The latest on COVID, the Olympics, and Bill O'Reilly's latest accuser, Juliette Huddy of Fox News joins me to talk about it all. Plus, we hear from Dr. Joel Zinsberg, a Yale Law School graduate, on the latest on vaccines and the Olympics.
00:01:50.200And why does he say we need to get back to reason and calm and that this is sort of an invented crisis?
00:01:58.380Well, we just heard, like literally a minute ago, that the CDC, according to the New York Times, is about to recommend that, quote, some vaccinated people wear masks indoors again.
00:02:08.240We're already seeing it happen in several cities, thus removing a large incentive that a lot of people had in getting the vaccine.
00:02:17.220I know people say, well, if you get it, you get it to save your life.
00:02:19.900Well, most of us don't fear losing our lives from COVID.
00:02:22.620If you're not over the age of 65, it's not really a reasonable fear.
00:02:25.440And really, if you're not over the age of, you know, 75, the percentages are very low of people who actually die from COVID.
00:02:31.940So why? So why should they get vaccinated?
00:02:34.200Well, you have to find a way to incentivize them.
00:02:35.800Maybe maybe they don't have to wear the mask anymore.
00:02:37.500They don't have to worry about that nonsense.
00:02:38.880That's something most anti-vax people hate.
00:03:19.500And then we will talk to her about Bill O'Reilly's original accuser.
00:03:23.960This woman, Andrea Macris, has finally broken her silence after 17 years.
00:03:28.120And the war between those two is back on in earnest.
00:03:31.800Juliette brought her own allegations against Bill O'Reilly and received a settlement from Fox News and just happened that she was coming on today.
00:03:37.920So she's the perfect person to ask about it.
00:04:28.480OK, so we're starting to see it already.
00:04:31.220Indoor mask mandates returning, even for the vaccinated in Los Angeles, now in Las Vegas, in St. Louis, and maybe again soon in New York City.
00:04:51.560Well, because we know that the Delta variant is susceptible to the vaccines.
00:04:57.400Every study seems to indicate that the authorized vaccines protect against Delta as well as they protect against the other variants.
00:05:07.080We also know that Delta is no more deadly than the other variants.
00:05:10.800In other words, if you come down with COVID, you're no more likely to end up in the hospital or to die than the other variants.
00:05:17.060So what we have is a situation where the people who are most vulnerable, that is the elderly people over 65, are extremely well protected.
00:05:28.960You have nearly all of them have gotten at least one shot, which provides significant protection, although not as much as the two-shot regimen.
00:05:36.840And 80% have received the full two-shot regimen.
00:05:40.400So those folks who have far and away the most severe cases and account for more than 80% of deaths, those people are protected.
00:05:48.600Let me just stop you right there just to reiterate those numbers.
00:05:51.30080% of the COVID deaths have been in the senior population.
00:05:56.40080% of seniors today have received the full vaccination.
00:06:01.080And 90% have received at least one shot.
00:06:05.380So your point is that population, the most vulnerable population, is extremely well protected right now versus where we were a year ago.
00:06:17.500And moreover, if you look at the population that's eligible for vaccination, people over age 12, you've got nearly 60% of those people are fully vaccinated.
00:06:28.620And about two-thirds of them have received a single injection.
00:06:32.720So those people are reasonably well protected.
00:06:37.980So, you know, the only people who are not getting at the moment full protection from the vaccines are people 12 and under.
00:06:46.220And the reality is that age 18 and less form a tiny, minuscule percentage of people who've been severely affected by COVID.
00:06:56.700If you are a healthy young person, COVID, while I'm not suggesting you want to get COVID, you certainly would want to avoid getting it, does not prevent the kind of severe health threat that it poses to older people or to people with medical comorbidities.
00:07:14.300So what you're seeing, you know, what you're seeing is that the folks who are most vulnerable are protected.
00:07:20.940The folks who remain vulnerable are probably not going to get severe disease.
00:07:27.540And you're also seeing that people are starting to react to the rising cases that are due to the Delta variant.
00:07:34.000And the rate of vaccinations has started to tick up again.
00:07:39.060That's what you would expect, that people respond to the risk.
00:07:41.600So what you mean there is that in the cities where we're seeing a rise in cases and hospitalizations, you're also seeing a rise in vaccination rates.
