Making Sense - Sam Harris - September 22, 2023


#335 β€” A Postmortem on My Response to Covid

Topics
COVID Vaccine Mandates and COVID ethics perverse drug industry incentives vaccines and deaths
Hosted by
Sam Harris
Mentioned
Brett Weinstein Renee DiResta Joe Rogan Michael Schellenberger Alex Jones Jordan Hall Elon Musk Eric Jordan Peterson Tristan Harris Anthony Fauci George Floyd Ben Shapiro Barry Weiss Tom Bilyeu Naomi Wolf Roman Ready Omicron Pfizer Trump
#334 β€” The Low-Trust Society #336 β€” The Roots of Identity Politics

Episode Stats


Length

1 hour and 10 minutes

Words per minute

171.89

Word count

12,188

Sentence count

687

Harmful content

Misogyny

5

sentences flagged

Toxicity

62

sentences flagged

Hate speech

15

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

I ve been getting a lot of criticism of my views on social media and other media outlets, and I m beginning to see some prominent people and even some friends begin to think the worst of me. Here s what s new, at least to me, is the effect that it is having in my life, and in some cases, even some of my friends have begun to think that they are wrong about me. I m not talking about my views, I m talking about the fact that people have edited them to make it seem as though I have said something else. And to be clear, I do not hold those views. I have not been wrong about anything I have ever said. I am not a bad person, I am a good person. And I have been wrong many times before about things that I do and don t think about, but it s just not as bad as people are making it out to be. I ve been wrong before, and it s not so bad this time, but the problem seems to be that many people are so busy and lazy that they don t have time to consume anything but clips, even when they do have the time to care about things I shouldn t care about, and even if they do care about them, they just don t care enough to care enough about them to actually watch them. And that s a problem, not a good one at all. the problem is that people are taking a clip at face value, and making it seem like it s good, not bad, not good, and not good enough, and they re making it good enough to be taken as though it s actually good or bad or good or good at all of the time, and that they ve been made by someone who doesn t actually care about what they think about it. I m sorry about that, but I don t really care about it, do they really care? or do they even care about something they ve even though they ve made it that much about it? or are they even heard it at all? ? and they don't even care that they re not even listening to it, you know what they re just making it so much more than they should they should be listening at all the time they should well, they ve got a chance to listen to it at least they ve heard it in a way they can make it or they ve actually heard it, right or not they are not?

