Juno News - The reality of Covid-19 (ft. Jay Bhattacharya)

00:00:00.000 well hello everybody and welcome back to the rupa subramania show as always it's great to have you

00:00:22.320 here and thank you so much again for taking the time out of your busy schedule to tune in

00:00:27.200 today we're returning to a topic that many of us wish would just go away but unfortunately the

00:00:34.400 powers that be and the doomsaying experts that whisper into their ears and also shout from the

00:00:39.600 rooftops of twitter mean that fresh pandemic restrictions like masking mandates at least

00:00:46.160 here in canada seem to be back in discussion canada just seems to have a really hard time

00:00:51.520 uh moving away from the pandemic and i wonder why uh many jurisdictions for example uh here in

00:00:58.480 ontario uh both at the provincial and municipal levels are strongly encouraging mask use and

00:01:06.640 you know what happens when there's a strong recommendation um after a while if people

00:01:12.080 don't do as as as they're ordered by the government uh even if it defies all common sense or scientific

00:01:19.280 evidence it turns into a mandate in ottawa for example the school board is actually considering

00:01:27.120 mandating mask use in schools which defies the scientific evidence out there which tells us

00:01:33.200 that it would be really bad for children my guest today has been at the forefront of challenging this

00:01:39.360 official doom saying narrative around covid right from the get-go right from the beginning of the pandemic

00:01:46.000 dr jay bodhacharya is a professor of medicine at stanford university and one of the architects of the

00:01:52.480 great barrington declaration which is about calling for a sensible and measured approach to the pandemic

00:01:59.040 uh rather than just mindlessly locking us all down with restrictions uh which ends up causing more harm

00:02:05.440 than good and we now know that all these restrictions and the lockdowns actually ended up hurting society

00:02:11.680 more than they ended up helping us dr bodhacharya by being at the forefront of this rational and

00:02:19.280 sensible approach to covet has had to face the usual criticisms by those promoting groupthink that he's

00:02:26.320 spreading misinformation but he's withstood uh all of these criticisms and he keeps fighting the good

00:02:32.560 fight it's my great pleasure to welcome dr bodhacharya to the show so it's great to have you on the

00:02:38.400 show jay i'm so glad we could finally make this happen um i'm sure it's a lot warmer in california

00:02:44.320 where you are than here in ottawa um so jay i first discovered you way back at the beginning of the

00:02:50.720 pandemic um i would say as early as march 2020 uh when you wrote this uh very um influential and

00:02:59.120 powerful op-ed in the wall street journal co-authored by uh aaron bender bendavid um there you made this

00:03:06.720 very important argument that covet debts are like likely highly exaggerated essentially because the

00:03:12.880 calculation uses the wrong denominator the true fatality rate is the percentage of people infected

00:03:19.680 who died not the percentage of identified positive cases um and this is because of uh selection bias of

00:03:27.920 uh those who would be tested so what was great about this op-ed is that it made a very important

00:03:33.360 point a very important argument using statistical concepts that could be understood understood by the

00:03:38.240 layperson looking back at that time you and your co-author were probably among the very first to

00:03:43.520 challenge um an emerging consensus or emerging orthodoxy which quickly uh which which quickly hardened into

00:03:50.400 orthodoxy uh what was your motivation at that time did you ever think that that uh that the world world

00:03:56.640 would lose two or more years of the pandemic in the way that it did i mean i was in many ways naive

00:04:02.640 at that time but i uh the the thing that motivated me to write that piece uh in part the main the main

00:04:09.280 the the most prominent thing was it was a scientific hypothesis right actually if you read the piece

00:04:14.560 carefully it we're very clear that we don't know the mortality rate we call for a study measure the the uh

00:04:21.920 and you know basically was a seroprevalence study to to measure the the prevalence of the of the

00:04:27.040 disease in the population at large which we were pretty sure was going to be much more than the

00:04:31.840 number of people that identified these cases but we didn't know how much and so that's why that was

00:04:36.320 the purpose was that was to to call for a study to test a scientific hypothesis but i was also in the

00:04:42.960 back of my head i'm a health policy person health economist as well as as well as an epidemiologist

00:04:46.720 um and to me the lockdown policy that we followed it was so clear and obvious it was going to cause

00:04:53.680 damage to the poor the working class to children uh to vulnerable people that we displaced all of our 0.99

00:05:00.080 other priorities in life with this one priority avoiding covid while all those other priorities

00:05:05.600 many of them are vital to health and well-being as we've learned yeah no absolutely in fact i used uh

00:05:12.240 your op-ed in a in a piece that i wrote i wrote a series of articles back in march of 2020 and i was

00:05:18.240 stuck in india at that time and as you know india um uh enforced one of the harshest lockdowns in the

00:05:25.040 world at that time imagine locking down 1.1 billion people uh yet they did that and i was making the case

00:05:31.280 that india shouldn't do that uh and in exactly saying what you you just said which is you know you're

00:05:37.040 locking down the vast majority of the people who are poor um and uh and and uh but yet you know

00:05:44.560 you know voices like mine weren't were were just uh dismissed as being uh you know as you know that