00:07:53.800And that's been, you know, frankly, an issue from the start, that most of the modeling, most of the people who were pushing lockdowns didn't want to account for people's individual behaviors in response to the risk of infectious disease.
00:08:09.440And economists have known for a very long time that people actually do respond to incentives.
00:08:14.160They do respond to risk and multiple studies have shown that people began to alter their behavior by staying home, by avoiding crowded areas, by not going to stores that would involve close contact before any kind of lockdowns were instituted.
00:08:34.660And that, you know, all the studies have indicated, multiple studies have indicated that when you compare the impact of individual behavior with the impact of lockdowns, the individual behavior happened first and was far more important.
00:09:01.660But the problem is the people doing the modeling from the start have been somewhat alarmist.
00:09:07.320They overpredicted the number of deaths.
00:09:09.380They overpredicted the number of hospitalizations and raised this specter of hospitals being overburdened and collapsing because they failed to account for the individual behaviors.
00:09:20.940But you're now starting to see that again in response to Delta variants.
00:09:25.320Cities and localities that have high rates are responding.
00:09:29.780Hospitals are responding by changing their allocation of resources.
00:09:36.020So what you saw, for example, early in the spring surge in New York City at my hospital, Mount Sinai, is that they were ingenious.
00:09:45.140They found nooks and crannies to put beds.
00:09:51.180They cut back on elective surgeries and elective procedures, all independent of what the government was doing.
00:10:00.300And that's sort of what you're starting to see now in response to Delta.
00:10:03.740But the good news is, and the reason I said don't panic, the sky is not falling, is because if you look at the curves of numbers of cases, numbers of hospitalizations, numbers of deaths,
00:10:17.020those all peaked in January of this year, and it's been a steady downhill course since then.
00:10:24.640What you're seeing now in July is an uptick in the number of cases, but the number of hospitalization increasing has been much more modest.
00:10:35.560And the number of deaths is basically plateauing.
00:10:38.520It's not continuing to decline, but you're not seeing a big jump there.
00:10:41.980And, you know, we're three, four weeks into this Delta surge.
00:10:45.880So when I look at the number of deaths, to pick up on what you said, we're basically at 269 as of today.
00:10:54.620That's basically where we are, about 269 people dying a day in America from this.
00:11:00.720About a year ago, it was a thousand deaths a day, a thousand.
00:12:37.640And the interesting thing, of course, is that with flu, that's a disease that's affects sort of a broader range of people.
00:12:46.800You know, at the outset of COVID, no one really knew exactly who was going to which age groups, which demographics were going to be affected.
00:12:56.700But it became clear pretty quickly that younger age groups were not impacted the way they are with many other diseases.
00:13:04.320So that's why I was alluding to earlier when I said that younger people don't seem to be impacted in the way they do for other diseases.
00:13:15.080So if you look at age 18 and below, you have something like 350 deaths, which, granted, a horrible thing if you're one of those people or the family of one of those people.
00:13:26.500But you're talking about, you know, 70 million people in the population fall into that age group more or less.
00:13:34.320And to have 350 deaths, you know, is not an outrageous thing.
00:13:40.960We'd like to prevent those, but it's not like, you know, you're talking about less than a tenth of a percent of COVID deaths are in that younger age group where it was.
00:13:49.820Yeah, that's total, total over the course of the pandemic versus.
00:13:53.820Well, versus 81 percent and versus 81 percent for the 65 and older.
00:13:58.520And just to look at the numbers, it says that, indeed, according to the CDC, among children, the mortality risk for COVID is lower than it is from the flu.
00:14:08.860And that they say it's less than you have less risk if you're under age 18 of dying from COVID than you do of dying from pneumonia, of dying in a car crash, of dying from drowning, of dying from heart disease, of dying from suicide, of dying from homicide, of dying from a birth defect.
00:14:26.840We could go on. And yet still we're at a situation here where we're looking at not just mandatory vaccine or mandatory mask mandates returning, returning to cities, but schools.
00:14:39.060You know, we're we're moving to Connecticut. The Connecticut governor still has a mask mandate in place for all children inside schools.
00:14:47.080And so when our kids go back in September, they're going to have to wear masks.
00:14:51.120Our little kids in the single digits and, you know, 10 and 11.
00:14:58.240There was a great piece in New York magazine last week saying we we the kids are safe.
00:15:03.220They always have been. This is theater.
