The Megyn Kelly Show - COVID Child Abuse, Vaccine Truth and Lebron James Backlash with Karol Markowicz, Dr. Monica Gandhi and Dr. Martin Kulldorff

00:00:00.520 Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations.

00:00:12.400 Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show. My first guest today is somebody I've

00:00:17.300 been wanting to talk to forever. So happy she's finally with us, Carol Markowitz. She's a columnist

00:00:23.520 for the New York Post and she spares no one. She's been probably the most sensible person

00:00:29.540 when it comes to COVID these past two years. And that's a challenge, right? Because there's

00:00:34.380 so much pressure to say the right things. But Carol doesn't listen. She writes what's true

00:00:39.340 and she cuts through all the BS fearlessly and has from the start. She's also written

00:00:46.600 for Fox News, USA Today, Daily Beast, several other publications. But when it comes to covering

00:00:51.580 and calling out all the COVID insanity, there is no one better than Carol. And there's a

00:00:55.340 lot to discuss today. NBA superstar LeBron James shocking the left by refusing to become

00:01:00.380 their vaccines for all poster boy. The drop in COVID cases in Florida that the media won't

00:01:05.720 be telling you about and how one mother's fight against sexually explicit books in her school's

00:01:10.900 library just upended the Virginia's governor's race. So there is a lot to discuss. Carol, so

00:01:17.040 happy to have you here. Thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited.

00:01:20.200 Okay, so let's talk about first. I don't even know where to begin. Let's talk about masking

00:01:24.320 New York State and other states. New York, I saw you had a post recently about the insanity of

00:01:31.000 now masking two-year-olds. Abby, my assistant, she's with me every day. She's in Connecticut.

00:01:35.320 She has a three-year-old daughter. She has to have a mask across her face all day long, three years old.

00:01:41.580 On and on it goes. And you were calling attention to this sad video of this little two-year-old boy

00:01:47.040 who had asthma, had special needs on a plane, getting booted off the plane. And you were

00:01:52.400 making the point, if you see this, you know you were dealing with America because we're the only

00:01:56.960 country doing the madness of hurting our little ones. I think we have the video by making them

00:02:02.640 do this nonsense. Standby. Let's watch a piece of it.

00:02:17.040 Oh, it's maddening. It's cruel. It's really cruel. No other country is doing this. And we continue

00:02:38.240 to do things like this. And I don't understand why more Americans aren't outraged.

00:02:43.740 Is it that they're not seeing it? I think about Pete Buttigieg. I'm sure he's sitting in his nice

00:02:49.020 apartment, his nice house with his husband. They just adopted a new child. Are they thinking about

00:02:54.280 the torture that little kids like that little boy are going through who has asthma, who cannot deal

00:02:59.700 with a mask over his face on an airplane? Or is it just rules are rules? Yeah. I wonder if they all

00:03:06.440 just think they're being safe, which again, no other country believes that masking two-year-olds is

00:03:12.180 important. So it's not about safety. And I said this to my kids recently. My kids, I have 11,

00:03:16.680 eight, and five. They know how I feel about masking. They know that they have to mask in schools. And I

00:03:21.720 think that that's crazy. But I said to them, if I thought that masking would really protect you,

00:03:28.600 and I thought that COVID-19 was dangerous for you, I would make you mask. I would make you wear

00:03:34.460 a really serious medical mask. I wouldn't have you in a little Batman mask, which is what my boys wear

00:03:41.120 to school. I would make you really do it. And it's only because I looked at the data. I've looked

00:03:47.740 at what the other countries are doing. I've looked at how COVID-19 affects kids, that I don't believe

00:03:52.820 that masking kids is necessary. And I think that we're doing something really crazy and really unique

00:03:57.560 in this country with the masking small children like this. Right. We don't care. The people who want

00:04:02.700 to lecture us about science don't care at all what the science is when it comes to children

00:04:08.260 and masking in particular at the primary school level. So can you talk to us for a minute about,

00:04:14.080 because I follow your Twitter feed for information about this all the time. You link to such good

00:04:17.280 articles about other countries and what specifically they're doing differently.

00:04:22.960 So in a lot of places in Europe, in the UK, in Ireland, in Denmark, in Sweden, in Holland,

00:04:31.040 they never masked kids under 12. That was just not something that they did. Some countries are 11.

00:04:35.740 And Iceland, I was recently in Iceland. It was amazing to see a universe of sanity where there's

00:04:40.920 no kids being masked. You're in a supermarket and they have an indoor mask mandate right now,

00:04:45.400 Iceland, because they had a small spike in the summer. And I think that tourism is really important

00:04:49.920 to them. And they felt that American tourists wouldn't come if they didn't implement that mask

00:04:53.560 mandate. So you're in a supermarket and all the adults are masked, but all the kids are just walking

00:04:57.760 around maskless, which I think is the same thing to do. So you have these other countries and you can

00:05:03.560 look at the numbers and they don't have a worse outcome for kids. It isn't something that like,

00:05:08.980 if they were having poor outcomes, we'd hear a lot of stories about it. We'd hear like, oh,

00:05:13.880 this London school, you know, had this many kids die because they weren't masking, but we don't see

00:05:18.780 that. And it's, you know, a lot of times people will say, oh, it's really different there. It's rural

00:05:23.360 or Iceland, for example, they'll say, oh, well, that's why they're not masking kids because there's

00:05:27.680 only so, you know, very few people in Iceland, whatever. But London is London and London is

00:05:32.460 very comparable to New York. And yet London is doing the same thing for kids and they never mask

00:05:37.400 kids under 12 in schools or anywhere. And yet we continue to do that. We continue to push these

00:05:43.800 masks. And the way that we mask children is also completely different than the way the grownups

00:05:48.660 mask. At this point, everybody understands that wearing masks outside is completely pointless. I mean,

00:05:54.040 Dr. Fauci had a really famous moment where he said, as we've been saying all along, the risk

00:05:59.520 outdoors is very small. Now, of course, they had not been saying that all along, but at least we

00:06:04.480 finally faced the reality that masking outdoors is needless. Kids in New York City, for example,

00:06:10.780 still have to mask during recess. So they have lunch, they put on their mask to go play,

00:06:16.240 they have to stay apart from their friends. So they can't play tag or any game where you get close to

00:06:20.960 each other. And their mask at the same time. Grownups are not doing this. Medical doctors

00:06:26.940 are not doing this. Medical doctors are not going out on their lunch break and pulling up their mask

00:06:31.660 in between bites. They're not wearing a mask after they're done eating. It just isn't something that

00:06:37.680 we're doing. We're doing this uniquely to children. Only kids have to mask like this.

00:06:42.300 It's like we're taking advantage of the reality that they have to listen. They have to listen to their

00:06:49.300 teachers. It is cruel. My sons are going through this, too. My daughter as well, where they play

00:06:54.600 outside at recess and, you know, they play Gaga or these other games where you're really not close

00:06:59.960 to the other kids and they get screamed at. Get your get your mask over your nose and over your

00:07:05.740 mouth. And if they don't listen, like if they get caught with the mask below their nose, they get

00:07:10.180 kicked out. You're out of the game. You're done. You're over by yourself. It's like this is absurd.

00:07:14.520 You're trying to scare my kid or my husband and I have done our level best for the past 18 months to

00:07:19.400 make sure his level of fear and anxiety stays exactly where it ought to be, which is next to

00:07:24.160 non-existent when it comes to covid. And you really can't escape it is the other thing. So, you know,

00:07:29.200 I'm pretty open about the fact that I'm a conservative. And so I would always say local,

00:07:34.340 you know, we should make local decisions, which for me, I live in a very left area and very left city

00:07:39.100 in a very left state. I understand that my area would probably still choose to mask. But what

00:07:45.540 happens is you have local decisions where it only works. They only let us make local decisions when

00:07:51.080 the left would win it. So, for example, in Florida, you know, Governor DeSantis mandated that schools

00:07:58.840 cannot implement mask mandates. Parents can decide for themselves. And these local school districts,

00:08:04.120 a few of them decided, no, we're going to implement a mask mandate anyway. And they have this ongoing

00:08:09.220 battle with the governor. But so people will say, well, look, you wanted local control. Here it is,

00:08:14.140 you know. But in New York, we don't have local control. There are school districts in Long Island

00:08:18.880 that wanted to not have masking. And the governor and the new governor, Hochul, said absolutely not.

00:08:23.620 And private schools cannot choose for themselves. Local school districts cannot choose for

00:08:27.400 themselves. It's a statewide statewide mandate. So it's interesting that we can no longer support

00:08:34.000 local rules because it never, ever works in the direction of sanity. It only works when

00:08:40.760 the left wants it. They don't want local control. What they want is control, period. They want control

00:08:46.760 over your kid and my kid. And that's part of what's so infuriating, especially when it comes to

00:08:52.440 the vaccine. I mean, that that's a medicine being put into my child's body. And I get, you know,

00:08:58.340 we have the MMR vaccines for all three of our kids. Those have been around for a long time.

00:09:03.080 It's just not the same as COVID. And that's another area in which our friends across the pond

00:09:08.780 are having a much different approach than we are. And when parents over here say, well,

00:09:13.400 kind of want to do it the way they're doing it. We're shamed as science deniers or terrible parents

00:09:19.320 or anti-vaxxers. It's like, well, that's that's not true at all. Look at look at how these very sane

00:09:23.380 people who are very cosmopolitan, just like we are across the pond are doing it. Can you speak to that?

00:09:27.820 Yeah. So once again, if I thought that my kids were at risk from COVID-19, if I thought that this

00:09:35.040 was something that really could affect them, I would absolutely want the vaccine for them. It's

00:09:39.740 not like I'm opposed to vaccines. It's not even that I'm opposed to the COVID vaccine. I got vaccinated.

00:09:44.440 My husband got vaccinated. I just don't see it for children. I don't see the numbers really pointing

00:09:51.620 to them needing to get vaccinated. And then people will point to other viruses or diseases that we've

00:09:57.620 combated with vaccines in the past. Great. Those vaccines were important because kids were targeted

00:10:03.620 by those viruses. They were targeted by those diseases. COVID-19, thankfully, does not target

00:10:09.220 children in the same way. And I don't understand why other countries can see that reality while we refuse

00:10:15.900 to. And we've gotten to the point where like, oh, but even one death would be too many. Well, yeah,

00:10:21.540 I mean, it would. But, you know, we still drive cars. We still have pools. We still do plenty of

00:10:26.340 things which result in many deaths for children. And we don't say, OK, well, one death, it's too much.

00:10:31.560 We're going to ban these things. I just I don't see the point of the vaccine for children.

00:10:36.280 And also that that. OK, so even that argument speaks to great. Let's develop a vaccine that is

00:10:43.600 available for parents of young children who would like it. That does not speak to everyone must do

00:10:49.940 it. That's a very different situation. I think that you've got parents like you and me, both of

00:10:55.940 whom have been vaccinated. My husband's been vaccinated, who are going to push back considerably

00:11:02.120 when we're told we have to get it in our five to 11 year olds, which is where we're going. They're

00:11:07.640 going to approve that for Pfizer. They said as early as October, potentially on an emergency use

00:11:12.420 basis. And then they're going to do the same thing they did with it with the 12 and up or 16 year olds

00:11:18.220 and up, which is once it gets the real approval, it's going to be mandated and your kids get expelled

00:11:23.600 if they don't get it. I hope you're right that parents will be outraged by their children being

00:11:30.220 forced to take a vaccine that they don't need. But I keep waiting for parents to be outraged about all

00:11:35.120 kinds of things. And it never happens. And I've been really disappointed in my city,

00:11:40.100 in my state, in my country for the last 19 months where I don't see parents really speaking out on

00:11:45.580 behalf of kids. I really think that kids have been sort of pushed by the wayside here and I don't see

00:11:51.700 a lot of outrage. I mean, we see pockets of it. Absolutely. But I thought, for example, when New York

00:11:58.780 City public schools didn't open last year, but private schools did, I thought, well, this is when this is

00:12:04.720 the moment, right? This is the moment where parents will take to the streets. Nothing happened. Nobody

00:12:09.680 cared. It was like, well, public schools are closed. What are you going to do? Private schools get to

00:12:13.640 stay open. You know, I do think that the left has done a very good job of shaming people who speak up.

