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