Juno News - February 09, 2023The media got it wrong on Covid ｜ Dr. Matt Strauss ｜ Part 2.
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Summary
In this episode, Dr. Kelly talks about the controversy surrounding the controversial topic of whether or not the flu vaccine causes heart attacks and strokes in the elderly. She also talks about a recent article by a sports writer in the Toronto Star criticizing her work as a public health expert.
Transcript
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I think that you are wise to say that you don't know what's going on. The wisest man in, let's say, Western philosophy, Socrates says, I only know that I don't know. And on both sides of this issue, so the first thing I'll say is I didn't watch that movie. Some people who I think are very thoughtful and reflective did watch it, gave a description to me and I was like, yeah, that doesn't sound credible.
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And it's not how I'm going to spend two hours on a Friday night.
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What I have seen happening, so like one thing you could take from that German pathology study with the autopsies is only four out of the 35 people who dropped dead unexpectedly at home died because of vaccine-induced myocarditis.
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And that's not completely confirmed, but it seems like the most likely explanation.
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So I think it's deeply irresponsible if you're on Twitter and somebody faints somewhere or has a heart attack somewhere to say, this is the vaccine.
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They might not even have been vaccinated. So there's just a lot of deeply irresponsible claims coming out from the old traditional anti-vaccine movement.
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And then I think they're in the medical establishment is a reflexive like they're conspiracy theorists, they're misinformation mongers.
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They're very bad people. We need to censor them and know the vaccine doesn't kill anybody. It's perfectly safe. And it's like, well, no, hang on absolutism on both sides.
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I understand why they're falling into a reflexive absolutism because the claims made on the anti-vaccine side are irresponsible and often false.
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But four out of 35 out of a population of 11 million is still not zero.
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So we have to be really careful to be nuanced at all times.
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Well, yeah, no, of course, and you are extremely nuanced.
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And I'm just, I feel like we're in the twilight zone, really, that someone as nuanced as you
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are has been attacked as viciously you know as you've been for the last year and a half or more
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and so that's going to be my next question this recent Toronto Star story that if you can talk
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about it by Bruce Arthur who is a sports writer but anointed as a public health expert and
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ironically he seems critical of the fact that you hadn't received specialist training
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for your position as acting health officer at this health unit without having the self-realization
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to realize he has zero training in public health and and that was one of the reasons why I wanted
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you to tell me what you do as a critical care physician because you know do I believe a critical
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care physician or do I go with what a sports writer is saying in the Toronto Star for me
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the choice is very clear um so you you know you point to distortions and misrepresentations in his
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uh you know in this interview that you did with him could you could you set the record
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record straight for us you know and why do you think your views were were misrepresented what is going on
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here um why my views were misrepresented um I can't speak for Bruce in fact I would invite Bruce to
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explain why he did that because my views were misrepresented I explained it very carefully to
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him um his editors must have explained it to him because they printed corrections he went on twitter the
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day after and kind of explained how he was right all along and made more factual errors um amazing so I
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can't which I called out in his replies um I I can't speak for his headspace um but I I think you should
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invite him uh to be on the podcast I I would love to hear um more globally socially I think people were
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terrified of COVID um and I think there's a um I think there was a whole swath of people who hadn't
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really spent a lot of time reflecting on their mortality who suddenly all had to all at once I
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think that this is the first pandemic we've gone through with social media with your phone buzzing
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in your pocket telling you constantly how many cases how many deaths is the ICU full you have enough
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ventilators um so I was a medical resident during h1n1 working in ICU and I um I'm pretty sure I got I
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was working with h1n1 patients and I had the worst flu of my life I nobody was interested in testing me
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public health didn't call me the hospital called me every day to ask if I could come back to work
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yet like the idea and um h1n1 was particularly dangerous to people in their 20s um so I was more
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at risk of death back then in 2008 but hardly anyone even remembers the h1n1 pandemic so that's very
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interesting so h1n1 was actually more deadly uh as far as young people were concerned um is that
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is that yeah I um I and I wouldn't be able to remember the age cutoffs I remember I did the
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own calculation for me as a yeah as a I think I was 25 at that time and yeah sorry go ahead in both
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cases like you can neither number is certain for the mortality risk because there's more cases than
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tests that are performed um but yeah something really changed in terms of how we as a society
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deal with this sort of thing and I hope it killed far more people no question but I am saying the