00:12:19.720 You know, I mean, I think we have a mutual friend who I've mentioned her before, but she she went to

00:12:24.160 an open the schools rally so that her kids could go to school. She got called a white supremacist.

00:12:28.000 So, you know, liberals and, you know, we've both been living in Manhattan for 17 years now. I just moved

00:12:32.640 to Connecticut. But I don't know how long you've been there, but I've been there nearly 20 years.

00:12:37.700 It's it went 87 percent for Biden. Manhattan did there. They don't want to be called a white

00:12:43.100 supremacist. And they're not yet at the point like you, a conservative who writes for The Post or me,

00:12:47.520 right, leaning independent who worked for Fox News are like, this is what they do. You don't bother me.

00:12:52.200 Right. Well, you can't cancel us either. Right. You can't call our bosses and say, oh, you know,

00:12:57.020 she wants teachers to die. So I get it. I had a lot of parents last year talk to me anonymously when I was

00:13:02.600 writing about opening schools and they were really afraid of somebody calling their boss and saying,

00:13:06.900 you know, Brenda wants teachers to die. And it's scary. I get it. But it's your kids. That's it.

00:13:13.340 We've hit the part where like you must you must stand up now. This is the you know, they've taken

00:13:18.040 away school from your children. You don't you don't think that's important. They're masking them

00:13:21.840 unnecessarily. They're taking away so many things from kids that we just are ignoring. I think like so

00:13:29.500 many, you know, you were saying about a 12 year old being being vaccinated. If your 12 year old

00:13:33.720 is not vaccinated in New York City, they can't participate in a wide array of sports. They're

00:13:38.700 just not allowed to. So you you must you're being forced to. It's so absurd, which is like, oh,

00:13:43.260 you want to hurt 12 year olds? Tell them they can't do sports because we're also also having an obesity

00:13:47.640 problem, an anxiety and depression problem, all of which are partially addressed by exercise and

00:13:53.640 socialization that comes with it for children. Absolutely. And it just it there's no sanity

00:14:00.160 around it. If I thought that we were heading in a direction where people would wake up, I think I'd

00:14:05.520 feel better about it. But I don't know. I think places like New York are really in trouble because of

00:14:10.280 stuff like this. Yeah. OK. UK, it initially said no vaccines for 12 to 15 year olds because of the

00:14:16.460 myocarditis risk. Now they say, OK, 12 to 15 year olds can get one dose only and only if their doctor

00:14:23.300 recommends it and not the second dose. You cannot get that. There's they're saying right now we think

00:14:28.280 that's too dangerous. OK, so they're saying you can't get the second dose for 12 to 15 if you want

00:14:32.920 it in the UK. Here we're saying you must. You have to get it or your kid is kicked out of school.

00:14:38.520 That's what that's the mandate right now in Los Angeles. Twelve year olds and up have to get it or

00:14:43.200 they're expelled. Same rule in Norway, in Ontario, Canada. They're saying you could take Pfizer, but not

00:14:50.420 Moderna for these late teens, 18 to 25, 24 year old men. But they're saying 12 to 17, only one dose.

00:14:57.900 That's it. And so now we're in a position where we're being forced to give two doses to our kids

00:15:04.120 and not just two doses, but has to be the three weeks apart, which is controversial. Right. In some

00:15:09.900 of these other countries that have allowed the second dose for these mid teens, they say space it out

00:15:14.580 considerably because it lowers the chance of side effects. So it's like, I don't know. Do people not

00:15:19.820 know this information here or is it just like they're, they're terrified, like our fellow New

00:15:24.260 Yorkers who live in this sort of COVID fear, porn, panic, utopia? I really do think it's both. I think

00:15:30.540 there are a lot of people are afraid. They think, well, okay. Yeah. COVID is not that much of a risk

00:15:35.440 for kids, but what about my kid? What if something happens to my kid? I won't be able to like deal. I

00:15:40.360 won't be able to live with myself if I don't take all the protections that I can take. But the other part

00:15:44.840 of it is absolutely that our news is so limited and so myopic and just so America centric. I've

00:15:51.360 been waiting for somebody to ask the Dr. Fauci, like, Hey, how come Britain never masked kids

00:15:56.800 under 12 at all? And they don't have any worse outcome than we did. Like what's going on here?

00:16:01.280 I would love something about driving on the left side of the street that makes you more immune to

00:16:04.800 COVID. Right. Exactly. Or, or Rochelle Walensky to be asked, how come you were afraid to send your

00:16:10.340 kids to camp yet? Uh, kids all over the world were going on about their lives as if nothing was

00:16:15.100 going on. What's happening here, but they never get asked these kinds of questions. People who have

00:16:19.820 access to them always end up asking them really fluff questions that really don't matter. And the

00:16:24.740 thing is they mess up anyway. Walensky and Fauci are constantly contradicting themselves are constantly

00:16:30.340 making errors in what they're saying. It's unbelievable to me that 19 months in, this is still the best we

00:16:35.520 could do on our television screens because they're awful at their jobs.

00:16:38.880 I'd love to talk to Rochelle Walensky. I'm a pouch. You would be my number one, but I'd love to ask

00:16:43.700 Rochelle Walensky. Are you embarrassed? You didn't send your child. You made such a fool out of yourself

00:16:48.460 and out of him. He missed an entire summer of fun and was stuck with you. Uh, when he, he could have

00:16:53.200 been out there. I mean, I think you do a real fair job. You know, I do. I would, I would, I actually

00:16:59.440 would. And, and, but they'll never come on. They're afraid. Um, can we talk about Florida and Ron

00:17:04.200 DeSantis? So I saw you tweet about this and I, I have the same reaction. Some no name group,

00:17:08.600 but I mean, I hate to give them too much play because there's, this is not a big group,

00:17:11.200 but they put out this ad against Ron DeSantis trying to rip on him for having, he's against

00:17:16.500 mandated vaccines and mandated masks. He's fine if you want to do it for your kid or yourself,

00:17:21.480 but he doesn't like mandating everybody to do it. They put out this ad and your response was,

00:17:26.060 this looks like an ad for DeSantis. And even my, my executive producer, Canadian Debbie was like,

00:17:32.080 this makes me want to move to Florida right now. She's in poor Canada where they have no freedoms

00:17:36.480 right now. Okay. So watch, watch this ad or listen to it. If you're listening to us right

00:17:40.240 now on Sirius XM.

00:17:45.480 Ladies and gentlemen, on behalf of your cabin crew, we'd like to inform you that we have

00:17:50.500 officially entered Florida airspace. Now that we're making our final dissent,

00:17:56.340 please watch this short message from governor Ron DeSantis on COVID-19. Thereafter, everyone on board

00:18:03.500 will be required to comply with the state forever purge. We are not doing any vaccine passports in

00:18:12.120 the state of Florida. We trust people to make their own decisions in this state. We are not going to be

00:18:18.360 bludgeoning people with restrictions and mandates and lockdowns or any of that stuff.

00:18:25.500 As governor DeSantis stated, while you're within state lines, you do not have to wear a mask.

00:18:32.520 You do not have to get a vaccine. It is against the law for private businesses or schools to mandate

00:18:39.120 masks or vaccines. And you have the absolute right to infect whoever you want, whenever and wherever

00:18:48.020 with COVID-19. Thank you for traveling with us. And please enjoy your floor ever purge.

00:18:56.400 Okay. Who wants to go with me to Palm Beach?

00:18:59.920 I know. I mean, let's go. It sounds like a magical place where they don't force people to do what they

00:19:05.020 don't want to do. And it, you know, they get to live freely. I said earlier today on Twitter,

00:19:10.360 Governor DeSantis' press secretary, Christina Pachas, shared it on Twitter. And I said,

00:19:16.160 I used to be in PR. And when your opponent's press secretary shares your attack ad, you have not

00:19:21.780 done a good job with that ad. So yeah, we lived in Florida last year for almost five months. We found

00:19:28.260 it to be a magical wonderland of freedom and normalcy, especially during a time of real

00:19:35.220 abnormalcy in New York. And I loved it. I thought Governor DeSantis did an amazing job. I was there

00:19:40.980 when the vaccine rollout happened. So I saw him on TV every day pushing those vaccines. The idea that

00:19:47.500 he is not sufficiently encouraging people getting vaccinated is ridiculous. I thought that everything

00:19:53.880 in Florida made sense to me in a way that things in New York had stopped making sense.

00:19:58.720 Meanwhile, Florida has the 41st highest COVID rate in the United States. So that's good. You don't

00:20:05.640 want to be number one. You'd like to be number 50 highest COVID rate. He's 41st. The cases there are

00:20:10.860 down 57% in the past two weeks. That's without a mask mandate, without vaccine mandates in the schools

00:20:17.860 or elsewhere. Something you will not hear from the mainstream media because they're too fixated on

00:20:23.920 calling him Governor Death Santis. I know. Yeah. I mean, well, yeah. Also in that ad,

00:20:29.340 they say that a private business is not allowed to mandate masks. Of course they are. That's

00:20:34.480 ridiculous. A private business in Florida can absolutely ask every person who comes in to wear

00:20:39.080 a mask. That's just wrong. Florida is looking pretty good. But let me ask you the same thing I

00:20:45.980 get asked, which is, well, why don't you move there? Right? Like you were down there. Why didn't you stay

00:20:51.200 there? Yeah. A lot of people will ask questions like that. Yeah. Well, the truth is where we're

00:20:56.840 moving towards that. I'm not, uh, I've been pretty open about the fact that our family is moving

00:21:01.820 towards a potential Florida move. We've thought about it a lot. Um, it's really hard. Look, it's

00:21:07.180 not that easy to just lift up your life and move. I have three kids in schools. We had just moved into

00:21:12.500 like our dream home, uh, March, 2020. It's really hard to leave it. We have our family. I grew up in

00:21:18.340 Brooklyn. My husband grew up in Queens. We're lifelong New Yorkers. We're not like people who

00:21:22.480 moved here, you know, five years ago and now can just go somewhere else. We have ties. Uh, but we

00:21:27.820 absolutely are considering a move to Florida in, you know, the near future or in the not so near

00:21:34.460 future. But I think our future is in Florida. We, we didn't want to move to Florida, even though I

00:21:41.020 love it because all our family and all our friends are in the Northeast, you know, it's like, it's,

00:21:44.720 it's hard to just say, well, I'm leaving everybody. It's like, well, I, but I don't want to do that.

00:21:49.240 I just want sanity in the place where I grew up. I'm, I'm used to the Northeast. I'm used to the

00:21:53.260 climate. I want to be with my mom. Doug wants to be with his mom. They're getting older. They need

00:21:56.460 us and so on. And the other question I'll get asked, Carol is, well, why do you complain about

00:22:00.400 schools when you have enough money to just put to homeschool your kids? You know, you could homeschool

00:22:04.180 your kids and it's like, okay, I don't want to do that for so many reasons. First of all, I would be a

00:22:08.720 nightmare to them if I were homeschooled. None of us would fare well in that situation. I, I'm not

00:22:14.540 the kind of mother who should be with her children all day long, trying to teach them math. We would

00:22:18.500 drive each other nuts, nor am I capable of doing it. By the way, I'm already at the point where

00:22:21.760 they're homework or I'm like, uh, ask your father. Right. Um, but you know, there's all sorts of

00:22:26.820 reasons that some of us choose to send them to school, which is, you know, the socialization and

00:22:31.120 the homecoming parade and the big bonfire and the, you know, the football games, all of it is fun.

00:22:36.880 Those are my own memories. I want them for my kids too. I know you can find it. You can cobble it

00:22:41.360 together. If you decide to homeschool, it's not the same. Everybody makes a different choice,

00:22:45.540 but like, just cause you have money and you object to what the schools are doing doesn't

00:22:48.860 mean you're prepared to homeschool your children. Right. I've thought about homeschooling so much

00:22:53.860 in the last 19 months. I really have. I know you and I have talked about this before also. Look,

00:22:58.460 it's not just COVID regulations in schools. It's a problem. Uh, the wokeness, the, the just

00:23:03.040 absolute indoctrination in these schools is an issue for me as well. Um, it, yeah, it, you know,

00:23:09.000 I get that a lot that, Oh, you have the money to just pull them out and do it yourself. But look,

00:23:14.380 I have a career. My husband has a career. Um, it's not quite so simple once again, plus my kids

00:23:19.720 love their schools before, you know, two years ago, I would have never even considered leaving

00:23:24.580 New York. I would have never considered pulling them out of school. I think things were very

00:23:28.020 different. And I think a lot of things got exposed during this COVID time that, yeah, it's hard to

00:23:33.400 unsee. Um, but in general, I, I used to like their schools. I used to like their school

00:23:38.100 experiences. It is absolutely difficult, um, to say, look, let's just pull them out of school.