00:05:51.600 we weren't taking the pandemic seriously and look at all of the people who are dying in italy and so

00:05:56.480 on and so forth how how did you i mean speaking of lockdowns um you know you've argued in various for

00:06:02.960 that lockdowns um were a mistake um why do you think they were a mistake uh what was the risk

00:06:08.800 benefit calculation that was going uh through your head uh when you realized that lockdowns were were

00:06:14.640 doing more harm than good um and likewise you've also opposed vaccine mandates and and again you know

00:06:20.880 i'm wondering what why why you thought that these measures were doing more harm than good so let's take

00:06:26.400 the lockdowns and you mentioned india so let's let's talk about that yeah the lockdowns in india right so

00:06:31.360 when prime minister modi imposed the lockdown uh i mean it was as you said one of the most draconian

00:06:37.120 in the world uh he has ordered us like a half billion migrant workers to go back to their home

00:06:44.560 villages right so you know they work in mumbai or somewhere they sell coconuts on the street their

00:06:52.400 entire life savings is in the coconuts that they bought right if they buy if they sell the coconuts for the

00:06:57.600 day then they can buy coconuts the next day and then feed their family well the lockdown meant

00:07:03.280 they had no one to sell the coconuts to now they're utterly impoverished now they have to go back

00:07:09.280 sometimes a hundred two hundred three thousand miles a thousand miles away back to their home village

00:07:15.120 there's no capacity in the indian transportation system to transport a half a billion people overnight

00:07:20.400 um and so a a a half billion people walked some of them walked some of the rode their bike uh crowded

00:07:28.640 overcrowded trains or buses or whatever they could manage um to get back home a thousand died that day

00:07:36.240 on route to home a thousand immediately yeah just in that one order uh the cruelty of it is almost

00:07:44.240 unimaginable um the the um the the the there was a friend of mine that did a seroprevalence study

00:07:51.200 measure of antibodies in the population in mumbai in july of 2020 and what he found was that there was

00:07:56.960 a deep divide in um if you if you if you go to the mumbai slums for like the dharavi slums in mumbai

00:08:04.160 what you saw was 70 prevalence of the disease by july 2020 during the lockdown in outside of the slums it's

00:08:13.840 like 20 percent there was this deep inequality in the ability for people poor people to comply

00:08:20.720 with the lockdown orders lockdown means death for the poor that's in the in the developing world in

00:08:27.520 the developed world it also there's this deep social inequality that characterizes how lockdowns

00:08:34.960 were actually experienced right so if you look at the data out of toronto from early in the pandemic

00:08:40.000 what you see is the 30 richest neighborhoods uh during the lockdown uh have a huge spread of the

00:08:46.640 disease i'm sorry the 30 poorest neighborhoods have a huge spread of the disease whereas the 30 richest

00:08:51.760 neighborhoods almost no spread in the first few weeks of the lockdown the ability to comply with

00:08:56.640 lockdowns depends on your social position your income your your your your status the kind of job

00:09:01.840 you have only a small fraction of the world's population can abide a lockdown that's that was running

00:09:07.280 through my head in the beginning um and for for closing schools i mean that's going to have lifelong

00:09:13.440 negative consequences on our children it had it already has had negative deep negative consequences

00:09:18.160 psychologically of course in terms of the learning loss but the reason why i say it's lifelong is that

00:09:22.320 there's a literature that that's uh that from before the pandemic this jet that measured the the high

00:09:28.160 returns the incredibly high returns to investments in education you interrupt that for a short time which

00:09:34.160 what you've done then is consigned those kids short time now is two years in some some places to a

00:09:40.080 lifetime of lower income more unemployment uh worse health and shorter life that's what we've done one

00:09:47.760 estimate was in from just the us alone is five and a half million life years taken away from our

00:09:52.240 children just based on the spring school closures alone spring 2020 spring close uh school closures alone um

00:09:59.760 we basically threw away our commitments to the poor the vulnerable the working class overnight in the

00:10:05.840 hopes of stopping the spread of a disease that is not stoppable with any of these kinds of technologies

00:10:12.320 so was china a template uh for us uh because um it was china and then italy and then everybody else

00:10:21.760 followed suit uh what was the inspiration behind the lockdowns china i i think it was actually so it's

00:10:28.880 interesting to read foia emails foia freedom information act for emails from um uh from

00:10:36.800 communications between tony fauci uh francis collins the head of the nih uh jeremy farrar who's the head

00:10:44.640 of the welcome trust a big charity uh that that funds biomedical research in in the uk um and uh and a

00:10:51.680 whole host of virologists some of the the the um uh the the the uh one of the the focuses in early

00:11:00.160 january was to get some american to go on this world health organization junket to china because if you

00:11:08.560 remember back then china had had imposed this draconian lockdown in in wuhan in uh in july in january

00:11:15.600 yeah and uh so the the uh the the uh there's this cliff cliff lane who's a aid to tony fauci the

00:11:26.560 the american government finally finagles his cliff lane onto this junket he goes on this junket and

00:11:33.520 and and on the on the it seems like on the flight back almost he's writing or talking with maria van

00:11:38.960 kirkov who's a epidemiologist high epidemiologist of high position at the world health organization

