Welcome to the making sense podcast. This is Sam Harris.
Okay, well today's podcast is yet another PSA. There have been many of them of late.
Needless to say, if you want to support what I'm doing here, the way to do that is to subscribe to the podcast at Sam Harris dot-org.
It's really the subscribers that make all of this possible, but given the kinds of topics I touch here is with some regularity that I feel the need to put out a podcast in a form, where the most people will hear every word of it.
And today the topic that could not suffer a pay wall is what is now universally described as vaccine, hesitancy and the general condition of misinformation and disinformation that surrounds vaccines in general. But the covid MRNA vaccines in particular, I think anyone who has listened to the podcast in the last year or so, we'll have no down about where I stand on the topic of the covid. Vaccines.
But I haven't focused on it because it seemed like there really has not been all that much to say. And it's just a general air of futility around persuading, anyone who has decided for one reason or another, that they're really worried about the covid vaccines, and not all that worried about covid. That's the bifurcation here, we have a very large cohort in our society
We think the covid is not an especially big deal at minimum the dangers of it have been exaggerated.
Of course, there are many millions of people who think it's a hoax, and that there is, in fact, no problem at all.
Any case, there's a spectrum of opinion on this side. We're in people are really not at all concerned about getting covid but they're quite concerned about the dangers or imagined dangers associated with the vaccines for covid. And then there are the rest of us who have the valence on those terms flipped and were quite concerned about covid.
And not, especially concerned about the risk of vaccines, rather. We were incredibly eager to get vaccinated and to get our kids vaccinated and we are fairly aghast at an increasingly troubled by the thinking and unjustified certainties come in from the other camp.
If people agree about anything on this topic, it's that you can't shame the other side into compliance, right? And to talk down to them to cast the vaccine hesitant as stupid or uneducated is generally deemed counterproductive. And it's also in many cases, just not true because there are many smart people who fall into this Camp as will become obvious.
Anyway, the fact that this is possible, the fact that one can be smart and aggressively misinformed and misinforming of others attest to just how bad the problem of misinformation has grown in our society. Anyway, I was avoiding this topic because again, I don't think there's that much to say on it.
But it's pretty obvious. Now, as the pace of vaccination has slowed, to a crawl in the United States and the need for vaccination globally is fairly excruciating. And the Delta variant is tipped us into a condition where even those of us who are vaccinated can no longer enjoy the light at the end of the tunnel, because we have been pushed back into that tunnel by frankly, the
Ocean of our neighbors at the Tipping Point for me. The other day was I was I was eating at a restaurant and notice that about half of the waiters were wearing masks and half warrant and I asked one of them, what was the policy here we wearing masks or not wearing masks and he said, well the policy, the restaurant was that if you're vaccinated you don't have to wear a mask and if you're not vaccinated you do
I chewed on that for a few minutes after he walked away and then I looked at all of these young men, they were all men with a kind of a fresh set of eyes and realize that there is no reason these guys aren't vaccinated.
But for the fact that they have some spurious memes and bad ideas bouncing around their brains, and they were very likely put there by some of my friends. Some of my fellow podcasters who have either gone down this Rabbit Hole themselves, or just platform to people who spread misinformation about.
Scenes and about covid and not known enough to push back in real time against these ideas. And then sitting, in this restaurant, looking at these waiters who are all podcast listeners, I just know it. I've spoken to a few of them about it and they're advertising, they're dangerous confusion on their faces by wearing masks, that would otherwise be
Necessary for them. This was before the explosion of the Delta variant in my city.
I just figure, I have to say something. So, the goal of today's podcast is to present a very simple case, which hopefully stands a chance of persuading, some number of the vaccine hesitant, and the punchline is this, even if you accept the worst claims about the risks of the MRNA vaccines, which are almost guaranteed.
To be false but even accepting them. The case for getting vaccinated is absolutely clear cut given what else we know about the effects of the vaccines in preventing disease and about the effects of covid itself, right? It's a very simple argument but it requires that we get into some of the details here about what's being claimed in about what we know thus far.
From what is really one of the largest medical experiments ever performed. We now have over a hundred million people in the US alone who are fully vaccinated, we have an extraordinary amount of information about the dangers here, or lack thereof,
So anyway, I wanted to produce a document that could be spread around to the people in your life.
Who may still be hesitating to get vaccinated and to help me do this. I decided to speak with dr. Eric Topol, Eric is a truly world, renowned cardiologist. He's also the Executive Vice President of Scripps Research, and one of the top ten, most cited medical researchers. He's the author of several books. The patient will see you. Now the creative destruction of medicine and
Deep medicine, how artificial intelligence can make Healthcare human again and even more relevantly for our purposes. He's been very active on Twitter for the last year and a half or so countering some of the crazy ideas that have been spread around covid and around vaccines. And you can follow them on Twitter at Eric Topol, pric Tio Pol and I recommend you do that. He's continually surfacing useful
Eagles.
But I thought Eric was one of the best people I could find to walk me through what we currently know, or have every reason to believe about vaccines, and about the state of our response to covid, we discuss the general problem of misinformation, the political and social siloing that people experience in our society.
We cover concerns about mRNA vaccines, the emergency use authorization by the FDA, what that means and what it doesn't mean and the false claims made about it. Talk about the effectiveness of the vaccines and differentiate vaccine efficacy from Effectiveness we discuss the Delta variant, the misuse of the vaccine adverse event Reporting System the tver database
We discussed concerns about the long-term side effects of the covid, vaccines bad incentives and Medicine, Ivermectin, government and corporate censorship and touch upon vaccine mandates, and other topics. Anyway, as you'll hear in the discussion, neither, I nor Eric have any conceivable conflict of interest here
In fact, Eric has distinguished himself in the past for going after big Pharma he had his career fairly derailed at one point in his battle against Merc over vioxx and he was very much on the heroic side of the good in that battle. Neither of us have an idealized picture of the pharmaceutical industry or the incentives that might drive in a specific decision.
The only reason for this podcast is I'm growing increasingly concerned about Miss information leading to needless illness disability and even death in our society and the world over. So with that said, I hope you find this podcast useful and I bring you Eric Topol.
I am here with dr. Eric Topol, Eric thanks for joining me again. Great to be with you soon. So, let's say you've been on the podcast. I forget when that was a while back, but let's briefly introduce you properly. How do you, how do you describe your background and current perch and Medicine? Well, I'm an old dog. I've
been around for a while now. You know, in the early years well as a cardiologist but research was
In clinical trials and then in the mid-90s it switch to genomics and digital medicine. And so the I'm at Scripps Research a professor of molecular medicine here and also Executive Vice President of the script research
institution. Hmm nice. Nice y. So I am talking to you today just because you know I know you're a wonderful Communicator of Science and and medicine and just, you know, you can just help people think about what is rational.
Oil on this topic and also you've been very active on Twitter throughout the pandemic, just forwarding articles, which you, you helpfully highlight for people. And just, you know, cutting through what has become a truly, a deluge of misinformation and disinformation and conspiracy thinking, you know, malignant fantasies, it was just a we're now dealing with a information space.