00:23:45.120 Um, I also don't want to leave behind the parents who are like me. I feel like a lot of the time I'm

00:23:50.160 fighting for a lot of New York parents. I get emails all the time, thanking me for various articles

00:23:56.140 that I write, exposing things that are going on in New York city schools. This is my city. Why should

00:24:00.300 I be pushed out of the school system? Because you know, the wokesters have decided that they're in

00:24:05.060 charge. I want to stay in fight for as long as I can. And again, I might end up in, in governor

00:24:10.400 DeSantis is Florida sooner rather than later. I'm not pretending that's not a possibility,

00:24:14.400 but while I'm here, I'm going to fight. I'm going to fight for my kids. I'm going to fight for other

00:24:18.840 kids too. I love it. You've been doing it. I mean, I'll tell you that we didn't leave New York

00:24:22.980 because of the COVID restrictions on our kids. We, we left because of the crazy far left woke

00:24:27.060 indoctrination of the children, which just got to the point where it was like, Oh my God,

00:24:31.180 this is actual child abuse happening by the moment. And we raised it with the school and

00:24:36.880 they didn't care. There was absolutely no willingness to push back on it. And then we

00:24:41.780 talked to a lot of other parents, including very, very rich parents, you know, who had way,

00:24:46.540 way more money than we do, who had made tens of millions of dollars of donations to these private

00:24:51.920 schools. And what they made clear to us was it's not a fight you can win. You can't win it with money,

00:24:57.280 donations. No one cared when these parents who had built the library at the schools went in and

00:25:02.740 said, don't do not offer this divisive rhetoric. You're creating racists. You're creating divisions

00:25:08.100 that didn't exist. And the schools were like, Nope, we are all Ibram X. Kendi, you know, accolades

00:25:13.840 now. So, you know, it's sort of the, the rules of war. Like if you're, if outmatched, it's not smart

00:25:19.700 to fight and you got to sort of make that decision on a case by case basis. Cause parents ask me all the

00:25:23.940 time. What should I do? What should I do? Which, and if, if you can fight and there's any chance

00:25:28.060 of prevailing, you should fight. We left because we realized this was not a winnable battle where we

00:25:33.940 were. Okay. Uh, my guest right now is New York post columnist, Carol Markowitz coming up. We're

00:25:38.500 going to discuss LeBron James pushing back against these vaccine mandates for everybody. Plus next hour,

00:25:45.580 our doctors are here. Dr. Monica Gandhi and Dr. Martin Koldorf will discuss whether COVID will become

00:25:51.420 an endemic as opposed to a pandemic and what that means for society and when, and they say,

00:25:56.820 this is sort of when you can go back to quote normal. Well, when's that happening? And they're

00:26:00.540 going to take your questions. Call us 833-44-MEGYM. That's 833-446-3496.

00:26:12.640 Welcome back to the Megan Kelly show. My guest right now is New York post columnist,

00:26:16.600 Carol Markowitz. In just a bit, we're going to be joined by two very smart doctors to talk

00:26:21.400 about COVID and where we are with that as well. Uh, Carol can cover everything, which is one of

00:26:26.160 the many things we love about her. Uh, let's talk about LeBron James. So he was asked about whether

00:26:31.300 he's been vaccinated and whether he's in favor of essentially vaccine mandates. And here is what he

00:26:37.120 said. Have you been vaccinated and do you feel compelled to send a message to the rest of the

00:26:42.340 country about the importance of vaccinations? Um, I think when it comes down for me, I can speak

00:26:47.120 about myself. Um, I think everyone has their own choice, um, to do what they feel is right for

00:26:53.180 themselves and their family and things of that nature. Um, I know, um, that I was very skepticism,

00:26:58.440 uh, about it all. Um, but after doing my research and things of that nature, I felt like it was best

00:27:03.560 suited for not only me, but for my family and for my friends. And, uh, you know, and that's why I

00:27:07.900 decided to do it. So, but as far as I don't, you guys should know me, anything that I talk about,

00:27:13.440 I don't talk about other people and what they should do. Um, I speak for me, um, and for my

00:27:18.660 family. And, uh, you know, that's what it's about. But you don't think the issue is important

00:27:22.900 enough for someone with your stature to, to speak out on it? You know, we're talking about

00:27:27.360 individuals' bodies, you know, we're not talking about something that's, you know, political or,

00:27:33.100 or, uh, racism or police brutality and things of that nature. We're talking about like people's

00:27:38.660 bodies and well-beings, you know, so I don't feel like for me personally, and I should get

00:27:43.080 involved in, and, and what other people should do for their bodies.

00:27:45.640 I mean, meanwhile, I just have to point out, he was fine with defunding the police and all

00:27:49.660 that. Like that also affects people's bodies. That also affects people's safety on a day-to-day

00:27:53.800 basis, but he was fine commenting on that. Uh, Ted Cruz of all people tweets out, I've never

00:27:58.740 said this before, but I agree with at King James's Twitter handle. Um, and so all the alignments

00:28:04.760 are exactly opposite on this. He's getting attacked by the left and he's getting praised by the

00:28:09.880 right for, um, for, um, for it's for the second piece. I mean, getting vaccinated. I don't think

00:28:16.120 anybody opposes you getting vaccinated except for the hardcore anti-vaxxers, but the fact

00:28:20.480 that he won't get behind saying everyone should do it. Your thoughts on what this cultural moment

00:28:26.220 means. Well, it's very interesting because meanwhile, your pizza guy in New York city has to tell you to

00:28:32.540 do it, or he can't let you stay and eat his slice of pizza in his pizzeria. Uh, but LeBron James gets

00:28:39.120 to not say anything, right? It's sort of interesting that we've put the onus on small business owners to

00:28:46.460 enforce vaccination at their restaurants, um, at their art galleries, at their, uh, you know,

00:28:53.100 any other kind of business that they have where people come indoors in New York city with the mask,

00:28:57.400 with the vaccine mandate, the business owner has to ask for vaccination. I think LeBron James is

00:29:02.400 saying is absolutely right. I would just hope that it would have could apply to more people than just

00:29:06.480 LeBron James. I, I don't think it's anybody's business who else gets vaccinated. Again, I got

00:29:11.160 vaccinated. I, I feel secure in my vaccination. I don't care what other people do. I don't care if

00:29:16.140 other people are unvaccinated because it really does not affect me. I am vaccinated. And if you

00:29:20.540 believe in the vaccine, if you trust in the science of vaccine, why do you care if other people are

00:29:25.380 vaccinated or not? Well, he's, he's not pro mandate. That's very obvious. And one of the things that you

00:29:31.300 hear in the press is that the people who are not pro mandate or heaven forbid, not pro vaccine are

00:29:38.240 all Republicans. And I don't think LeBron James is a Republican based on what I've heard him say in

00:29:43.560 the past. And there's also a significant holdout, um, population within the black community when it

00:29:50.460 comes to these vaccines, a fact, the media and the Democrats just will not acknowledge. They want it to

00:29:55.880 be all Trump, MAGA, you know, Patriot America hat wearing, uh, folks in, you know, Louisiana and

00:30:03.280 Mississippi. It's not true. It's not, uh, just personal experience. The people that I know that

00:30:10.000 are not vaccinated in New York are not very few of them would be considered Republicans at all,

00:30:15.760 much less Trump supporters. Um, it really runs the gamut. People are afraid. Uh, they maybe think that

00:30:23.540 they're in, in good enough shape that they don't need the vaccine. I know a lot of young people in

00:30:28.100 their twenties and thirties who are like, I don't feel like I need to be vaccinated for something

00:30:32.380 that's not a risk to me. And then the real cohort that I know that is not getting vaccinated are

00:30:37.700 people who have had the virus before. And once again, other countries accept previous infection as,

00:30:43.720 uh, evidence of, you know, of having antibodies, but in the U S we largely don't except our state

00:30:50.280 department does. When you come in from another country, you can either show vaccination or proof

00:30:55.140 of infection, but we, for some reason, that's the only place that that is permitted. It's not

00:30:59.800 that. Yeah. You can't, if you want to fly back into the U S you need, you can show proof of prior

00:31:04.760 infection because it makes sense. It means you beat the virus. You have the antibodies. You're in

00:31:08.920 the same place, maybe even better than a vaccinated person. Why not? Um, so, but we don't, but in New

00:31:14.900 York, for example, you can't show evidence of prior infection to go to a restaurant or, uh, to go

00:31:20.020 in some, you know, into a museum or something. Um, and what you're seeing is all these healthcare

00:31:24.720 workers who are now forced to get vaccinated. The reason that they don't want to get vaccinated,

00:31:29.340 they're not anti-vax. They're all saying I've had this already. I've been infected. Why do I need

00:31:34.340 to be vaccinated now? And the truth is they don't. No, it's crazy. The, um, I was just reading

00:31:39.760 about this online. Hold on. I want to pull it up because the guy, okay. So this was written in,

00:31:44.480 um, to a publication that I think it was retweeted by one of our guests coming up in the next hour,

00:31:50.180 Martin Koldorf. And it says, um, this is somebody writing in to complain about this mandatory

00:31:55.200 vaccines, even if you've had COVID. He writes, my wife is a triple board certified doctor in the

00:32:00.080 Bronx. She worked at the hospital that had the highest COVID death rate in all of New York city.

00:32:04.240 She went down hard with COVID in April, 2020 and missed two months of work. She recovered and went

00:32:10.540 back for 15 years. She served the poor underprivileged patients on welfare in the Bronx.

00:32:15.840 None of them had private insurance. She resigned on Friday and I could not be more proud of her.

00:32:21.360 She's not bowing to this tyranny. She tested her antibodies several times and they remain high.

00:32:26.940 Please keep up the fight and goes on to say that many of these nurses took the VAX against their will

00:32:31.380 because they could not afford to miss a paycheck. The mandates must fail.

00:32:35.900 Yeah. I hear stories like this all the time. Uh, I really think that once again,

00:32:40.180 we're in the grips of mania and we're refusing to do the same thing. I think that we will eventually

00:32:45.980 get to this same path. I think we will eventually say, well, previous infection does count. I think

00:32:51.280 eventually we'll say, well, masking small children is bad for them. I think we will get to the place

00:32:56.180 where we have, you know, what we're, where, what we all know to be true will be accepted by

00:33:00.600 everybody. Um, but it, it might take a while and it's really unfortunate because we're heading down

00:33:06.120 again, this bad path where we're not accepting reality. And that really destabilizes places when

00:33:12.040 you don't, when you don't accept your reality, uh, when people can't agree on what reality is,

00:33:16.520 I think it's very destabilizing for a city.

00:33:19.100 Well, you have all these, all these healthcare workers in New York state and elsewhere for that

00:33:22.500 matter who are about to get laid off. Thanks in here. It starts because of our governor's

00:33:26.020 mandate, but of course we've got the presidential mandate looming. Um, but they're about to get

00:33:30.340 laid off, even if they have natural immunity, even though they were on the front lines of fighting

00:33:33.900 COVID, that's how they got it. A lot of them. And now we're going to punish them because they won't

00:33:38.020 also get the vaccine. Um, and the plan is to bring in the national guard to backfill them.