00:11:44.480 they write a report in in february 2020 based on their observations of china uh cliff lane writes

00:11:51.440 to tony fauci he writes uh to murray kirkhoff he writes um it looks like what china did worked albeit

00:11:58.000 at great cost we have very difficult decisions to make uh it's going to take more than just the

00:12:03.120 people in this room to make those decisions this is like mid-february 2020. if you remember back then

00:12:07.600 there was no talk of lockdown in fact there was a big pushback from the left against uh the flight

00:12:13.680 ban from china so that and when trump opposed it people were accusing him of racism right actually

00:12:21.120 i think the flight ban was a mistake because it was already too late the disease was already seeded

00:12:25.840 i think in fall of 2020 2019. um uh and i can talk about some of the evidence for that but the point is

00:12:32.640 that um certainly by february 2020 it was all already all over the world that's why the cases were you

00:12:40.160 seeing in italy back then there was also iran you're seeing cases that meant the disease was out

00:12:44.480 there it's a highly infectious respiratory disease very clearly spread by aerosols that's why it's the

00:12:49.680 only way you get those big super spreader events that we saw in the early days um so you just have

00:12:54.480 this like situation where uh everyone in the west is looking to the chinese model thinking that the

00:13:00.400 chinese model had worked they're looking at italy saying oh gosh they didn't shut down early enough

00:13:05.760 that's why it didn't work they weren't draconian enough that's why it didn't work let's adopt the

00:13:09.520 chinese model we can get make the disease go away we'll be heroes um that uh that chinese model has 0.99

00:13:15.760 tremendous impact on the western epidemiological thinking and on western public health thinking

00:13:21.360 yeah um you know looking back at that time one of the puzzles i had then and this is you know when

00:13:26.560 i was writing these pieces sitting in india uh i remember the the news coming out of italy was

00:13:32.160 horrific uh almost every day there were like seven eight hundred deaths and i remember you know people

00:13:37.520 were freaking out on social media uh this is happening in italy it's a country in the west

00:13:42.560 it has a very fairly good healthcare system if this can happen in italy just think about you know what

00:13:49.760 this could mean for the rest of us so what happened in italy why was why you know looking back at that

00:13:55.600 time you know why was it so bad in italy or was that was that normal given italy's demographic profile

00:14:04.400 i mean a few things happened so one italy is certainly older so you would expect there to be

00:14:08.880 much more severe disease from this disease so i think that's certainly part of the demographics were

00:14:14.400 very important there yeah the italian healthcare system is stressed at baseline every respiratory virus

00:14:21.440 season that's not that's a normal thing of course to stress much more here part of it is also and

00:14:26.560 you saw this in china the doctors themselves were scared to treat the patients they were they were

00:14:32.560 doing these ventilator protocols in part i think to protect themselves um and uh because you know

00:14:39.120 if you're on ventilator maybe there's less virus particles being spread outside because it goes

00:14:42.880 in the machine or something i mean i don't know um i'm not sure exactly what they were thinking

00:14:46.880 the key thing though is that uh is that and so and so like you know you saw those like those coffins

00:14:52.400 uh all these people like lined up in coffins they couldn't get family members to come and pick them

00:14:58.000 up because they were scared they the fear itself i think drove the that drove itself it's like a

00:15:03.200 self-fulfilling prophecy cycle right so the people were scared doctors were scared they acted in ways that

00:15:10.480 that that that furthered the panic and um and they were looking for any any guru to solve the problem

00:15:18.320 um and they just thought okay well you know this uh if we just locked down like china did we would 0.76

00:15:23.680 have we would have avoided this um the the thing that would have avoided this would have been focused

00:15:29.280 protection of vulnerable people older people right if if if uh people had looked at the data out of

00:15:34.880 china and the diamond princess and realized look there's this enormous age gradient the

00:15:40.480 people who are most at risk of being hospitalized and dying are older people still 80 percent of

00:15:44.480 the deaths i think worldwide are over 65. if we had adopted policies then to protect older people

00:15:52.880 not sending coveted infected patients back to nursing homes for instance um then we would have

00:15:57.520 avoided a lot of the the death and harm that happened in the early days of the pandemic um and

00:16:02.880 i think a lot of that was like this it's just panic like we made these panic decisions assuming that

00:16:07.680 we were doing good when in fact we ended up doing you know very very bad things that harm people

00:16:11.840 yeah if we had the goal of focused protection protection of older people protection of vulnerable

00:16:15.520 people instead of protection of hospital systems we would never have sent coveted infected patients

00:16:21.280 back to nursing rooms that was that that problem was caused by a lack of understanding of the 0.86

00:16:26.480 epidemiology of this disease and who was most at risk yeah uh you kind of touched upon the great

00:16:31.520 bank to declaration we'll get to that in a bit uh but just uh a question before that uh with so many

00:16:37.600 screw-ups by governments around the world uh who in your opinion got it right uh which which places

00:16:44.160 got it right well almost everyone else was getting it wrong and what exactly did they get right

00:16:49.840 well rupa i don't i don't think there's any place that got it all completely right that's not

00:16:52.880 this it's just it was not possible in the fog of war okay but i do think that some places were