Is so contaminated by, you know, the digital entrepreneurship of people with varying, with various convictions that it's just very difficult to get anything like ground truth, around covid and vaccines. And, you know, sound Public Health advice and this is coupled to a pervasive distrust. In institutions now move, the people people distrust the
Government they distrust the media, they distrust Science And scientists. You know, our medical journals have have lost standing. Certainly organizations like the CDC and the who have fairly immolated their their reputations over the last 18 months or so. And some of this is understandable. I mean there really has been some terrible failures of Public Health messaging and instances of hypocrisy and double think.
rather than perform an autopsy on all of that, I want us to see if we can have a conversation about
Vaccines and vaccine, hesitancy and starting pretty much from first principles, and from what we can be reasonably, sure about in the current environment. So I'm, you know it, I have a few other things. I want to say by by way of getting us started here but it is there anything you want to say just to kick
this off?
Well, your point in the intro here are spot on Sam. The vaccine progression from the sequence of the tsar's Covey to. In January January, 10th to the clinical trial executed completed in November and rolling out vaccines. All in a matter of months is of historic significance. There's never been a vaccine. That's been short of eight.
Is the average and many
many fail. So
what we have here is one of the greatest triumphs in biomedicine and history and it's very sad to see that being compromised by Miss and disinformation. Mmm.
Okay, so let's just talk about a few background facts here. So first, despite that Triumph of rolling out these vaccines at record Pace, the vaccination rates in the US
Have now plummeted were around 250,000 shots. First shots given a day now, which is like something like 1/10 of where we were at our highest rate and what will focus on the US here. But anything we say will apply to other countries where vaccines are available and and we're a significant percentage of people don't want to get them. But I think we have to recognize that everyone is very likely to be in a bubble.
Of sorts here. So it's, you know, I think, I mean, I honestly think I only know a few people out of the hundreds of people, I know personally, I think I'm only aware of knowing one or two who aren't vaccinated and I'm sure that anyone who isn't vaccinated is very likely surrounded by people who are not vaccinated right there. So this is analogous to what happens with with smokers right? I think I only know.
One or two people who still smoke cigarettes. Whereas, if you smoke cigarettes, I imagine, you know, many of your friends are smokers. So we're impressively siloed here and this is all making it very difficult to talk about what is rational and responsible, because the siloing is not just social as, with respect to information and sources of information that one deems credible, there's one difference. So
about that.
I am. Yeah. I think you're making an app comparison to the smoker Circle or meat versus the non-smokers. But the difference is that the smoker circuit isn't directly trying to hurt the non-smokers, right? Whereas here we have a we have a harm that serious, unfortunately.
Yeah, it's worse than second hand. Smoke was coming from zactly exist unvaccinated here. It's a flip of
the model, you know? The one
Way it was supposed to work Sam was that there was this famous herd immunity, a lot of people had never heard of until they heard of her
demeanor knee and then
that idea was if we could just get 70% of people vaccinated, then the other 30% would benefit because the virus wouldn't be able to find hosts so that they're the majority. The one bubble would help the smaller one. But what's happened, unfortunately is that we have we have a much more
Transmissible contagious version of the virus would Delta. So we seen a flip of that model where the unvaccinated because it's substantial minority are now leading to infections in the vaccinated. And that's not the way it was
supposed to work, right? Right. Yeah. So, this is a bit of a stretch psychologically, to build a bridge between where we are and where the unvaccinated at the the resolutely unvaccinated.
Are right. So, I mean, you know, I'm living in a world where I and all of my friends were profoundly impatient to get vaccinated. And many of us were going to vaccine centers early on and lining up for hours even whole days. Hoping to get some overflow vaccine. Right? These are this is now months ago and now vaccines are ubiquitously available and we have people who don't want them, right?
Right. Right.
So what but I do think, you know, rather than stigmatize the unvaccinated or put the onus on them in very judgmental terms. I just, I just want to see if we can. This is a pointless exercise. If we can't say something that stands a chance of being persuasive for these people. So right, I mean, first, I think to understand who these people are. There's been a fair amount of polling on this. I'm drawing these comments from
Um, the Kaiser Family Foundation, vaccine monitoring website. So there's a few ways in which our society is segmented here. The first is obviously political, right? So there's a left-right. Divide politically that accounts for a lot of this difference. So two percent of Democrats say they will definitely will not get the vaccine whereas 23% of Republicans say that. So there's a significant significant effect and no surprise
There's about a 30% difference in vaccination rates. Among Democrats and Republicans eighty-six. Percent of Democrats have received at least one dose and only 52 percent of Republicans have and you know, there have been exceptions to this it with respect to public messaging missed some Republicans and right-wing media figures have said, you know what, I would consider the reason of the reasonable thing but many have tended to amplify the message that
covid itself is not really bad. It's, you know, just a flu or maybe, maybe even a hoax, but these newfangled covid, vaccines are dangerous. And then you have people like Trump, slinking off to get vaccinated and secret without using it as an opportunity to actually send a helpful Public Health message. So politics are definitely part of it but it's not the whole story age is also a major variable so people over 65 are much more likely to be vaccinated than the young. This is
Fairly rational because people over 65 understand their much greater risk for serious illness or death from covid. And there's also a rural urban divide which is again somewhat if not rational understandable because those are the people living in crowded cities are more likely to get exposed to covid and they're more likely to be vaccinated as well. And there's a, you know, there are other Cuts you can make it this and the education as a
Terrible college. Graduates are more likely to be vaccinated than than those who haven't finished college or or never went and there's some stratification by race. We whites are more likely to be vaccinated than blacks or Hispanics, but the effect is not that great. And then they're weird Pockets where there's a very strong anti vax sentiment like the yoga Community apparently is is very wary of getting vaccinated for covid. And the reason is when you pull people in these very
Is groups, the reasons they give for not being vaccinated tend to focus on concerns about the newness of the vaccines, right? And fear of side effects. You know these are new vaccines. They could not have been fully tested because they were produced so quickly. And therefore, they're likely to be dangerous, right? And then you add to this distrust of the government and, and also just a belief that
They don't actually need a vaccine because the the risk of covid has been greatly exaggerated. This is basically the picture you get of why people are, are not getting vaccinated. So I think there's
two prominent things that you've mentioned that deserve emphasis am. So first you did, cite the Kaiser Family Foundation, survey a large survey of Americans. And in that one of the most important reasons that people gave, and you can understand it.
Is that the FDA didn't give full approval yet and it's still being categorized as an emergency use. And so that, you know, you can understand people being skeptical when that without this final Blessing by the FDA, then the other thing, I think you've alluded to, but can't be emphasized enough. It isn't so much the problem with the unvaccinated. It's the problem of the information being fed to them, which they actually believe these things.
Things. Because a lot of this is purposeful, a lot of this is, you know, intentionally trying to prevent the benefit from being actualized. So I think those are factors that I consider, you know, pretty high on the list for where we are right
now. But what do you mean intentionally trying to get the benefit from keeping the benefit for being actualized?