00:33:43.180 And with all due respect to our national guard, you know, somebody online was writing,

00:33:46.840 what kind of scabs are they going to be like basically for scab workers, you know, like when the unions

00:33:50.700 go on strike and you bring in their fourth, I don't know what their medical background is,

00:33:54.700 who, which national guard, are they all as qualified as nurses are to take care of a New

00:33:59.600 Yorkers? I'm really not sure. And it's also amazing, like for, uh, the same exact people

00:34:04.560 who are really worried about militarization of like a police force or, uh, other parts of society

00:34:09.840 are totally fine with like militarization of like our hospitals. Um, I it's amazing to me how quickly

00:34:16.140 we can turn these hospital heroes who we, you know, plotted them out of our windows every night

00:34:22.040 at 7 PM with the height of the pandemic. Yes, I was one of them. I had the pots and pans out at

00:34:27.940 seven o'clock night after night and I meant it. And I still mean it. Unlike these other people who now

00:34:32.400 want them to get fired without unemployment benefits. That's what's insane. Thanks to our

00:34:37.220 governor. They're going to get fired. Even if they've had COVID and have natural immunity, which is

00:34:41.000 better, they say than the vaccine immunity, they're going to get fired. They're not going to get their

00:34:45.000 paychecks. It is such BS. Um, cruelty is the point here. Nobody thinks that this is going to make us

00:34:51.900 safer. They all just want to punish the people who will not obey. And you know, what's crazy. It's

00:34:56.780 like, I, I love modern medicine. You know, I'm, I'm pro vax, you know, I get them all. Um, but I know

00:35:03.720 people like my friend, she, she won't even take a Tylenol when she has a headache. You know, she's very

00:35:10.800 anti just anything foreign in her body. She doesn't, I don't recommend this at all, but she

00:35:16.460 doesn't even get an annual mammogram, even though she's 50 something. If she doesn't want the exposure

00:35:20.660 of the radiation, I get an annual mammogram and I recommend everybody do that saved a lot of lives.

00:35:24.920 But I'm just saying, this is how she's built. And those are her own medical decisions for her body

00:35:29.300 herself. So you take somebody like that and you say, you have to inject this new vaccine into your

00:35:35.440 arm. And by the way, she had, she's had COVID she's had it right. So, and she's not going to do

00:35:40.360 it. She's not going to do it. And she needs her job. She needs her paycheck, but it's like all of

00:35:45.500 that's being taken away. And so this is genuinely scary for a lot of people who are anti mandated

00:35:51.380 medicine or even sort of mild medicine. And scary for society. I think forcing people to do things like

00:35:57.700 this is bad for us. I really don't think that we come out of this in a happy, good place. I, you know,

00:36:03.140 it's funny because I do envision a world, you know, past this. I hope we get there someday. And

00:36:09.180 you know, the world also didn't start with COVID. We, we, we had relationships and, and, um, ideas

00:36:14.960 of how things should work before. I think what we're suspending now, all the things that we knew

00:36:19.500 in the past, I think it's a real problem. And I think we're not going to get over it for a very long

00:36:24.000 time. All right. So I have a few more things I want to get to with Carol, including her, her recent

00:36:28.260 article saying as, as bad as things may be, we can't break up. It's not, we, there's no

00:36:32.980 secession. There's no two, two Americas. It's not going to work. Uh, and she's got thoughts on

00:36:38.840 why. Uh, and a bit later in the show, we're going to be joined by doctors, Monica Gandhi and Martin

00:36:43.780 Kaldorf. They will discuss the possible end game of COVID and answer your questions. Call us at 833-44-M-E-G-Y-N

00:36:51.880 that's 833-446-3496. Welcome back to the Megan Kelly show. My guest right now, New York post

00:37:03.680 columnist, Carol Markowitz. And if you don't follow her on Twitter and read her columns,

00:37:06.960 no matter where you are, you're missing out. Carol, I want to ask you about Virginia and this

00:37:11.160 gubernatorial race down there where Terry McAuliffe, uh, the Clinton disciple, uh, is now running again for

00:37:17.320 governor there. He was, he was the governor and now he's not, now he's running. And over the

00:37:22.400 Republican Gregory Youngkin and McAuliffe, the Democrat had like a six and a half point lead.

00:37:27.600 Now we're told it's down to about a three and a half point lead. Uh, they had a debate the other

00:37:31.960 night. That's making national news. Now I want to warn our audience. We're going to play a soundbite

00:37:38.000 from my mom in Fairfax, Virginia. Very nice, very nice County, affluent County who is, I mean,

00:37:43.620 I'll just say she's ripped shit over the books that she found in the high school. It's not middle

00:37:49.400 school. Uh, very graphic. We, I debated on whether to play it cause it's really graphic. And I will say

00:37:55.920 if you have children with you, you want to turn on the radio cause it talks about pedophilia. It gets

00:37:59.420 specific. Um, it's graphic, but I decided to play it because you should know what's in these districts

00:38:07.060 available to your child. Most of us just go about our jobs and we, we don't think about, you know,

00:38:11.320 going to school library and figure out all the books that are available to your kids,

00:38:13.980 but this stuff is damaging. So better. You hear a bit of it here and do something about it. Then

00:38:18.700 your kids stumble across it without you having done anything. That's why we're going to play it,

00:38:22.560 but turn it down. If you've got a kid in the car. Okay, here we go.

00:38:25.360 I decided to check the titles at my child's school, Fairfax high school. The books were available

00:38:32.640 and we checked them out. Both of these books include pedophilia, sex between men and boys.

00:38:46.680 Both books describe different acts. One book describes a fourth grade boy performing oral sex

00:38:52.500 on an adult male. The other book has detailed illustrations of a man having sex with a boy.

00:39:00.320 The illustrations include fellatio, sex toys, masturbation, and violent nudity.

00:39:14.200 Pedophilia here. From the author, Maya Kobabe, quote, I can't wait to have your cock in my mouth.

00:39:22.200 I am going to give you the blow job of your life and then I want you inside me, end quote.

00:39:27.100 From the author, Jonathan Evason. What if I told you I touched another guy's dick? What if I told

00:39:34.320 you I sucked it? I was 10 years old, but it's true. I sucked Doug Goebel's dick, the real estate guy,

00:39:40.720 and he sucked mine too. This is not an oversight at Fairfax high school.

00:39:47.940 This material, there are children in the audience here. Do not interrupt my time.

00:39:53.820 Do not interrupt my time. There are children in the audience who shouldn't be hearing that.

00:39:59.620 Exactly. Exactly, ma'am. That's, that's my point as the mom, right? That's what she should have said,

00:40:04.900 but she was, she was on a roll. Okay, so this comes up shortly thereafter in the Virginia

00:40:10.940 gubernatorial debate between, again, Gregory Youngkin, the Republican, and Terry McAuliffe,

00:40:15.900 the Democrat. And here is what they said. Watch.

00:40:19.820 What we've seen over the course of the last 20 months is our school systems refusing to engage

00:40:25.000 with parents. In fact, in Fairfax County this past week, we watched parents so upset because there was

00:40:30.660 such sexually explicit material in the library they had never seen. It was shocking. And in fact,

00:40:36.540 you vetoed the bill that would have informed parents that they were there. You believe school

00:40:41.360 systems should tell children what to do. I believe parents should be in charge of their kids' education.

00:40:46.540 Mr. McAuliffe, 30 seconds.

00:40:51.480 So first of all, this shows how clueless Glenn Youngkin is. He doesn't understand what the laws

00:40:55.740 were because he's never been involved here in helping Virginia, but it was not. The

00:41:00.540 parents had to write to veto bills, veto books, Glenn, not to be knowledge about it, also take

00:41:06.560 them off the shelves. And I'm not going to let parents come into schools and actually take books

00:41:10.920 out and make their own decision. You vetoed it. So yeah, I've stopped the bill that I don't think

00:41:17.580 parents should be telling schools what they should teach. I don't think parents should be telling

00:41:21.880 schools what they should teach. Well, how would you feel about that if they were teaching your kid

00:41:26.080 that stuff? Yeah. I think that if I had to point to something positive that happened over this COVID

00:41:33.760 time, it would be that parents really have a much sharper view of what their kids are learning and

00:41:40.060 what's going on in their kids' schools. I think that soundbite should be terrifying to everybody.

00:41:46.240 I mean, they're talking about child porn and McAuliffe is saying, well, I don't think parents should

00:41:51.280 tell schools what they should be teaching. Well, I'm sorry. I think parents should tell the school

00:41:56.680 that they shouldn't be teaching about child porn, that the kids shouldn't be able to access a book

00:42:00.400 on that in the school library. It's abuse they're talking about child rape.

00:42:04.580 Yeah. Yeah. I mean, this is, it's, it's real. It's not, you know, and she's not exaggerating.

00:42:10.120 She's reading from this book where you want to like close your ears and not hear it. And yet your child

00:42:14.620 would take this out in the library. It's also, I think we're at a such a pivotal moment right now.

00:42:20.620 You know, I was thinking about this, like if I was on your show, say two years ago, like what would

00:42:24.660 we be talking about? If you could, you know, pre COVID, because I think that, you know, I used to

00:42:29.380 write about all kinds of different things. I used to write about foreign policy or immigration or sex

00:42:35.060 or any relationships or any other number of things. But in the last 19 months, I think that what we're

00:42:41.000 doing to children has become so pivotal and so important in our conversations that I can't focus on

00:42:48.400 anything else. When you hear stories like this about a book like this in the school library,

00:42:52.440 like what else matters? What else matters except how damaging what we're doing to kids across the

00:42:58.540 country is right now. And I think that's why it's become, you know, sort of the top thing that I

00:43:03.580 write about the thing that I write about week after week. I, I, I wasn't a children's, you know,

00:43:09.420 issues person before this, but we all have to be now we have to listen to this mother. We have to

00:43:14.500 listen to people like her and we have to take action in our own schools. That's right. As

00:43:18.600 uncomfortable as it is, this is what's out there. This is what they're doing to our kids

00:43:23.160 and ignoring it. I mean, as I said, I wrestle with whether we play that thing, but not playing

00:43:27.940 it and not calling attention to it is worse. And me just trying to describe, oh, it's really graphic

00:43:32.100 and it's awful. Doesn't have the same effect. I mean, now I guarantee you, there's going to be lots

00:43:36.600 of parents trying to find out whether those books are in their kids' schools and making a push to

00:43:41.400 find out exactly what else is in the, is in the schools. I mean, you can't trust these schools

00:43:44.980 any longer coming of age books, you know, introduction to sexuality, all that stuff.

00:43:49.860 Of course. Yes. Of course. Who didn't sit there with a, an underlying copy of the book forever

00:43:54.160 back in the seventies. That's what I, that's where I learned all my stuff. That's, this is not the same,

00:43:59.120 not, not by a long shot. Okay. Um, can we talk about why we can't break up? Cause you're hearing

00:44:04.140 more and more talk of some sort of is secession the answer. How do I send my kids to school

00:44:10.040 with parents who want those books in the library with parents who want mandated masks forever?

00:44:16.280 You know, how do we get along? How do we, is there a real solution where we could go into our own

00:44:21.940 camps and still remain Americans? And you, your, your conclusion is no. So I, I understand the impulse

00:44:28.940 of the national divorce. I really do. I, in a way that I never really did before. I'm like an uber

00:44:34.000 patriotic American. I was born in the Soviet union. I came to the U S when I was a kid. Um,

00:44:38.880 I have a brother named after Ronald Reagan. I mean, I come from a family where I think

00:44:43.840 about it every single day, how lucky I was to end up here. So it's completely unnatural

00:44:48.400 for me to even entertain the idea of an America that splits up. But I do think we've gotten

00:44:54.100 to such a state and we're so divided, uh, that I, I really don't know how we move forward

00:45:01.000 from this. But so I really thought about the idea of a national divorce and I thought about

00:45:06.220 how would it work? I mean, some of the people that are into the idea, Jesse Kelly is a prominent

00:45:11.840 person who talks about this, you know, say divide the States and sort of go by red and blue.

00:45:16.300 But the truth is we have so many purple States and things change all the time. Um, I mentioned

00:45:21.700 in the column, if you move to deep red Colorado in the late nineties, because you wanted to be

00:45:26.560 around other conservatives, you would be surprised to find they haven't voted for Republican for

00:45:30.940 president since 2004 and George W Bush. And things change. Conservativism changes, liberalism changes.