00:16:58.560 better than others like so for instance let's take sweden because that's the most probably an

00:17:02.640 example of account sort of a country that followed a very different policy i think in the early days

00:17:08.400 of the pandemic the swedish stockholm um public health actually made huge errors they uh sent coveted

00:17:15.360 infected patients back to their nursing homes causing tremendous deaths in those in those uh in those

00:17:19.760 locations um but very early on uh that they corrected themselves uh anders tagnal the the head of

00:17:28.960 swedish public health made a decision to follow the old pandemic plan which is protection of the vulnerable

00:17:35.200 uh don't spread panic spread try to calm the population down um and that's that's and and

00:17:42.960 that's what he did so like for instance they didn't close schools because the kids were not at risk

00:17:46.960 risk and the a data out of iceland was suggesting that kids were not particularly efficient spreaders

00:17:52.720 of this disease um so you had like so so and and on the other hand they they tried to after that

00:17:58.880 horrible mistake in stockholm they tried to advise older people you know that this actually is a high

00:18:05.840 risk disease for them they organized communities to to um to provide support for older people living in

00:18:12.400 the communities so they could reduce the amount of exposures they had they actually did recommend

00:18:17.680 uh limitations in mass gatherings which are completely reasonable in the diseases spreading

00:18:21.920 uh but they were mostly it was a voluntary kind of kind of effort to try to and the reason why it

00:18:27.200 could do this is because they built trust with the population the population trusted swedish public

00:18:31.840 health because their swedish public health never lied to their population um and as a consequence

00:18:37.360 they they could they could make these measures um that actually turned out to be quite

00:18:41.600 effective the overall excess mortality in sweden is actually pretty low uh you know on par with the

00:18:46.800 other scandinavian countries and below much of the rest of europe certainly much lower than the united

00:18:51.280 states yeah uh which is a remarkable remarkable thing to say because the swedish model was derided

00:18:59.120 right from the get-go um and uh and those of us who said hey look at what sweden is doing maybe we

00:19:04.960 could learn a thing or two from them uh were just uh again once again dismissed um but uh you know

00:19:11.520 coming to the great barrington declaration you you're one of the architects of the great barrington

00:19:16.320 declaration which called for a sensible and measured approach uh when responding to the pandemic

00:19:22.320 rather than using these blunt instrument of lockdowns um you were naturally criticized heavily at that time

00:19:30.960 but now it seems that many governments have quietly pivoted to your approach uh the approach that you and

00:19:37.040 your colleagues advocated um maybe even china uh belatedly uh perhaps realizing the the the folly of

00:19:45.440 their zero covet policy uh what was the motivation behind the declaration and do you believe that it had

00:19:51.920 the desired effect on the discourse that you all were hoping for uh so so my mo my main motivation to

00:20:00.000 write the declaration um was to tell the public that there actually was a scientific debate uh the

00:20:06.880 up to that point it seemed like to me from the public discourse that people thought that that that

00:20:11.760 that the the lockdown the pro lockdown position was unanimous among scientists and their only fringe

00:20:16.720 you know like a few fringe characters were were opposed to it when in fact i knew that many many many

00:20:22.000 prominent reasonable scientists had deep discomfort with the the lockdown focused policy we followed

00:20:29.840 uh so the the purpose was to tell the public that there was this scientific discussion going on

00:20:35.040 and uh to shatter any illusion that there may be a consensus around this they're not there wasn't one

00:20:41.760 um you asked about if i it had the desired impact i have to say unfortunately no we we um what happened

00:20:50.480 uh turns out a few days after we wrote that declaration francis collins the head of the

00:20:55.440 national institute of health wrote an email to tony fauci calling me sinetra gupta she's one of the

00:21:01.280 fantastic epidemiologists oxford university and martin kuhldorf uh was a then at harvard university

00:21:07.600 um he to uh you could they call they they he called us fringe epidemiologists uh i got i can't see

00:21:14.160 how you find it someone so a friend of mine sent me a card that he made up for me that says fringe

00:21:19.200 epidemiology on it uh with my name on it so anyways uh uh the um and then he called for a

00:21:27.200 devastating takedown of the premises of the declaration i started then getting calls from

00:21:32.400 reporters at like the new york times and washington post in effect asking me why i wanted to kill

00:21:36.480 grandma when in fact what the declaration said was protect vulnerable older people that was the central

00:21:42.640 idea of the declaration what i really hope would happen uh in addition to the public understanding that

00:21:48.320 there was no illusion consensus i was hoping that public health would engage in a a creative

00:21:54.880 discussion about how to protect the vulnerable we gave a lot of ideas in the declaration but you know

00:22:00.720 protection of vulnerable people is a local thing it really depends on living local living

00:22:07.280 circumstances it's going to be the right policies in ottawa are going to be very different than ones in

00:22:12.000 toronto very different than ones in downtown la very different than ones in billings montana it'll depend

00:22:17.120 of where older people live their their their resources that are the the resources of the

00:22:22.480 broader community and so on um and what i was hoping is that local public health would engage in a

00:22:28.560 creative uh a creative thinking about how to protect better protect vulnerable older people