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the alacrity of our response was terribly different and I think social media is part of that so
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I think people another issue is that China has been ascendant since h1n1 and this um virus happened to
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start in China well possibly not a coincidence um and so the first worldwide response to this
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pandemic was a communist authoritarian authoritarian dictatorship response um and throughout my initial
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commentaries I was like hey everyone like look at South Korea and Japan and Taiwan they're all having
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really successful pandemic responses that are not playing by the Chinese Communist Party playbook and
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Taiwan for for most of the pandemic was doing better than than mainland China um but but yet the
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World Health Organization made some statements um explicitly promoting the the authoritarian lockdown
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response so all that taken together I think people were just terrified they thought um this this new
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uh superpower is going to teach us the proper response and like get on the team you're not on our team
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you're on the team with the anti-science anti-vaxxers and I was like no I have more vaccines than most
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people because I've done work overseas yeah um uh and I think it was just frank tribalism um yeah if
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you're not saying the words on our team then you must be on their team yeah absolutely like I I interviewed um
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recently I interviewed Thomas Fatsy I don't know if you uh know of uh Thomas Fatsy he and his co-author
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have a great new book out called the covid consensus and he was on my podcast recently and uh he made he
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made a very interesting point to me uh which you know which I picked up from his book and we were
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talking about it on the show uh that the western world really had not um experienced death in this
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manner uh you know there was a bureaucratization of death in our society you know uh sick people um dying
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people are sent to hospices hospitals long-term care homes retirement homes whatever and there's
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a whole bureau bureaucracy of death involved and you're kind of just kind of um uh you know hermetically
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sealed from all of that stuff and so this was the first time where we were as you say um every day
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getting updates minute by minute updates about how many people died in Italy for example um and uh whereas
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in the rest of the world say in Asia for example or in India in particular death is like an everyday
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part of life you see it all the time around you yeah and and frankly as an ICU doctor as any hospital
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doctor you see uh every day all the time and I think I think another sort of confluence and events for why
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did Ontario and Canada have such draconian responses I think our healthcare system was on its last legs
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free pandemic I think the um the folks who are responsible for the catastrophe of our healthcare
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system in Ontario were kind of granted a three-year excuse um to use at all times but in some ways I've
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been in positions like me have been the frog boiling in water where things were getting worse and worse
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every year I started med school 20 years ago and people would be lying in stretchers in the hall back
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then and every year it's been a little bit more and I I do remember in the winter of 2019 thinking
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I don't even know that I want to be associated with this anymore I had a um 92 year old woman
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who was in the hall like um it just no no darkness no privacy uh no place to use the washroom on a very
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uncomfortable stretcher and her seven-year-old daughter came in and said like should I just take her home
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and I said frankly you probably should like she needs to be in the hospital but
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this is inhumane and she's not going to get better here yeah um and but that 92 year old woman
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does not have a podcast um is not uh is not invited to conferences uh isn't about to write a book about
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what happened to her but it's awful so by the time that you get to feel the inhumanity
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of our healthcare system collapsing you're you're usually not in a position to make a lot of noise
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about it yeah another thing that you mentioned and it just occurred to me uh is that uh um that
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you know I expected authoritarian uh governments around the world to really take advantage of the
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pandemic and really push hard on authoritarian uh measures of you know and just use the pandemic as an
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excuse I've actually seen the opposite like you mentioned Bolsonaro I I'll give you India as an
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example yes the Indian government I was actually there during the first lockdown and they um did
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think one of the the world's most draconian lockdown it lasted for like two months locking down 1.1 billion
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people and it it truly was like a lot a real lockdown you couldn't even the hospitals were locked
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down if you could believe that uh for the first few days um so you know I just it's perplexing you
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know why is it that liberal democracies like Canada uh New Zealand uh Australia I mean these are the last
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places on the planet that I would have thought would have gone you know would have would have
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implemented these extreme measures I mean there are these um interviews of Jacinda Ardern uh that are
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making the rounds now where you know she's like saying in this you know it almost sounds evil you know if