00:45:37.860 I think, uh, a Democrat from 25 years ago to now would be completely different. I think Republican

00:45:43.240 from 25 years ago to now are completely different. Um, so we really can't divide up like that and hope

00:45:48.760 that it lasts. It might be short term. It might work where we have red States and blue States and we

00:45:54.460 stay in our, our lanes. Um, but conservatives will have liberal children. Liberals will have

00:45:59.640 conservative children. Uh, and it happens. It absolutely happens. And ideologies change unless

00:46:05.120 we plan to, uh, give an ideological test to anybody entering any state. It's really impossible,

00:46:10.980 uh, to keep it ideologically pure. But really what made me think about all of this is I live in

00:46:16.640 Brooklyn. Again, I grew up in Brooklyn. Um, I was in deeper in Brooklyn, the part of Brooklyn,

00:46:22.180 you really don't hear about, uh, it's not hipsters. It's not coffee shops. It's not, you know,

00:46:26.180 pickle stores. It's deep in Brooklyn where ethnic minorities live and they tend to vote Republican,

00:46:32.200 uh, Russian Jews. Um, I've got 30 seconds left just FYI. Orthodox, et cetera. And you can't really,

00:46:38.760 you can't forget about them. You can't forget about the people that we can't just leave in

00:46:42.820 these blue States. We had 3.2 million Trump voters in New York. That's more than the population

00:46:46.880 of many red States. So the division's really unlikely and impossible much as, you know, it might make

00:46:53.320 sense. We're going to have to find a way to live together. Okay. Good luck. Such a pleasure.

00:46:58.920 Carol Markowitz. Thank you. Up next, our doctors are here and we'll be taking your questions. 833-44-MEGYN.

00:47:05.160 Don't go away. Welcome back to the Megan Kelly show. I am joined this hour by Monica Gandhi. She's a

00:47:15.640 professor of medicine at the university of California, San Francisco, and has been a leading voice

00:47:21.060 within the COVID hysteria. Really? She's, she displeases both sides, which means she's probably

00:47:26.100 right. She says not everyone needs the booster shot and that it could very well be that we are

00:47:31.940 seeing finally the end game with COVID. Also joining us is Martin Kulldorff. He's a professor of medicine

00:47:39.140 at Harvard university and author, one of them of the great Barrington declaration. He's another outspoken

00:47:44.680 voice tackling everything from masking our kids to vaccine passports. And we're going to be discussing

00:47:49.380 all of this and all of the updates with COVID over our next hour. And we're going to be answering your

00:47:53.960 questions on COVID with our doctors. So you can call us now. We're going to start taking your calls

00:47:58.200 early today. Call in, let us know what's on your mind. What you want to know. It's 833-44-MEGYN,

00:48:04.180 M-E-G-Y-N, excuse me, 833-446-3496. Okay. So let's get right to it docs. Thank you so much for being here.

00:48:13.700 All right. Let's start with whether we really might be in the, at the end game of COVID from where we go

00:48:20.580 from pandemic to endemic. Dr. Gandhi, can you, can you just explain what that means? Cause I I've heard

00:48:27.000 that term endemic many times. I don't totally understand what it means, what it looks like

00:48:30.980 and how we'll know when we're there.

00:48:32.920 Yes. So these are very traditional infectious disease definitions, but essentially an epidemic

00:48:38.880 means you have an undue burden of disease more than expected. Well, what would we know that's

00:48:44.600 more than expected with COVID more than expected is people in the hospital, a lot of hospitals being

00:48:50.180 flooded, people being really sick. And then a pandemic means that it's extended to multiple

00:48:55.380 content, uh, continents. And then what an endemic means is that it's gone down to a level where you

00:49:03.060 live with it. Um, and it's at such a level that it doesn't cause an undue burden. Everyone's going to

00:49:08.780 have to decide what undue burden means for themselves as a country, um, of hospitalizations

00:49:14.500 or disease. But I will tell you, and I'm sorry to say this because I think some people don't

00:49:20.280 think this, but we're not going to eradicate COVID because of some very key pathogen properties

00:49:26.000 about it. It's very transmissible. It looks like another, a bunch of other respiratory viruses.

00:49:31.580 You can spread it even when you don't feel, um, sick. And, uh, and, um, it also has some animal

00:49:39.240 hosts that it sticks in. So all of those infectious disease reasons means we can't get rid of it. We

00:49:44.400 can't eradicate it without means getting rid of, um, but luckily once it's endemic, it's kind of one

00:49:51.160 of our other respiratory illnesses that we live with and life should go back to normal. And I think

00:49:56.260 we're getting there in many places. So how do we know when we're there? Cause I'm, I'm just looking

00:50:00.380 at the COVID cases, et cetera, as of September 29th, this is over two week, you know, over two

00:50:06.380 week period. The number of cases is down 26%. This is nationally, the number of hospitalizations

00:50:11.900 down 16%, but the, the death numbers, which tend to, I guess, lag, I don't know that they're,

00:50:18.200 I'm not exactly sure, but for the past, I don't know, several weeks, every time I look at the death

00:50:21.940 number, it's on, it's on the plus side, it's gone up 7% over the past two weeks. So what does that

00:50:27.560 tell you? So we're not quite there in the United States, um, yet. Um, and everyone has to define

00:50:33.500 again, what works for their country. Um, there's about a hundred deaths a day from influenza. So

00:50:39.540 some people have said, okay, once you get to a hundred deaths a day, um, uh, you know, average

00:50:44.480 out over the year, some, everyone's going to decide where we're about 2000. Yeah. So there's still

00:50:50.640 very high deaths and hospitalizations in some regions. I live in a state, California that we have

00:50:55.740 very low hospitalizations and deaths. You could argue that we're endemic here in, in California,

00:51:00.760 but we're still masking and have restrictions. Um, Denmark decided at a 74% vaccination rate to open

00:51:08.160 up society. Norway decided at a 67% vaccination rate. Portugal decided at a 80% vaccination rate.

00:51:15.660 Um, and then finally Ireland on October 22nd will open at around 80%. So every country's deciding for

00:51:22.620 themselves, we have to come up with a definition in the United States so that we're not in endless

00:51:26.980 restrictions and less, um, and, and make that decision. It shouldn't be political. Like the

00:51:33.100 blue state says this, the red state says this, we should come up with some definitions that make sense.

00:51:37.920 What about that? So we, um, I'm going to get to Dr. Calder for one second, but what,

00:51:42.040 aren't we over 70% vaccination rate here in the country? And that's not even including the 42 million

00:51:46.600 people who have had COVID and, you know, have natural immunity and they may also be part of the

00:51:51.700 vaccinated number. So you're, yeah, you're right. There's a lot of overlap. If people have been sick,

00:51:56.360 they could have gotten vaccinated. We don't know what our real seroprevalence rate is. Um,

00:52:00.920 it could be as high, it could be very high. Um, I'll tell you one thing about, um, you know,

00:52:06.620 how do we decide or, or how do we know, um, you know, places like California, I could say we know

00:52:13.120 because our hospitalizations are low, absolutely manageable. I've worked in a hospital. Uh, I've seen

00:52:18.400 people, um, cross the street and we have very low numbers. Um, and we have about, we have a higher

00:52:23.400 vaccination rate than the national, which is actually 64.4% one dose. It depends on if you're

00:52:29.360 dividing it in over 12, over 18 and over 65, the CDC provides different definitions. Um,

00:52:36.140 we have to decide as a country when we feel like the burden of disease is not high. And the problem is

00:52:42.320 we're looking at cases. We're looking at like, there's been numbers flown around, like when we're

00:52:46.960 less than 10,000 cases, that doesn't make sense to me because cases, um, the reason we detected cases

00:52:53.160 when we call them cases, they're actually, you can feel totally well. You're asymptomatic

00:52:56.920 was because you didn't want it to spread to someone else, but those aren't traditional infectious

00:53:02.540 disease definitions of disease. Disease means you feel unwell. So I think we have to look at

00:53:08.600 hospitalizations because we don't know how many people have colds with COVID. We're not tracking that.

00:53:12.220 Let's look at hospitalizations, decide when it's a number that we can all live with. Like we live

00:53:17.660 with influenza and the hospital, we live with RSV and then we have to lift restrictions. And

00:53:22.980 when do I, I know that we're there in California, but, um, I'm not a policymaker.

00:53:28.220 And when you say restrictions, what do you mean?

00:53:30.340 Well, right now we're still masking in California and San Francisco inside. And many people are masking

00:53:35.800 outside. I went to a outside theater. I was so excited to go to the theater. And then I had to,

00:53:40.600 uh, wear a mask outside. And, um, just two days ago. And, um, I actually said to the person,

00:53:47.000 I'm an infectious disease doctor. And I don't think we have spread outside. And then they said,

00:53:51.200 wish everyone was an infectious disease doctor.

00:53:53.600 And then they said, you hate, you want to kill grandma. And you were like, what?

00:53:56.800 Wait, what?

00:53:58.040 My nuanced views and on relifting masking has gotten me in the trouble.

00:54:02.760 I know. I've seen that. I've seen that, but I've seen you also be brave. And, and as I said,

00:54:07.000 in the intro, you'll push back against either side. You won't be totally beloved by the people

00:54:10.500 who hate mandates, but you won't be totally beloved by the people who love them either,

00:54:14.440 which I get it from both sides. So yeah, that's where I am right now.

00:54:18.640 But I appreciate that. So, so Dr. Caldorf, what are your thoughts on the, when we'll know

00:54:24.360 it's time, you know, that we've gotten to endemic instead of pandemic or epidemic,

00:54:30.240 and it's time indisputably really to take off masks and get back to what, what we used to know

00:54:37.660 is normal.

00:54:38.960 Well, Dr. Caldorf is correct, but we cannot eradicate COVID. It will be with us forever as

00:54:46.100 an endemic disease. What happens is that we are, almost all of us are going to go and get

00:54:54.640 infected sooner or later. And as long as there are susceptible people who have, who can get

00:55:03.860 the disease, then we have a problem that we have to deal with. And there's also a seasonal

00:55:08.820 pattern, which is different in different parts of the world, including different states. So we

00:55:14.100 have, for example, seen a summer wave in the South, which we had last summer as well. So I think

00:55:19.900 we can expect a winter wave in the northern parts of the U.S. We don't know exactly the

00:55:26.300 magnitude of it, but I mean, there are some states that have had very few, very few cases,

00:55:32.880 for example. So, so whether we are, the time we reach the endemics, they will vary geographically.

00:55:40.440 What's I think what is key thing now is that as we're approaching the winter season, it's

00:55:47.400 very important that the older people who have neither had COVID, because if you had COVID,

00:55:52.860 you have good national immunity, it's better immunity than from the vaccine. So if you've

00:55:55.980 had COVID, or if you're vaccinated, that's good. But there are still people, older people

00:56:00.480 out there who have not yet been vaccinated and have not had COVID. And as we now approach

00:56:06.480 the winter wave, they are at high risk. So the most important thing to do at this point

00:56:13.540 to minimize death is to convince older people, somebody who's 77, somebody who's 67 or 87,

00:56:23.820 or even 97, to get vaccinated if they haven't already had COVID, and they haven't already been

00:56:30.840 vaccinated. That's the most important thing we can do in terms of the public health right now.

00:56:36.480 And it's not enough just to say that these vaccines are freely available. We have to really help educate

00:56:44.560 people about the importance for these people to get the vaccines. And even though as with any

00:56:51.280 medical intervention, drug or vaccine, there are some risks with vaccines. We know about those.

00:56:58.340 We're not right at least some about them. There are things we don't necessarily know yet,

00:57:01.760 because that takes two or three years. But if you are in this age bracket, the benefit of the vaccines

00:57:07.580 greatly outweigh any small risk with it. So the benefit cost of the benefit risk ratio is very

00:57:15.620 favorable. So it's a no brainer, I think, for people in these ages to take the vaccine. So I think that is

00:57:22.200 the most important thing we can do now. Unfortunately, the vaccine debate has sort of deteriorated.

00:57:31.760 And that has led to enormous distrust in public health. So there are some people who do not trust

00:57:40.220 public health for very good reason, because there's a lot of nonsense that has been going on.

00:57:44.840 So that makes it much more difficult to convince these people that vaccines is a good thing for them.

00:57:52.700 So for example, to have vaccine mandates that you, I talked to a nurse at my hospital,

00:58:01.360 Brigham Women's Hospital, she was a nurse in the taking care of COVID patients, obviously,

00:58:06.900 she got infected, not surprised, she recovered. And now she has better immunity than her colleagues who

00:58:15.380 have only been vaccinated. But she is now going to be fired by work from home administrators,

00:58:22.920 hospital administrators, who have less immunity than she does, even though she really stood up

00:58:30.080 and did what she had to do to take care of these COVID patients. And now yes, because she has superior

00:58:37.220 immunity from disease, then those who have it from vaccines, they're going to fire her.