00:15:05.900Well, look, if you look there, there have been some studies published in the New England Journal coming out of Sweden and coming out of Iceland.
00:15:15.100And, you know, Sweden was was criticized consistently throughout this pandemic for not taking enough actions, not requiring lockdowns, not requiring masks in schools.
00:15:26.960But what they found is they had one point eight million kids in schools over several months period and not a single kid died.
00:15:35.880And and the risk of of infection and death for the teachers was no higher in school than it was in multiple other occupations.
00:15:45.520So the schools were not where it was a problem. And same thing was seen in Iceland.
00:15:50.520You did not have high rates of of disease and deaths.
00:15:56.840It's certainly severe illnesses in among school children or among the school population.
00:16:02.260And we've seen out here. I mean, every indication is that schools are not where transmission would be taking place and that the cases that are being seen in schools are cases that were probably brought in from the outside.
00:16:19.100People were infected outside the school, came to school.
00:16:22.120And that's where the diagnosis took place.
00:16:24.140That's not where the disease is transmission.
00:16:26.140Why don't our health officials sound like you? Right.
00:16:29.640Why does the American Academy of Pediatrics say the kids should all be masked if they're over age two, even if you have a kid who you've chosen to have vaccinated, they should be masked.
00:16:39.920And, you know, Fauci taking it beyond children, saying, yeah, you know what?
00:16:44.220We're we're seriously looking at back at mandatory masks coming back, even for the vaccinated.
00:16:51.440We think that's where our public health officials are going to land.
00:16:53.820And that and even though a former Biden administration, his former covid-19 response coordinator, the guy just left the office, said we're going to look at more vaccine mandates.
00:17:38.960All the approved vaccine, excuse me, authorized vaccines are seem to protect against the transmission of disease quite well, better than any influenza vaccine we've had in recent years.
00:17:53.740Moreover, in the cases where people have so-called breakthrough infections, where they become infected after being vaccinated.
00:18:01.900The cases are nearly uniformly very mild.
00:18:06.760The viral titers those people have are lower, so they present less of a risk to transmit it to others.
00:18:13.300So it doesn't really make much sense for people who are vaccinated to have to wear masks.
00:18:24.980Can we talk about the effectiveness of the vaccines?
00:18:27.180I know you're saying the vaccines are effective against Delta.
00:18:29.540They are. And they're not increasing the death rate as some feared it would.
00:18:36.480But there was a headline in The New York Times this week saying that Pfizer has proven to be less effective versus Delta, that the effective rate was 95 percent in preventing systematic infection.
00:18:49.320And now it's down to 84 percent after four to six months looking at what's happened, I guess, in Israel.
00:18:56.080They said that that Pfizer's vaccine was just 39 percent effective in preventing infection in that country in late June and early July compared to 95 percent effective in January to April.
00:19:08.940So should you be worried in particular if you have Pfizer, if the Pfizer vaccine about Delta?
00:19:15.800Well, look, the Pfizer vaccine is the most well studied because it forms the largest part of the vaccines that have been administered.
00:19:26.900And it's also very well studied because the country of Israel undertook with Pfizer to study their results very early on.
00:19:35.660And they have a terrific database there and they're following it very closely.
00:19:42.480I mean, what seems clear is that the two dose vaccines, the Pfizer and Moderna, probably are not as effective after a single dose for Delta as they are against other variants.
00:19:54.760But they still remain highly effective after the second dose, the figure you cited coming out of Israel is very preliminary data.
00:20:04.140So it's hard to know if that's going to hold up.
00:20:09.040But every indication here is that the vaccines remain highly effective.
00:20:13.920And the thing, the effectiveness that you have to be looking at is not so much necessarily the interfering with disease transmission, but how effective is it against coming down with a severe case of COVID that requires hospitalization or ICU admission, intubation or potentially leading to death?
00:20:36.060And there it seems to be that the vaccines remain highly effective.
00:20:39.620So we're not seeing the surge in the hospitalizations like we did last spring and in the winter.
00:20:46.380You're seeing surges in isolated areas.
00:20:49.600Look, you know, right from the start, I referred to this before, the modeling that was was undertaken by many epidemiologists was severely flawed because they didn't account for individual responses.
00:21:02.760So, you know, the Imperial College of London model back in March of 2020 was predicting the hospitals would be overrun by April, that we'd have 2.2 million deaths by July.