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 Welcome to the Making Sense Podcast.
00:00:23.520 This is Sam Harris.
00:00:25.820 Okay.
00:00:27.740 Well, long housekeeping here.
00:00:30.900 As many of you know, I've been off social media for a long time at this point.
00:00:36.320 It's like nine months.
00:00:38.180 But social media apparently is not off of me.
00:00:42.420 Occasionally someone sends me a tweet that they think I really must see.
00:00:46.460 Do we still call them tweets?
00:00:48.060 What do you call a post at X?
00:00:50.520 Anyway, people send me these things.
00:00:52.800 And after the astonishment subsides, I'm usually left with two feelings.
00:00:58.140 The first is that social media is destroying society.
00:01:03.560 And the second is that I'm very glad I'm no longer witnessing this on an hourly or even
00:01:07.300 weekly basis.
00:01:09.460 I generally then ignore what was sent to me.
00:01:12.240 But there's been a flurry of these communications of late, focused on what I did and didn't think
00:01:17.700 or say throughout the COVID pandemic, which I should probably comment on.
00:01:22.940 Now, some of you get annoyed when I address controversies of the sort I'm now going to touch.
00:01:27.640 You tell me I'm defending myself from things that don't require defense.
00:01:31.760 Some of you say it's boring or that it looks petty.
00:01:34.960 And I get that.
00:01:36.220 But consider it from my point of view.
00:01:38.100 It's like I have a doppelganger out there who is now much more famous than I am. 1.00
00:01:45.000 And this fake version of me is saying some exceedingly stupid things. 0.95
00:01:50.260 So I feel I have to correct the record from time to time, at the risk of boring you, and 0.98
00:01:55.240 at the risk of appearing to care about things that I shouldn't care about, just so that I
00:01:59.440 know that a clear statement of my views exists somewhere.
00:02:03.780 Here's what seems to be happening.
00:02:05.520 I've been appearing on other people's podcasts, people who have very different audiences from
00:02:10.680 mine.
00:02:11.820 In some cases, these audiences are quite hostile to me.
00:02:15.540 Now, my reason for doing this is pretty straightforward.
00:02:18.440 These people invite me on their podcast, and I generally assume that there is some possibility
00:02:22.440 of communicating something of value to part of their audience, even if it's only a sliver
00:02:27.600 of the audience.
00:02:29.080 A sliver of a podcast audience could be much larger than the largest public talk I've ever
00:02:33.720 given.
00:02:34.020 It could be 50,000 people or more.
00:02:37.600 So if I'm not too busy, and if this person hasn't behaved unethically toward me in the
00:02:41.560 past, however much we may disagree about politics or anything else, I will often say yes.
00:02:47.940 And generally speaking, I'm happy to talk about anything, no matter how arcane or controversial,
00:02:53.460 provided I have an opinion that I think is worth sharing on the topic.
00:02:56.140 So what's been happening is that I've been putting myself in front of, again, often fairly
00:03:02.160 hostile audiences and giving them hours of video content on a wide variety of controversial
00:03:07.720 topics.
00:03:09.060 And then people produce clips from those conversations and share them on social media.
00:03:13.520 However, rather often, the clips are chosen to make it seem like I'm expressing a belief
00:03:19.160 for an opinion that I don't actually hold.
00:03:21.840 To be clear, it's not the podcasts themselves that are doing this.
00:03:25.400 It's members of their audience.
00:03:27.560 Of course, this game of editing for the purpose of misrepresentation is something we're all
00:03:31.100 very familiar with.
00:03:32.280 But what seems new, at least to me, is the effect that it is having in my life.
00:03:38.700 I'm beginning to see some very prominent people, and even some friends, and now in some cases,
00:03:43.660 former friends, have begun to think the worst of me.
00:03:47.260 The problem seems to be that many people are so busy and lazy that they don't have time
00:03:52.340 to consume anything but clips, even when they're going to stake their professional reputations
00:03:56.980 and even their friendships on the dubious premise that a clip created and shared on social media
00:04:02.360 by a person who absolutely loathes the subject of that clip will be accurate and its meaning
00:04:08.240 self-explanatory.
00:04:09.160 Now, I have some sympathy for taking a clip at face value, being very busy myself, and
00:04:14.840 also lazy.
00:04:16.240 It's also true that many clips, perhaps most, are not made by people who hate the subject
00:04:20.780 of that clip and are seeking to make him look terrible.
00:04:23.460 Many clips can be trusted because they are made by fans, and they really do help amplify
00:04:27.580 a person's actual message.
00:04:29.980 But again, I'm not talking to my audience when I appear on these podcasts.
00:04:34.440 And now, more and more, I'm seeing people criticize me for views that I do not hold.
00:04:39.160 And for things that I have not said.
00:04:41.540 To be clear, I'm not talking about valid criticism of my views.
00:04:46.140 I've received a ton of that, and that's great.
00:04:48.980 I'm not even talking about strawmanning my positions.
00:04:52.340 I'm talking about clips that present something I said for the sole purpose of making it appear
00:04:58.240 as though I said something else. 0.99
00:05:00.140 Something quite stupid or obscene. 0.99
00:05:01.840 People have edited videos to make it seem like I wished that more kids had died during 0.99
00:05:07.520 the pandemic, so that I could have been proven right about how scary COVID was, or something
00:05:12.560 like that.
00:05:13.560 And some people who I used to consider friends have shared those videos and dunked on them
00:05:19.320 to produce clickbait for their podcasts.
00:05:22.120 So part of this is just a fake controversy, based on malicious editing.
00:05:28.160 But the problem is also deeper than that.
00:05:30.700 There seems to be a consensus out there, right of center, that I got COVID wrong.
00:05:36.280 Disastrously so.
00:05:37.920 And for some reason, I have refused to admit this.
00:05:40.880 People seem to think that it's the result of some combination of pride and sunk cost,
00:05:45.580 and perhaps my own capture by bad incentives.
00:05:47.960 Of course, a few people think that something more nefarious is going on.
00:05:52.760 I know that there's also a general feeling of disappointment, that while I have routinely
00:05:56.840 challenged prevailing opinion on other topics, I mostly just went with the establishment on
00:06:02.400 COVID.
00:06:03.580 So, for instance, in the years after September 11, 2001, when both the ivory tower and the
00:06:09.000 mainstream media were telling us that Islam is really a religion of peace, hijacked by extremists,
00:06:13.680 and there's no connection at all between its actual tenets and the suicidal terrorism we 0.99
00:06:18.100 were seeing in dozens of countries, I said bullshit, and at some considerable cost to my 0.97
00:06:23.120 reputation, left of center, which is where I have always lived, politically. 0.93
00:06:28.020 I even landed on the Hate Watch page on the Southern Poverty Law Center website, or when George
00:06:33.560 Floyd got murdered, and half of our society erupted in protest over an imagined epidemic of racist
00:06:39.460 police killings.
00:06:41.140 I spent two hours on this podcast arguing that things were not as they seemed, and there are
00:06:45.840 several other instances where I've been willing to stand against a river of sanctimony and lies
00:06:50.240 coming from the establishment, and yet during the pandemic I seemed content to just get washed
00:06:54.840 out to sea with everyone else.
00:06:57.360 Trump is bad.
00:06:58.760 Vaccines are good. 0.65
00:07:00.540 To many of you, I sounded just like the suits on CNN.
00:07:02.980 Again, crucially, I didn't forcefully push back against specific policies, like vaccine
00:07:09.000 mandates, that many of you considered unjust.
00:07:12.760 Well, I'll get into more detail about what I did and didn't think or say about COVID in
00:07:16.940 a minute, but I just want to point out that there are important differences among these
00:07:20.860 various topics, and they explain why in some cases I'm content to, quote, do my own research,
00:07:26.840 and in others it feels irresponsible not to run with whatever consensus among qualified experts
00:07:31.960 we can find.
00:07:33.780 The first difference is that COVID was a public health emergency, around which there was tremendous
00:07:38.260 uncertainty.
00:07:39.660 There were several collective action problems that we had to solve.
00:07:43.080 If we were going to lock down, we had to do that together.
00:07:46.700 We could only meaningfully practice social distancing and flatten the curve together.
00:07:51.640 When vaccines arrived, we could only achieve herd immunity and protect people who really couldn't
00:07:56.920 get vaccinated together.
00:07:58.760 And in every instance, the clock was ticking.
00:08:02.900 And COVID was also a moving target.
00:08:05.000 There was no point at which all the facts were in.
00:08:07.500 They're still not all in.
00:08:09.440 Given this situation, the most responsible thing to do, in my view, was to defer to whatever
00:08:15.080 consensus we could find among experts, until that consensus changed.
00:08:20.200 This was not the situation with jihadism or the data on crime and police violence in the
00:08:25.580 U.S.
00:08:30.980 We've got 1,400 years of data about Islam, and the relevant information is very easy to
00:08:36.020 access.
00:08:37.060 I've read the Quran cover to cover.
00:08:39.320 If you want to know why jihadists do what they do, they will tell you.
00:08:43.580 The data on crime and police violence are also very simple to parse.
00:08:47.360 As much as I've been pilloried by the left for the positions I took on these topics, I
00:08:52.240 was not worried that I might be wildly wrong.
00:08:55.560 But with COVID, the mainstream position was generally as close to the truth as we could
00:09:00.180 get.
00:09:01.060 I know that claim will be controversial to some of you, and I'll defend it in a few minutes.
00:09:06.000 The important point is that this is what I believed, and this belief explains my behavior.
00:09:11.480 And again, COVID was a moving target.
00:09:13.540 There were many things that more or less everyone got wrong in the beginning, because
00:09:17.740 we didn't know what was going on.
00:09:19.860 Wiping down packages for fear of fomite transmission.
00:09:23.100 You remember that?
00:09:24.080 That was rational, until it wasn't.
00:09:27.000 And I believe I made the switch more or less on time.
00:09:29.700 I can't quite say the same for my wife.
00:09:32.260 But there were many things like that, which were rational at first, and then became irrational
00:09:36.820 once we had more information.
00:09:39.200 So I'm going to take the time in this podcast to explain what I believed at various points during
00:09:43.280 the pandemic, and what I believe now.
00:09:46.180 And I'll explain why I did or didn't say various things about vaccines and lockdowns
00:09:50.440 and other policies.
00:09:51.720 And I'll mention a few things that I think I should have done differently.
00:09:54.620 But first, I want to illustrate how strange the criticism of me has grown.
00:09:59.280 Here's a tweet from Brett Weinstein from last week.
00:10:02.260 This was sent to me by a podcast guest. 0.99
00:10:05.000 Sam Harris is not a moron. 0.88
00:10:07.620 Thank you, Brett. 0.99
00:10:08.220 Which is why his absurd formulations and failure to update is so baffling.
00:10:14.060 Of course he knows better.
00:10:15.660 And yet his positions are fixed.
00:10:17.500 And his half-baked explanations play as if on a loop.
00:10:21.260 I'll get to the substance of that in a minute.
00:10:23.360 But then someone named Jordan Hall responded.
00:10:26.700 Any chance of compromat?
00:10:28.760 For those of you who might not know, compromat is a KGB term for compromising material.
00:10:34.620 They can be used to blackmail or coerce a public figure.
00:10:38.740 The much-discussed pee tape of Trump would have been compromat if it had existed.
00:10:44.180 So Jordan Hall, whoever he is, asked Brett,
00:10:46.780 Any chance of compromat?
00:10:48.680 This is compromat on me, right?
00:10:50.940 That would explain my errant and incorrigible views about COVID.
00:10:55.140 And Brett responds,
00:10:56.860 Of course.
00:10:57.980 Or an even more direct motivation.
00:11:00.640 Of course?
00:11:02.640 What is being imagined here? 0.97
00:11:04.940 That Pfizer or Johns Hopkins has got some pictures of me with prostitutes?
00:11:09.400 Or an even more direct motivation?
00:11:12.620 Does this mean that I make a lot of money doing, on average,
00:11:15.960 less than one podcast a year focused on COVID?
00:11:19.500 What, I'm just working the COVID grift by not talking much about it?
00:11:23.960 Or is it by not offending the powers that be,
00:11:26.340 I didn't get demonetized on YouTube,
00:11:28.740 where I don't actually monetize anything?
00:11:30.740 I honestly cannot understand what Brett might be thinking here.
00:11:35.580 Anyway, back to the original tweet,
00:11:37.500 or whatever one calls them. 0.96
00:11:40.060 Sam Harris is not a moron, 0.99
00:11:41.820 which is why his absurd formulations and failures to update is so baffling. 0.99
00:11:45.800 Of course he knows better,
00:11:48.220 and yet his positions are fixed,
00:11:49.840 and his half-baked explanations play as if on a loop.
00:11:53.520 Well, they play as if on a loop,
00:11:56.220 because people keep making clips to this effect,
00:11:58.820 and all you apparently watch are the clips.
00:12:01.560 And they are absurd and baffling,
00:12:04.200 because I'm not saying what you think I'm saying in those clips.