Well, you know, in the political Specter, as you've mentioned, there's such a remarkable dichotomy between
Republicans and the Democrats and there was a great cartoon by one of my favorite, cartoonists Barrel Bill Brown Hall, who had a Biden. He's out there, you know, our sunglasses and he said, says on the cartoon, vaccines are bad. And that's how you get Republican to go, get vaccinated. But there is clearly a movement of among many republican leaders in Congress and states to now,
Be supportive of the vaccine front and only in recent days. Interestingly, have they started to come out? You know, with a message that this is important and that we're facing a very serious Delta wave right now. So this is, of course, very late in the game where we're now, you know, highly dominant with this very formidable version of the virus. And so the messaging from politicians to Buck, you know, that a lot of things have been blocked politically and it's
Area that I want to even get into as far as you know, politicization of the vaccines. But unfortunately it has happened and and you the data you cited and there are other other servers it suggested even worse than that. So you know, never before has vaccination in this country been so highly political and I remember you know as a kid I know I'm older than you I think Sam but when I was a kid and getting polio vaccine
Everybody got the polio vaccine there was still there was no politics and, you know, if you go back in time, we've never had anything like this. And it's the sad part is the people who are not getting the benefit of the vaccine, a lot of his because they're just, you know, they're on social media. They're getting Fitness information. And by the way, we also know, the Russians are involved. This is part of this, you know, mission of their divisiveness. And we haven't had a counteroffensive in this country.
This misinformation and in fact you know, I pleaded with Vivek Murthy are certain General. Back in May to do that. And I think he saw just last week. He did make that announcement that there but it hasn't really been aggressive. It isn't calling out the sources of this. So what we have is a problem of a lots of misinformation, some of it quite deliberate and lack of a
counter. Yeah. The reason why this is so upside down as you have many, many
Millions of people who believe some combination of the following that the risk of covid. The disease has been vastly exaggerated, right? Ok, covid is a hoax, or it's just a flu or it's just not a factor, but the vaccines are scary and dangerous, right? So, it's the, the we just have literally tens of millions of people who are totally saying, what about the
Act of catching covid but really averse to the idea of getting vaccinated for covid and you obviously from our point of view, that's totally upside down, but this is the balance that has to be, you know, the results of which have to be fairly judgment. On the one side, you have the risk of covid, plus the effectiveness of the vaccines weighed against the risks of vaccination, because it may be, this is this is really a forced choice.
For all of us, it's easy. If unless you're going to be perfectly in hiding, you're going to be exposed to the novel coronavirus and is some variant or many variants thereof, and you can either be exposed having been fully vaccinated or not having been fully vaccinated, and this should be simple to talk about. And, you know, the comparative risks should be simple to assess now because we have many many millions,
People who have run this experiment, we've got millions of people who have caught covid without the benefit of a vaccine. We've got millions of people who have been vaccinated and we can assess the negative side effects of getting these vaccines, all of this can be assessed. But again, this is happening in a context where many, many millions of people believe that, for instance, everything that has been going on here, has been part of a vast totalitarian conspiracy. I mean, they're people who think that the lock
Downs. And the masking has been not for the purpose of mitigating, real illness, the whole point has been to acclimatize. Otherwise free societies to regimes of extreme social control, right? And then you get you add to that, paranoia the belief that any emphasis on vaccinations rather than treatment of covid, with existing compounds like Ivermectin. That's based on a pure profit motive.
From Big Pharma and the mercenary manipulation of government, right? We're all doing the bidding somehow of Pfizer, interna, right? I mean, so I can say for, like, for instance, someone's going to think that of us in this conversation. I mean, I should go without saying that I have absolutely, no entanglement with big Pharma and, you know, this for me is no pressure on me to do a podcast about the benefits of vaccines. So, it's, you know, this is just a pure PSA from my point of view, but,
But that's the environment in which we're having this
conversation. Yeah. I would add, you know, I have no connections conflicts with Pharma but even everyday people on Twitter, say, you're a tool. You're a shield for front of it. When in fact, I've been attacking them throughout the in fact before the vaccines were approved, I was attacking them for not posting their protocols,
rendering it, Pfizer
and all the rest of them. And also, you know, more recently for a premature pronouncement of Need for boosters and know.
This is absurd. This is all as you say, just part of that kind of, multi-dimensional, conspiracy, accuse oil and theory, and its really, it's saddening to watch and in a way, be part of that. Yeah,
okay. So what do we know about the effectiveness of the vaccines at this point,
right? So the vaccines, when we had the first trials that came out
In November December was a formal review. We learned that they were 95% effective, both Pfizer and then subsequently short shortly after moderna that was against any infection or as it turned out which wasn't the primary endpoint of the trails. The same was at least against any severe illness. Like death or hospitalization. Mmm. So the trials were just
Design 75 thousand participants multi-country means is the largest trials ever performed in vaccines. And they showed us, you know, remarkable, you may recall Sam that at the time when the trials were done, the FDA had set the bar for 50%. If 50% right now are enough confidence intervals, that would qualify as approval here. We had 95% striking. There's only one other vaccine
In history that's been at this level of a efficacy, not efficacy. So then you have, of course, the different world which is Effectiveness when you put the vaccines in the real world and which striking wherever you look whether it's Israel or the UK or you know, the various centers that are reported in the u.s. we see the same Effectiveness as efficacy. Now that's unusual to because what's happened, there is the real
World isn't like that ideal situation of, you know, the inclusion criteria, the exclusion criteria exactly the right way that the vaccines were given and, you know, they're frozen into the moment and you know, all the perfect things usually you see a drop off in Effectiveness and in fact it's held up now that was with the original strain and of course there's been some Evolution first it would you know from well it's what it's called. The ancestor or Wuhan.
Strain to the D6 one 4G which had a little bit more transmission and then we went through this Alpha Beta gamma and finally now to Delta, Now Delta there is a small drop off and Effectiveness. We don't have an efficacy trial. We have now Effectiveness in the real world and what we're seeing now is like a five or six point drop. So instead of 95%, it's like 88 90 percent Effectiveness, that's exceptionally
good.
Against any symptomatic infection and
96 percent against death or hospitalization, which is extraordinary. So, here we have, you know, what would most would consider the best vaccine and datasets in history and it's ironic that we have such as a substantial number of people, or as you position it bubble that just are still not believing
Enos and and of course, the safety has gone along with that.
Yeah, so there are many, that a natural experiments happening here. So one thing you can do is compare the rates of hospitalization and death for the VAC stand unvaccinated. I mean, granted their context in which this can be misleading. So, maybe obviously in a society, where a hundred percent of people are fully vaccinated well then a hundred percent of people who are hospitalized or dead from covid. Will also be fully vaccinated, right?
But presumably will be very few of them if the vaccines actually work. But we have many situations where around 50% of people are fully vaccinated and fifty percent aren't and we can compare what's happening at the hospitals and in the morgues. And it means you take a place like Virginia, where about just under fifty four percent of the population is fully vaccinated if you look at the hospitalization data
Over 98% of the people hospitalized are not fully vaccinated and over ninety, nine percent of the deaths are for people who are not fully vaccinated. So it's just our hospitals are not filling with the vaccinated in places, where there is a, you know, comparable cohorts of vaccinated and unvaccinated people. So what we have is what we appear to have now is a raging pandemic among the unvaccinated.
