, I guess because I work on tropical diseases.
But the in terms of solving big problems in the world,
you can do more in Texas, I think, than anywhere else.
Speaker 4: And that's why that's why I stay. That's why I'm
here interesting.
Speaker 1: Thank you for that, Thank you for joining us on
the show. Thank you Eleanor looking forward to reading those
stories as well. And a big thank you to Robin Chris,
our producers. That is it for the podcast. We will
be back next week.