00:12:06.580 Again, that is the purpose of the clip.
00:12:10.540 But I should say that Brett, more than anyone,
00:12:13.600 has supported and amplified 0.96
00:12:15.380 the most malicious liars and trolls in this space. 0.76
00:12:20.180 And while I'm trying to be charitable here, 0.94
00:12:22.840 it really is a stretch at this point for me to believe
00:12:25.000 that he doesn't know that he's engaged
00:12:26.620 in a thoroughly dishonest smear campaign.
00:12:29.960 This is the man who gave us the extremely wise and useful phrase,
00:12:34.080 bad faith changes everything.
00:12:35.700 Well, it does.
00:12:37.920 It really does.
00:12:40.080 Perhaps I should clear something up here for Brett,
00:12:42.380 in case he listens to this.
00:12:44.160 I believe he was once very offended
00:12:45.600 by my summarizing his views about mRNA vaccines inaccurately.
00:12:50.120 This was unintentional.
00:12:52.160 Wherever I have discussed them,
00:12:54.020 and it's only been in a few places,
00:12:55.940 I've said that Brett has called our vaccine policy
00:12:58.160 the crime of the century,
00:12:59.880 which he did,
00:13:00.980 and he predicted that millions might die as a result of it.
00:13:03.720 But the crime, on his account,
00:13:05.840 has been twofold.
00:13:07.560 It entails our releasing dangerous pseudo-vaccines
00:13:10.500 on an unsuspecting world,
00:13:12.200 and it also entails lying about
00:13:14.100 or otherwise obfuscating the life-saving knowledge
00:13:16.620 of the powers of ivermectin,
00:13:18.460 which, on his account,
00:13:19.500 was almost perfectly effective
00:13:20.800 as a prophylactic against COVID.
00:13:23.260 Whenever I've mentioned Brett's views,
00:13:25.240 I've generally been careful
00:13:26.300 to describe this twofold effect.
00:13:28.300 But there have been one or two times
00:13:30.060 where I've said something more abbreviated,
00:13:31.900 either because I was speaking quickly,
00:13:33.720 or at least what passes for quickly,
00:13:35.340 if you're me,
00:13:36.320 or I was interrupted.
00:13:37.800 So I said something like,
00:13:39.420 Brett thinks our mRNA vaccines
00:13:40.820 are getting people killed
00:13:41.700 and might kill millions.
00:13:43.320 Whereas I should have more accurately said,
00:13:46.000 Brett thinks our vaccine policy
00:13:47.600 is getting people killed
00:13:49.020 and might kill millions. 0.57
00:13:50.980 I've heard through a back channel
00:13:53.340 that Brett was quite outraged
00:13:55.620 that I gave the impression
00:13:56.960 that he believed that the vaccines
00:13:58.920 by themselves might kill millions.
00:14:01.900 And that was a regrettable mistake.
00:14:04.200 Unfortunately, there was no obvious place
00:14:06.360 to correct it on somebody else's podcast.
00:14:09.420 And again, in most contexts,
00:14:10.480 I've been careful to spell out
00:14:11.520 Brett's less-than-defensible medical views
00:14:13.800 in full, as I just did here.
00:14:16.500 At least this is what they were
00:14:17.460 when he embarked on his crusade
00:14:19.000 to convince the world
00:14:19.960 that no one should get mRNA vaccines
00:14:21.640 and they should take ivermectin instead.
00:14:23.740 So perhaps this slight inaccuracy,
00:14:27.320 which does not at all distort
00:14:28.780 his basic message about public health,
00:14:31.200 perhaps this is what Brett thinks justifies,
00:14:33.660 his sharing and dunking on clips of me
00:14:35.660 that he must know
00:14:37.120 were designed to be misleading.
00:14:39.600 But of course, Brett isn't alone.
00:14:42.140 Ben Shapiro, for instance,
00:14:44.140 understands how misleading
00:14:45.140 these clips likely are,
00:14:46.600 but he just couldn't resist
00:14:47.920 amplifying them anyway.
00:14:49.480 So he released a short video titled,
00:14:51.620 Sam Harris just said something weird
00:14:54.120 where he reacts to one of these clips
00:14:56.420 and then sort of criticizes me
00:14:58.920 for something I never actually said
00:15:00.180 while also wondering out loud
00:15:01.820 whether I was making
00:15:02.460 a slightly different point in context.
00:15:04.860 But of course,
00:15:05.580 he can't be bothered
00:15:06.200 to listen to the podcast itself
00:15:07.840 to figure out
00:15:08.580 what I was actually saying.
00:15:10.320 He was just compelled
00:15:11.180 by an unseen force
00:15:12.840 to release something
00:15:14.200 with my name in the title
00:15:15.420 to further solidify
00:15:16.960 my bad reputation
00:15:18.000 for his enormous audience.
00:15:19.200 Incidentally,
00:15:20.500 that unseen force
00:15:21.480 you feel, Ben,
00:15:22.600 compelling you to do this 0.97
00:15:23.960 is a shitty business model. 0.99
00:15:26.320 That's what a shitty business model 0.98
00:15:27.840 feels like. 0.96
00:15:29.640 Anyway,
00:15:30.180 the clip that most people
00:15:30.940 are reacting to
00:15:31.840 of late
00:15:32.560 was from the
00:15:33.560 Impact Theory podcast
00:15:34.840 where I was talking
00:15:36.040 to the host,
00:15:37.000 Tom Bilyeu,
00:15:38.200 a very nice guy
00:15:38.900 whose audience
00:15:39.400 also seems to hate me,
00:15:41.280 who was claiming
00:15:41.740 that where vaccines
00:15:42.500 are concerned,
00:15:43.660 bodily autonomy
00:15:44.420 supersedes everything.
00:15:46.200 On his account,
00:15:46.780 you can never ethically
00:15:47.920 force someone
00:15:48.640 to get vaccinated.
00:15:50.140 Therefore,
00:15:50.500 vaccine mandates
00:15:51.180 are always wrong.
00:15:53.120 Now,
00:15:53.300 I understand the intuition,
00:15:55.040 but I simply pointed out
00:15:56.360 that it was very likely
00:15:57.220 unstable.
00:15:58.580 The moment you dial up
00:15:59.540 the dangerousness
00:16:00.320 of the pathogen
00:16:01.060 and the safety
00:16:02.040 of the vaccine,
00:16:03.540 whatever your concerns
00:16:04.500 about bodily autonomy,
00:16:06.160 at a certain point,
00:16:07.800 the ethics flip,
00:16:09.820 which is to say
00:16:10.360 that it is quite easy
00:16:11.340 to imagine a pathogen
00:16:12.540 so dangerous,
00:16:13.960 especially one
00:16:14.560 that preferentially 0.99
00:16:15.160 kills kids,
00:16:16.000 and a vaccine
00:16:17.300 so safe and effective,
00:16:19.200 and if you're worried
00:16:19.720 about needles,
00:16:20.440 just imagine it comes
00:16:21.300 in a pill or a spray.
00:16:23.300 And the moment
00:16:23.880 you imagine this,
00:16:25.180 a virus that will kill
00:16:26.420 tens of millions of kids,
00:16:28.580 and we have a way
00:16:29.300 to prevent this catastrophe
00:16:30.440 that is truly benign,
00:16:32.500 I think any sane person
00:16:33.940 would want the government
00:16:35.120 to force people
00:16:35.900 to be vaccinated
00:16:36.620 and to get their kids 0.93
00:16:38.000 vaccinated.
00:16:39.060 I was arguing
00:16:39.980 on that podcast
00:16:40.620 that if you don't believe
00:16:41.860 that's true,
00:16:42.980 if your gut tells you
00:16:44.180 that it just can't be true,
00:16:45.460 you are not thinking
00:16:46.860 clearly enough
00:16:47.580 about what the world
00:16:48.320 would look like
00:16:48.980 in the presence
00:16:49.840 of a pandemic,
00:16:50.780 orders of magnitude
00:16:51.800 more dangerous than COVID,
00:16:53.600 and in the presence
00:16:54.200 of vaccines,
00:16:55.240 again,
00:16:55.760 safe vaccines,
00:16:57.260 that could truly
00:16:58.080 stop the disease.
00:16:59.820 I mean,
00:17:00.040 think of smallpox,
00:17:01.300 which killed
00:17:01.780 500 million people
00:17:03.060 in the 20th century.
00:17:04.880 500 million people.
00:17:07.200 We got rid of smallpox
00:17:08.840 with the smallpox vaccine.
00:17:11.480 Well,
00:17:12.000 it appears that millions
00:17:12.840 of people have watched
00:17:13.880 that clip,
00:17:14.920 and they now imagine
00:17:15.640 that I was defending
00:17:16.340 a paranoid response
00:17:17.740 to COVID across the board.
00:17:19.520 They think I'm claiming
00:17:20.240 that if the pandemic
00:17:21.560 had been much worse,
00:17:23.140 the most extreme things
00:17:24.440 we did would have made sense.
00:17:26.900 So,
00:17:27.820 and I'm not quite sure
00:17:28.440 how they think
00:17:28.860 I'm trying to sneak
00:17:29.560 the rabbit into the hat
00:17:30.680 in this way,
00:17:31.300 but here goes.
00:17:33.280 Therefore,
00:17:34.360 everything did make sense.
00:17:36.480 So Anthony Fauci
00:17:37.360 was right about everything,
00:17:38.280 and the crazy people
00:17:39.240 wearing masks
00:17:39.960 while driving alone
00:17:40.820 in their cars were right,
00:17:42.360 and it was right
00:17:42.900 to close the beaches,
00:17:44.120 and everyone who got
00:17:45.040 demonetized on YouTube
00:17:46.160 should have been demonetized.
00:17:48.020 No mistakes were made.
00:17:50.200 It's quite crazy
00:17:51.020 that people think
00:17:51.640 I was saying this,
00:17:52.820 but it seems
00:17:53.440 that's what they think
00:17:54.160 I was saying.
00:17:55.380 And it's not just
00:17:55.960 randos on Twitter.
00:17:58.120 Joe Rogan,
00:17:59.260 again,
00:17:59.620 a friend,
00:18:00.600 who I just don't happen
00:18:01.220 to talk to very much,
00:18:02.960 he appears to think
00:18:04.100 that this is what I believe.
00:18:05.700 At least that's what
00:18:06.280 I gleaned from comments
00:18:07.240 he recently made
00:18:07.840 on his own podcast.
00:18:09.260 Of course,
00:18:09.600 at first I only saw
00:18:10.400 a clip from that podcast,
00:18:12.260 but then I went
00:18:13.000 and listened to it
00:18:13.600 in context
00:18:14.240 to make sure he was saying
00:18:15.600 what he seemed to be saying.
00:18:17.200 And it really does appear
00:18:18.520 that Joe thinks
00:18:20.220 that I have rationalized
00:18:21.780 my crazy
00:18:22.420 and now debunked
00:18:23.260 positions on COVID,
00:18:24.660 though it's not clear
00:18:25.180 what he thinks those are,
00:18:26.600 by saying that
00:18:27.320 if COVID had been worse,
00:18:29.320 I would have been right.
00:18:31.020 He thinks these are
00:18:31.640 the kinds of contortions
00:18:32.740 I'm making
00:18:33.200 in a desperate
00:18:34.320 and ecocentric effort
00:18:35.780 to save face,
00:18:36.720 where on his account
00:18:37.880 what I should do
00:18:38.700 is just swallow my pride
00:18:40.480 and apologize.
00:18:42.740 Well, I'll get back to that.
00:18:44.880 There's another clip
00:18:45.900 circulating
00:18:46.640 where I seem to be
00:18:47.480 enthusiastically defending
00:18:48.660 the pharmaceutical industry
00:18:49.800 and even its greediest
00:18:51.160 excesses.
00:18:52.660 Again,
00:18:53.400 that's not what I was doing.
00:18:54.840 As I've said many times
00:18:55.860 on this podcast,
00:18:57.000 I am quite worried
00:18:57.960 about the perverse incentives
00:18:59.200 and profit motives
00:19:00.580 of drug companies.
00:19:02.100 In fact,
00:19:02.480 I even said this
00:19:03.140 at considerable length
00:19:04.120 on the very podcast
00:19:05.520 from which this clip
00:19:06.860 was taken.
00:19:08.380 There really are
00:19:09.400 some perverse incentives
00:19:10.660 in the drug business.
00:19:12.240 Forget about the release
00:19:13.200 of poorly tested
00:19:14.240 and dangerous drugs,
00:19:16.000 which of course
00:19:16.560 is worth worrying about.
00:19:18.060 The opposite
00:19:18.720 sometimes happens.
00:19:20.280 There are cases
00:19:20.760 where a company
00:19:21.460 holds back a drug
00:19:22.860 they know to be
00:19:24.020 better and safer
00:19:24.740 than the one
00:19:25.260 that's already on the market
00:19:26.220 because they're still
00:19:27.300 making so much money
00:19:28.400 on its more dangerous cousin,
00:19:30.220 which may have years
00:19:31.060 left to run
00:19:31.740 on its patent.
00:19:33.420 They could be
00:19:34.060 saving people's lives
00:19:35.080 and reducing suffering now,
00:19:36.920 but they're worried
00:19:37.580 about the better drug
00:19:38.500 cannibalizing the profits
00:19:39.720 of the drug
00:19:40.260 that's already on the market.
00:19:42.240 This is just a nightmare.
00:19:44.660 The problem,
00:19:45.880 however,
00:19:46.680 and this is the point
00:19:47.260 I was making
00:19:47.680 on that podcast,
00:19:49.160 there are no obvious
00:19:50.240 alternatives to capitalism
00:19:51.720 when it comes to
00:19:52.660 encouraging and rewarding
00:19:53.900 human ingenuity.
00:19:55.500 If you're going to say
00:19:56.240 that people can't get
00:19:57.100 filthy rich
00:19:57.840 creating new medicines,
00:19:59.420 many of the smartest people
00:20:00.640 will do something else.
00:20:02.300 There's also a weird
00:20:03.460 double standard here
00:20:04.580 that we should reflect on.
00:20:06.500 We appear to be content
00:20:07.600 for movie stars
00:20:08.780 and professional athletes
00:20:10.020 to get rich,
00:20:11.000 but we view it
00:20:11.880 as somehow corrupt
00:20:12.900 for the person
00:20:13.920 who cures cancer
00:20:14.920 to make a fortune.
00:20:16.460 This is weird.
00:20:18.180 Shouldn't we want
00:20:18.740 the person
00:20:19.280 who actually cures cancer
00:20:21.860 to get rich?
00:20:23.820 If anyone should make
00:20:25.220 a billion dollars,
00:20:26.580 shouldn't it be
00:20:27.180 that person?
00:20:28.580 Do we really want
00:20:29.560 someone graduating
00:20:30.300 from Princeton
00:20:31.000 with a degree
00:20:32.020 in biochemistry
00:20:32.900 saying,
00:20:34.760 well, I'd really like
00:20:35.380 to cure cancer,
00:20:36.480 but I also want
00:20:37.280 a beach house,
00:20:38.360 so I'm just going to work
00:20:39.040 for Goldman Sachs
00:20:40.060 for the next decade?
00:20:42.440 I don't think so.
00:20:44.400 But there's no question
00:20:45.460 that the profit motive
00:20:46.420 in medicine
00:20:46.940 can produce some
00:20:48.180 very ugly conflicts
00:20:49.160 of interest,
00:20:49.860 and we need to figure out
00:20:51.040 what to do about this.
00:20:52.440 Strangely,
00:20:52.820 the people who think
00:20:53.340 it's just obvious
00:20:54.020 that the government