00:21:15.900And yet, if you really read their study, we saw they acknowledged that, oh, you know, they didn't, they acknowledged that they didn't take into account individual responses and they knew that they would be involved.
00:21:30.320So we're not seeing, we didn't see widespread hospital problems then.
00:21:35.740You saw isolated instances here in New York, for example, we saw isolated instances, but you also saw hospitals like, like mine, Mount Sinai, that very, very readily and do a terrific job.
00:23:51.780So what do you make of the of the number of people in the country who have chosen not to get vaccinated and the increasing push to shame them?
00:24:01.560I would try to speak to them, convince them.
00:24:05.560And I think what you've seen over time is that more and more people who in these original polling had said they had doubts about it, have moved over to get vaccinated.
00:24:17.640But, you know, there's been a lot of study of what makes people vaccine hesitant, what what goes into their decision, whether it be vaccinated or not.
00:24:29.180And the and the considerations fall into two major areas.
00:24:33.280The first is that people are want to know and they're concerned about vaccine safety.
00:24:38.540And the second area is they want to know how effective the vaccines, what's the need for it?
00:24:46.620And, you know, unfortunately, we had about six months leading up to the election of highly politicized responses to the vaccine development.
00:24:58.120So you have, you know, the Biden campaign, Kamala Harris coming out and casting doubt on how safe the vaccine would be, how effective it would be.
00:25:09.460Kamala Harris said she wouldn't take a vaccine that was developed under President Trump.
00:25:14.380Andrew Cuomo, or the governor here in New York, was saying he wouldn't trust a vaccine under developed under Trump.
00:25:22.660He was going to have state authorities look into it, form their own conclusion.
00:25:27.480The same but state authorities, by the way, that, you know, did the magnificent policy move of sending positive COVID cases back into nursing homes.
00:25:36.960These were going to be the people who were going to do a better job at assessing than the FDA.
00:25:43.060Chuck Schumer, our senator from New York, cast out on the FDA saying he didn't think they were independent.
00:25:50.140Every time President Trump came out and said, we're moving along, we're going to have a vaccine by the end of the year, the media came down on him, calling him a nut job, another choice.
00:26:03.940But that's so, you know, and you even had science coming on board, you know, many official scientific publications and societies, but unfortunately, we're casting doubt.
00:26:17.080There was an editorial in JAMA, the Journal of the American Medical Association, that was casting doubt on the FDA's independence and whether a vaccine developed under the Trump administration would be safe.
00:26:28.980So when you have this constellation of political figures, media figures, medical and scientific figures all casting doubt, it's not a huge surprise that people had some sort of doubts about safety.
00:26:43.820Then all of a sudden, as soon as the election was over, vaccines were the greatest thing since sliced bread for those folks.
00:26:52.020I mean, this has been one of my own lamentations about the state of our media and now, in the broader sense, the medical community, community, because it's it's all been so politicized.
00:27:02.220People don't know where to turn for valid, trustworthy information on public health.
00:27:08.500Fauci has been he's reversed himself so many times that he's not trusted anymore, certainly not by the right.
00:27:15.620The CDC, same the WHO, with that ridiculous report, clearing China of, you know, having releases from a lab.
00:27:26.300People are they distrust these organizations now and even the greater scientific community.
00:27:31.500I think things like, you know, what's happening with trans kids and that, you know, you just affirm and then you perform surgery without questioning.
00:27:38.500People are starting to distrust doctors in a way they didn't before because they see them as more politically driven, more agenda driven and less driven by just pure data, you know, that's coming back to them in terms of public health.
00:27:52.400And the media, too, the way they hated Trump, every every story that might reflect negatively on him, including covid was played to the nth degree and people would start discounting the information.
00:28:05.700All of these deteriorations in trust of these institutions that used to be at least higher, more highly regarded than they are today, have real life consequences.
00:28:15.200And now those same groups look around and say, I don't understand.
00:28:19.460Why don't the people trust us when we tell them they should take the vaccines during the pandemic?
00:28:24.880And over the summer, you had groups that said any kind of public gathering of more than minimal amounts of people is dangerous, risks that just cannot be taken.
00:28:40.420And then as soon as there were George Floyd demonstrations, not only were those risks tolerable, but you had large groups of medical professionals signing on to letters, encouraging people to participate in those demonstrations.
00:28:56.020Now, you know, one can, you know, I'm not suggesting that, you know, people shouldn't be allowed to demonstrate.