And of course, some number of vaccinated people will experience break through illness and even severe illness and death. But the numbers are are minuscule by comparison. Is there any way in which this this doesn't speak to the effectiveness of the vaccines immediately is to say well
yeah I mean I think you're bringing up. What is been used Again by the same people who are the anti-vaxxers anti-science?
- but what is being used is the increasing number of breakthrough infections with Delta. So in Prior, you know, Delta we know has a viral load or the number of copies of replicant virus that is capable of replication, thousandfold or more here compared with the ancestral strange. So we know it's a more challenging virus, much more contagious. Transmissible now
With that, the Breakthrough infections of people winding up in the hospital with the prior variance, versions of the virus, was less than 1% in even less than a fraction of 1% and something like point, one percent for death. Now, it has gone up some for Delta that is, you know, now it's a couple of percent, you know, few percent hospitalizations and you know, perhaps it will approach
A 1% in death. But the point here is that this is a formidable. Now, version of the virus and what we have is a problem with mathematics because people who don't understand that. Like, for example, let's say in Israel, where you have more than half of the current breakthrough infections, people are in the hospital and say, oh look that vaccines aren't working. Well, that's just because in Israel among these people that are being looked
That the, you know, 89 percent of adults has made have been vaccinating a headstrong?
Yeah, there's no one else. There's no one left to get
sick right guys. It's that whole point. If a hundred percent of the people are vaccinated and everybody's have it, you know, and anybody who's in the hospital obviously that defined a breakthrough on the so people are missing the point about denominators and fractions but they're the if you calculate the vaccine efficacy as has been done in the UK,
Okay. And in Israel, Effectiveness I should say
it stays at the 90% level. They has never changed with Delta.
So here, I think is again, whenever there's just a slight of hand with Statistics, it's being used in a way by anti-vaxxers in what I consider to be delivered. A lot of these people are intelligent they know better but this feeds their narrative.
Yeah.
There's another comparison here, which should be pretty straightforward and we have something like a hundred and fifty nine million people now who have been fully vaccinated in the u.s. right. And we have a probably a similar number of people who have been exposed to the coronavirus. I mean, there's only 34 million confirmed cases according to the CDC but we know it's got to be higher than that. So we can compare. And we have, you know,
Tens of millions of people in each cohort people have been vaccinated and people who have gotten covid. Now if the people have gotten covid, we have around 600,000 who have died for the people who've gotten vaccinated. When we ask, how many people have died as a result of getting vaccinated Miss. Just it is just a comparison of just how dangerous is covid compared to the danger of getting vaccinated. These data are kind of hard to get your your hands around because I
Seems like there's just
there are
reports of people dying after getting vaccinated with out there, any being any real assessment of whether the vaccine was causally responsible for their death. And there's people who happen to drop dead from something after being vaccinated and that is the highest number. I've seen there is 12,000.
Yeah but that that is it's probably 12, right? Yeah, I mean really how many? Yeah I mean
if it is if it's that many but I think this is the
problem you're bringing up is
This is this unfortunate situation, you know, we all like open science open data but the CDC when they set up the mayor's, Hmm, this is the adverse event Reporting System, right? They didn't dig in recognized. That this was going to be used by anti-vaxxers because these cases are not adjudicated. They not as you say not been reviewed, they have no idea whether the death has any linkage because
We know, you know, people when you have a hundred sixty two million Americans which we has as of today who are fully vaccinated, you know some people are going to die naturally your the vaccinations and so these are people part of the various reporting system. Now what is extraordinary here is that this is used on a daily basis. The likes of, you know, Fox News Tucker Carlson Laura Ingraham, you know, mainstream television stations and lots of other
Other entities are using this data and it's obvious misuse, because unlike the clinical trials, where no one died of a vaccine vaccination, is the safety was exempt. Mean, it was just extraordinary. No one died of the vaccine in either moderna or Pfizer. You know, Wendy 75,000 Pages trials, because every case every potential side effect is it is reviewed by an event committee. Now,
You know, we have one of the ways you could die of a vaccine would be if you had anaphylaxis but you're the most profound allergic reaction. But there's been multiple reports of the people who had anaphylaxis with the specifically, with the MRNA vaccine and I haven't died. I mean, they got treated and if you know a small number had to get hospitalized but that would be the one thing you could link with death. Now, there are these exceptionally rare rare side effects like, you know, with
The J&J and AstraZeneca this blood clotting issue which is called vaccine induced, thrombocytopenia thrombosis more. What we, you know, we have seen very rare, a myocarditis right in young people particularly men with mRNA vaccines, these are exceptionally rare, gambhir a with, you know, Johnson Johnson a hundred cases among 12 million people vaccinated. So if you just look at these rare things, first of all, they don't
Die. Most of these people don't die. They recover, my occurred, itís almost all recover and very mild with the blood clotting issue. Well, if it does occur where there's a cerebral sinus, thrombosis, yes, that has a high fatality but it's incredibly rare, you know, one in hundreds of thousands of people with AstraZeneca or with J&J, not seeing with mRNA. So just to review the composite here, the safety is overwhelming but the
There's open data. Registry of unadjudicated data is what's causing the problem because as being basically but used by people who either don't know or unknowingly are using it to spread false information, right?
Yeah. So I take all those points and undoubtedly that's the correct way to look at it. But even if we took the tver numbers at face value, even if we acknowledge the
People have been killed outright by these vaccines. It still makes covid. Look a hell of a lot more dangerous than the vaccine for covid. Marie, right? Me sir. I mean it's like we are you still talking about when you have on the order of a hundred, sixty million people who have been fully vaccinated. 12,000 people, died minutes less than 1 in 10,000. People dying based on this intervention, it would be a depressing number but it's so much better.
Other than the number for getting covid without having the benefit of the vaccine that people still have this upside down, even taking those numbers at face value, which, of course we can't do.
I couldn't agree with you more. In fact, you're looking at overall with respect to the exceptionally rare side effects that I've mentioned the chance of you having any of those from covid is considerably higher, Yale orders of magnitude higher. So yes,
Across-the-board. Their relationship between getting covid risk versus any risk of the vaccine. It is overwhelming that the vaccines are providing an exceptional net benefit and that can't be questioned. That's real data. That's the most solid evidence data set that I that I've known in my 35 years in
academics and it's just it's important to realize that when you're talking about numbers, this large when you talkin about a hundred sixty,
Million people being exposed to any intervention, there will always be some number of bad reactions. That if you focus on those without understanding the background statistics, you could make a, you know, a rational person and otherwise rational person nervous about that intervention. But the truth is, if we were giving people peanut butter as a prophylactic against Goliath, peanut butter were 100% effective.