00:20:54.540 should control
00:20:55.100 the drug market
00:20:55.760 are the very people
00:20:57.140 who, five minutes later,
00:20:58.860 will tell you
00:20:59.400 that the government
00:20:59.960 is the most corrupt 0.99
00:21:00.880 and incompetent 1.00
00:21:02.080 institution of all. 0.51
00:21:04.000 In any case,
00:21:04.700 I think there is a role
00:21:05.380 for government here,
00:21:06.680 but I think it's probably
00:21:07.300 more a matter
00:21:07.840 of funding research
00:21:09.260 and also creating
00:21:10.380 a guaranteed market
00:21:11.440 for rarely used medicines,
00:21:13.500 like new antibiotics
00:21:14.660 that most of us
00:21:15.300 will take for 10 days
00:21:16.520 once in our lives.
00:21:18.760 Anyway,
00:21:19.300 I want to say a few things
00:21:20.100 about what I believe
00:21:20.740 about COVID
00:21:21.320 and the mRNA vaccines,
00:21:23.540 as well as our collective
00:21:24.380 response to the pandemic,
00:21:25.600 and about what I did
00:21:27.360 or didn't say
00:21:28.020 in recent years
00:21:28.720 and why I did
00:21:29.320 or didn't say it,
00:21:30.580 so as to clear up
00:21:31.420 some of this misunderstanding.
00:21:33.640 First,
00:21:34.120 on this sunk cost point,
00:21:36.160 the notion that I'm
00:21:36.860 so dug in
00:21:37.680 and my ego is so invested
00:21:39.340 in having staked out
00:21:40.300 certain positions on COVID
00:21:41.380 that I just can't admit
00:21:42.640 how wrong I was.
00:21:44.740 This is a total hallucination.
00:21:47.300 I have not talked
00:21:48.240 about COVID
00:21:48.860 or vaccines
00:21:49.800 or specific policies
00:21:51.400 much at all.
00:21:53.280 And this criticism
00:21:53.900 is coming
00:21:54.460 in the cases
00:21:55.280 of Brett and Joe
00:21:56.240 from people
00:21:57.060 who have literally
00:21:57.700 done hundreds
00:21:58.780 of podcasts
00:21:59.640 on these topics.
00:22:01.460 I mean,
00:22:01.640 to my eye,
00:22:02.540 they're the ones
00:22:03.260 invested in a narrative
00:22:04.380 around COVID.
00:22:06.360 The few times
00:22:07.280 I've spoken
00:22:07.780 on these topics,
00:22:09.220 I have clearly stated
00:22:10.820 that,
00:22:12.240 one,
00:22:12.960 I'm not an expert
00:22:14.160 in any of the relevant fields,
00:22:16.480 neither are Joe
00:22:17.000 and Brett,
00:22:17.540 by the way.
00:22:18.400 I'm not an epidemiologist
00:22:19.960 or an immunologist
00:22:21.140 or a virologist
00:22:22.500 or a biostatistician,
00:22:24.380 so I have never
00:22:25.300 pretended to be
00:22:26.600 an authority
00:22:27.120 on COVID
00:22:27.900 or vaccines
00:22:29.120 or public health policy.
00:22:31.420 So my ego
00:22:32.360 really is not bound up
00:22:34.260 in my being
00:22:35.200 a credible voice
00:22:36.160 on these topics
00:22:37.160 because I'm not one.
00:22:39.280 And I have always
00:22:40.300 simply recommended
00:22:41.160 that people follow
00:22:42.040 whatever the most
00:22:42.780 mainstream consensus
00:22:43.860 among experts
00:22:44.680 appears to be
00:22:45.580 at any given moment,
00:22:47.100 all the while
00:22:47.700 bemoaning the fact
00:22:48.620 that there are
00:22:48.940 some very ominous signs
00:22:50.460 that our institutions
00:22:51.660 had become so politicized
00:22:53.280 that we couldn't
00:22:54.200 trust them as much
00:22:54.920 as we should have
00:22:55.420 been able to.
00:22:56.700 That doesn't mean
00:22:57.280 that everything they said
00:22:58.380 was a lie.
00:22:59.820 But it was a bad situation,
00:23:01.640 which I have talked about
00:23:02.700 a lot on this podcast.
00:23:04.960 And second,
00:23:06.000 I've always said
00:23:06.780 that COVID
00:23:07.200 has been a moving target.
00:23:08.900 Our understanding
00:23:09.620 of it has changed
00:23:10.700 over weeks
00:23:11.620 and months
00:23:12.300 and now years.
00:23:14.060 And therefore,
00:23:14.600 what was rational
00:23:15.300 and ethical to do
00:23:16.340 at one point
00:23:17.060 seemed less than rational
00:23:18.800 and ethical
00:23:19.420 later on.
00:23:20.460 And there were
00:23:20.900 definitely instances
00:23:21.820 where the public policy
00:23:23.420 seemed to be out of step
00:23:24.440 with the science.
00:23:25.660 I have never denied this.
00:23:27.800 So, for instance,
00:23:28.520 rather than just
00:23:29.060 uniformly urge everyone
00:23:30.500 to not merely
00:23:31.200 get vaccinated
00:23:31.960 but to be repeatedly
00:23:33.240 boosted,
00:23:34.220 at a certain point
00:23:35.520 it made sense
00:23:36.420 to talk about
00:23:36.960 the stratification
00:23:37.640 of risk and reward
00:23:39.100 as we've come
00:23:39.920 to understand them,
00:23:41.220 making it very clear
00:23:41.920 that the people
00:23:42.380 who would really be helped
00:23:43.420 by being boosted
00:23:44.440 were 65 and older,
00:23:46.480 or people with comorbidities
00:23:47.860 like obesity and diabetes
00:23:49.680 and kidney problems.
00:23:51.700 Did we make mistakes
00:23:53.080 in our response
00:23:53.960 to COVID?
00:23:55.460 Absolutely.
00:23:56.660 But it's important
00:23:57.420 to recognize
00:23:58.000 that some of those mistakes
00:23:59.480 were only mistakes
00:24:00.960 in hindsight.
00:24:02.200 They weren't mistakes
00:24:03.280 at the time.
00:24:04.860 I mean,
00:24:05.060 consider school closures.
00:24:06.980 School closures
00:24:07.840 made total sense
00:24:09.060 until they didn't.
00:24:10.480 I was absolutely
00:24:12.040 in favor of closing
00:24:13.080 the schools
00:24:13.500 in March of 2020,
00:24:14.800 and I was against
00:24:16.100 keeping them closed
00:24:17.100 at some later date.
00:24:19.100 I would have to do
00:24:19.700 some research
00:24:20.220 to figure out
00:24:20.720 when that was.
00:24:22.080 But it was not
00:24:22.880 a mistake
00:24:23.420 to close the schools,
00:24:25.500 given all that we
00:24:26.200 didn't know at the time.
00:24:27.480 It was a mistake
00:24:28.320 to keep them closed
00:24:29.480 once we knew
00:24:30.440 how benign
00:24:31.120 the virus was for kids
00:24:32.460 and how deleterious
00:24:33.840 the effects were
00:24:34.520 of keeping them
00:24:34.980 out of school.
00:24:36.020 The people who were
00:24:37.080 against school closures
00:24:38.260 in March of 2020,
00:24:39.360 given what was
00:24:40.520 happening in Italy
00:24:41.340 and what we didn't
00:24:42.360 know about the virus,
00:24:43.640 were wrong.
00:24:44.940 Those people
00:24:45.340 were against everything.
00:24:47.040 It doesn't matter
00:24:47.840 that they were
00:24:48.300 eventually proven right
00:24:49.620 about school closures.
00:24:51.340 They weren't reasoning
00:24:52.100 on the basis
00:24:52.660 of real health information.
00:24:54.540 They were just
00:24:55.000 recoiling from any
00:24:56.060 intrusion of the government
00:24:57.200 into their lives.
00:24:58.960 And as far as I can tell,
00:25:00.680 there's no clear
00:25:01.460 lesson to draw
00:25:02.360 from our experience
00:25:03.340 with school closures
00:25:04.240 at this point,
00:25:05.580 because it turns out
00:25:06.300 that the SARS-CoV-2
00:25:07.440 virus is unusual.
00:25:09.360 Most flus
00:25:10.320 and other infectious
00:25:11.080 illnesses are worse
00:25:12.580 for kids.
00:25:13.940 So what should we do
00:25:14.480 at the start
00:25:14.920 of the next pandemic,
00:25:16.260 when the epidemiology
00:25:17.280 of the virus
00:25:17.820 is poorly understood?
00:25:19.180 It seems almost certain
00:25:20.600 that we should close
00:25:21.720 the schools again.
00:25:23.500 Of course,
00:25:23.860 there were other things
00:25:24.340 that we did
00:25:24.700 that were quite crazy,
00:25:26.240 and I perceived them
00:25:27.080 to be crazy at the time.
00:25:28.820 Closing the beaches
00:25:29.600 never made sense.
00:25:31.800 Stigmatizing the lab leak
00:25:32.940 hypothesis as racist
00:25:34.280 was obviously insane.
00:25:36.440 Masking very young children 0.71
00:25:37.700 always struck me
00:25:38.460 as totally farcical
00:25:39.800 and just depressing.
00:25:41.520 Not counting natural immunity
00:25:43.240 as immunity
00:25:43.960 during the vaccine
00:25:44.980 passport controversy. 1.00
00:25:46.560 That always seems stupid 0.99
00:25:47.860 to me. 0.99
00:25:48.980 So what would I change
00:25:49.840 about my response
00:25:50.920 to COVID
00:25:51.460 related to these examples?
00:25:54.020 Not much.
00:25:55.740 One thing that comes to mind,
00:25:57.460 and I said this
00:25:58.160 when I did a podcast
00:25:58.840 on the lab leak,
00:26:00.160 is that in the beginning,
00:26:01.620 I said that the origins
00:26:02.600 of the pandemic
00:26:03.300 really didn't matter,
00:26:04.420 because we had
00:26:05.720 the genome sequenced,
00:26:06.920 and we were designing
00:26:07.620 vaccines against that.
00:26:09.480 So in my view,
00:26:10.360 the difference between
00:26:11.120 a lab leak
00:26:11.820 and a wet market origin
00:26:12.920 was sort of academic,
00:26:15.280 and I believe I said
00:26:15.980 as much on this podcast.
00:26:17.780 And I never understood
00:26:18.820 why one story
00:26:19.700 was judged to be
00:26:20.460 politically radioactive
00:26:21.480 and the other not.
00:26:23.340 And the truth is,
00:26:23.980 I still don't.
00:26:25.360 In fact,
00:26:25.780 the wet market story
00:26:26.880 has always seemed
00:26:28.400 worse to me.
00:26:29.840 A lab leak
00:26:30.340 could happen to anyone,
00:26:31.740 and has happened
00:26:32.520 in multiple countries
00:26:33.540 in some of the best labs.
00:26:35.180 But only total barbarians 0.99
00:26:36.840 are eating bats
00:26:37.840 and pangolins
00:26:38.720 and raccoon dogs,
00:26:40.320 and putting the lives
00:26:41.140 of all humanity
00:26:41.940 at risk because
00:26:42.580 they can't figure out
00:26:43.260 how to eat those
00:26:43.780 nasty things safely.
00:26:45.560 The wet markets
00:26:46.220 are just vile.
00:26:47.820 So the preferred origin story
00:26:49.380 has always seemed
00:26:50.520 more politically invidious,
00:26:52.260 not to say racist,
00:26:53.640 than a lab leak.
00:26:55.020 But at the time,
00:26:55.800 I thought we could
00:26:56.360 wait indefinitely
00:26:57.340 to figure out
00:26:58.380 the origin of COVID,
00:26:59.640 because nothing much
00:27:00.340 churned on it.
00:27:01.600 However,
00:27:01.940 one of my guests
00:27:02.620 on the podcast
00:27:03.420 Alina Chan
00:27:04.620 pointed out
00:27:05.700 that evidence
00:27:06.240 tends to vanish.
00:27:07.720 If you don't test
00:27:08.520 everything in the wet market
00:27:09.580 or the lab immediately,
00:27:11.040 there's not necessarily
00:27:11.780 an opportunity
00:27:12.340 to do that
00:27:13.220 six months later.
00:27:14.820 And that's obviously
00:27:15.720 true.
00:27:16.880 It just never occurred
00:27:17.660 to me at the time.
00:27:19.060 And I think our practices
00:27:19.980 around studying
00:27:20.800 dangerous pathogens
00:27:21.900 require some
00:27:23.160 serious rethinking.
00:27:24.960 I've released
00:27:25.340 several long episodes
00:27:26.280 on this podcast
00:27:27.120 about the dangers here
00:27:28.560 in collaboration
00:27:29.900 with my friend
00:27:30.560 Rob Reed,
00:27:31.080 and I'm happy
00:27:32.100 to say that
00:27:32.500 the podcast
00:27:33.040 we did
00:27:33.600 appear to have
00:27:34.440 helped change
00:27:34.940 the U.S.
00:27:35.380 government's
00:27:35.800 thinking on this front.
00:27:37.380 After one of those
00:27:38.020 episodes,
00:27:38.940 Rob was invited
00:27:39.540 to do a presentation
00:27:40.280 at the White House,
00:27:41.280 and then several
00:27:42.420 dominoes fell
00:27:43.480 after that.
00:27:44.840 And USAID
00:27:45.640 has now suspended
00:27:46.760 the Deep Vision
00:27:48.180 program,
00:27:49.380 which was this
00:27:49.900 fairly terrifying
00:27:50.820 and I think
00:27:51.460 quite obviously
00:27:52.380 misguided project
00:27:53.480 of going out
00:27:54.660 into nature
00:27:55.200 to find thousands
00:27:56.320 of undiscovered
00:27:57.340 mammalian viruses,
00:27:58.280 many of them
00:27:59.480 quite remote
00:28:00.100 and unlikely
00:28:00.580 to ever infect
00:28:01.300 a human being,
00:28:02.540 and to bring
00:28:03.060 them into our
00:28:03.620 cities,
00:28:04.400 into labs
00:28:04.960 with imperfect
00:28:05.520 safety protocols,
00:28:06.720 to characterize
00:28:07.720 them for pandemic
00:28:08.720 potential,
00:28:09.780 and then to publish
00:28:10.680 the genomes
00:28:11.540 of the most
00:28:12.460 dangerous of
00:28:13.140 these pathogens
00:28:13.720 for all the world
00:28:14.800 to see,
00:28:15.920 literally making
00:28:16.820 the recipes
00:28:17.440 for genocide
00:28:18.340 available for
00:28:19.840 all time
00:28:20.600 to any crackpot
00:28:22.040 who might want
00:28:22.760 to weaponize
00:28:23.260 one of them.
00:28:24.320 What could go wrong?
00:28:25.140 I'm happy to say
00:28:27.320 that the US version
00:28:28.220 of that program
00:28:29.020 appears to now
00:28:30.240 be stopped.
00:28:32.120 Anyway,
00:28:32.660 I think it's
00:28:33.020 very important
00:28:33.860 to understand
00:28:34.560 what, if anything,
00:28:35.660 happened at the
00:28:36.220 Wuhan Institute
00:28:36.940 of Virology
00:28:37.660 and how Western
00:28:38.600 governments might
00:28:39.260 have collaborated
00:28:39.840 in it,
00:28:40.880 and whether,
00:28:41.660 to what degree,
00:28:42.220 there's been a
00:28:42.640 cover-up.
00:28:43.540 So if I would
00:28:44.240 change anything
00:28:44.880 about what I said
00:28:45.540 publicly at that
00:28:46.560 point,
00:28:47.180 I would have said
00:28:48.100 that we should
00:28:48.480 have focused on
00:28:49.100 the origins of
00:28:49.700 the virus earlier,
00:28:50.960 because I do think
00:28:52.080 it's ultimately
00:28:52.500 important to understand
00:28:53.360 how this happened.
00:28:54.060 would I have done
00:28:55.660 50 podcasts
00:28:56.720 on the topic?
00:28:58.100 No,
00:28:59.020 but I should have
00:28:59.800 done one.
00:29:00.900 But I was never
00:29:01.620 someone who doubted