00:58:41.700 So this is completely nonsense in terms of science to do this. And that leads to distrust

00:58:50.280 in public health and vaccine messages by doing these kinds of nonsense.

00:58:55.240 Let me ask you a follow up on that. So is it accepted within the medical community that you do,

00:59:01.660 I mean, I realize there have been studies and so on, but is it an accepted fact that you have better

00:59:05.920 immunity if you've had COVID than if you've had just the vaccine?

00:59:11.540 Yeah, so that has, there's the clearest, the best study is the study from Israel. And for some

00:59:15.740 reason, we haven't done very, there has been a few studies from the US, but we haven't done the

00:59:21.020 really excellent study that we should have done. But there's a very good study from Israel.

00:59:24.140 And it shows that adjusting for the timing of vaccine and or disease as well as for age, which is

00:59:33.480 important to adjust for in this analysis. It found that the risk for having people who are vaccinated,

00:59:40.140 they had 27 times higher risk for symptomatic COVID disease than those who had recovered from COVID

00:59:46.780 with the confidence, 95% confidence of between 13 and 57. So this is a very, very big difference. So

00:59:54.320 it's very strong evidence that immunity is better from the disease than from vaccines. Now, we don't know.

01:00:01.400 Does that assume that the vaccine was administered in patient A at the same time that patient B

01:00:08.640 had just gotten over COVID, right? Because the timing matters.

01:00:11.940 Yeah, so correct. So that 27 fold is adjusted for the timing of it. Now, in that study, most of the

01:00:20.180 people who had disease had it before the vaccines, but they still had a better protection. So those who

01:00:26.980 have had the disease earlier had better protection than those who had the vaccine later.

01:00:33.440 Oh, is that right? Right? Because I think a lot of people are looking at the healthcare workers who

01:00:37.060 were on the front lines, as you point out during that peak of when everything was

01:00:41.300 happening, which I don't, I don't even know when the peak was. And it began in the spring,

01:00:45.540 God, two years ago. It's hard to keep track. Was it spring of 2020 or spring of 2020?

01:00:50.820 Right? I'm losing my ears.

01:00:53.940 I know.

01:00:54.400 Okay. Spring of 2020.

01:00:56.040 Right? It's been so long, never ending. So the healthcare workers who are out there in the

01:01:00.000 spring, right after quarantine, and then through the following winter, they said was the peak.

01:01:04.020 So let's say, let's take the winter. If you had COVID during that winter, and then you had a vaccine,

01:01:12.800 let's say, four months after that, would those two people, still that person who had COVID would be

01:01:20.020 better protected, even though they had COVID longer in time away from where we are today?

01:01:26.760 Yeah. So based on the Israel study, that was the case. Those who had COVID earlier had better

01:01:33.900 protection for symptomatic disease than those who had vaccine later. Now, it's interesting also that

01:01:40.600 if you look at, instead of looking at symptomatic disease, if you look at death, then the efficacy was

01:01:46.760 great in both groups because there was zero death in either group. So both the vaccine, as well as

01:01:56.020 having had national immunity, protects very well against serious disease and death.

01:02:01.780 So it's, but in terms of symptomatic disease,

01:02:06.120 having had COVID gives you better protection on the vaccine. So there's no reason-

01:02:11.140 Dr. Vandy, do you agree with that? Is that a controversial statement to say you have better

01:02:14.720 immunity from having had the disease versus getting vaccinated?

01:02:19.480 So I have also thought about this a lot and tried to look at all the studies.

01:02:23.640 And I actually think there's so much mixed data and it depends on two things. It depends on how severe

01:02:32.200 your initial infection was. So you're going to have, I always think immunologically, because this

01:02:37.400 is how I was trained as someone who does HIV. So I'm always thinking about the immune system and where

01:02:43.180 memory cells go. So if you've had severe disease, it's more likely you set up what's called memory cells

01:02:48.700 and that you have very durable protection. If you had mild disease, you may not set up those memory

01:02:55.800 cells. And then a vaccine boost, like one vaccine, at least in the immunologic research helps you. It

01:03:03.640 helps differentiate your T cells and it helps you deepen your, your memory banks. So this mixed data

01:03:11.180 for me, and maybe you're just going to call me too much of a compromiser,

01:03:15.020 but I am actually a compromiser. I'm a compromiser with masks, um, saying that we shouldn't mask

01:03:20.380 forever. Even if you want to, you can absolutely. You will not get a flu and you won't get colds

01:03:25.080 if you mask, but please don't make the rest of the population not mask or colds and flus. Cause

01:03:29.740 that is a personal decision. Um, but the same thing with vaccines that might compromise. And I really

01:03:35.280 mean this based on immunology research is one dose after natural infection to me makes sense.

01:03:40.180 Um, and, but, uh, Dr. Kullendorf is totally right that the data is very mixed. The Kentucky study in

01:03:48.700 the United States was not a well-done study. Case control studies are not the best way to look at

01:03:52.840 this. This Israeli study was powerful though. I really, they do, but they really do need to break

01:03:57.880 it out with severe and mild disease. What did you have to begin with? And it's not, can I just jump in

01:04:02.500 and ask you a quick question there? Is it knowable irrespective of severe versus mild disease? Is it

01:04:06.960 knowable based on your antibodies? You know, could you give a blood test if you're the nurse

01:04:11.820 and say, just check my antibodies? See, this is the problem. Uh, yes. Like if you still have

01:04:17.080 antibodies, then you definitely got enough of a immune reaction from it. But the problem is your

01:04:23.440 antibodies could go down. Those people who got infected, like you said, in spring of two 20,

01:04:27.900 2020, that's when it started, believe it or not. Um, versus winter, their antibodies may have come

01:04:33.020 down, but what we're not going to do is grab their lymph node biopsies and to see if they have memory

01:04:37.820 B cells in their lymph nodes. And so it's harder to tell from an antibody test. If you've been

01:04:42.780 exposed because antibodies coming down, that's totally natural. That's what the immune system

01:04:46.960 does. So it's hard. There's so much variability, two pieces of variability, the severity of your

01:04:52.920 original disease. That's the variability of the disease. The variability is also in the vaccines.

01:04:57.920 Moderna is better than Pfizer. Sorry, because we gave it four weeks apart. You're not supposed to give

01:05:02.540 vaccines three weeks apart. I don't know any vaccine in the world that we give them such a

01:05:06.520 short period of time. Israel only has three weeks apart because they only had Israel or they only

01:05:11.180 had Pfizer. So giving it in longer duration and also Moderna happens to have a higher dose that those

01:05:17.160 are stronger vaccines. We've seen that with reinfection being lower with Moderna recipients and

01:05:22.300 Pfizer. So Israel is the worst example in a way, because we don't know anyone who's mild or severe and

01:05:28.440 they gave the vaccine in the wrong way. So do we in the U S by the way, you don't give it

01:05:32.340 three weeks apart. So many vaccinologists said, please let us extend the duration

01:05:36.000 between doses. And we said no in the United States, but Canada, UK, so many Europe, all of Europe did

01:05:43.460 that. So it depends on the vaccine, how you give it and the severity of initial disease. It's not a

01:05:47.740 one size fits all answer. I thought it was interesting. And just in reading prior articles

01:05:51.820 of yours, Dr. Gandhi, how you said we don't keep antibodies in our blood forever based on prior

01:05:57.520 infection. Because otherwise you said our blood would be really thick, but like a shape.

01:06:03.260 You couldn't move. I had a cold when I was one, but I don't have those antibodies in my bloodstream.

01:06:07.960 I don't. I think that. Right, right. All right. So I want to bring in some of our callers here

01:06:12.660 because we're getting really good questions. And I'm going to start with caller number four,

01:06:15.900 Paul from Pennsylvania, who has a question about long haul COVID. Paul, what's Johnny Ryan?

01:06:20.680 Yeah, I was just having a question. They just did a study about the long haul symptoms.

01:06:25.640 And it's a real thing. And what I've been trying to figure out is, does the long haul symptoms occur

01:06:33.180 both when you have the COVID naturally and maybe when you get the vaccine? Or is it just when you

01:06:39.040 have it normally, you know, you get the COVID, you get sick, and the long haul comes from that?

01:06:44.760 Or is it like I said, could it be a byproduct of the vaccine? But I don't see any information on it.

01:06:52.000 So can you get long haul COVID from the vaccine? Either one of you can take that.

01:06:55.640 I would, I would say, I don't see how that could happen pathophysiologically. So I think

01:07:01.600 what pathophysiologically happens, pathophysiologically, what happens in the body,

01:07:06.400 when people have more prolonged symptoms, is one, two things. One is that the virus can go

01:07:12.280 everywhere. It'll never stay in your body, like a retrovirus, like HIV, because it can't go into

01:07:17.260 your DNA. Eventually, it'll go away. But when it goes everywhere, you can, it'll take you a while for

01:07:22.260 you to feel better. The second reason is you have what's called an innate inflammatory response,

01:07:28.820 not adaptive immunity, where you make immune cells calmly against the virus that you see,

01:07:34.080 you have this something called innate immunity, where you make a very massive response, because

01:07:37.900 you're trying to fight everything in sight, it's not specific. And that's why we give steroids in

01:07:42.920 the hospital for calming down really severe COVID, we're trying to fight the immune response that's

01:07:48.020 hurting our lungs. So I think it happens with severe COVID. And I think it happens with natural

01:07:54.660 infection. But I can't see biologically, why would happen with producing adaptive immunity from a

01:08:01.080 vaccine. Okay. I want to get this quick call in first, before we go to break, because I think this

01:08:05.920 is a good one. This is number one, Carol in Michigan, who's got a quick question about Moderna versus

01:08:12.140 J&J. Go ahead, Carol. Yeah, I was not going to get a vaccination, but family pressure made me get

01:08:18.880 one. So I agreed to one and I got the Moderna. And even the pharmacist told me I was 80 to 85%

01:08:25.480 coverage. You know, Johnson Johnson is 66%. But now everyone's saying I need a second one. And I'm

01:08:31.540 saying I don't. So where am I on that? Thoughts on that, docs? I don't think you need a third one. Did

01:08:38.400 you just get one Moderna? No, she just she just had one Moderna. And she doesn't know she thinks

01:08:43.180 she's better covered right now than she would have been if she just had the one J&J, which wouldn't

01:08:48.620 require a second shot. She wants to know why should she get the second Moderna? This is such an excellent

01:08:53.380 question. I would say, I don't think we have data on this, because I will tell you that the Moderna,

01:08:58.480 the data that we have, and it was just two weeks ago from the CDC, MMWR, comparing the three vaccines

01:09:03.620 looked at you had a 93% protection from hospitalization with Moderna, 88% with Pfizer,

01:09:09.600 and 71% with one dose of the Johnson and Johnson. But it was two doses in Moderna. So I do think it

01:09:15.700 with the data we have is for two doses. I think you need the two doses, but that's the data we have.

01:09:20.840 What about that, though? Because I had Pfizer, which now I'm regretting. I feel like, damn,

01:09:25.700 I should have gotten Moderna. So should I remember after I got my first dose, I was like,

01:09:31.000 I think I'm just about the same as people who got J&J right now. So I realize I'm all for upping my,

01:09:39.320 you know, my immunity. So I had my second dose. But, you know, she doesn't have a terrible point

01:09:44.020 of like, if you're kind of hesitant, like, why don't we have more of like, okay, at least get

01:09:49.500 one jab here in the United States? It's like two jabs or you suck.

01:09:52.520 I have an explanation. If we had gotten our transmission down by like other places did

01:10:02.860 with getting vaccinated better, in my opinion, we wouldn't have all the circulating virus. It's

01:10:07.880 like really clear. We have a lot of circulating virus. So even after two doses of Pfizer, I'm

01:10:12.340 more susceptible if I go to a place with lots of virus to a breakthrough infection. But I don't

01:10:17.180 think I'm susceptible to severe disease than if it was calm and it was low rates of transmission.

01:10:22.900 So if we've gotten it all down, one dose would have been enough. But it's like, it's like this

01:10:27.400 happened with polio. You got to keep the rates down. And we have high rates in this country still,

01:10:32.640 not everywhere, not in California, but some places.