Against covid, some number of people would die out. Right from peanut butter. That's right. I mean that's just, that's the nature of human biology. But, you know, obviously it would be, we would consider it an absolute gift beyond words. If peanut butter could prevent this disease, well, weren't
one other thing. I just want to mention because what you're saying is so spot-on, but the issue about the concerns of long term effects of the vaccine. I do want
Address that. Because a lot of do, it will say, well, you know, I I I think the data look good, but what about could something happen later, you know? Right. And the answer there is I think pretty astounding and that in the history of vaccines there has never been something that showed up Beyond two months after the vaccines were in common use. Hmm. Okay. We're now, you know, beyond seven months. So there is never, there is no reason to think that.
These
vaccines are going to be different than vaccines that have been going on for you know, many many decades and so many different diseases and platforms. So the long-term people should have confidence in vaccines because we're not going to there's no more surprises. You know, the surprises have been unveiled either in the clinical trials or the first two months when they get into, you know, you have a hundred and ninety million Americans who've been exposed to at least one dose, we have hundreds of more Millions around.
The world. We know what these vaccines do. There's no long-term surprises that we could see
at this point, right? But it so even if we were going to give a hostage to paranoia here and Grant that we just we don't understand the long-term implications of the vaccines, you still have this head-to-head comparison with the actual disease of covid, which makes the vaccines look, comparatively benign, right me, like so if
Worried about the long-term possibilities of vaccines. You should be doubly. Worried about the long-term possibilities of having caught covid without the benefit of having been vaccinated. You know, if you're worried about, you know, people, you know, there's people circulate in an article that suggests that the spike protein born of the MRNA vaccines could be bad for the blood-brain barrier, right? But it, what does covid due to the blood-brain barrier? Right me like
well, yeah, I mean first.
Firstly, that that is absurd. You know, I saw this through commentary that Brett Weinstein, put out that people who get a headache, as a side effect of a covid vaccine, which is not uncommon to get a headache. That, that could be brain fog from the MRNA, getting into the brain. This is totally unsubstantiated. Totally, and to try to make a parallel where the true brains.
That is the cognitive effect. Hit two people who do get covid so-called long covid or long haulers, which is happening, at least 10% of the people with confirmed infections. And, you know, I know many people colleagues people, I work with who are affected by long covid who have a brain fog and have profound fatigue, have difficulty breathing, you know, can't even go on a long walk that they used to be, you know, healthy and athletic. So for anyone to
It that people who get a headache is having mRNA going into the brain, that is totally irresponsible. It's Reckless. It's sick. And it, and it casts unnecessary doubt to these people, the innocent, you know, it's in a way Sam, I have to say it's predatory, it's taking people who want to believe in a conspiracy or don't know what to believe and making vaccines look like they're intended to harm with.
Evidence whatsoever. It's really
sad. Yeah. Well so there's a conspiratorial frame of mind here which is given just enough pavlovian reinforcement to be almost impossible for people to break out of because, you know, there are occasional conspiracies, there are certainly bad incentives that can be detected where it's easy to allege a, you know, I profit motive on the part of Pfizer makes you you.
You reference. The fact that Pfizer was prematurely recommending booster shots, right? Well, the reason for that is, you know, that the cynical reason for that is fairly obvious to see, because this would mean, literally billions of dollars fall into their bottom line. If that were, that were our health policy and so that, there's this background concerned about a profit motive, in medicine, that is deranging people's thinking here, and I means to Brett
This is an example of this may I know that he's very concerned that the emergency use authorization for these vaccines required that there be no valid therapeutic for covid in order to get triggered. And so, you know, by definite at this is on his account, by definition, it had to be judged that there is nothing in the armamentarium of Medical Science. They could treat covid in principle in order.
To fast-track these vaccines and therefore we overlooked the near Panacea of ivermectin. It's a bit old compound that is generically available and from which no pharmaceutical company stands a chance of profiting. And so they're in Brett's mind. You have the perfect storm of bad incentives and greedy, pharmaceutical Executives driving.
Policy toward a, you know, windfall profits, and disregarding the life-saving opportunity of handing out, Ivermectin to one and all and driving us toward some kind of abyss of Novel risk, right? Because on his account, these mRNA vaccines are our new and therefore have to be assumed to be dangerous because they by definition.
Ian are, you know, untested or where we're testing them on ourselves now on his account. So this is where we have to deal with the claim about Ivermectin. And how why? It's not a rational alternative to these vaccines.
Yeah, well I do want to go over this because the notion about the emergency use authorization is incorrect. Firstly, that is the definition in.
Setting of a pandemic or crisis for the FDA is may be effective. That's all it takes, maybe effective. It doesn't have to be that. There's no other
treatment. That was always
something. May be effective in an emergency situation, the FDA has the ability to push forward as they did. You may recall, they may even eua for hydroxychloroquine they gave an EU way for convalescent plasma. There already was
Other things, you know, like for example, when the convalescent plasma was granted, which was wrong and had to be withdrawn as was a hydroxychloroquine, both of those were, there were other things out there for treatment, that is right when the plasma there already. So, you know, we've been through this where there were all sorts of sense, whether it was then president or other people following president that hydroxychloroquine was, you know, some magical,
And it proved not only to not have an effect, but also have some dangers. The convalescent plasma were over 600,000. Americans got convalescent plasma because of a tortured data analysis, without a randomized trial, that was given an emergency use authorization, which promoted Hunters of thousands to get the treatment. They may have actually helped to spur on these variants because they were getting these polyclonal. Antibodies. That certainly wasn't helping the situation, helping them.
M. So you know, then comes Ivermectin. Now, I've reviewed that data carefully because you know, on Twitter, if I put anything on Twitter you know I usually get at least some comments about. Did they get Ivermectin or If Only They had ever met? They all had Ivermectin. No one needs a vaccine this kind of stuff, right and Center. Where did this come from? So it turns out you know there are a bunch of small studies right and they've been meta analyze multiple times.
Different parties. And you know, I think the best raking over of the data was by this fellow Gideon Meyer, which cat who put together is Ivermectin for covid-19 based on fraudulent research and that was just, you know, earlier this month I'm a medium now in it. He takes an unbiased View and very careful view of ivermectin, which is an anti-parasitic medicine. As you mentioned,
And it has been used for river. Blindness, it is used for lice. It is used for know, various parasitic diseases and it's relatively safe. I mean, there are some serious side effects, but there are uncommon. Now, the point here, is that what about these trials? Do we have any large trials? The trials? Like, you know, I did one of the largest clinical trials in medicine with 41 thousand patients in 18 countries around the world.
Heart attack. Hmm. And you know I know what a large trial is when I see it Mega trials, over 10,000, which is what you want and with the UK has done in the recovery trials, you know, we haven't had one large trial in the whole covid-19 pandemic done in the United States. But these trials, these trials of ivermectin are exceptionally small, and the largest one, was this one from Egypt, which Gideon. My words cats show.