00:29:02.720 the plausibility
00:29:03.560 of a lab leak,
00:29:04.800 and I did say
00:29:06.000 as much at the time.
00:29:08.340 I also think
00:29:09.160 I should have done
00:29:09.580 a podcast acknowledging
00:29:10.660 just how different
00:29:11.540 people's experiences
00:29:12.640 were during the
00:29:13.700 pandemic,
00:29:14.780 both in the US
00:29:15.500 and abroad.
00:29:16.920 I touched on this
00:29:17.940 a little,
00:29:18.760 but it really
00:29:19.320 merited a longer
00:29:20.540 conversation,
00:29:21.660 probably several
00:29:22.540 conversations.
00:29:24.060 There were people
00:29:24.600 who lost their
00:29:25.220 businesses through
00:29:26.220 no fault of their
00:29:27.140 own, right?
00:29:27.980 They just happened
00:29:28.500 to be in the wrong
00:29:29.120 spot when lightning
00:29:30.340 struck.
00:29:31.640 If you owned a
00:29:32.320 restaurant or a
00:29:33.420 movie theater,
00:29:34.440 if you made your
00:29:34.880 living doing live
00:29:35.700 events, 0.99
00:29:36.600 you were screwed 0.95
00:29:37.380 in a way that 0.98
00:29:38.340 people who could
00:29:38.860 work from home
00:29:39.780 simply weren't.
00:29:41.600 And this disparity
00:29:42.460 existed at every
00:29:43.460 level of the wealth
00:29:44.240 hierarchy.
00:29:45.580 For instance,
00:29:45.980 I think this
00:29:46.320 probably explains the
00:29:47.500 crazy things that
00:29:48.340 Elon Musk was saying
00:29:49.420 and doing at the
00:29:50.340 time.
00:29:50.580 I think Elon
00:29:51.940 looked deep into
00:29:52.940 the abyss and
00:29:54.220 understood that
00:29:54.860 electric cars and
00:29:55.880 rockets are among
00:29:56.940 the things one is
00:29:57.740 least able to
00:29:58.500 build from home.
00:29:59.880 And so he realized
00:30:00.620 that taking COVID
00:30:01.620 seriously posed an
00:30:03.300 existential threat to
00:30:04.460 both of his core
00:30:05.340 businesses.
00:30:06.120 So he just wasn't
00:30:07.020 going to do that.
00:30:08.820 Okay, I get it.
00:30:10.680 But that doesn't
00:30:11.400 change the fact that
00:30:12.120 what he was saying
00:30:12.860 both in public and
00:30:13.900 in private about
00:30:14.940 COVID was delusional.
00:30:17.180 There are also
00:30:17.780 people who ran afoul of
00:30:19.020 the public health
00:30:19.680 orthodoxy and got
00:30:21.100 censored or
00:30:21.980 demonetized on
00:30:23.140 various platforms.
00:30:24.460 In certain cases,
00:30:25.140 this might have been
00:30:25.760 warranted.
00:30:26.880 Alex Jones is the
00:30:28.120 perfect example of
00:30:29.560 why platforms should
00:30:30.860 retain the right to 1.00
00:30:31.780 demonetize or kick
00:30:32.820 people off.
00:30:33.800 Though in his case,
00:30:34.400 it was for lies he
00:30:35.200 spread on topics
00:30:36.020 other than COVID.
00:30:37.320 I'm thinking, of
00:30:37.880 course, about the
00:30:38.400 absolutely ghoulish
00:30:39.700 campaign he waged to
00:30:41.420 bring further misery to
00:30:42.540 the Sandy Hook
00:30:43.100 parents.
00:30:44.020 For that, I think he
00:30:44.800 should have been
00:30:45.200 kicked off every
00:30:45.980 platform under the
00:30:47.020 sun.
00:30:47.680 And the truth is, I
00:30:48.380 think he probably
00:30:49.020 belongs in prison for
00:30:50.660 the harm he caused.
00:30:51.920 But many other far
00:30:53.080 more normal and
00:30:53.980 well-intentioned people
00:30:54.980 saw their livelihoods
00:30:56.460 attacked, and this
00:30:57.920 radicalized them.
00:30:59.500 I think Brett Weinstein
00:31:00.440 probably falls into
00:31:01.380 this camp.
00:31:02.400 I don't recall the
00:31:03.020 details, but I'm
00:31:04.000 reasonably sure he got
00:31:05.020 demonetized on YouTube
00:31:06.280 at some point.
00:31:07.960 There's no question
00:31:09.040 that many of the
00:31:10.180 efforts to silence
00:31:11.140 debate on YouTube
00:31:12.600 and other platforms
00:31:13.620 went way too far.
00:31:15.820 All of this preceded
00:31:16.780 the pandemic, by the
00:31:17.920 way.
00:31:18.720 I remember hearing
00:31:19.340 that episodes of
00:31:20.080 podcasts I was on
00:31:21.180 got demonetized for
00:31:22.660 my criticism of
00:31:23.460 Islam.
00:31:24.320 This is one reason
00:31:25.020 why I built my
00:31:25.660 business the way I
00:31:26.400 have.
00:31:27.360 In addition to my
00:31:28.020 believing that the
00:31:28.660 advertising model is
00:31:29.840 at the bottom of
00:31:30.540 almost everything
00:31:31.100 that's wrong with
00:31:32.000 the internet, and
00:31:32.920 therefore much that's
00:31:33.540 wrong with society.
00:31:35.320 As some of you might
00:31:36.160 recall, I originally
00:31:37.420 launched my podcast
00:31:38.280 on Patreon, but I
00:31:40.440 left when I saw that
00:31:41.240 they were demonetizing
00:31:42.100 people for expressing
00:31:43.100 political opinions that
00:31:44.160 they considered beyond
00:31:44.960 the pale.
00:31:45.380 I think it was
00:31:46.380 around the end of
00:31:47.100 2018 that I decided
00:31:49.160 to consolidate
00:31:49.800 everything on my
00:31:50.440 own platform so
00:31:51.640 that I could be as
00:31:52.100 free from outside
00:31:53.020 influence as
00:31:53.780 possible.
00:31:54.720 But I would be the
00:31:55.640 first to admit that
00:31:56.680 most people are not
00:31:57.560 in a position to do
00:31:58.340 this.
00:31:59.060 Even most podcasters
00:32:00.180 would struggle to
00:32:01.160 make my business
00:32:01.760 model work.
00:32:03.400 So the differential
00:32:04.780 exposure to economic
00:32:06.100 pressure during the
00:32:07.260 pandemic was a big
00:32:08.860 deal.
00:32:09.780 And while I
00:32:10.220 mentioned it, I
00:32:11.160 think I should have
00:32:11.660 spoken more about
00:32:12.560 it.
00:32:13.300 I talk about wealth
00:32:14.180 inequality and
00:32:14.940 economic insecurity
00:32:15.940 a fair amount.
00:32:17.320 Not enough, I'm
00:32:18.220 sure.
00:32:18.920 But I don't think I
00:32:20.040 talked much about
00:32:20.840 them through the
00:32:21.340 lens of the
00:32:21.840 pandemic.
00:32:22.880 That was surely a
00:32:23.640 missed opportunity.
00:32:25.400 Many people who were
00:32:26.220 really struggling were
00:32:27.720 directly targeted by
00:32:28.940 various bureaucracies and
00:32:30.680 made to feel like
00:32:31.360 second-class citizens.
00:32:32.940 There was also a
00:32:33.800 difference between
00:32:34.300 countries.
00:32:35.180 Despite widespread
00:32:35.860 concerns about
00:32:36.680 censorship in the
00:32:37.500 U.S., we have much
00:32:38.860 stronger protections of
00:32:40.260 free speech than
00:32:41.280 exist almost anywhere
00:32:42.100 else.
00:32:42.460 In the U.S.,
00:32:44.040 lockdowns lasted for
00:32:45.220 five to seven weeks
00:32:46.420 on average, depending
00:32:48.000 on the state.
00:32:49.240 Other countries like
00:32:49.960 New Zealand and
00:32:50.720 Australia and Canada
00:32:51.880 locked down much
00:32:53.100 harder than we did.
00:32:54.960 At most stages along
00:32:56.240 the way, I believe I
00:32:57.500 was appropriately
00:32:58.120 worried about COVID,
00:32:59.880 given what we knew
00:33:00.480 at the time.
00:33:01.760 Remember, everyone
00:33:02.700 was in a unique
00:33:03.600 situation.
00:33:05.160 Fairly early on, I
00:33:06.200 knew that I wasn't at
00:33:07.220 high risk of death
00:33:08.300 from COVID, but I
00:33:09.580 have people close to
00:33:10.400 me who were.
00:33:10.980 It was rational for
00:33:12.360 me to worry about
00:33:12.980 them.
00:33:14.040 But once we had
00:33:14.840 vaccines, things
00:33:16.400 really did change.
00:33:18.120 Whatever their
00:33:18.620 flaws, the vaccines
00:33:20.060 really did mitigate
00:33:21.060 risk of hospitalization
00:33:22.380 and death for 0.62
00:33:23.340 vulnerable people.
00:33:24.620 And if you don't
00:33:25.600 believe that, if you
00:33:27.060 think I need to
00:33:27.640 publicly apologize for
00:33:29.720 thinking that the
00:33:30.280 vaccines saved lives,
00:33:32.900 well, then we're
00:33:33.340 dealing with a very
00:33:34.140 different set of
00:33:35.000 facts.
00:33:35.800 I'll get into the
00:33:36.680 facts as I think we
00:33:37.440 know them in a minute.
00:33:38.820 But if you think that
00:33:39.780 the vaccines just
00:33:41.280 harmed people on
00:33:42.740 balance, and that
00:33:43.860 ivermectin is an
00:33:44.700 effective prophylactic
00:33:45.700 against COVID, and
00:33:47.300 that the
00:33:47.500 establishment's
00:33:48.380 response to COVID
00:33:49.420 was mostly just a
00:33:50.660 pretext for
00:33:51.360 governments to
00:33:52.060 arbitrarily turn the
00:33:53.280 ratchet of state
00:33:54.120 power toward
00:33:54.940 tyranny, we are
00:33:56.520 living on very
00:33:57.180 different parts of
00:33:58.080 the information
00:33:58.640 landscape.
00:33:59.720 And you're in the
00:34:00.560 shady part, or
00:34:01.700 you're in the
00:34:02.100 climate change as a
00:34:03.260 hoax part.
00:34:04.560 I'm not saying we
00:34:05.440 know everything.
00:34:06.560 I'm not saying the
00:34:07.240 data are perfect.
00:34:08.040 I'm not saying
00:34:09.280 certain official
00:34:10.000 communications weren't
00:34:11.220 untrue or unwise, but
00:34:13.820 billions of people have
00:34:15.540 now been vaccinated, and
00:34:17.160 billions of people have
00:34:18.160 gotten COVID, with and
00:34:19.640 without vaccines, and we
00:34:21.400 have a reasonably good
00:34:22.420 sense of what happened.
00:34:25.280 And consider this fact.
00:34:26.680 Before vaccines, Democrats
00:34:28.780 and Republicans in the
00:34:29.860 United States died more or
00:34:31.640 less at the same rate.
00:34:32.900 But after vaccines,
00:34:34.820 Republicans were 43% more 0.90
00:34:36.800 likely to die than
00:34:38.060 Democrats.
00:34:39.200 That's almost all one
00:34:40.260 needs to know about the
00:34:41.220 consequences of
00:34:41.940 politicizing public
00:34:43.080 health information.
00:34:44.860 Vaccine misinformation
00:34:45.980 and vaccine hesitancy
00:34:48.040 got people killed.
00:34:50.200 But that doesn't mean
00:34:51.360 that I supported
00:34:52.160 vaccine mandates.
00:34:53.760 I never supported them,
00:34:55.240 in fact, except for
00:34:56.440 medical workers.
00:34:57.540 It just seemed obscene to
00:34:58.760 me that a person could go
00:35:00.020 into their doctor's office
00:35:01.080 or a hospital and catch
00:35:03.240 COVID from a medical
00:35:04.240 worker who had declined
00:35:05.600 to get vaccinated, not
00:35:06.940 because they're among the
00:35:07.660 tiny minority people who
00:35:08.720 can't actually tolerate
00:35:09.820 vaccines, but because
00:35:11.240 they'd spent too much
00:35:11.920 time on Facebook or
00:35:13.100 YouTube learning from
00:35:14.840 RFK Jr. or Naomi Wolf or
00:35:17.140 some other confabulator
00:35:18.340 that vaccines are
00:35:19.900 dangerous.
00:35:21.160 Of course, this was on the
00:35:22.060 assumption that the
00:35:22.660 COVID vaccines would
00:35:23.720 reduce transmission, and
00:35:25.420 that assumption eroded with
00:35:26.640 the emergence of Omicron in
00:35:28.140 the fall of 2021 and the
00:35:29.580 winter of 2022.
00:35:31.160 But it was still a valid
00:35:32.600 assumption to a
00:35:33.760 considerable degree when
00:35:35.340 the more dangerous delta
00:35:36.380 strain was ascendant.
00:35:38.120 And I'll return to that
00:35:38.960 point.
00:35:39.900 My understanding at the
00:35:40.900 time, and it's my
00:35:42.080 understanding of that
00:35:42.940 period still, was that
00:35:44.660 while the vaccines weren't
00:35:45.720 working as well as we'd
00:35:46.640 hoped, they still reduced
00:35:48.500 transmission.
00:35:49.800 And while natural
00:35:50.720 immunity did too,
00:35:52.520 natural immunity plus
00:35:53.800 being vaccinated was
00:35:55.100 better still.
00:35:56.400 There's this notion that
00:35:57.480 has spread and become
00:35:58.340 indelible right of
00:35:59.560 center.
00:36:00.560 They promised us one
00:36:01.580 thing with the vaccines,
00:36:02.880 no transmission, but
00:36:04.820 that was a lie.
00:36:06.580 But that's just not
00:36:08.100 true.
00:36:09.520 Yes, some politicians
00:36:10.900 and public health
00:36:11.640 officials spoke too
00:36:13.760 categorically and
00:36:14.920 sloppily, saying that
00:36:16.380 if you get vaccinated,
00:36:17.300 you won't get COVID.
00:36:18.220 Full stop.
00:36:19.480 But it was always a
00:36:20.620 story of increased and
00:36:21.720 decreased probabilities.
00:36:24.000 And until Omicron, it
00:36:25.620 was totally valid to
00:36:27.020 claim that the vaccines
00:36:28.160 reduced transmission.
00:36:30.200 And because of our
00:36:31.100 politics, the United
00:36:32.700 States did worse than
00:36:33.880 its peers once vaccines
00:36:35.620 became available.
00:36:36.840 We got them first, and
00:36:38.340 then many millions of
00:36:39.240 Americans decided not to
00:36:40.380 take them, or decided to
00:36:41.880 stop after only one dose.
00:36:44.140 While I didn't support
00:36:45.160 mandates generally, one
00:36:46.800 thing that confused
00:36:47.420 people, I think, was that
00:36:48.360 I did support the freedom
00:36:49.560 of private businesses to
00:36:51.380 require their employees to
00:36:52.640 be vaccinated.
00:36:53.600 But that was not really a
00:36:54.720 position I was taking on
00:36:55.660 vaccines.
00:36:56.760 It's totally of a piece
00:36:57.680 with my free market views
00:36:59.120 about what private
00:36:59.900 businesses should be able
00:37:00.840 to do.
00:37:01.900 In my view, if you open a
00:37:03.340 restaurant or any other
00:37:04.260 business, no one has the
00:37:05.920 right to work there.
00:37:08.220 I think you should be able
00:37:09.140 to open a restaurant where
00:37:10.960 all your employees must be 0.93
00:37:12.840 amputees.
00:37:14.180 So if someone who is not an 0.95
00:37:15.400 amputee applies for the job,
00:37:17.260 you should be able to say,
00:37:18.680 well, you seem great, but