00:29:02.760I think they should and they should be able to exercise their First Amendment rights, but the medical risk had nothing to do with what your political views were.
00:29:11.460And that's unfortunately what it often became.
00:29:14.140And it's it's really galling for that same group of people, the media, the medical professionals to now turn around and say people who have vaccine hesitancy are a bunch of rubes whose lives must be dictated by us.
00:29:29.620You know, the elect, the elite, because they're too dumb to understand what's good for them.
00:29:34.180Right. It's like you spend your life deteriorating, the relationship, the trust.
00:29:40.140I don't know the respect that these people once had for you.
00:29:43.300And then it's the boy who cried wolf situation when when you really need them to trust you.
00:29:48.760They no longer do. And instead of trying to take some responsibility for that, what we're seeing is just more dismissal of these groups as just too stupid.
00:29:59.020And an urge for a harder hand of government, a heavier hand of government to step in.
00:30:05.560Right. Like what's going to need to happen is the officials in Vegas or the officials in St.
00:30:10.780Louis are going to have to show you what's good for you.
00:30:13.360And I don't know you tell me as a matter of public health whether that's going to work.
00:30:18.120I think people resist that. And obviously we want to try to avoid mandates if at all possible.
00:30:24.500And, you know, the good news here is that COVID is obviously a serious disease.
00:30:31.640It's killed over 600,000 people, but it is not Ebola.
00:30:37.100It is not a disease that kills half of the people that get infected.
00:30:42.060It doesn't you know, we one has to gauge the response that's necessary depending on how severe the illness is.
00:30:50.580And since we've now protected those who are most vulnerable, the push for mandates becomes less important than it was before.
00:31:00.060You know, the one area that I think still is potentially an area where we're going to have to resort to mandates are our medical professionals.
00:31:09.140And you're seeing that increasingly with hospitals around the country.
00:31:14.280The VA have just come out and suggested that their staff is going to have to be vaccinated for the next eight weeks.
00:31:22.600New York City has announced that staff at public hospitals are going to have to be vaccinated.
00:31:29.080This is an area where, you know, you're dealing with vulnerable patient populations.
00:31:33.140People who have cancer, people who have immunosuppressed for other reasons, the elderly who, you know, have all sorts of comorbidities.
00:31:42.140These people need to be protected against having becoming infected from the staff that's trying to treat them.
00:31:49.400So this is an area where you can argue that there is a case to be made for mandates as long as, you know, we allow people to opt out if there's a legitimate medical reason to opt out, if there's some other legitimate reason, or if we make some kind of effort to accommodate them, whether that means consistently wearing masks or undergoing frequent testing.
00:32:11.740But this is an area where mandates may make some sense.
00:32:16.740So thus far, what you've seen is that among medical professionals, physicians are highly vaccinated, you know, all well over 90 percent vaccinated.
00:32:25.740But unfortunately, it's less so among other medical professionals, including nurses, who are probably only about 60 percent or so vaccinated and other medical professionals even less.
00:32:36.740So, you know, when I have a relative who's in a nursing facility where they're with a lot of other people and they see staff every day, I'd like to have some assurance that the staff taking care of them is vaccinated.
00:32:53.740So what let me ask you about the vaccine themselves, because, you know, we've had we've had a lot of people within the African-American community, Latino community and amongst Republicans.
00:33:06.820Sure. Who say, I don't believe it is safe.
00:33:10.740You know, I know what the officials are saying, but I also have eyes and ears and can see that this is new.
00:33:18.100Obviously, by definition, there's been no long term studies because they just came up with it within the past year.
00:33:22.980And, you know, I'm young and relatively healthy and therefore I just don't think I want to do it.
00:33:28.400Right. That's that's what you hear from a lot of people.
00:33:31.000So do you worry about any of those things?
00:33:34.020Right. Like I confess I had some worries.
00:33:36.580I got vaccinated. My husband and I have Pfizer, but I have some worries and I my own worries were assuaged when I thought you've got such huge percentages of the population getting vaccinated.
00:33:47.840God forbid there is some massive downside to the vaccines that manifests five years from now.
00:33:53.940Those same people are going to solve it, because if they don't, you're going to have hundreds of millions of people affected around the globe with some horrible thing.
00:34:02.440I mean, they just it's just the way innovation works.