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you don't get tested we're gonna put you in a quarantine and uh you're gonna be there in in
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that quarantine facility indefinitely basically if you refuse to get tested for COVID how did this
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how did this happen like I it's it's a puzzle for me I don't know if you have any thoughts about it
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I don't um I do not have a complete political theory on what happened um I think part of it was the
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uh extremely divisive global figure of Donald Trump and uh as soon as Donald Trump wanted to open up
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um because like you know hydroxychloroquine I don't I never thought it worked but I never thought it was
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a a public threat that we all need to censor anyone who mentions it on on social media I think the fact
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that Donald Trump had mentioned it at a press conference really motivated a lot of animosity towards
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it people forget that um Trump uh did operation warp speed to get the vaccine to market faster than
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usual and a number of prominent uh left-wing figures including Kamala Harris said I'm never
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taking this Trump vaccine that was back in like November of 2020. So I I I I kind of think he
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recalibrated and by the way I've never been a supporter and at times I've been staunchly critical of
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Trump um I think he recalibrated the left-right divide in a totally nonsensical way a lot of the
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time because of course no I would not have predicted that um more liberal progressive places would be
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locking elderly people in their nursing home room uh without being allowed to go outside and see the
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sun for weeks slash months at a time that yeah that is a deep surprise to me yeah um yeah I mean uh you
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know the one of the things that I wanted to ask you about is you know right now where we are in the
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pandemic now um I've I my senses and I've said this many times in several of my columns recently that
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much of the advanced world western world um you know essentially seems to have moved on from the
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pandemic and removed all pandemic measures Japan of all places last week said that COVID-19 should
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be treated like the flu uh yet here in Canada we seem to be stuck in some kind of a time warp where
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you know we're constantly being told to get vaccinated uh perhaps we should bring mass mandates
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uh in um what do you make of this disconnect uh Canada versus the rest of the world I mean
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let's take Japan for example of of highly max mass compliant society highly vaccinated
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but yet uh the Japanese government said that we're just going to treat it like the flu now
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um I I think so the first part of my answer might be a a second part to the last question um yeah I
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there's this important book by uh a political theorist named James Burnham uh called the managerial
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revolution where he he was explaining like the the the 20th the the the big conflict in the 20th
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century between the far right fascism and the far left i.e communism is going to be one and he he was
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not happy about this by managerialism by the the um uh ascendance of this many um professional
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managerial class the laptop class the Davos set the people who um claim to be much smarter than
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everyone else and and they'll just run things in this sort of technocratic fashion and you'll be
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happy with whatever they come up with because obviously they know better than you whether you
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whether you should have your palm or your wedding or your dad's funeral um and I think Canada
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very very heavily subscribed at least the government and the bureaucracy of Canada of course the
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bureaucracy does it is a bureau it is a bureaucratic philosophy and it and it's very centered in Ottawa
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which I think is why the trucks went there so I think um that's part of why we're seeing it so
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heavily in Canada the other issue in Canada is actually two more issues one for some reason we have
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very strongly tied our national identity to a healthcare system that isn't good um in all the
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rankings of OECD countries and their healthcare systems we're always second last um but at least
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we're beating the uh United States which is the elephant in the room and that's all we really care
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about so we we've come to see take great pride in our ability to do healthcare here um even though it's
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not that good and it's it's an unfortunate myth that we can't let go of um and oh I had one other oh
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and we don't have a functioning media which I know you're able to talk about um with more depth than I
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am but if um often uh political figures then you know I'll name the prime minister Trudeau would say
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we're we're doing this trucker mandate um because that's what the science shows and I was
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I was just flabbergasted going like will one of these journalists in the scrum say which scientific
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paper are you quoting prime minister you don't just get to say the science supports my policy
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right um somebody say which science please yeah well that has never happened and I I've you know as
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really an outsider in journalism um I've um commented on this many many times like I'm not at these press
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conferences um but uh maybe I should start going to them uh uh you know if I get the time but the
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the point is I would have asked that question like what is this based on you know why where you how are