00:37:19.900 there's no job for you here 0.99
00:37:20.840 unless you cut your arm off. 0.89
00:37:23.040 So yes, I think businesses
00:37:24.220 should have been free to
00:37:25.060 require that their employees
00:37:26.140 be vaccinated, especially if
00:37:28.040 they wanted to be able to
00:37:28.720 advertise that all their
00:37:29.780 employees were vaccinated
00:37:30.840 when that would have
00:37:31.620 mattered.
00:37:32.640 Of course, it no longer
00:37:33.700 does.
00:37:35.000 This free market view also
00:37:36.340 confuses people on the topic
00:37:37.400 of free speech and
00:37:38.400 censorship.
00:37:39.560 Here I tend to take the
00:37:40.400 side of the entrepreneur
00:37:41.200 who might be starting a
00:37:42.220 social media platform.
00:37:44.080 Should someone starting a 0.60
00:37:44.960 new social media platform
00:37:46.040 be forced by the
00:37:47.800 government to publish the
00:37:49.320 conspiratorial ravings of
00:37:50.720 someone like Alex Jones?
00:37:52.520 No.
00:37:53.660 You should be able to start
00:37:54.520 any social media platform
00:37:55.720 you want.
00:37:56.840 Not letting Alex Jones on
00:37:58.140 your platform, as not even
00:37:59.960 Elon does, is not a
00:38:02.160 violation of his First
00:38:03.280 Amendment rights.
00:38:04.800 The First Amendment limits
00:38:06.160 what the government gets to
00:38:07.880 do.
00:38:08.720 I think the terms of service
00:38:09.980 of private platforms should
00:38:11.880 be whatever their owners and
00:38:13.120 employees want them to be,
00:38:14.800 which means I think Alex Jones
00:38:16.120 should be able to start his
00:38:16.980 own social network where he
00:38:18.380 can talk to as many crazy 0.95
00:38:19.380 people as he wants. 0.94
00:38:21.120 Someone recently sent me
00:38:21.940 another podcast clip on the
00:38:23.200 issue of censorship.
00:38:24.000 It was from Brett Weinstein
00:38:25.680 again, talking to a
00:38:27.840 previous podcast guest of
00:38:29.060 mine, Michael Schellenberger,
00:38:30.820 another person who appears
00:38:32.220 to have lost the plot, or
00:38:34.380 rather now sees plots
00:38:35.480 everywhere.
00:38:36.980 I wind up listening to about
00:38:38.260 30 minutes of this podcast,
00:38:40.400 so I'm reasonably sure I
00:38:41.580 understand what Brett and
00:38:42.460 Michael were saying in
00:38:43.220 context.
00:38:44.620 Brett thought it highly
00:38:45.840 suspicious that Schellenberger
00:38:47.760 had found himself on a
00:38:48.860 podcast with me and Rene
00:38:50.820 DiResta, because they both
00:38:52.640 think Rene is a CIA mole of
00:38:54.460 some kind, and the linchpin of
00:38:56.200 what they call the censorship
00:38:57.380 industrial complex.
00:38:59.340 Brett also found it highly
00:39:00.280 suspicious that Rene got onto
00:39:01.620 Joe Rogan's podcast.
00:39:03.160 He seemed to be suggesting
00:39:04.020 that she's the tip of the
00:39:05.400 spear of some sinister
00:39:06.620 influence campaign.
00:39:08.760 Well, Brett, I can clear up
00:39:09.680 part of this mystery for you.
00:39:12.280 Schellenberger found himself
00:39:13.340 on a podcast with Rene
00:39:14.540 DiResta and me because I
00:39:16.580 invited both of them to appear
00:39:18.240 on that podcast, my podcast,
00:39:20.820 along with Barry Weiss,
00:39:22.720 because I thought the four of
00:39:23.600 us could have a good
00:39:24.220 conversation about the so-called
00:39:25.660 Twitter files.
00:39:27.260 And Rene got on Joe Rogan's
00:39:28.480 podcast because I recommended
00:39:30.420 that he have her on.
00:39:31.980 So, the really vexing question
00:39:33.860 is how did Rene first get to
00:39:36.160 me?
00:39:37.460 Well, I hope you're sitting
00:39:38.940 down, Brett, because I met
00:39:40.920 Rene through your brother,
00:39:42.460 Eric.
00:39:43.520 He first introduced me to
00:39:44.840 Tristan Harris, who introduced
00:39:46.300 me to Rene, but Eric also
00:39:47.980 connected me again with Rene
00:39:49.140 directly through a small
00:39:50.680 conference he organized,
00:39:52.260 which I believe you also
00:39:53.160 attended, though I could be
00:39:54.440 wrong about that.
00:39:56.040 So, Brett, on this particular
00:39:57.800 conspiracy, the call is coming
00:40:00.200 from inside the house.
00:40:02.920 Now, do I think censorship and
00:40:04.440 the stifling of legitimate
00:40:05.460 debate are issues worth
00:40:06.880 worrying about?
00:40:07.880 Of course.
00:40:09.520 So, I understand why so many
00:40:10.500 people were hopeful when Elon
00:40:11.640 bought Twitter and vowed to
00:40:13.380 create something like political
00:40:14.440 balance on the platform.
00:40:15.920 However, we need to support
00:40:18.060 free expression and debate
00:40:20.100 while also addressing the very
00:40:22.020 real crisis of misinformation
00:40:23.480 and disinformation that is
00:40:25.700 undermining public trust and
00:40:27.280 political cooperation across the
00:40:28.760 globe.
00:40:29.800 There are tensions and trade-offs
00:40:31.560 for smart, well-intentioned
00:40:33.480 people to discuss.
00:40:35.540 Buying Twitter, firing 80% of the
00:40:38.400 staff, baselessly accusing your
00:40:40.580 former head of trust and safety of
00:40:42.280 being a pedophile, deleting the 0.94
00:40:44.280 accounts of real journalists, and 0.90
00:40:46.180 raising the profiles of
00:40:47.380 conspiracists and white
00:40:48.580 supremacists, and then
00:40:50.040 threatening to sue the
00:40:50.900 Anti-Defamation League when it
00:40:52.500 complains about the most
00:40:53.340 nauseating eruption of
00:40:54.640 anti-Semitism to be seen in a
00:40:56.140 generation.
00:40:57.100 This is not how a serious person
00:40:59.140 would address these issues.
00:41:01.620 Okay, back to COVID.
00:41:03.660 As I was saying, after the
00:41:04.560 vaccines arrived, I became much
00:41:06.880 less worried about COVID, as
00:41:08.480 seemed rational.
00:41:09.920 In particular, I was much less
00:41:11.280 worried that I or my kids would
00:41:13.120 kill my mother with it, and I 0.98
00:41:14.920 became much more worried about 0.98
00:41:16.100 the social pathologies I was
00:41:17.920 witnessing in reaction to the
00:41:19.500 pandemic, and to the vaccines, and
00:41:21.900 the attendant shattering of our
00:41:23.240 politics.
00:41:24.480 What worried me was that we were
00:41:26.400 utterly failing to come together as
00:41:28.380 a society in the face of what was a
00:41:30.460 fairly modest challenge, all things
00:41:33.080 considered.
00:41:34.300 It could have been so much worse.
00:41:37.000 It will, one day, be so much worse.
00:41:39.920 My concern about pandemics, whether
00:41:42.900 natural or engineered, long
00:41:45.300 precedes COVID, and this problem is
00:41:47.900 not going away, and worrying about it
00:41:50.580 is, unfortunately, all too rational.
00:41:54.580 Responding to an emerging pandemic is
00:41:57.180 something that we simply must get
00:41:58.960 better at.
00:42:00.200 Honestly, it's in my top two concerns
00:42:02.300 at this point, dealing with nuclear
00:42:04.480 risk and future pandemics.
00:42:06.780 At a global scale, those are priorities
00:42:08.760 one and two.
00:42:10.340 Of course, I say this as a non-expert
00:42:12.040 in either domain, but I've been
00:42:14.520 paying attention to what the experts
00:42:16.500 have said on these topics for at
00:42:18.960 least 30 years.
00:42:20.740 Anyway, once we got vaccines, the
00:42:23.260 loss of trust in our institutions,
00:42:25.520 again, much of it warranted, is what
00:42:28.020 worried me, and that is what I've
00:42:30.140 spent a lot of time talking about on
00:42:31.500 this podcast.
00:42:32.420 I have not spent the last few years
00:42:34.560 worrying about COVID.
00:42:36.280 I've spent them worrying about the
00:42:37.740 fragmentation of our society, and the
00:42:40.600 main concern about what I did or
00:42:42.340 didn't say during the height of the
00:42:43.640 pandemic appears to be this.
00:42:46.160 Once the vaccine story changed, I
00:42:48.980 never acknowledged it.
00:42:50.280 The original claim was that the
00:42:51.840 vaccine would prevent transmission,
00:42:53.900 and therefore everyone had a civic
00:42:55.500 responsibility to take it to help us
00:42:57.760 achieve herd immunity and protect
00:42:59.740 vulnerable people who can't take
00:43:01.160 vaccines.
00:43:02.080 And then when it became obvious that
00:43:03.620 the vaccines were not preventing
00:43:05.080 infection and transmission, the
00:43:07.220 ethical basis for this argument
00:43:08.580 evaporated.
00:43:09.780 It was no longer rational or ethical
00:43:11.400 to pressure people to get
00:43:12.420 vaccinated, much less force them to,
00:43:14.880 because they should have been free
00:43:15.760 to make a medical choice that only
00:43:17.120 affected themselves.
00:43:18.860 There was also the additional fact
00:43:20.060 that many millions of people were
00:43:21.100 catching and recovering from COVID
00:43:22.620 all the while, and therefore
00:43:24.060 acquiring natural immunity.
00:43:25.960 And perversely, natural immunity
00:43:27.720 wasn't acknowledged.
00:43:29.300 So we had the spectacle of 19-year-old
00:43:31.100 college students who had just
00:43:32.840 recovered from COVID, unable to
00:43:34.800 return to campus until they had
00:43:36.140 been vaccinated.
00:43:37.380 And there were many other
00:43:38.120 permutations of that sort of
00:43:39.360 thing.
00:43:40.580 Well, on the natural immunity
00:43:42.200 piece, right, I've already said
00:43:43.940 that it never made sense to me
00:43:45.040 to ignore it.
00:43:46.440 I think natural immunity should
00:43:47.620 have always counted, though given
00:43:49.480 the cultural resistance to the
00:43:50.860 vaccine, it probably would have
00:43:52.600 been a bureaucratic nightmare to
00:43:54.180 try to count it.
00:43:55.760 Millions of people would have
00:43:56.940 probably lied about having just
00:43:58.600 recovered from COVID.
00:44:00.060 But leaving that aside, it always
00:44:01.940 struck me as dishonest and
00:44:03.280 offensive to disregard
00:44:04.760 natural immunity.
00:44:06.640 However, and this is a much
00:44:07.840 more important point, all of
00:44:09.960 this only became a big deal
00:44:11.700 and contributed to a politically
00:44:13.500 toxic situation because of the
00:44:16.400 background concern on the part
00:44:18.400 of millions and millions of
00:44:19.580 people that there was something
00:44:21.060 especially scary about the mRNA
00:44:23.040 vaccines.
00:44:24.360 And strangely, the people who felt
00:44:25.540 that didn't resort to the other
00:44:27.180 vaccines, like the Johnson &
00:44:28.840 Johnson and AstraZeneca, which
00:44:31.040 ironically appear to have had
00:44:32.020 more complications than the mRNA
00:44:33.280 vaccines, or the Chinese or
00:44:35.300 Russian vaccines that were based
00:44:37.280 on genuinely old technology.
00:44:39.520 People were worried about COVID
00:44:41.180 vaccines in a way that they
00:44:43.000 weren't worried about other
00:44:44.140 vaccines.
00:44:45.020 And in many cases, they were
00:44:46.480 worried about COVID vaccines in a
00:44:48.540 way that they weren't worried
00:44:49.520 about COVID itself.
00:44:52.040 Millions of people were willing to
00:44:53.980 make huge social and even
00:44:55.560 material sacrifices to not get a
00:44:58.460 COVID vaccine.
00:45:00.060 Again, even the non-mRNA variants.
00:45:03.760 Why was that?
00:45:05.620 It's pretty strange.
00:45:07.960 For instance, I've had several
00:45:09.020 friends who've recently gone on
00:45:10.960 trips to East Africa to go on
00:45:13.260 safari.
00:45:14.180 To make a trip like that, you
00:45:15.480 routinely have to get a bunch of
00:45:16.900 vaccines for diseases that you
00:45:18.500 might never even have heard of,
00:45:20.380 like yellow fever.
00:45:21.820 People do this without even
00:45:23.760 thinking about it, just because
00:45:25.500 they feel like going on a
00:45:26.580 safari.
00:45:27.840 When Joe Rogan caught COVID
00:45:29.260 early on, not having been
00:45:30.960 vaccinated, someone recommended
00:45:32.680 that he get monoclonal antibodies
00:45:34.120 immediately.
00:45:35.300 Many people did that.
00:45:37.000 Why were they unwilling to get
00:45:38.440 the vaccine, but more than happy
00:45:40.180 to let someone stick a needle in
00:45:41.400 their arm to give them
00:45:42.180 monoclonal antibodies, which is a
00:45:44.180 medicine that was far less
00:45:45.540 widely tested than the vaccines?
00:45:48.540 I can understand why someone who
00:45:50.760 caught COVID and then recovered
00:45:52.540 didn't want to be pointlessly
00:45:54.800 pressured into getting
00:45:55.720 vaccinated, but I do not
00:45:57.780 understand why someone who
00:45:59.640 hadn't yet had COVID, while we
00:46:01.780 were losing 15 to 25,000 people
00:46:04.300 a week to it, why that person
00:46:06.580 didn't want to get vaccinated.
00:46:09.020 That person, of which there were
00:46:11.120 millions, I believe was being
00:46:13.300 spooked by a very noisy public
00:46:15.200 conversation, born of a breakdown
00:46:17.220 of trust in our institutions, the
00:46:19.360 outrage machine of social media,
00:46:21.700 where lots of scared people were
00:46:23.440 doing their own research, and an
00:46:25.540 anti-vax cult was seizing the
00:46:27.420 moment to spread misinformation, and
00:46:29.620 they were also being spooked by
00:46:30.900 several of my fellow podcasters, who
00:46:33.140 thought it was their responsibility
00:46:34.300 to platform any dissenting voice that
00:46:36.460 seemed remotely credible, at least on
00:46:38.540 paper.
00:46:39.600 I simply did not want to contribute to
00:46:42.340 that noise.
00:46:43.480 It felt irresponsible, because my view of
00:46:46.360 the research, again, as a non-expert,
00:46:49.080 suggested that it was dangerous.
00:46:50.340 So I did just a few podcasts on
00:46:53.380 COVID, and that's where I left it.