00:34:04.820But what is your thought and what is your message to people who have these concerns?
00:34:08.680I'm a surgeon. I got vaccinated as soon as I could.
00:34:13.120My wife is a physician. She got vaccinated as soon as she could.
00:34:16.680My daughter is almost 20. She got vaccinated as soon as she could.
00:34:20.300But I would I think it's it. This has been heavily studied.
00:34:24.380This the the original studies were quite large.
00:34:27.800And now you have an experience that's stretching over, say, nine months or more like about six, seven months with hundreds of millions of people having been vaccinated.
00:34:38.500And there's really no indication that there's any kind of widespread side effects.
00:34:44.360Sure. You know, you your arm hurts. Many people report they they get flu life symptoms the next day after the second shot.
00:34:52.700But you're not seeing, you know, with the exception of some extremely rare side effects, you're not seeing any widespread side effect that that should give people pause.
00:35:04.440You know, that doesn't mean that everyone's going to want to do it.
00:35:08.340And as long as we have a we protect the vulnerable and between the number of people who are vaccinated, the people who have natural immunity, we have a large group of people who are immune.
00:35:21.180We're probably going to do all right as a society.
00:35:24.640Nevertheless, I would still urge people to think it's safe.
00:35:28.680Don't believe what you heard during the election.
00:36:04.440And when they had the pause for 10, 11 days dealing with the blood clots in the brain situation, which, in fact, was really like a one in a million kind of complication.
00:36:16.920It wasn't clear that it was any more common than when if you were vaccinated versus getting the disease.
00:36:23.840There's background incidents in the population of this happening.
00:36:27.020That's, again, very rare, but, again, not so clearly lower, much lower than when we got the vaccine.
00:36:34.580Yet they added an abundance of overabundance of caution.
00:36:39.960And I think that crippled the Johnson & Johnson vaccine.
00:36:42.800And then, of course, they announced more recently that the Johnson & Johnson vaccine had some episodes of Guillain-Barre, which is a neurological condition, which is known to happen in many vaccines.
00:36:56.620So, again, you know, they did the right thing in terms of letting people know.
00:37:02.040But on the other hand, they've made it what could be a fabulous vaccine because it only requires a single shot.
00:37:09.600It doesn't require the specialized transportation and freezers that the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines require.
00:37:17.080They've made that into a vaccine that no one really seems to want to take, which is unfortunate.
00:37:22.280And people need to realize, too, that, you know, long COVID could be with you for a very long time and can really impact the quality of your life.
00:37:29.900And so you've got to weigh, you know, getting COVID is no walk in the park for a lot of people, even if you're young.
00:37:35.180Getting COVID is worse, is much worse than getting the vaccine.
00:37:39.320I think that that has not been hammered home enough.
00:37:42.020And I think we need more of the leaders in the community.
00:37:45.840And, you know, frankly, I think President Trump deserves tremendous credit for developing the vaccine.
00:37:53.000I think most of the country does not realize what an achievement it was to develop three new vaccines in under a year for a brand new disease.
00:38:09.240He deserves tremendous credit for that.
00:38:10.840But I think he could do a tremendous public service by coming out and promoting the vaccines, telling people that he that he got it, that it's safe, that you should get it, too.
00:38:21.200I think that would that would be extremely helpful.
00:38:23.740Yeah, the media said it would take a miracle for a vaccine as fast as Trump got it done.
00:38:28.580But, you know, and now everything's political.
00:38:30.920And so he doesn't really want to do something, I think, that's going to help Biden.
00:38:34.300And, you know, some Republicans are skeptical.
00:38:36.380So it's all about political messaging when you involve politicians.
00:38:39.120Last question, as the mother of three kids who are now 8, 10 and 11, they're not yet eligible for the vaccine, but my 11-year-old soon will be.
00:39:21.940No, I think that is something that parents are going to have to wrestle with on an individual basis.
00:39:29.080And, you know, the government now appears to be asking Pfizer and Moderna to increase the size of their trials, said that, in kids under 12.
00:39:40.980And, you know, to me, that indicates two things.
00:39:46.900And I think that's completely appropriate because whenever they approve something like this that's going to be administered on a mass scale,
00:39:53.420they have to balance the benefits and risks.
00:39:55.720And we know the risks are quite low in that age group.
00:39:59.580So you want to bend over backwards to make sure that, you know, that you're not going to expose kids to a risk of a vaccine when the risk of getting the actual disease is pretty low.