Shows was highly irregular. One third of the people who died from covid in the trout were already dead. When the researchers started to recruit them. I mean, these, are you just don't see this kind of stuff. You need
a time machine to run that trial. Yeah, you have
quote, if this is an outright fraud, the ethical concerns are randomizing people into a clinical trial before the ethical approval comes through, is enormous. And, you know, his peace, you know, takes this hard in terms of the fact that this trial from Egypt, the
Just which isn't large at all. I mean just you know a few hundred people in either arm of ivermectin this is not what you would call any evidence for making Ivermectin a standard drug. Now I I see a signal there. That Ivermectin could be beneficial, I don't know why, I don't know the mechanism and I would also hasten to add that, you know, our place and many others have raked through every drug known to mankind, for repurposing. That is almost smile.
Like yul's drugs have been characterized, we know their structure and we can match up whether it would work against this virus. And Ivermectin is never shown up despite hundreds of others that have for having an antiviral specific qualities. But putting the biology aside, it looks like there's a signal but for anyone to say that this should be given universally and as Brett Weinstein has said and others that it's 99% effective.
This isn't there is there is no drug. That's 99% effective known to man. And then to say it reduces mortality or improved Survival by 70, 80 90 percent, these are impossible, a it never occurred. This is, you know, just not acceptable.
Yeah. Well as I'm was conspicuous, here is what I am. Not saying, inbreds defense. I mean, bread is somebody who I consider a friend. He's definitely a colleague. He's moderate.
Add some of my debates. I know his brother, Eric very well. He's a fellow podcaster. We've been on each other's podcasts. I guess I would say that. I haven't heard everything he has said on this topic and he's gone on for many many hours, I know. But I've heard enough to be very uncomfortable with what he has put out there and I do consider it dangerous. What strikes me as just Frank misinformation getting pushed out there to millions and millions of people.
It is in in Brett's case born of almost a characterological bias against institutions at this point. Some of which I do understand. I mean, and so I like for instance, one thing that he that's really animating him is the the response to what he's doing from the big tech companies, right? So the fact that YouTube will demonetized the episodes of his
podcast where he discusses Ivermectin. I'm torn even here. I don't know what YouTube and Facebook and all of these companies should be doing. I mean there's certainly a straightforward argument that they should be censoring what is obviously misinformation. But the problem here is that, you know, many things that were wrong yesterday are considered good information today, right? It's like they're very unlikely to get censorship, right? You know, what does outlier thinking and can be deemed
Dangerous or irresponsible can in the fullness of time, proved to be the only correct view. So it's just a difficult problem that they show no sign of being able to solve, and, you know, Brett and everyone who's listening to him, incredibly animated by their clumsy efforts at censorship because Amica, they can always point to the instance, where what they censored was, you know, actually is now CDC policy writing like at one point CDC was once again.
Just mask-wearing, right? And if you do, what are you going to censor? The people said, we should have been wearing masks, a year ago, it was just obvious, we should have been wearing masks. It's a hard problem to solve in terms of a response and it's easy to see how people get freaked out by the authoritarian implications of having these virtually monopolistic companies closed down conversation on specific topics but it's absolutely, it's a nightmare. What's happening in terms of how
Section 3, the spread of misinformation has become. So I don't know what your thoughts are on the front of what what we should be doing and also just to close the loop on breaths concern here. It's not just that the big tech companies are doing it, but there really is a conspiracy that's happening out in the open where you have a government asking the big tech companies to do this. Right, right. It's not that no one ever conspires, even in this case, they even admit that they're conspiring, but
Certainly viewed from one side. It seems counterproductive as bad as the misinformation and disinformation problem has become.
Yeah, no I am sympathetic to the point that everyone should be heard and things shouldn't be censored that I think is clear. However, when it is come to a point where it's leads to harm of people, then you have to say, well, is this crossing the line when you're harming a lot of
For now I think the conspiracy theories and theorist get tremendous amount of fuel when this happened. So for example, if we go back to the lab leak, origen vs. The natural zoonotic origin of the virus from to it, from zoonotic to human. You know, there were a lot of people who initially in the science Community advance that this had to be a natural not a leak at the Wuhan virology Institute.
And then as time went on, you know, they were more and more regularity. Still no definitive evidence either way, and we may never get that definitive evidence, but basically the people's voices who were not being heard regarding the Wuhan Institute lab leak. You know, assuming it accidental, lab lie, they got more, they got more concerning substance and then the conspiracy theorist would say, huh? There you go. Right? And they were saying that at the beginning.
And so now you have another parallel where, you know, whether it's Ivermectin or you know, that scenes, you have people who are pushing these agendas, and you know what, I don't have a problem with pushing Ivermectin as advancing. It as a candidate drug that we need totally. There's two thousand, two hundred people in randomized, Trials. Most of the randomized trials are, you know, 2046 people, 2,000 people
All to say, it should be given universally and has 99% effective. That's not you can't make that assertion. And you know, I listen to read a couple of his podcast interview with test Lori. One of the UK scientists who he has been aligned with and I can tell he's an intelligent fellow. I'm he's bright fellow, but he doesn't know how to do clinical trials and he shouldn't be passing himself off as an expert to interpret that data. These are not what we would consider.
Definitive trials. Now it should be pursued. Ivermectin is very inexpensive and relatively safe drug and it may indeed have you. No good, very positive effects but it shouldn't be you know, having emergency podcast and then the people that he brings together like for example the dr. Kirsch who said the covid vaccines have caused more deaths than have all other vaccines combined over the last 30 years. This is somebody
He brought on as a guest. Okay? And then you have him also lined up with the front line. Covid-19 Critical Care Alliance for an emergency podcast with Joe Rogan making these claims, there's something serious afoot, the public is largely unaware. They have been placed in kind of danger, 99% effective, Ivermectin. The pandemic would end in a month that is complete
Balderdash, okay? The pandemic
will not end in a month and there
No drug or no vaccine at 99% effective. So, the problem here, Sam I see is that he is overstepped, that is he's aligned himself or had guess who are are saying things that he then has a large following. And instead of taking a critical view, he this is, I'm sure he's upset with the century. I would be too, but it doesn't mean he should go, you know, across the line as to advancing
see things or people who have and saying things like, you know, for example the headache, which is, you know, the MRNA Crossing into the brain, these are unfounded things and they're dangerous things and that's where I have a concern.
What do you make of the fact that my some of these people who he's brought on his show and at least one and I think he was on with Rogan with at least one other person. These people are MDS with seemingly relevant credentials and very caring for people with
Covid. And I mean, he's not MDS who have been sidelined for malpractice years ago and they should be credible sources of information here and it is should be is it's genuinely bewilder rain, even to very smart people, to see an MD who purports to be close to the data. And in one case, I one of these people who even claim to be the originator of mRNA vaccine technology. I don't know how specious that claim. Yeah, I know this is this is
actually one of
Of the chief of fenders. I'm glad you mentioned it. Sam this dr. Malone, dr. Malone, who puts out that he was the inventor of the, MRNA vaccines. Well, guess what, he wasn't the inventor. And what he does is he now the person who is leading the charge against the vaccines, and, and people unknowingly because he identified himself as the inventor there that they, that this is the perfect of fuel for the conspiracy that I've been incredible. You, you couldn't make this stuff up. That person who
In himself as the inventor having worked, you know, decades ago on a path. But he is not the inventor of either of the MRNA vaccines, okay? And then also, you know, the Frontline, doctors from the Frontline doctors that one of which one of whom is should say, was part of this. They are the ones who are suing the government right now that the vaccine should be taken off the market, okay? So we have a problem here, you
No, this is this is a group of people who are hard, either unwittingly or knowingly. Harming people, who don't know better, who I have to say, you know, they're their channel of disinformation is, is I consider predatory because it's not based on the right evidence data and I don't want to see it centered but I also want to see it tone down and stick with the facts. Don't make stuff up.