01:10:35.760 Okay, that makes sense. So since it's still everywhere, we're just, we're going to be more

01:10:41.100 susceptible to it. And the double dose is still a better deal. Though I'll ask you about that when

01:10:45.560 it comes to kids and one dose in just a bit. Okay, I'm going to squeeze in a quick break. Today,

01:10:49.880 I'm joined by Dr. Monica Gandhi, Professor of Medicine at the University of California,

01:10:53.620 San Francisco, and Martin Kulldorff, Professor of Medicine at Harvard University. Up next,

01:10:58.000 we're going to discuss what to expect when the FDA gives the emergency authorization for the vaccine

01:11:01.680 in kids as young as five. Give us a call with your questions. The boards lighten up. You could

01:11:05.820 still get in. 833-44-MEGYN. That's 833-446-3496.

01:11:15.560 Welcome back to the Megan Kelly Show. Joined today by Monica Gandhi, Professor of Medicine

01:11:20.020 at the University of California at San Fran, and Martin Kulldorff, Professor of Medicine at Harvard.

01:11:25.220 We're taking your calls during the rest of this show on COVID. If you've got questions or comments,

01:11:29.640 call us on that topic. 833-44-MEGYN. 833-446-3496. So let's just talk about vaccines for five to

01:11:38.280 11-year-olds because Pfizer has just released its, it's just released an update saying that it tested

01:11:44.080 that group, 2,000 plus kids, and they found the response to be robust of the antibodies.

01:11:50.800 And they've now submitted to the FDA for an emergency use authorization for that age group.

01:11:56.120 So for parents who really want it for that age group, they're very happy. For parents like me,

01:11:59.880 who are a little less excited about the vaccine for my littles, unlike for myself, which I got it,

01:12:05.700 I don't know. I'm worried they're going to force it on me as soon as they, as soon as they move past

01:12:09.240 emergency authorization to the permanent. And I don't want anybody to force me to do anything with

01:12:12.760 my kid. I want it to be between me and my pediatrician. Let me ask you about that because

01:12:17.380 we just talked about in our earlier hour how the LA public schools now are mandating that the 12-year-olds

01:12:23.860 and older get the vaccine or they're expelled. They're expelled. And Dr. Vinay Prasad, who's been

01:12:30.380 on the show, he has a powerful op-out out in US News and World Report saying, that's insane.

01:12:35.960 I'm saying that this is just, there are still some questions around giving adolescents two doses

01:12:41.360 versus one. There's the rare but real risk of myocarditis in some small portion and saying there

01:12:48.460 are such, such terrible consequences in forcing kids out of school. They've got to be factored into

01:12:55.420 this lunacy of you take two doses or you're expelled. Let me start with you on that one, Dr.

01:13:01.400 Kaldor, for your thoughts. Dr. Prasad, for older people, it's a no-brainer to get the vaccine. But

01:13:07.780 whenever we have a new vaccine, we don't know about adverse reactions until about two or three years

01:13:13.920 after it comes on the market. And of course, children can be very different and more sensitive

01:13:19.900 to vaccines than an adult. So what's key here is that while anybody can get the disease,

01:13:27.240 including children, anybody can get infected, the risk of mortality, there's a more than a

01:13:34.080 thousandfold difference between the old and the young. So for older people, COVID is more serious,

01:13:40.160 more fatal than the anion influenza. But for children, it's the opposite. It's less dangerous

01:13:46.540 for them than the anion influenza. So we have here a disease that for children has minuscule risks.

01:13:55.560 And we have a vaccine where the risk can also be very small, but we don't know the exact magnitude.

01:14:02.320 So it's not at all clear that there is a benefit to risk ratio that's above one here for children.

01:14:10.420 So I think we should not vaccinate children. If we look at it from the longer term perspective,

01:14:20.760 when this is endemic, the reason that we have so much problem is because we have so many people

01:14:27.140 that are susceptible because it's a new virus. And then it's very deadly to older people. So that's

01:14:33.040 why we have this problem. If we look five, 10 years down the road, the adults always are going to have

01:14:39.720 been exposed at some point. So that's susceptible population will not be there. Of course, when

01:14:45.960 you're born and newborn, you will not, you will not have the immunity because you haven't been exposed

01:14:52.040 yet. But most children, most people are going to be exposed at a very young age where this is not a

01:14:59.680 serious disease. So it would be very, very natural to have COVID-19 sort of take the same path endemically

01:15:07.220 as the previous four coronaviruses that we live with on a daily basis that causes the cold in some

01:15:14.620 people now and then.

01:15:15.540 When you say children shouldn't be vaccinated, what age group are you talking about?

01:15:19.900 Zero to 18.

01:15:21.640 Wow. I mean, you're in the minority on that. I would say, unfortunately, because I don't want to

01:15:28.380 vaccinate my young ones. I really don't. For the very reasons you stated, but I know he's,

01:15:33.780 that's not where we're going, Dr. Gandhi. I mean, already Dr. Fauci said he thinks it should be

01:15:39.160 mandatory even for the littles. And once we get this approval from Pfizer, if it becomes permanent,

01:15:46.000 you tell me whether you think this is going to be a mandated thing for even five-year-olds at some

01:15:50.080 point in the next 12 months.

01:15:51.620 I think this is a really difficult one. Actually, I really do. I agree with Dr. Koldorf. There's no

01:15:57.040 question that children are less at risk. No question. And in fact, we have really hurt them in this

01:16:02.380 country by keeping them out of school. And I'm so grateful that we're back in school now in fall

01:16:06.800 2021. It is something we'll have to look back and have a national reconciliation with ourselves that

01:16:12.540 we restricted in-person learning, especially in blue states. So I'll never get over it, actually.

01:16:20.080 And you spoke up against it at the time, just so the audience knows. You wrote a very-

01:16:24.380 Yeah. I'll never deviate from that position, even though people yell at me a lot on that, too.

01:16:29.800 We kept children out of school, and that was the most important thing for them,

01:16:33.800 to protect others. Now, okay. So then going back to that question of protecting others,

01:16:40.400 you're right. The real reason for children to get vaccinated is actually to protect others.

01:16:45.080 And the reason that it's important to protect others is there is multi-generational households.

01:16:52.160 They are around older people. And I will just explain to you that there are many vaccines that

01:16:57.740 we give children that are not for because children are severely at risk. It's to protect others. So

01:17:02.980 pertussis, mumps, measles, rubella, and diphtheria all are childhood diseases that children can get very

01:17:09.880 sick. Pneumococcus and anemophilus influenzae, children actually are really taking it to protect

01:17:16.000 others. So there really is a longstanding practice of this across the world. But you have to make sure

01:17:25.860 it's safe. So I agree that the safety is paramount because the safety concerns for children have to be

01:17:32.360 very high if you're asking them to do something to protect others. And I will tell you that I have a

01:17:37.820 13 and 11 year old. I'll be very like handed on the air. I'm a 13 and 11 year old. So right in

01:17:43.120 between the 13 year old only qualified for the 30 microgram dose. And he, I delayed his time between

01:17:50.660 doses. I said that publicly because I was worried about the myocarditis. And, and I gave it seven to

01:17:58.060 eight weeks because there's so much less myocarditis in places that spaced out the dosing. The 11 year

01:18:03.220 old, there was no way it was going to give a 30 microgram dose because he's teeny. And

01:18:07.420 because of that, I will wait for the 10 microgram dose. And I will, I will, I'm really feeling

01:18:13.240 better that it's a smaller dose and then I'll watch for the safety too. But please know that

01:18:18.580 we've done this before in society and we really do want to protect everyone that are, that is older

01:18:23.420 too by our own immunity. That's fascinating to know, but I confess I hadn't really paid attention

01:18:28.380 to the microgram dosage. I just kind of thought it was the same. Okay. I want to get a couple of

01:18:32.940 listener questions in. Um, okay. You know what? Let's go here because I hear this from a lot of

01:18:39.140 women. This is Tammy in Texas, caller number seven, uh, who's got a 21 year old daughter.

01:18:44.880 Tammy, tell us your question. Uh, yes, I have a 21 year old daughter. Of course she's around,

01:18:50.500 you know, all the young girls now. Um, some are getting the vaccine. Some are not. All of them

01:18:57.160 are still concerned about getting pregnant in the future. Yeah. I hear this from so many women.

01:19:02.280 They're worried it's going to affect fertility. I hear from men too, from young, young men is,

01:19:06.500 is there, I mean, what's the truth? Is there any evidence that the vaccine does something to the

01:19:11.180 ovaries or something that could affect fertility in the short or longterm? There really is no evidence.

01:19:18.380 And, and I would like to say something about that fertility question. So there is no evidence of it.

01:19:23.240 Um, but I will say that this is how I think of vaccine safety. Actually, a lot of your side

01:19:28.900 effects will reoccur early on or very, very late. And what occurs very, very late is if, for example,

01:19:35.660 you have a live vaccine, which this is not. And live vaccines like measles can very rarely

01:19:41.740 seroconvert. And then like very in the future, 60 years later, you can get some severe side effects.

01:19:47.380 So the things that happen later, usually from live vaccines, this is not a live vaccine.

01:19:51.260 This is a vaccine where you produce, you get a little bit of genetic material that makes you

01:19:57.620 produce the protein, the spike protein of the virus. And then you raise an immune response

01:20:02.800 against it. And both the genetic material and the spike protein go away. They don't go and like

01:20:07.900 hang out in your ovaries or hurt them or spike them. I know that word spike, but they really don't

01:20:12.300 because they get degraded very quickly. So I don't, I don't think there's a biological reason why

01:20:17.080 you could have infertility. And truly, this is one of the reasons why you really should not

01:20:21.960 consult Dr. Google for possible risks on, you know, the vaccines and so on. And I know people

01:20:27.660 don't trust the mainstream media and I, I get you, I trust me, I get you. But when it comes to health,

01:20:33.280 I agree. Yeah. We've actually, public health has been very problematic too. Public health has been

01:20:37.940 very problematic. They have put a lot of lockdowns, they've put up people's businesses at stake,

01:20:43.760 their livelihoods at stake, mass mandates, um, when they should be lifted. I mean, of course we have

01:20:48.780 a concern about public health. I completely agree why people are upset. That's another thing we're

01:20:53.300 going to have to take a long, hard look at after this is over. Michael in Texas, number six has got a

01:20:57.640 good question. Uh, we'll give this one to you, Dr. Kaldorf. Go ahead, Michael. Yes. Thanks. Uh,

01:21:03.280 Megan, we talked, you talked about it and everybody was talking about it this spring,

01:21:08.040 uh, herd immunity, herd immunity. When we get to herd immunity, we'll have a handle on this thing.

01:21:13.960 I haven't heard a peep about herd immunity in months. When are we there? Or is that concept no

01:21:20.600 longer valid? Because this thing is taking on a political life and science is no longer valid in the

01:21:26.840 reasoning and coming to decisions on how we move forward. Good question. Martin?

01:21:33.080 Uh, so first of all, herd immunity is not a strategy. It's just, uh, established scientific

01:21:37.660 phenomena, yes, like gravity. And, uh, uh, herd immunity is the end of this pandemic. So once we

01:21:44.020 reach herd immunity, that's when we are in the endemic stage, states. Uh, so, um, when we will reach

01:21:51.420 herd immunity, well, when a large part of the population has already had, uh, the disease,

01:21:56.920 that's when we reach herd immunity. Now there was a hope with the vaccines that, uh, the vaccines

01:22:03.380 could contribute to, to that. Uh, but what we have found now, and there was a study of the Qatar that

01:22:09.560 was, is, is, uh, very good to, to see what is, uh, uh, uh, how long does the protection last?

01:22:16.780 So that showed that for severe disease and death, the vaccine had a very good protection,

01:22:23.880 at least six months up in the nineties, a percent protection, which is good. So it's not a hundred

01:22:28.520 percent, but it's very good. On the other hand, the protection against symptomatic disease

01:22:34.820 wanes rather quickly within, uh, three months or so. So it goes gradually down. So we, we now know that,

01:22:42.260 and that's sort of disappointing that, uh, while the vaccines are very good at preventing death and

01:22:47.820 serious disease, it's not doing a great job at, uh, preventing, uh, symptomatic disease or

01:22:53.660 transmission. And we saw also that from, uh, from Iceland because it's already unique countries in

01:22:58.940 the small island in the middle of the Atlantic, and they have managed to keep, uh, COVID out quite

01:23:04.820 successfully for a long time, uh, before they got vaccinated. And they have one of the highest

01:23:10.140 vaccination rates, uh, in the world, but still after, uh, having so many people vaccinated this,

01:23:16.660 the COVID was still, uh, circulating among the population, even though most are vaccinated.