00:40:17.120Number two, it means that we're probably not going to see these vaccines approve for quite some time.
00:40:23.360I mean, Pfizer was predicting that they would have data on the 5 to 11-year-old group by the end of September.
00:40:31.180And then in the succeeding months, they'd have data on the other even younger age groups.
00:40:38.100That's probably going to be pushed back.
00:40:40.680And Moderna, it was talking about the end of 2021 or maybe 2022 is when they would have their data.
00:40:49.640If they have to expand their trials, that means that we're probably not going to see the data.
00:40:56.020They have to first complete the trials, present the data.
00:40:59.280Then the FDA has to go through the emergency use authorization process, which can take several weeks.
00:41:05.780So we're not going to see those very soon.
00:41:07.760Certainly not in time for the school year.
00:41:10.100So, you know, by that time, we'll probably know a lot more and we'll have a lot better data.
00:41:17.620But at the end of the day, it's going to be an individual decision with parents speaking to their pediatricians for their kids.
00:41:25.320Each kid may present a unique problem because there are some kids that have underlying medical problems that make them more susceptible to COVID.
00:41:33.400There are many other kids who don't have those problems, but may present certain circumstances, which would indicate the vaccine is or is not appropriate for them.
00:41:45.560Those are going to be decisions that parents are going to have to wrestle with.
00:41:49.360But it's going to be many months, I think, into the future.
00:41:53.860Yeah. Well, and in the meantime, they're going to be masking our kids as if that's necessary.
00:41:59.260It's just infuriating to so many parents.
00:42:01.060We're just kind of over this whole thing.
00:42:02.960But listen, Dr. Joel Zinberg, I appreciate you coming on and giving us the straight scoop.
00:42:07.940I mean, it's impressive that you have a J.D. and an M.D.
00:42:12.440You can understand the legal challenges that will come from these massive mandates if they if they do what the Biden administration official said they're going to do, you know, push the mandates at the city level, at the state level from your employer.
00:42:38.420And it got me thinking as a lawyer myself, could these are these employers allowed to access whatever government database has got my vaccination proof in it, too?
00:42:47.980Because when I went to CVS, you know, they they typed all that information in.
00:42:51.680And I wonder whether that's can the government snoop in that way?
00:42:55.300I mean, realistically, what kind of proof could they require of you that you're vaccinated?
00:42:58.860Well, I mean, this was an issue simply because around the world, people are talking about vaccine passports.
00:43:06.440Many of the European nations are starting their own programs to create credentials.
00:43:13.760Many of the airlines are interested in this.
00:43:15.900They don't want to allow people flying.
00:43:47.720But, you know, this is actually an area where if it becomes important that we have these sorts of credentials, that if it becomes necessary to travel, necessary to go into certain places, that the government, by promulgating standards that would be widely accepted, that would not lend themselves to counterfeiting, they could do a tremendous service.
00:44:15.100And I'm not saying the government should require, I'm saying the government should adopt the standards that a lot of different private groups are developing, you know, software makers and developers who are really good at this kind of stuff.
00:44:32.160And they are trying to gauge the market and develop their own thing.
00:44:36.220So IBM, for example, has a blockchain product that they're utilizing.
00:44:41.000So if the government can step in and say, these are the few products that we think are good, and we're proposing that if you're going to have this sort of credential, these are the standards we think would work, that would actually be a service as opposed to requiring it.
00:45:17.760Look, look, the hacker community, you know, if they want to know whether I got vaccinated or not, that's OK.
00:45:24.000There are probably a lot of other medical issues they'd like to know or financial issues about me or about you that would be of much more interest and much more damaging than whether or not I have this vaccine.
00:45:34.500Look, all they need to know is I was in college, I was dating a lacrosse player, and I just, that's all I'm going to say.
00:46:07.120But first, before we get to that, we're going to bring a feature to you called Asked and Answered, where we get after some of our listener mail.
00:46:14.280Steve Krakauer is our executive producer.
00:46:37.180You know, it's funny because a lot of my liberal friends are going through this.
00:46:42.240You know, I think it's affecting mostly liberals, like center left people, this sort of distancing.
00:46:49.980Because let's face it, you know, if you work at Fox News for 14 years, you probably already lost your hardcore, you know, far left friends.
00:47:03.000And that's kind of how I see it for you, too, Domi.