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you implementing this policy you know what's the science here yet we were told follow the science
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follow the science and you know but the end result really is that you know we've created a great uh
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distrust in public health wouldn't you say um I I think that's true I don't I I don't know of a
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scientific a scientific way to answer that question I do maybe know one I know that um a lot of figures in
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public health have said you need to get your toddlers vaccinated against covid and at ontario
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currently um four percent of toddlers have received two doses of vaccine against covid so that it stands
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to reason that 96 of parents of toddlers aren't buying these recommendations currently um and two years
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ago I think that they would have been lining up in droves um to follow that advice so yes I think
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there quite obviously has been an erosion of public trust um it and some of that's going to be terribly
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detrimental like if you're not careful if you're not nuanced if you've said things that turned out
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to be ridiculous or untrue which certain public health figures in Canada have at certain times I
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don't want to call out names um that's going to diminish public trust um and it it should um but
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there are terrible drastic downsides to that currently we don't know in Ontario uh what percentage of the
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population and the the young population is vaccinated against polio that's a really really bad problem
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because polio can be absolutely devastating for children and the vaccine is 99 effective for life at
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preventing you from getting it and I I know kind of anecdotally that there are a lot of folks who
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in addition to not believing public health about the COVID vaccines are not believing public health
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about the traditional vaccines that we have 70 years of safety data on and we know how good they are
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and that's a big problem yeah well uh Matt I know um you're very busy and uh but I one final question
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for you on a personal note uh you know you've uh uh very courageously taken on these positions right
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from the beginning of the pandemic um and of course you've taken a lot of heat uh I'm sure uh you know
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it hasn't been easy for you and your family um and but you know when you look back on all of this now
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you've basically been proved proved right um and and what's more you have um you know the health district
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that you um that you uh were in charge of seeing a 30 percent um um you know um um uh lower mortality
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from COVID than the provincial average um do you feel a sense of vindication that it was all worth it
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and if in hindsight uh if you knew in hindsight you know how much heat you were gonna uh take for
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challenging the establishment and you know and this group think out there would you would you
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would you have still done the same things would you or would you have approached things differently
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yes absolutely and I I've just been continually surprised by the blowback um I in some ways
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this is not the I'm not living in the society that I thought I was living in I I I thought we
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cherished evidence cost benefit analysis freedom of speech hashing it out uh having a friendly
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argument like we can agreeing to disagree these like very basic civil society um ethos or or this very
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basic ethos um I I'm I'm so perplexed that it's not the case um but at no point could I have done any
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other like um there's the Elon Musk uh quote if nobody makes the stuff there won't be any stuff
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if nobody criticizes bad policy there will not be any good policy so yeah um it's been this weird um
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tightrope to walk between saying the most true thing and saying the most effective thing and I
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frankly have a lot of sympathy for public figures who maybe I was critical of three years ago where I
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I I now understand that you can't say everything that you have to say in public life on day one
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because then there will be no day two you have to kind of meet the public where they are at what
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they're ready to hear but you you always have to be pushing towards truth and reason or else we're
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we're not going to have truth or reason like my um family are refugees from former Yugoslavia and uh
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they they fled because they were starving um and being politically persecuted uh and that that can
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happen here it won't happen here because we're going to speak out and we're we're winning but it's
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not speaking out is not an option well yeah it's definitely not an option for me um uh even if I tried
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I mean I I just can't find uh it in me to not uh speak up and um it's it's a good thing and a bad thing
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I think both at the same time but I'm so glad that you're speaking up Matt and that you have
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been speaking up for all of us during the pandemic and uh it's been such a great uh privilege and honor
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to have you on the show and um you know and also you know that uh that you'll join us again sometime
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soon and uh and hopefully we'll have other things to talk about other than COVID-19 I hope that so much
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and uh I just want to say you're you're a hero of mine and uh I will always come when you call
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oh thank you Matt real pleasure thanks take care