01:23:23.080 So even if you're vaccinated, uh, you're still going to get, uh, COVID and then you will have

01:23:28.880 natural immunity, which is stronger, but, uh, you will still get COVID and you might get it very

01:23:34.760 mildly or you might have feel bad for a week. But the key thing is with, with the vaccine,

01:23:40.140 vaccines, you are less, uh, likely to die. Uh, we're not thinking about it in terms of,

01:23:44.980 of herd immunity really anymore. Delta, it seems like kind of changed that. What about, uh, that

01:23:50.480 leads us to the discussion of boosters and Bill in New York, caller number eight, uh, has got a

01:23:54.840 question about, about that. Go ahead, Bill. Oh, thanks, uh, Megan. Uh, my question is this,

01:24:00.980 in speaking with my doctor, uh, the, he recommends, I had them there, but he recommends getting the

01:24:07.520 booster as soon as that's improved, uh, approved of getting the booster. How old are you?

01:24:14.380 Oh, I should have said that. Yeah. I'm in my mid seventies and I do have preexisting conditions.

01:24:20.160 Okay. So, so yeah, that's important. You're right. And, uh, but he recommends that and he also

01:24:27.580 recommends the flu shot, but he said I should wait at least three weeks in between the flu shot

01:24:33.180 and the booster shot, uh, because of side effect, because you want to identify where the side effects

01:24:40.260 are coming from, or do these doctors that you have as a guest think that we, uh, you shouldn't get the,

01:24:47.820 the, the flu shot along with the booster shot. Okay. Dr. Gandhi, can you speak to quickly the flu

01:24:54.900 versus COVID, but also generally boosters because, you know, somebody like me, 50 years old, I don't think

01:25:02.420 I need a booster, but somebody, you know, like our, like our friend Bill here in his mid seventies,

01:25:07.300 I can see very different answer. Yeah, I completely agree with you on that latter point that, um,

01:25:12.840 you know, where do we give boosters and, um, uh, third shots, um, or even higher doses for older

01:25:19.380 people. It goes back to those immunology, um, concepts and immunocompromised people, because

01:25:24.920 you really want to deepen the ability for your cells to go into memory and stay there for the rest of

01:25:31.280 your life. So, um, I do think that you definitely should get a booster. And I, uh, said everyone

01:25:36.880 over 65 or who's immunocompromised, I really believe in it harder for me to justify it for,

01:25:42.520 uh, a young, healthy 50 year old, um, putting myself, um, and, uh, you know, um, healthcare

01:25:50.300 workers, if they're around a lot of people, it may be helpful if they, because again, you're going to

01:25:54.700 get more of a breakthrough infection if you're around a lot of people have COVID. So if you're in a high

01:25:59.060 incidence area, you're intubating people with COVID, that's a good time to get a booster. But

01:26:03.760 I actually, infectious disease doctors just write long notes in a row. Um, so, uh, going back to,

01:26:10.000 um, the question of flu and COVID, you can get them together. There was a study that showed you

01:26:15.160 can get them both at once. Oh, you can get both, both vaccines together. Sorry. Yeah, sorry.

01:26:19.880 That sounds like a nightmare. Yeah, but both vaccines at once. Um, but I also advise my parents to do

01:26:26.260 what you just said. Um, and your doctor said, I got, I asked them, they're 87 and 80. I asked

01:26:31.060 them to get the flu shot first and a COVID shot three weeks later, because I'm more worried about

01:26:36.440 flu right now, um, than I am about COVID even for them because they're in a low surplating area.

01:26:42.080 Okay. That's helpful. All right. We're going to squeeze in a quick break and be right back with

01:26:45.780 our two doctors, Monica Gandhi and Martin Kaldorf. Don't go away. We're still taking your calls at

01:26:50.620 833-44-MEGYN 833-446-3496. Welcome back to the Megan Kelly show joined now by Dr. Monica Gandhi

01:27:02.600 and Dr. Martin Kaldorf. Dr. Gandhi, let me ask you about just a follow-up. I was talking to my

01:27:07.760 producer in the break and we were both into this micro dosing situation for our kids and the 10

01:27:12.300 milligrams. How do we get that? How do you get that? I mean, I just thought it was sort of like,

01:27:16.360 okay, I got to go to Pfizer and get a shot in the arm. I didn't know I had any say over the

01:27:21.180 milligrams. The 30 microgram dose is what, um, was authorized and approved for adults. And then

01:27:27.080 they use that same dose for 12 to 15 year olds. I think they took a shortcut. Um, and so that's

01:27:32.940 why I spaced out my child's doses of 13 and then the FDA and enough people got mad at them, frankly,

01:27:39.360 and said, Hey, you, you don't, we don't get the same dose of like Tylenol for someone who's little

01:27:44.520 and someone who's bigger. So they actually deliberately was kind of without fanfare,

01:27:48.240 um, brought down their dosing from, they were going to test a 10 and a 20 microgram dose of

01:27:53.820 five to 11 year olds. And they brought it down to 10 micrograms. So that gives me more comfort

01:27:59.080 that for five to 11, it's going to be safer. And even when my, because I think by the time it comes

01:28:04.240 up, my child's going to be 12, I'm still going to do the 10 microgram dose because he's tiny.

01:28:08.420 He's so tiny.

01:28:09.440 Oh, so we can weigh in on that. I mean, I guess you, you probably can't do that at the CVS. Can

01:28:13.340 you probably got to go to the PD, like you said, I'm going to talk to the pediatrician and I know

01:28:17.840 enough about medicine to say, you know, um, there, we do weight-based dosing and we never did this.

01:28:24.000 So I'm going to use a little dose for a little person and, and my, my personal is bigger. So

01:28:28.660 bigger dose for a bigger person. It just makes sense.

01:28:30.720 And the rest of us can just play this segment. You just bring a little copy of this on your phone.

01:28:34.240 Yes. I agree.

01:28:37.560 Exactly. Okay. Um, I want to go to caller number two and I have, I understand your concerns.

01:28:44.140 Exactly. Eric from New York. Can you voice what your concerns are?

01:28:47.640 Yeah, I was, I went to, uh, Oregon to a wedding over the weekend and came back. My wife was diagnosed

01:28:57.660 with, um, COVID yesterday morning. I mean, she got, she's a teacher. We got back, uh, Wednesday

01:29:06.380 night. She went in yesterday morning and, um, sharing off. She had the virus. And the problem

01:29:15.200 that I have here is we go through these things in the airport where they say, Oh, say 60 part,

01:29:21.460 wear your mask all over the place. Then they cram you into an airplane where they, um, put you

01:29:27.520 in like sardines. And then when we came back, she gets the, uh, thing about contact tracing.

01:29:36.500 And she's like, well, I, who knows all the people that you, uh, came into contact with in Oregon and

01:29:44.340 Washington. But just cutting to the chase, your, your concern is you don't know if all these

01:29:48.180 restrictions even, even work. And that's, that's a question you get from both sides, Dr. Kaldorf,

01:29:53.580 like, right. The people who want the restrictions gone say they don't work anyway. The people

01:29:57.500 who want COVID gone say they're not tight enough and they're not working. So what's your thought

01:30:02.500 on whether the restrictions work? Well, first of all, vaccines for older

01:30:06.920 people are very important. Uh, so that saves life. Uh, the other thing that saves lives are,

01:30:12.320 uh, uh, monotonal antibodies, uh, uh, for people, uh, who have become sick, uh, if you get it early

01:30:18.760 enough. So those are two things that are very important that saves lives. When it comes to masks,

01:30:23.560 for example, there has been no studies, uh, uh, showing that it, it has any efficacy for

01:30:29.440 children, children. And if we look, for example, at Sweden, uh, during the first wave in the spring

01:30:35.260 of 2020, there were 1.8 million children ages one to 15 who were in school, uh, that whole time,

01:30:42.820 uh, without, uh, social distancing, without masks, without any testing and exactly zero of them died

01:30:49.460 from COVID. There were only a few hospitalizations. So, uh, there's, there's no evidence that the mask

01:30:54.960 works. And there's evidence that if you don't wear a mask, children are not at risk. And the teachers

01:30:59.040 were not at higher risk than the average of other professions. There are, for adults, there are two

01:31:04.160 studies, two randomized studies, uh, on mask. One was from Denmark, uh, which showed that mask had

01:31:11.340 either no or a very minimal efficacy. It was not statistically significant. Uh, the other one was a

01:31:18.520 study from Bangladesh, which also showed that, uh, the mask had, uh, between, uh, uh, no to very

01:31:25.600 limited efficacy. Uh, the point estimate was 9% reduction with the confidence interval of 95%

01:31:32.900 confidence between zero and 18. So that means that, uh, at, uh, at worst, the masks do nothing. And at

01:31:40.120 best if they provide some very minimal, uh, protection, um, at the same time, if you have a 9%

01:31:48.100 reduction, I mean, you would, you would never approve a vaccine with a 9% reduction. And if

01:31:52.860 you have a 9% reduction, it basically means that, uh, you might delay the time a little bit when you

01:31:57.440 get, uh, get, uh, get the disease, but it's not. Well, that's why it may make sense if you're in

01:32:02.780 the elderly population, but it's so infuriating to see it nonstop on our kids. Can I just ask you

01:32:07.780 realistically, Dr. Gandhi, and I know that you advocated for no masks before Delta, um, on the

01:32:13.620 kids, but like realistically, you tell me in a state like mine, Connecticut, which is blue and

01:32:18.660 they're very, very hardcore, all the restrictions. When are, when are these kids going to be able to

01:32:23.780 take off these masks? Yeah, I mean, this is a great question. So, you know, the, the evidence

01:32:29.580 for masks is more on like the physical properties of masks, um, physical science as opposed to these

01:32:36.020 studies. I agree. These RCTs, that may not be the best way to study masks. And it's true that

01:32:42.220 before Delta, I thought we were getting into very low cases and I was wrong and Delta brought it up.

01:32:47.820 So, um, so I think right now masks are fine on children. I really do. And my children are in

01:32:53.680 masks, but we need an end point because if you don't do an end point, what you've just said to

01:32:58.040 someone is their life will never go back to normal. We're just not agreeing to that. We're

01:33:02.000 not, we're just not agreeing to that. So what is it though? Cause they won't say it. They won't say

01:33:05.840 it what it is. So I have a very clear, like put it out there metric, you know, when the

01:33:12.560 hospitalizations come down to there's, that means there's very low circulating virus. I wouldn't go

01:33:16.720 on cases cause it depends on how much you test. And if we come down to five to 10, over a hundred

01:33:21.540 thousand, you're there in Connecticut. I'm there in California. We're in New York, they're in New

01:33:25.440 York. Um, then you take the mask and come off children because you're no longer protecting

01:33:29.840 adults. Can you say it again? Say what was the, what were the numbers again?

01:33:32.560 I, I have a rate, which is five to 10 over a hundred thousand hospitalizations for COVID. Why?

01:33:39.580 Because, and I wrote this with Ashish John in April, but because the flu, the flu hospitalizations

01:33:45.860 are 20 to 40 over a hundred thousand. And, um, but COVID is much more diluted than the flu for

01:33:52.060 adults. So that's where we brought it down to five to 10, a much lower rate where life gets to go

01:33:57.320 back to normal, even for children. I'm going to leave it there. Cause we're up against a heartbreak,

01:34:02.360 but this is so fascinating. Thank you both for your expertise and all of your information. And

01:34:06.740 thanks to our listeners for calling in with such good questions tomorrow on the program, Glenn Beck.

01:34:11.820 Don't forget to download the show on Apple, Pandora, Stitcher, also youtube.com slash Megan

01:34:16.260 Kelly. If you want to watch it, thanks so much. See you tomorrow.

01:34:32.540 And if you want to watch it.

01:34:37.320 Bye-bye.

01:34:38.520 Bye-bye.

01:34:43.460 Bye-bye.

01:34:53.180 Bye-bye.

01:34:55.780 Bye-bye.

The Megyn Kelly Show - September 30, 2021

COVID Child Abuse, Vaccine Truth and Lebron James Backlash with Karol Markowicz, Dr. Monica Gandhi and Dr. Martin Kulldorff ｜ Ep. 171

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