00:22:35.520 but instead we got this demonization smearing people who signed the declaration some of them lost

00:22:39.840 their jobs for the act of signing it um it was really an amazing thing to watch public health decide

00:22:46.320 especially the high poobahs the public health decide that we were so dangerous that we had to be 0.99

00:22:50.960 uh you know essentially thrown out the city of the city walls you put under the fringe instead

00:22:56.720 of instead of actually with uh creative engagement scientific uh discussion good faith scientific

00:23:02.000 discussion yeah what an extremely horrific and shameful part of our history um it's yeah it's just uh

00:23:09.680 crazy absolutely insane when you think about it now um we're we're now in the you know the late fall of

00:23:16.560 2022 and the pandemic is still hanging over us uh like a shadow especially when it comes to uh

00:23:23.440 government's saber rattling about renewed restrictions especially here in canada where we just refuse to

00:23:28.960 move on um where we are today uh do you believe it makes any sense to reimpose masking mandates for

00:23:36.240 example whether it is in public places or specifically in schools um and does it make sense for uh so one

00:23:44.000 on masking mandates should they come back um does it make sense for average healthy people to jump on to

00:23:51.760 an endless round of boosters as governments are encouraging at least here in canada um basically

00:23:57.680 where are we in the pandemic right now jay can the average person just assume a life is back to normal

00:24:02.960 and treat covet 19 as uh as it's another respiratory disease of a type we've seen uh we've dealt with

00:24:10.080 for millennia so uh first on the mass mandates i i mean i think that the mass mandates were uh come

00:24:17.280 almost entirely useless almost entirely why hedge i think they were entirely useless in actually stopping

00:24:23.840 disease spread uh heavily mass countries like japan south korea have seen enormous outbreaks of the

00:24:29.600 disease yeah the mass mandates have not stopped the disease from spreading in china um but the masks

00:24:36.080 do not work did not work to stop disease spread instead what those mandates did is they created

00:24:41.840 distrust in public health that vastly oversold their ability they and worse it was a it was a mechanism

00:24:48.640 to moralize the disease to to divide people into good guys and bad guys you're wearing a mask you're a

00:24:54.880 good guy if you're wearing they're not wearing a mask you're a bad guy and that thus divide the public

00:25:00.080 so uh now half the public doesn't trust public health they half of the public hates their neighbor

00:25:05.760 the other half hates the other other neighbor um you you have a something that public health should

00:25:10.640 never do is public health should seek to unify the population not divide it the mass mandates are

00:25:16.480 almost a perfect tool for division and it was not based on any reasonable science the the randomized

00:25:22.880 studies before the pandemic on the ability of masks to stop does highly infectious respiratory diseases

00:25:28.400 in the mass used by the general public to stop those highly infectious respiratory diseases was

00:25:34.160 non-existent in fact they they found negative results that was why in february 2020 you heard

00:25:39.840 public health saying don't use masks because that was the the consensus based on a tremendous body of

00:25:46.560 evidence based on nothing we switched overnight till you have to use masks and it's the only way to stop

00:25:52.560 it the evidence developed since the pandemic shows no uh that nothing's changed really in terms of the

00:25:58.880 science they don't really work when used by the general public you can and the physics of it can

00:26:03.440 explain why right so if you wear a mask you don't have glasses but i have glasses my glass my

00:26:09.680 yeah they fog up yeah this disease is spread by aerosols yeah uh aerosols are like they sit in the

00:26:15.760 the air for a long time the fogging up is the aerosols those if i have covid my glasses are filled

00:26:22.800 up with aerosols okay um i mean you just can't stop a disease like this with mass uh when it's

00:26:30.480 worn by the general public in the way that normally the general public would wear it and kids wearing

00:26:34.240 masks i mean come on that there's literally no evidence that that does any good and there may be

00:26:38.560 some harm like i've had lots of reports from autistic moms who wrote to me saying look my kid can't

00:26:43.600 abide by a mask or hearing impaired uh parents or uh you know it's just up it's it's it you need to

00:26:51.360 if you're going to impose something like this on the general public you have to have excellent evidence

00:26:55.520 and the evidence base was poor and the and and it was divisive it's diminished destroyed trust in

00:27:01.440 politics bring it back now makes no sense sorry how long a long time about mass but like like the other

00:27:07.280 party question is even more important rupa um you asked about where we are in the pandemic the key

00:27:12.400 thing is such a large fraction of the population has had coveted and recovered it's not march march

00:27:18.880 2020 everybody nearly everybody was was at risk because no one had seen covered before the bodies

00:27:24.480 did not cope with it now we're at a point where such a large fraction populations had it before

00:27:29.760 it's become it's defaying the disease it's not that you can't still die from it there are still

00:27:34.240 vulnerable people but they are vulnerable to so many other things they're vulnerable to other

00:27:38.240 respiratory diseases for instance um so they have to be careful no matter what but for the vast

00:27:43.760 majority of the population it's not going to kill you that's that it's it's it's 10 times more

00:27:50.560 a hundred times uh more uh uh uh it's it's i'm sorry 100 times less deadly than 10 times less

00:27:56.400 deadly than it was before for the vast majority so it's a it's a relatively minor risk relative to the