00:47:05.040It's like if your friends have drifted so far to the left that they no longer want to be with you, or frankly, that you no longer want to be with them, then that's the natural evolution of things, and you should accept that reality, right?
00:47:26.520And, look, I understand the way things are getting right now with, let's take COVID.
00:47:32.540You know, you've got the shamers out there, and then you've got people who are really more committed to freedom and individual choices and liberty.
00:47:38.700It's tough to get along on that issue.
00:47:41.020It's either you don't talk about it or you put things on pause.
00:47:45.320I can see how you couldn't reach common ground on that issue, the way the dialogue has emerged in our country.
00:47:51.860And we've seen a lot about, you know, that happening when it comes to woke and their constant judging of everybody versus people who don't see the world that way.
00:48:01.080Look, it's not bad to find your own posse, your own tribe that shares your worldview.
00:48:07.140But I would say to the extent possible, fight to hold on to people who don't as well, the ones who are reasonable, the ones who aren't so far away, and certainly the ones who aren't too judgy.
00:48:14.680Because it is good to be able to expose yourself to a variety of opinions, and it's just a reminder that there are so many good people in the world out there who are, you know, liberal if you're conservative, who are Republican if you're Democrat.
00:48:29.220It's, you know, it used to be this way where we could look at each other and see one of those hearts through their partisan jerseys.
00:48:37.280So, anyway, it's an individual assessment.
00:48:39.320I guess my bottom line is don't feel too bad because I do think the universe has a way of shaking things out the way they need to be.
00:48:45.220And the people who are really important to you, they won't leave, and you won't leave them.
00:48:54.240And anybody else who's got a thought or a question, you can email it to us at questions, plural, at devilmaycaremedia.com, or you can go on any of our social media and drop it in on our Insta or Facebook or Twitter.
00:49:09.160And any thoughts on the show, too, because I check those and often get fun guest suggestions or, I don't know, just feedback on the show, and I always love hearing from you.
00:50:20.460It just looks like a mascara tube, and it's white, and I'm telling you.
00:50:23.420It separates and lengthens your lashes like nobody's business, and it looks like you have false eyelashes on by the time you're done with it.
00:50:30.120Okay, well, I'm going to go to Sephora after we hang out.
00:50:32.880While we're on the subject of beauty, let's talk about the Olympics, because there's already been a couple of beauty dust-ups there.
00:50:40.220I actually want to get to the, there's breaking news right now about Simone Biles, but let's just table that for one second, because what's been in the news so far is the outfits, right?
00:50:48.840The German gymnasts are not happy with the little, I don't know, the little leotards that they put on the female athletes.
00:50:56.620And then outside of the Olympics, there's some Norway beach handball team that they don't like wearing the bikini, but I can't, I don't, all the women are basically saying they don't want to be dressed for sexuality, you know, for sexiness now.
00:51:13.480Okay, so I'm just going to ask you to bear with me.
00:51:16.380Well, first of all, as a 50-year-old who has never been an athlete, like I would like to trade with them for just one day to have their problems.
00:51:25.280If my butt looked like that, I'd be like, I want a thong.
00:51:33.180But in all seriousness, these women have fit, beautiful, healthy bodies, and surely they realize that and they know that.
00:51:41.460And I get it, though, because I don't know, Megan, when you were a reporter out in the field, you were mainly covering politics.
00:51:47.360So you probably weren't at too many events where there were a bunch of people behind you, you know, screaming, like, I remember being at my first Jacksonville Jaguars football game, covering it, and I'm out in the crowd.
00:51:57.920And all of a sudden, you know, I'm doing a live shot, and some guy reaches and grabs my bum, and he grabbed a little bit more than my bum, too.
00:52:04.760You know, and that was sort of the beginning of this perpetual situation throughout my career where you'd have some guys just do perverted things.
00:52:12.100And I remember, and I'm sure that you do, too, when we were at Fox, our good old days at Fox, when they had that, I don't even want to say what the website was, but some pervert created some website where essentially he would just have us on all day long, and he would try to get shots of the women on the anchor sets.
00:52:33.040That and crossing and uncrossing our legs.
00:52:36.700And occasionally, you know, he would get a little shot, and then he would blow it up and post it all over the place, and it was degrading and humiliating.
00:52:43.240And the reason I'm bringing this up is because, you know, these women have a job to do.