00:46:55.960 And then I wasn't really paying
00:46:56.980 attention the way everyone who was
00:46:58.680 worried about the vaccines was
00:47:00.320 paying attention, month after month
00:47:02.660 after month.
00:47:03.680 I certainly didn't listen to the
00:47:05.080 hundred or more podcasts that
00:47:06.400 Brett Weinstein did on the topic.
00:47:08.320 I might do a proper post-mortem on
00:47:10.180 the pandemic at some point, and if I
00:47:12.000 do that, I'll bring on a contrarian
00:47:13.540 medical voice.
00:47:14.620 But despite how many errors we made,
00:47:17.180 I trust the mainstream consensus on
00:47:19.580 most questions about COVID and
00:47:21.300 vaccines, at least to a first
00:47:23.280 approximation, which is how I
00:47:25.360 approach another very polarizing
00:47:26.640 topic, climate change.
00:47:28.540 There are a few caveats here, but I
00:47:31.040 believe that the mainstream picture
00:47:32.820 of COVID is far more likely to be
00:47:35.300 correct than the fringe picture
00:47:37.280 pushed ad nauseum by many people in
00:47:39.600 alternative media.
00:47:41.280 And I'll give you an analogy, which
00:47:42.840 I've deployed in various ways many
00:47:44.320 times before.
00:47:46.160 Consider what it's like to fly on an
00:47:47.720 airplane.
00:47:48.040 I mean, the reason why being on an
00:47:50.200 airplane is often such a good
00:47:52.060 analogy is that almost everyone has
00:47:54.000 done this.
00:47:55.140 And as much as we do it and seek to
00:47:57.400 normalize it, it never ceases to be an
00:47:59.920 extreme situation.
00:48:01.780 There's an extraordinary degree of
00:48:03.120 trust and cooperation required to make
00:48:05.640 flying on a commercial airliner a
00:48:07.700 normal experience.
00:48:09.260 You're putting your very life and
00:48:11.420 perhaps the lives of your children
00:48:12.920 into the hands of two pilots you have
00:48:15.420 never met, the pilots themselves are
00:48:17.940 entirely dependent upon the
00:48:19.240 competence of the mechanics who
00:48:20.620 service the plane, and on the
00:48:22.580 moment-to-moment attention of air
00:48:23.960 traffic controllers, half of whom are
00:48:26.140 probably checking Instagram on their
00:48:27.740 phones.
00:48:28.980 For flying on an airplane to be
00:48:30.840 remotely okay, you have to assume
00:48:33.320 quite a lot about the world, and about
00:48:35.320 the competence of other people, and
00:48:37.140 about the incentives that govern their
00:48:38.840 behavior, and about the redundancy of
00:48:41.100 systems put in place to ensure that
00:48:42.660 everything goes according to plan.
00:48:44.720 If you look too closely at this
00:48:47.020 situation, you can begin to think, 0.99
00:48:49.260 what the fuck am I doing? 0.99
00:48:51.160 This is crazy. 1.00
00:48:52.720 I'm going to get into this tube filled
00:48:54.940 with explosive liquids and gases, and
00:48:57.540 obediently sit side by side with
00:48:59.440 hundreds of other people, and let some
00:49:01.600 frat boys and sorority girls who were
00:49:04.300 probably out partying last night take me
00:49:06.180 up to 35,000 feet, and keep me there for
00:49:08.800 hours, over ground or water where there
00:49:11.160 may be no safe place to land for
00:49:12.780 thousands of miles, and if the poorly
00:49:15.060 paid union workers maintaining this
00:49:16.960 plane didn't do their job, something
00:49:18.820 might break loose, and we could all find
00:49:20.880 ourselves suddenly hurtling toward the
00:49:22.580 earth, and we're running this risk
00:49:24.780 alongside thousands of other planes
00:49:26.600 flown by other all-too-human pilots,
00:49:29.840 risking the lives of thousands upon
00:49:31.660 thousands of other helpless people, and 0.99
00:49:33.720 no one has a fucking parachute? 1.00
00:49:35.480 This is bonkers. 1.00
00:49:37.860 And of course, occasionally, our worst
00:49:39.580 fears are realized.
00:49:41.680 It doesn't happen often, but when it
00:49:43.440 does, millions of people notice.
00:49:46.560 Occasionally, planes crash, due to
00:49:48.800 mechanical failures, or pilot error, or
00:49:51.800 extreme weather, or bird strikes, or
00:49:55.200 bombs placed by terrorists, or even
00:49:57.900 suicidal hijackers or pilots themselves
00:50:00.480 who have deliberately crashed their
00:50:02.200 planes and murdered everyone on board.
00:50:04.520 As scary as this is, these things almost
00:50:07.760 never happen, because most people are not
00:50:10.280 eager to die, and we have systems in
00:50:12.800 place to make flying very safe.
00:50:15.200 Is it as safe as it could possibly be?
00:50:17.780 Absolutely not.
00:50:19.580 A plane ticket could cost one million
00:50:21.660 dollars, and for that price, I am sure an
00:50:25.080 airline could provide even more safety.
00:50:27.620 But given economic reality, and our
00:50:30.580 general need, or even just desire, to
00:50:32.980 travel to places we can't easily reach
00:50:35.120 by walking or driving, we have a system
00:50:38.440 that most people judge to be good
00:50:40.920 enough.
00:50:42.380 Now, good enough just means that most of
00:50:45.640 us are willing to fly.
00:50:47.620 Most of us can get on a plane without
00:50:49.600 worrying that we might die in a ball of
00:50:51.760 fire at any moment.
00:50:53.560 It does not mean that if you do some
00:50:55.620 digging, you won't find evidence of 1.00
00:50:57.840 human stupidity and greed creating risk 1.00
00:51:00.480 that shouldn't exist and can seem worth 1.00
00:51:03.740 worrying about. It does not mean that
00:51:06.760 things couldn't be better. It does not
00:51:08.760 mean things shouldn't be better. It does
00:51:11.000 not mean that the Boeing 737 MAX fiasco
00:51:13.740 wasn't a real fiasco. It does not mean
00:51:16.960 that the person who is blogging at this
00:51:18.560 moment about the unacceptable rate of
00:51:20.120 near misses at our most crowded
00:51:21.640 airports is wrong. And occasionally you
00:51:25.220 do hear about something that really
00:51:26.660 should freak you out. I remember years
00:51:29.460 ago, probably 20 years ago, there was a
00:51:32.500 report I think on 60 Minutes about there
00:51:35.140 being a thriving black market in
00:51:37.520 counterfeit airplane parts. And people
00:51:39.920 were making cheap and defective parts
00:51:42.220 for airplane engines. And these were
00:51:44.940 finding their way into commercial
00:51:46.400 airliners. This made me want to kill 0.99
00:51:48.540 somebody. How on earth could that be 1.00
00:51:51.080 happening? It's totally intolerable. But
00:51:54.640 what was I going to do about it? Was I
00:51:56.840 going to devote my life to solving this
00:51:58.440 problem? No. And I was going to continue
00:52:01.380 to fly because there was no real
00:52:03.580 alternative. And in fact, I just checked
00:52:06.640 and this is still a problem. Right? As
00:52:10.180 recently as fucking yesterday, United 0.99
00:52:14.440 Airlines reported finding bogus parts in 0.98
00:52:17.080 some of its engines. I absolutely see how
00:52:20.840 someone could obsess on this and decide
00:52:23.260 that flying just isn't worth the risk. But
00:52:26.260 the truth is, flying has been remarkably
00:52:29.180 safe for as long as I've been alive. And
00:52:32.620 though it is amazing to see that this
00:52:33.800 problem still exists, the truth is, is
00:52:36.220 that I more or less trust that people
00:52:38.480 much closer to this problem than I am will
00:52:41.600 eventually do something about it. The
00:52:43.780 pilots who themselves don't want to die
00:52:46.060 will do something about it. The
00:52:48.060 regulators who also have to fly will do
00:52:50.860 something about it. The airline
00:52:52.800 executives who don't want to be dragged
00:52:54.720 before Congress and told that they have
00:52:56.340 blood on their hands will do something 0.54
00:52:58.360 about it. Generally speaking, we can
00:53:01.260 rely on most people most of the time to 1.00
00:53:04.260 not be homicidal or suicidal assholes. And 0.99
00:53:08.240 the point is, we must rely on that in order
00:53:11.600 to live anything like normal lives. We
00:53:14.740 have to trust people. And even more, we
00:53:17.080 have to trust institutions and the systems
00:53:19.540 we have built to run them. Don't get me
00:53:21.900 wrong. I'm all for improving our systems
00:53:24.400 and institutions. I want whistleblowers
00:53:27.160 at Boeing or Airbus to tell us what's
00:53:29.520 wrong over there. I just don't want them
00:53:31.980 doing it from seat 15A when we're at
00:53:34.640 30,000 feet. This is the crucial
00:53:37.380 difference. Are we on the plane or are we
00:53:40.260 in the airport lounge? This is the point
00:53:43.120 of the analogy. In my view, the pandemic
00:53:45.400 was very much like all of us getting on an
00:53:47.380 airplane together. And it was not an
00:53:49.380 uncomplicated flight. It was one of those
00:53:51.560 flights where you're delayed for bad
00:53:53.000 weather, right? And you wind up sitting on
00:53:54.840 the tarmac for hours. And some people on
00:53:57.280 the plane want to get off because they're
00:53:58.800 now scared. So the plane taxis back to the
00:54:01.920 gate, losing its place in line and delaying
00:54:04.280 the flight further for everyone. And now
00:54:06.440 you have a choice about whether or not to
00:54:07.940 get off, right? By analogy, this might be
00:54:10.040 the question of whether you want to get
00:54:11.080 the vaccine or not. There is some
00:54:13.540 uncertainty. In fact, while you were
00:54:15.320 sitting on the tarmac, you watched a
00:54:16.820 YouTube video of Brett Weinstein, who told
00:54:19.160 you, not inaccurately, that most plane
00:54:21.800 crashes happen because of bad weather. And
00:54:24.620 no one can tell you that this
00:54:26.040 thunderstorm, the one that's delaying this
00:54:28.200 particular flight, won't add some risk.
00:54:31.520 What should you do? After all, this is a
00:54:33.780 forced choice. You need to get home to
00:54:35.580 your family. You could decide to drive
00:54:38.160 home, but the drive is 2,000 miles. And
00:54:41.740 the guy next to you who has a degree in
00:54:43.140 statistics from an Ivy League university
00:54:44.860 assures you that driving that distance
00:54:47.020 is guaranteed to be more dangerous than
00:54:49.240 flying in almost any weather. But wait a
00:54:52.000 minute. Joe Rogan has just released a
00:54:54.660 podcast where he's talking to an
00:54:56.540 engineer with an impressive head of
00:54:58.600 gray hair. And this guy claims to have
00:55:00.780 invented the engine used on the very
00:55:02.960 model of airplane you're now flying on.
00:55:05.140 And what's more, he was denied an
00:55:06.480 engineering award that really should have
00:55:08.600 been his. But now he's saying that the
00:55:10.480 entire concept of the engine was
00:55:13.120 flawed. And it was never supposed to be
00:55:15.040 put into production in the first place.
00:55:16.680 It was just a concept engine. And it
00:55:19.240 doesn't matter how many times these
00:55:20.360 planes have flown in the last year. They
00:55:22.040 should all be grounded. There's been a
00:55:23.860 conspiracy between all the airlines not
00:55:26.140 to admit this because they'd lose
00:55:27.820 billions of dollars. Are you fucking 1.00
00:55:29.960 kidding me? I think you get where I'm 0.99
00:55:32.800 going. Is the analogy perfect? Probably
00:55:36.260 not. But my point is, there are
00:55:38.900 situations in which there is no
00:55:40.580 substitute for trust in institutions
00:55:43.100 and procedures and aligned
00:55:45.820 incentives. If I'm sitting on the
00:55:48.180 tarmac, wondering if it's too
00:55:49.940 dangerous to take off in this
00:55:51.460 particular rainstorm, I need to trust
00:55:54.220 that the pilots are wondering the same
00:55:56.380 thing and relying on good radar
00:55:58.560 information and other tools. Tools which
00:56:01.140 are getting better every year, not
00:56:03.080 worse. The moment that trust breaks
00:56:06.160 down, the moment I'm asked to consider
00:56:08.540 whether the pilot might be suicidal, the
00:56:11.180 moment Jordan Peterson tells me that
00:56:12.920 this particular airline has stopped
00:56:14.880 x-raying the luggage of Muslims, even 1.00
00:56:16.980 if they come straight out of an al-Qaeda
00:56:18.380 training camp, because it's now
00:56:19.940 considered a microaggression and
00:56:21.580 everyone on the airline has gone woke,
00:56:23.840 normal life becomes impossible. And
00:56:28.360 throughout the pandemic, my goal was to
00:56:30.300 help make normal life possible again, and
00:56:34.360 to not add to the cacophony of voices that
00:56:37.140 we're making that harder rather than
00:56:39.060 easier. Yes, there are situations where
00:56:42.360 sunlight is the best disinfectant, and
00:56:45.000 we should talk about absolutely
00:56:46.280 everything for as long as it takes. And
00:56:48.960 there are situations where we all just
00:56:51.280 have to cooperate, guided by the best
00:56:53.800 information available. So no, once we've
00:56:57.140 taxied onto the runway, and the engines
00:56:59.440 have begun to roar, no, I don't think
00:57:01.740 that is the moment to bring RFK Jr. over
00:57:04.040 the PA system to just ask questions. When
00:57:08.400 we're already at 30,000 feet, and there
00:57:10.720 really is no alternative but to land the
00:57:13.000 plane safely, I don't want the guy beside
00:57:15.360 me to start taking a poll of the
00:57:16.960 passengers to see whether we still trust
00:57:19.260 the pilots. Being on an airplane is not a
00:57:22.820 normal situation, and neither was the
00:57:25.300 pandemic. And the truth is, I mostly dealt
00:57:28.000 with this by concentrating on other things.
00:57:30.300 Again, I only did a few podcasts, spaced out
00:57:33.020 by many months, generally recommending that
00:57:35.560 people get vaccinated, whereas I did many