00:28:01.440 other risks people face in their lives and so to bring back all of the all of the old uh old things

00:28:08.240 that hope that didn't work before in the hopes that it'll work now when the benefit of them are is

00:28:13.280 even less than it was back then makes no sense well so despite all of this evidence that you point to

00:28:19.520 about masks uh before the panda pandemic and and during the course of the pandemic why did governments

00:28:26.880 then um uh flip-flop on this they said masks don't really do much uh and then and then mass became

00:28:33.920 the silver bullet for everything and uh you know it's it's a bit like uh what happened with uh when

00:28:41.200 you know with the vaccines the vaccines were meant to prevent transmission among among other things uh but

00:28:47.440 then omicron happened and everybody was getting uh covet 19 so um you know despite all of this we're still

00:28:54.880 being told take the vaccine because it prevents transmission which i think is what would be would

00:29:00.240 be seen as misinformation at this point because i don't think it prevents transmission i got it uh

00:29:05.920 despite uh receiving my booster uh last december uh so what's going on i mean you have all of this

00:29:12.160 evidence but public health seems to be on a different planet altogether yeah well let's again let's go

00:29:17.280 back to mass real fast yeah there was very there's i said the the consensus pour is based on good

00:29:23.120 randomized studies

00:29:24.880 and but they were like i i think like it's like if you if you're if you ever go to a rookie doctor

00:29:30.320 a new doctor you ask them a tough question the doctor then faces a dilemma doctor doesn't know

00:29:37.040 the answer to your question but you're they're the doctor so you you're gonna lose authority right

00:29:41.360 if they don't say uh if they don't give you an answer and so everyone's looking to public health

00:29:46.480 it's march 2020 everyone's looking like what can i do to protect myself and washing hands yeah um but

00:29:54.000 that's not enough people are still scared and i think public health thought of mass as something

00:30:01.120 that's low cost who cares it won't harm anybody we may as well just suggest it even though the evidence

00:30:06.960 base was crappy for it i think it was this idea to give people some sense of of of autonomy some sense of

00:30:15.280 like control over the risk that they faced um i think i was it was it was deeply irresponsible

00:30:20.720 because some people believe them vulnerable people wore a mask went out in public when they probably

00:30:25.760 shouldn't have thinking they were protected and got the disease and died i think that was a deeply

00:30:30.560 cynical thing to do but it was it was based on on this like idea that public health has to give you

00:30:35.440 something to do um even if the evidence base is bad uh on the vaccines um the the transmission the fact

00:30:42.720 that it doesn't block transmission that was kind of known i mean i was looking at the data i by

00:30:48.480 april 2021 i suspected it and by june 2021 i was certain that it wasn't blocking transmission because

00:30:54.720 you had these like countries that were heavily vaccinated like israel that saw these huge numbers

00:30:58.800 of cases yeah the delta outbreak in israel despite being like 90 100 vaccinated yeah so yeah what that

00:31:07.440 meant then is that the vaccine mandates which really started arriving in july august 2021 after

00:31:13.040 the vaccine rollout kind of stalled that uh those vaccine mandates were based on bad reasoning a mandate

00:31:21.360 may make i'm not sure it makes sense in this case also but like it might make sense it absolutely

00:31:25.840 need you need a vaccine that stops transmission why because if the vaccine protects me against

00:31:31.520 against severe disease and death that's fine actually does that's i think uh for especially

00:31:35.280 for older people um but but uh but that means i have private protection the vaccine it doesn't matter

00:31:41.520 if you you can be in my presence and it doesn't make any difference to you uh whether whether you

00:31:46.480 know that that private protection i'm not a danger to you if on the other hand the vaccine

00:31:51.040 protects uh stops disease transmission if i'm vaccinated i can't infect you

00:31:55.760 well that in that case it's really important that a very large fraction of the population be

00:32:00.480 vaccinated right you can make an argument then for vaccine mandates although i think actually if you

00:32:06.240 have a mandate that means that's a failure of public health uh public health then because if you have a

00:32:11.120 trustworthy public health public health says look this is a really good idea people listen to you

00:32:15.360 because you trust you then public health is doing its job if you're forcing then almost your public

00:32:20.560 health authorities have failed already um anyways but uh let's leave that aside um if it doesn't

00:32:27.280 stop transmission there's no argument for the mandate that meant that the mandates were unscientific

00:32:34.160 almost as soon as they started using them there wasn't going to stop the disease spread and it and

00:32:38.800 again created this division where like you have this these clean people who were vaccinated and these

00:32:44.080 unclean people who are unvaccinated and in canada uh and also in the united states many places

00:32:49.440 essentially the unvaccinated weren't allowed to participate in civic life in canada they weren't

00:32:53.520 allowed to travel in domestically um i mean i think that's just a mass violation of civil rights on

00:32:58.720 the basis of a miss misperception about or mistake about what the scientific evidence was was

00:33:04.240 saying and also like i think a misunderstanding of how important civil rights are even in the middle of a

00:33:09.600 pandemic it's almost like we imported the caste system to the west uh which is exactly i've had 0.95