Yes, I can. People are going to
In this hard to adjudicate because on the one hand, it's you and me talking about this and you know, you're an MD with a seemingly relevant background and we're up against Bret Weinstein and his MDS and it's a he said she said situation where you just have to pick the authority who you trust but that means. There's more information than that. That's a standoff but we're living in the presence.
Of the, the largest vaccine and disease experiment ever run. Right. We're talking about tens of millions, even hundreds of millions of people getting the disease under conditions of being vaccinated or not, and the disparity in the results is so clear at this point. And again, even if you take the worst numbers from the most vaccine avoidant as the
Ground Truth for what these vaccines do to you. It's still an easy decision to get vaccinated, to mitigate your
risk. Yeah, I mean, when you have vaccine trials, done around the world, you know, the first to the MRNA is in 75,000 people. And then, you know, since that time hundred thousand more participants in randomized, double-blind Trials. I mean, these are the real deal. Then you have, you know, 2,200 people and all of the Ivermectin, trials total, you know,
you know, around the world. I mean there's a little bit different in the weight of evidence, the totality of evidence. Also with the safety. And I think that is that should drive people if they if they truly are data-driven evidence-based, even if you're not with a medical or Science Background, you want to see totality of evident and you don't want to see things that are just either made up or, you know, fueled by these
I would say, you know, I a good example of somebody who I know known from the past is Alex Barron, okay? He's a formerly. An excellent New York Times journalist. He then wrote a bunch of novels that were highly successful and spy Thrillers. And now he's a regular on Fox News, talking badly about vaccines, and making stuff up and using data manipulating data, okay? And of course, you know, he's, he's
A hit with this group, right? But he has no, he has no background. He has no clinical trials background, no Science Background, but he is a darling of those who wanted to be fed with this kind of over my head. But how do you explain this?
Eric, the people who do have the relevant background going this far down the wrong rabbit hole and just see the MDS who Brett has in his stable. What are they up to me? What has happened one way to explain it. It's a fairly Envy.
Is thing to say but there's some percentage of MDS and phds and people who have all the right credentials on paper who snap for one reason or another. I mean they're just they're, they're going through, you know, some inordinate stress in their life or their actually delusional. We basically have a background level of schizophrenia in any human population of one percent, right? So you will occasionally find crazy MDS, and phds who will testify about anything now.
I'm not breaking a specific allegation with respect to the people we've named, but you have to expect that you can always find a crackpot PhD or MD for any. You can find them to defend big tobacco. There are people who will either cynically or based on some derangement will back any cause and put their credentials to that purpose. But you have any other sense of what's going on with with these guys. Yeah.
Making a really valid point here. And that is we have seen people who have a medical degree who are not supporting the body of data, that's overwhelming regarding safety of vaccines, or the lack of adequate proof. For example, in the case of ivermectin, and you know the the answer for that is, is difficult to come up with why. But I think the thing that hasn't been done, I'll go back to something, we
Us early in our conversation. If we had a counter-offensive to the for the facts that is if we had said, you know, remember when Trump was very frequently lying and there was a fellow on CNN, that was the official fact Checker and he would take them on one by one and get the facts. Okay. And he did an exceptional job of that. He's pretty busy and you have to say,
throughout the time of the fact like 20,000 but documental eyes or something.
Right, right. Well, anyway, we don't have that in the pandemic. If the people were called out for lie or for a fact fact, free. You know, they may not, they may back off but when they have a license to just make stuff up or twist things, you know, to not acknowledge that the various registry is none. None of it has been adjudicated. None of it. We know of any event are we know other day actually happened in? What was
Potentially known root cause of the, of these events, but they don't do that, they use this that that's a data set, that's abuse and, and the highest way, but there's, there's something about being a contrarian tumor. I mean, you know, you're a minority, you're in a different Circle. The people in this group are are very, you know, seem to be close-knit and you know, kind of
Whispering each other on, you know, perhaps The Fellowship of of being in this in this group is alluring. I just don't know. It's sad to see though because I know these people are intelligent and they must recognize the lapses in what they're they're pushing.
Yeah. What I don't think people recognize maybe people who have a conspiratorial style of explaining anomalies. Don't tend to recognize that their
Nations don't actually run through. I mean there's no plausible background set of incentives that could explain a given conspiracy coming together. I mean, so you take like the 9/11 truth. Conspiracy is an analogy, you talk to conspiracy minded people on that topic and they'll just toss off one claim after another without acknowledging. The truly insurmountable obstacles around getting people whose incentives are not
Aligned to collaborate in such an awful project, right? So, like who rigged the Twin Towers to explode, right? Like just what it, what Madam just how many hours does it take to go into those buildings unobserved and rigged them to explode, right? And you know, how do you get hundreds or thousands of people to collaborate in that project of murdering their neighbors, on a bright fall morning and then never breathe a word of it. Afterward to me. No one feels guilty. No one, no one.
Divorced their husband and then spilled the beans. I mean it's just perfect silence, perfect collaboration. And so it is with many conspiracies that get alleged in this context, right in just like the influence of big Pharma. The truth is there is absolutely no conspiratorial explanation for what you and I are doing on this podcast, right? There's no kinetic like I've got no connection to Big Pharma. I will criticize big form of, you know, in the next
On cast on another topic, right? Absolute freedom. I've got no fear of YouTube D. Monetizing me. I mean it's just I'm completely free and this is I'm doing exactly what I want and you're the person I wanted to do it with and this is what we're doing right
and as you know Sam I Am was Maya career almost ended back in 2004 2005 because I took on Merc about rocks, right? Yeah. You know, I am the least person in the world that's pro forma. Okay. And I have
Taking big risk about taking them on and I still am during the pandemic. So no we're trying to play this thing straight. You're trying to you know, go with what is the body of evidence that is extraordinary. We are in a momentous time in life science where we learned how to you know develop vaccines in at scale in a Time velocity that no one could ever have imagined and to basically
And the pandemic we could have had we been able to get vaccine widely distributed throughout the world Houghton vaccines throughout the world early on the pandemic would essentially be over now. Okay, we wouldn't have a Delta verint. We wouldn't even had beta and gamma, all right. We probably would have just been a bit, a rested largely and contain it at the alpha stage. The problem is though, we aren't able to make the vaccines at 4/7 plus billion people, right?