00:57:37.800 podcasts worrying about the fragmentation
00:57:39.880 of society. And if you are still critical of
00:57:42.920 my views about COVID, and you think the
00:57:44.940 vaccines were a bad idea, take a moment to 0.85
00:57:47.680 answer the following questions, because we
00:57:49.480 probably have very different beliefs in
00:57:51.000 our heads. How many people have died from
00:57:53.920 COVID in the United States? Do you know what
00:57:56.720 the official total is? I'll tell you in a
00:57:59.040 moment, but what number do you have in mind? Do
00:58:02.100 you know the official number, but just think
00:58:03.580 it's wildly exaggerated, because we didn't
00:58:05.620 distinguish dying from COVID and dying with
00:58:08.080 COVID? Do you think it was exaggerated by
00:58:10.380 20%, 50%, 90%? Do you not even have a number in
00:58:16.640 mind? Do you just think we have no idea what
00:58:19.480 happened? Until proven otherwise, I think the
00:58:24.180 official number is probably approximately
00:58:27.300 correct. What is that number? The CDC currently
00:58:31.660 puts the total U.S. deaths at a little over
00:58:34.440 1.1 million. Do I have to apologize to anyone for
00:58:40.000 thinking that that number is approximately
00:58:42.140 correct? What do I mean by approximate? Well, would I
00:58:45.500 be astounded if it was off by 25%? No. Would I be
00:58:50.420 astounded if it was off by an order of magnitude?
00:58:52.820 Yes, I would. If only 100,000 people died from
00:58:57.700 COVID in the U.S., the world is not the way I think
00:59:01.320 it is. Incidentally, at least two of the guests I
00:59:04.780 had on this podcast in the first month of the
00:59:07.000 pandemic estimated that we would have something
00:59:09.280 like a million deaths in the U.S. before the dust
00:59:12.300 settled. This was at a time when Elon Musk was
00:59:15.500 telling people that COVID would quickly become a cold
00:59:17.560 and that basically no one would die from it. So
00:59:20.560 perhaps it's Elon who should apologize for
00:59:23.220 misleading people about COVID. In any case, until
00:59:26.360 proven otherwise, I accept the CDC data and believe
00:59:29.940 that we had something like 1 million deaths from
00:59:33.040 COVID in the U.S. Next question. How many of those
00:59:37.800 deaths were of people under age 65? Many people
00:59:41.300 imagine that more or less everyone who died was 80
00:59:43.780 years old. Take a moment to come up with a number.
00:59:47.640 Let's stipulate for the sake of argument that a
00:59:50.120 million people died in the U.S. How many do you
00:59:53.100 think were under age 65? I reached out to an expert
00:59:57.480 at Johns Hopkins for a sanity check on these numbers.
01:00:00.840 I won't name him because I didn't ask him if I could
01:00:03.000 publish his responses, but I asked him the very
01:00:05.300 questions I'm asking you now. The current answer
01:00:08.760 seems to be that around 25% were under 65, so
01:00:13.460 something like a quarter of a million people. The
01:00:16.200 vast majority of these would have been over 50. There
01:00:18.880 were some thousands of younger people who did die
01:00:21.100 from COVID, but the majority of those under 65 would
01:00:24.960 have been 50 or above. So my age, Elon's age, Joe
01:00:29.520 Rogan's age, Brett Weinstein's age. Not that old, really.
01:00:34.380 You would think that losing a quarter of a million people
01:00:36.640 in this cohort would be a pretty big deal. Oh, but of
01:00:40.600 course, many of them were fat or had other comorbidities.
01:00:44.740 Everyone in the anti-vax and vaccine-hesitant world seems to
01:00:49.360 emphasize this point, as though it were somehow morally or
01:00:52.140 politically irrelevant. You realize that about half of
01:00:55.240 American society is obese, and a person can't suddenly lose 70
01:00:59.700 pounds at the first sign of a pandemic. I don't actually know
01:01:02.600 what percentage of those in my cohort who died were overweight or
01:01:06.060 had other comorbidities. But you can be sure that some fit and
01:01:09.700 healthy people died too. And I find this fixation on health and
01:01:14.040 fitness in opposition to vaccines to be pretty silly. There's
01:01:18.780 something cultic about it. It reminds me of the cult that has
01:01:22.440 grown up around guns. Don't get me wrong, I like health and
01:01:26.040 fitness, and I even own guns. But an obsession with these things,
01:01:30.740 the cult of self-sufficiency that surrounds them, the notion that
01:01:34.460 each individual can fully protect himself against harm and
01:01:38.460 be absolved of having any stake in the health of society at
01:01:41.240 large. The sense that we don't need functioning institutions and
01:01:45.220 widespread social trust and a government that actually works and
01:01:49.340 a citizenry that isn't totally atomized. The idea that we can
01:01:52.620 all just go it alone with our ice baths and our vitamins and our
01:01:56.380 zone 2 cardio. This is a delusion. And there are viruses that
01:02:01.020 don't even slightly care about how much time you spend in the gym.
01:02:04.460 Or whether you eat only organic food. The 1918 flu killed somewhere
01:02:09.040 between 50 and 100 million people. Mostly young and healthy people
01:02:13.160 between the ages of 20 and 40. As far as I know, the reasons why it
01:02:16.920 preferentially killed the young are not completely understood.
01:02:20.140 It could have been the case that a so-called healthy immune system
01:02:22.640 was actually worse because it set a person up for a severe inflammatory
01:02:26.560 response known as a cytokine storm. Perhaps there are other reasons,
01:02:30.560 right? But this is just to say that staying fit and eating only grass-fed
01:02:36.180 beef isn't a strategy for dealing with pandemics in general. And all of the
01:02:42.440 anti-vax bullshit that has been spun up around this variable could well get a 1.00
01:02:46.720 lot of people killed next time. We need a government and institutions that 0.99
01:02:51.900 work. We need to be able to trust public health
01:02:54.860 messaging in an emergency. We need an information ecosystem that doesn't
01:02:59.240 amplify baseless conspiracies and lies. Whatever is broken here needs to be
01:03:05.260 fixed. It was my opinion that throughout the
01:03:09.200 pandemic, heterodox thinkers like Elon and Joe and Brett were not making that
01:03:16.020 project easier. Question three, how many lives have been saved by the COVID
01:03:22.740 vaccines in the U.S.? This is actually a question I had no prior intuitions
01:03:27.320 about, but I have since learned that the current model suggests around three
01:03:31.520 million. Just think about that for a moment. It is quite possible that without
01:03:36.720 vaccines, three million more people would have died from COVID in the U.S. If
01:03:43.220 that's remotely true, should anyone be apologizing for strongly recommending
01:03:50.440 that people get vaccinated? Question four, how many people died
01:03:56.040 unnecessarily in the U.S. because they didn't get vaccinated? In other words, how
01:04:00.800 many people did vaccine hesitancy kill? Well, that number is currently believed to
01:04:05.580 be around 300,000. Now, of course, most of those would be in the over 65 cohort or
01:04:11.620 have other comorbidities. Again, put whatever air bars around these numbers
01:04:15.840 you want. It seems rational to believe that they are
01:04:20.200 somewhere in the ballpark. Not all air traffic controllers are
01:04:24.960 smoking crack. Not all the mechanics at Boeing are using the wrong rivets in the
01:04:29.800 fuselage of their planes. Some things are broken, but not everything is. So until
01:04:36.980 proven otherwise, I believe that approximately 300,000 people died in the U.S. who
01:04:43.420 didn't need to die because they came to believe that the COVID vaccines were more
01:04:48.480 dangerous than COVID. As I said on this podcast, once the vaccines arrived, we had
01:04:54.740 a forced choice. We were all going to get COVID eventually. I still know a few people
01:04:59.460 who haven't, but even they will get it eventually. The question was, were you going
01:05:04.760 to get it with or without first having been vaccinated? It seems that around 300,000
01:05:09.860 Americans are dead today who would not be dead had everyone just gotten vaccinated 1.00
01:05:15.800 blindly, like obedient sheep. Just following instructions was not a bad heuristic in the
01:05:24.500 spring, summer, and fall of 2021. The voice that came over the PA system that said
01:05:30.560 nothing more persuasive or politically acceptable than fasten your seatbelts, you 1.00
01:05:35.500 whiny bitches, was worth listening to. Of course, you might worry that we don't 1.00
01:05:40.700 have long-term data on these vaccines, and that's true, but we also don't have
01:05:45.460 long-term data on the consequences of getting COVID without having been
01:05:48.740 vaccinated, apart from the short-term data of watching people die unnecessarily by the
01:05:53.900 hundreds of thousands because they weren't vaccinated. Yes, the future is
01:05:59.440 uncertain, but I continue to believe there is no good reason to be afraid of these
01:06:04.480 vaccines. Again, COVID is a moving target. Will I get the COVID vaccine once a year
01:06:10.220 like a flu shot? I'm not sure. It depends on how these variants evolve. I've now had
01:06:16.020 COVID twice, and as recently as last month, so I feel pretty well boosted at the
01:06:21.440 moment. However, based on current stats, even these more mild strains of COVID
01:06:26.760 appear to be more dangerous than flu, at least for someone in my cohort. So, given
01:06:32.020 that I get a flu shot every year, I suspect that a yearly COVID shot is in my
01:06:36.840 future. Next question. How many people were killed by the vaccines? Well, my contact
01:06:45.200 Johns Hopkins said, quote, I literally know of just two deaths directly attributed to the
01:06:52.080 vaccines in the U.S., one of which was J&J related. No doubt in the informational waters
01:06:58.120 in which my critics swim, that statement is not going to seem credible. Just two? And only
01:07:05.600 one mRNA related? I don't know what to tell you fellows, but where are the bodies? I'll grant
01:07:11.840 you that there could be more than two. Let's put the number at 2,000. What is there to talk
01:07:17.640 about? Let's put it at 20,000, a four order of magnitude error. Given the other numbers I've
01:07:25.820 just cited, what is there to talk about? Next question. What was the difference in the risk
01:07:33.660 of hospitalization or death between those who had been fully vaccinated compared to those
01:07:38.680 who hadn't taken the vaccine? Okay, well, from what I can tell, it was a likely three to four
01:07:44.880 fold reduction in all age groups. And that includes kids who don't see that much benefit not being at
01:07:50.460 high risk. In all adults, it was more like a tenfold difference. And in those over 65, we saw a
01:07:58.140 20 fold difference in the rate of hospitalization or death. Personally, I probably had a low risk of
01:08:04.640 hospitalization and death from COVID, though I did know people with my same profile who did get
01:08:09.200 hospitalized. But would it have been rational for me to have run a 10x greater risk of hospitalization
01:08:15.400 and or death, just because it was a lot of chatter, mostly from non-experts, about how scary these
01:08:21.260 vaccines were? I don't think so. Next question. Is there any reason to believe that ivermectin
01:08:29.200 or hydroxychloroquine are effective prophylactics against COVID, i.e. adequate substitutes for
01:08:35.460 vaccines? Unsurprisingly, this question provoked a one-word response from my guy at Johns Hopkins.
01:08:43.120 No. Next question. What about the risk of myocarditis from the vaccines, especially for
01:08:50.260 young men? This is something that I acknowledged on the podcast as soon as I became aware of it,
01:08:54.740 which no doubt was later than many people who were pretending to be vaccine experts became aware of
01:08:59.780 it. If you're conspiracy-minded, if you assume that everyone is lying, if you're convinced that
01:09:05.600 everything is more dangerous than advertised, well then I'm sure you will detect real conspiracies and
01:09:10.940 real lies and real dangers sooner than most other people. That doesn't mean that you have cracked the
01:09:16.440 code for how to live in this world. Apparently, Brett Weinstein is over there thinking that someone
01:09:20.720 at Pfizer might be blackmailing me with a pee tape. Okay, so yes, if I were into that sort of thing,
01:09:26.840 he will have been the first one to have found me out. Anyway, my contact at Johns Hopkins informed me
01:09:32.200 that the myocarditis that is a potential side effect of the mRNA vaccines is very different from other
01:09:37.480 forms of myocarditis in that there's generally no long-term clinically significant consequence from it.
01:09:43.700 Also, the risk can be mitigated by spacing the two doses of the vaccine by more than three or four
01:09:47.800 weeks apart. Now, I can imagine in Joe and Brett's world, that sounds insane. Well, again, we had a
01:09:54.540 forced choice from the spring of 2021 on. Get COVID with or without a vaccine. The official numbers,
01:10:02.040 if they are remotely correct, still make it look like the right choice to have been fully vaccinated.
01:10:08.320 Is it the clear choice now with the current variants for a 17-year-old boy given the increased
01:10:14.140 risk of myocarditis and the exceedingly low risk of hospitalization and death for that cohort?
01:10:19.720 I don't know. I would have to look at the most recent data and find out what most experts think.
01:10:25.560 Again, I am not a physician, and I have never played one on this podcast.
01:10:30.640 I am not a physician arkadaş but I have no advisor. I am not a physician-trained service call on