00:33:16.560 several times like you can't i mean this is like you know like india struggled to try to get rid of the

00:33:22.320 the echoes of the caste system forever when the west was wholesale embracing it yeah yeah um you know 0.99

00:33:27.920 you've been very critical of the cdc and dr fauci in particular what what do you think went wrong

00:33:34.160 in the u.s institutional setup um for example does it make sense for those uh who decide these policies

00:33:41.600 these are also the same people who are deciding on funding the research for example uh doesn't this

00:33:46.720 give them way too much power and distort distort what their incentives uh and big pharma i think you've

00:33:54.720 absolutely nailed it that's exactly what what the what the problem here is uh what you had is a small

00:33:59.360 group of of people a cartel basically of scientific bureaucrats with tremendous power to control the

00:34:05.680 minds and utterances of of a very large number of scientists because they control their funding they

00:34:10.560 control their social status in effect um if you if you don't get nih funding you can't get for instance

00:34:16.400 tenure at a major university um for you if you're a biomedical scientist so so uh you had uh and they

00:34:23.360 they used that power to create this illusion of consensus they they that was a deep abuse of their

00:34:30.320 power they they they and it was hubris at the bottom of it they thought they knew better than everybody

00:34:35.840 else what to do everyone was looking to them for answers and they they thought they had the answers

00:34:42.080 and they couldn't divide the debate that would have shattered the illusion that that they were omniscient

00:34:47.760 yeah um yeah i mean it's uh you know i i bet something similar was happening here but uh um you

00:34:55.280 know and that that's that's certainly something that uh i think canadians need to ask i mean that

00:35:00.240 question um but uh but j um recently there was this uh very um provocative essay in the atlantic by

00:35:08.480 economist uh emily oster uh she made this case for a pandemic amnesty in other words let's not worry

00:35:15.920 about the mistakes that were made uh let's not point fingers and let's move forward what do you

00:35:20.880 make of this argument to me it sounds like uh we're letting people who made uh avoidable mistakes off

00:35:26.560 the hook um is certainly here in the us and canada we shut out experts like like you uh you know

00:35:34.480 who weren't singing their tune and basically only listen to those who uh told them what they wanted

00:35:39.120 to hear whether it was uh mandates or lockdowns um so what do you make of this argument it seems like

00:35:45.360 the power elites want to escape all accountability and move on without taking stock of exactly what

00:35:51.760 went wrong and how things can be fixed i mean i think uh i mean i have to say in one in one sense

00:35:59.040 i am sympathetic right so like if your family didn't allow you to come to to christmas because

00:36:04.720 you were unvaccinated or something the only way forward is forgiveness there has to be some in that

00:36:10.960 sense um there has to be some reconciliation of people with each other the public health imposed

00:36:16.880 this division society on us and as as a society as families as friends we have to come together

00:36:24.000 to uh to to rise above that and that's going to require some some actually tremendous amount of

00:36:29.840 forgiveness to to to heal i i want that healing um on the other hand i think that uh you know public

00:36:36.400 health officials made huge mistakes enormous catastrophic mistakes that damaged the lives of

00:36:41.840 a tremendous number of people you can't just forget that and move on you have to have some kind of

00:36:48.400 of uh of reckoning and i think the right kind of reckoning uh in is to is to do an honest assessment of

00:36:57.120 what went wrong the policies that mistake the processes that led to those policies the the lack of checks and

00:37:02.720 balances um and and and then reform the system so that those mistakes never happen again ultimately

00:37:10.320 i think if you do that lockdown will become a dirty word people will look on on the idea with absolute

00:37:16.480 horror that you know the the same way they that that we look on on so many uh so many vestiges of our

00:37:23.680 past in horror um and i think uh and i think that that that that has to come out of an honest

00:37:28.720 conversation about uh about the the tremendous errors many of our leaders made and and i don't

00:37:36.240 generally i'm not in favor of like criminalization if simply people did criminal acts yeah fine but i do

00:37:40.960 but i am very much in favor of reform but i think we have to for instance you mentioned pharma if it

00:37:46.880 looks to all although i've worked with the fda for years it looks to me like for all the world like

00:37:51.200 the fda has been captured by by pharmaceutical interest with the vaccines um it's it's such a sad thing to

00:37:57.920 see uh the cdc has relied on absolutely shoddy science over the us cdc over and over again same

00:38:03.520 thing with canada like i've seen the same same kind of problems in canada for uh both for the

00:38:08.400 vaccines and for the um for the for the canadian public health um the nih has abused its power 0.94

00:38:16.160 uh all of these cry out for reforms uh and unless we have an honest conversation we're not going to get

00:38:22.320 those reforms so yes forgiveness especially at a personal level amnesty only after we've had a long

00:38:30.000 conversation about what we're wrong and reforms happen yeah uh you you recently said i think on

00:38:37.200 fox news that academic freedom is now dead um and i believe this is based in part on your experience

00:38:43.760 at stanford as someone who is critical of the establishment position um i think you even said you

00:38:49.360 received death threats uh and possibly faced censure and felt ostracized for making an academic

00:38:56.240 scientific argument um and rather than engaging in an open debate that was an attempt to shut down the