Not fast enough. But the other problem is in the United States which is far worse than any other place than I know. Of, in the world we have a very significant proportion of these, anti-vaxxers conspiracy theorists anti-science. I mean it started of course before you condemn it but it's been you know, gone much higher levels. So we are not reaping the advantages in the protection here that we could. And you know, I have to say I was really looking forward to the summer.
This time of year because I thought, you know what, we could get right back to pre covid life. I could stop having to put my attention on Covert and get it back to the things that I much more enjoy. And basically it's been screwed up because of Delta. It's now going to last a lot longer. We'll get through Delta, it'll take a couple of months, we'll get over this wave but the toll it will take on the desk on the hospitalizations and particularly the large number of cases were going to see.
With long covid. That was unnecessary had. We not had so much resistant and hesitancy and anti-vaccine for the people who will be part of the protection instead of part of the liability and vulnerability
group, right? All right. Okay. So, let's conclude on some recommendations or confessions of uncertainty about what we should do going forward. Before we talk about vaccine mandates and related matters. What's taking?
So long, with the full FDA authorization of the vaccines. Why is that not already accomplished?
Yeah, well, I've been pushing hard on that and as you saw, hit a New York Times op-ed few weeks ago and prior to that, trying to get dr. Woodcock, who's the acting commissioner to come out and talk to us. Tell us what's he's going on. So I know the former FDA Commissioners. Well, some of them few of them. I've spoken to it some length about
About this. And as you know, I've been on several FDA advisory committees over the years. So I know the workings and I understand what's happened. Here is that the usual so-called biologic licensing application. That's the full approval. That is a hundred thousand plus pages of documents. It requires plant, inspections, not just the clinical trials, it's not just this a drug. Does the vaccine work and is it safe? It's more than that. But in this case because of
the
Pandemic crisis back in December. When the, when the MRNA vaccines were given their emergency authorization, the company started submitting, you know, packet by packet to get FDA review. And so, we've had seven months since that time for the FDA to have complete their completed their review. And indeed in speaking to FDA Commissioners there, they believe it should have been done by now. Okay. In fact, it should have been done in June at the latest
and we now have heard just last week from dr. Woodcock that this could be take till January. Well, we can't wait till January. This should have been done now. There is no excuse except that. This is not the number one priority and as you saw there was an Alzheimer's drug, that was approved. Highly irregular, concurrent with this. And so, it's really unfortunate. We do not have an FDA that's functioning at the level, it needs to
In the midst of this pandemic especially as the u.s. is confronting this very formidable formidable version of the
virus. Yeah and in defense of the people who are worried about the quality of our information the truth is we need institutions we can rely on and it's pretty clear we don't quite have them when the FDA the who the CDC all of them have at various moments cover themselves in
Embarrassment in the last 18 months. So you know, that's again there's there's a rational way to understand that and then there's the paranoid way too exaggerated the nature that problem but it's yeah, I move. We do need a rebooting of our, our institutions here and there's no question. What do you think we should do around requiring vaccinations and in the public or private sector in various contexts? So they do mandates.
Right schools or hospitals, or businesses, or for travel. And what? What are your thoughts about?
Yeah, it really. It's really tight in, Sam to the question you just asked about the full approval because general, counsel of, you know, our health system and if you talk to private large companies, municipalities even though there have been some that have said, like for example, the University of California, you have to be vaccinated, you can't come on.
On campus, I can't be a student, you can't be on the faculty but that's the Rarity right now. The day that we get full approval which should have happened by now all these things open up and there will be a requirement for vaccination or they'll be accommodations. For those who don't want to get vaccinated, you have to wear a mask at all times at work and you have to get tested on a frequent basis and I would submit to you that the people that opt for the non-vaccinated
Patient. After a couple of weeks, you're not going to want to go through all that and they'll go and head and get vaccinated. So, I actually think, tens of millions of Americans soon. After full approval will be required to be vaccinated, or will be given an option that is unpalatable.
Yeah, maybe we should acknowledge that. There are some people who actually can't get vaccinated. I mean, they're people in various stages of cancer treatment I believe and they're people who just have weird immune systems who go into anaphylaxis over.
Vaccines that are as benign as possible and brave. So, you know, herd immunity is only way to protect those people because they can't get vaccinated. And under any regime where vaccines are required, that would still be a medical exemption for certain people right?
Yes. Yes, and but you know, those same people want to have protection with grass. They want to have protection from like, for example, if they did get infected from testing, they were found to be, they want to get mono.
Antibodies to the virus as soon as possible because they don't have an intact immune system. So yes you're absolutely right. Some people can't get vaccinated very rare but they for them that same option of mass and frequent testing is part of my defense. You know, if we didn't have the anti Force we would have passports, right? We would know that you had an option either, you had your vaccination digital proof.
Or you had a rapid antigen test very soon. Around that time you had proof that you're good to go. Whether it's through restaurant or to work, or, you know, want to trip on a plane, whatever we are against passports in this country, just like we've had the anti Force against mask and, you know, and vaccines and stay at home when things were really rough. And so that's unfortunate, but several countries as, you know, are adopting
Support system and it's working. Well, I mean, they're there their countries like in Denmark. They rely heavily on rapid antigen test and while they're getting their vaccinations up to the highest level. It's working extremely, extremely well for suppressing infections, and, and many other places as well. So, we aren't taking advantage of the rapid testing side, which we should, I mean, a lot of these companies, got our your are you as companies? But that's another misfire, I wish we could.
I'd do that, it would help the situation we're in right now.
Well, Eric, I need to my ear, I feel like we've covered it. I'm sure not to the satisfaction of the people who are unpersuadable, but is there anything else left to be said, in your view on this topic?
Well, you know, I just think when we go forward years from now, well, after this pandemic is over and hopefully, we're will be at a time when we can really be reflected. We'll think about
This some momentous science, Advanced science and medical advance of vaccines and the extraordinary proof track record of potent. Efficacy safety and will wonder what happened. Why did the u.s. who failed as a country and the early part of the pandemic? With, as you said, 600,000 and more deaths? Still why did they not become the world model for
Blocking the virus is harm and I think a lot of things we discussed today, Sam will will be written about for years to come because we have the potential to just show the world that we could build. The Delta wall of immunity. Whether it be from the vaccines or as you mentioned a hundred million plus people who had prior covid at had some natural immunity. How did we botch it up? How did we become?
As vulnerable as we are right now and in the weeks to come, it's really unfortunate. And I maybe maybe after all this will have a movement back to being data-driven evidence-based, and not allow for the misinformation to propagate, which something that should be emphasized. We know that the, the misinformation gets spread far better than truth, right? That's been documented.
So maybe maybe out of all this, it won't happen now, but in the years ahead, we can get back to where we were where we were in the old days when the polio vaccine is being rolled out and all the
other ones. Yeah. Yeah.
As always, Eric thank you for your wise counsel and your time I look forward to the next occasion. We'll talk about a happier topic. Let's little talk about human health somehow rather than our needless Misadventures and own goals around disease. But until then, thank you so
much. Thank you soon real real pleasure. I look forward to the next chance that we get to talk.