00:39:01.200 conversation if this is happening at stanford one of the top universities in the world uh you can bet

00:39:07.120 it's happening in many other places uh do you think there's any hope of restoring academic freedom

00:39:12.800 in universities how do we go about doing this i think i think we need new leadership in universities

00:39:18.400 uh at stanford i mean it's not so much that people disagreed with me i mean that's just that's just

00:39:23.360 normal in science right i don't have any problem with that i've spent my career disagreeing with other

00:39:28.160 people i mean that's just that's just how science works uh the problem is that places like stanford

00:39:33.840 have an obligation to host uh the the the debate to host the the conversation that's happening

00:39:40.960 instead the way that stanford behaved during the pandemic made it essentially a hostile work

00:39:47.360 environment for me and not just for me basically anyone who spoke up against the pandemic uh the

00:39:52.640 policies that were followed like scott atlas has reported the same thing johnny and edis is before

00:39:56.880 the same thing i've gotten countless emails from junior colleagues who tell me the same thing that

00:40:01.280 they that they shared my opinions but dared not speak up um that is a that's a disaster for a place

00:40:06.800 like stanford stanford is motto is let the winds of freedom blow or when the winds of freedom blow

00:40:12.000 that's in germans which you can't pronounce so that's about that's that's translation um it didn't

00:40:16.240 live up to that motto it didn't live up to the the it's high high mission of promoting uh high quality

00:40:22.880 academic discussion especially when it's difficult if academic freedom if stanford doesn't stand for

00:40:28.320 academic freedom and then just and this kind of freedom of discussion when it's the most difficult

00:40:32.240 like it was during the pandemic then it doesn't stand for it at all yeah that's the main

00:40:36.000 purpose of our universities is to allow that the the kind of discourse the good faith discourse

00:40:41.200 that allows science to progress or or society to progress and stanford failed at that during the

00:40:46.240 pandemic yeah and so did many other institutions around the world including here in canada um

00:40:51.760 finally on a personal note uh jay uh looking back now since uh you i i feel like you've basically

00:40:57.920 been proved right on pretty much everything on the pandemic do you feel a sense of vindication that

00:41:04.560 it was all worth it if you knew in hindsight just how much heat you were going to take for

00:41:09.760 challenging the establishment and group think view would you have approached things differently

00:41:16.160 i don't i if i hadn't spoken up but during the pandemic i there was no purpose to my career

00:41:20.640 like i found myself in a place where i mean i've been doing infectious disease policy work for for

00:41:24.720 decades i've done i've done health health policy work and health economics work a lot of my research

00:41:31.200 had pointed in this in this direction if i and um and i and i knew that the policies we followed were

00:41:37.520 going to damage poor people that were going to damage children i had to speak up i had no choice

00:41:42.640 and if i didn't hadn't spoken up i would have regretted it the rest of my life

00:41:45.600 yeah um i uh i do think that so many of my the ideas that i that i was pushed that i was arguing

00:41:52.080 for to have turned out to be right um but i don't think that that's anything to do with me really

00:41:56.800 because i was just arguing for ideas that before the pandemic would have been utterly uncontroversial

00:42:02.960 focus protection of vulnerable people really people would post to that uh not not closing schools

00:42:10.240 really people would propose to that relying on evidence-based medicine standards for deciding

00:42:14.560 you know whether it is a vaccine works to prevent transmission i mean

00:42:20.400 none of that should have been at all controversial honestly like and they're all just to me like

00:42:25.520 obvious things um i've worked on many i've written 160 papers i forget how many i've lost count of how

00:42:33.120 many uh peer-reviewed papers i've published in my life um and every one of them i'm trying to say

00:42:38.720 something new and different none of what i was saying really during the pandemic struck me as new or

00:42:43.120 different struck me as like just the normal application of what what then it was stunning

00:42:48.800 to me to see that so many of people react so negatively to what i was saying when i wouldn't

00:42:55.600 if you've just gone back two years they would have said yeah that makes total sense why are you even

00:42:59.360 bothering me with this jay so obvious yeah amazing um well um yeah i mean it's unfortunate how things

00:43:07.040 unfolded but um you know i really appreciate you coming on the podcast to share your insights and

00:43:12.480 your thoughts jay uh you know thank you for a great conversation and for fighting the good fight um

00:43:18.640 you know speaking personally my whole thinking about the pandemic changed radically when i read that

00:43:22.800 wall street journal op-ed uh back in um uh 2020 march of 2020 and that speaks to the power of ideas and open

00:43:30.880 debate in society in a free society so thank you for being here with me and i sure hope i can have

00:43:36.800 you back on the show again soon rupa thank you also for your bravery during the pandemic i've admired uh

00:43:42.400 you're speaking up but uh you know it's sometimes a great personal cost as well uh and um i think uh

00:43:48.160 i think you know it's one of the few blessings of the pandemic that i've got to know people like you

00:43:52.720 that otherwise probably would never have interacted with um and so and thank you for having me on the show

00:43:56.800 oh thank you so much jay thank you i really appreciate it and i hope to see

Juno News - November 25, 2022

The reality of Covid-19 (ft. Jay Bhattacharya)

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