The Megyn Kelly Show - COVID Truth on Fauci, Vaccines, and Masks, with Sen. Rand Paul, David Zweig, and Dr. Vinay Prasad

00:00:00.560 Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations.

00:00:12.160 Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show.

00:00:15.560 Oh, we have a lot to go over today.

00:00:18.160 Today's show is all about COVID.

00:00:20.680 And I have to tell you, I've been enjoying the prep for today's show,

00:00:23.100 just reviewing the latest that's out there.

00:00:24.800 The information that people are being given is so unreliable.

00:00:30.000 And today, we'll change that here.

00:00:32.460 We're going to dive into the truth about masks, vaccines, boosters,

00:00:36.180 and uncovering the hypocrisy and the lies.

00:00:40.140 I'm excited because in just a bit, we're going to have Rand Paul here.

00:00:43.160 And we're going to talk to him about the latest documents that just got released,

00:00:46.420 putting the lie to Fauci's testimony and that contentious back and forth he had with Rand Paul,

00:00:51.360 where he claimed, we never funded gain-of-function research in China.

00:00:55.400 That's the research that makes a virus, like a bat coronavirus, more transmissible,

00:01:00.860 more dangerous to humans.

00:01:02.040 We never did that.

00:01:03.360 Well, that's not true.

00:01:05.100 Rand Paul's been saying it.

00:01:06.760 And now we know, based on these documents, that The Intercept just got.

00:01:10.660 It's all there, black and white.

00:01:12.160 We're going to get into that in a minute.

00:01:13.540 Listen, today there's a lot happening with COVID.

00:01:15.280 President Biden is just a few hours.

00:01:16.660 He's going to give a speech that's expected to lay out a plan to push broad vaccination

00:01:21.620 and mask mandates.

00:01:24.300 He wants pressure on private businesses, states, and schools to enact stricter vaccination and

00:01:30.620 testing and, again, masking.

00:01:33.260 Los Angeles is going to vote this afternoon to potentially require, require, okay, this is

00:01:37.160 a public school system, require the vaccine for students 12 and up.

00:01:40.880 Young, healthy children forced to take a vaccine by a school system they have to go to.

00:01:47.160 If you live in the district, your parents work there, it's not so easy to pick up and

00:01:50.820 move.

00:01:51.300 And now they're going to have to take the vaccine against a virus that realistically poses

00:01:56.140 very little risk to them.

00:01:57.980 We weren't requiring this with the flu.

00:02:00.000 The flu is far more dangerous.

00:02:01.160 It has been to children.

00:02:02.120 We'll get into that.

00:02:03.260 You can't say that.

00:02:04.000 But guess what?

00:02:04.440 I did.

00:02:05.280 And I'm going to have a doctor on later to back me up.

00:02:07.200 Uh, so what would you do if you were a Los Angeles teacher or a parent?

00:02:11.360 And guess why you're having to do it?

00:02:12.540 Yeah.

00:02:12.840 Because of the teachers unions.

00:02:14.620 Plus, we've got first day of school this week everywhere having smiles between friends.

00:02:19.280 Not, not really.

00:02:20.020 No, they're non-existent because they're masked.

00:02:24.180 Well, today we're going to be joined by a journalist.

00:02:26.080 I've been trying to get on the show for weeks.

00:02:28.100 His name is David Zweig, and he has written a great article, a bunch of them in New York

00:02:33.720 Magazine saying, we owe our children and our families the truth about masks.

00:02:38.400 He did a deep dive into a major study by the CDC.

00:02:42.900 Okay.

00:02:43.560 90,000 children were studied.

00:02:45.980 And guess what?

00:02:46.880 It showed there is no real value to masks.

00:02:49.560 Why wasn't that everywhere?

00:02:50.960 Right?

00:02:51.380 Why wasn't that publicized anywhere?

00:02:52.940 You know, your friends are trying to shame you for not being pro mask mandates in schools.

00:02:57.080 Well, we'll talk about what you're going to say to them with David in just a bit.

00:03:02.080 It's unbelievable.

00:03:02.920 The CDC is also under fire for now coordinating mask guidance with the teachers union.

00:03:08.140 It wasn't going to mandate them for kids.

00:03:10.580 The CDC was not going to mandate them for kids in schools until the teachers unions, who

00:03:15.260 are all about getting more and more dues paying members on board and pushing other weird far

00:03:22.500 left agendas that have nothing to do with teachers unions like Medicare for all and cop reform.

00:03:28.540 They got that put into the CDC guidance, and we're going to discuss that in a minute.

00:03:33.460 And then we'll get to Senator Rand Paul.

00:03:34.720 As I mentioned, he's calling for now the DOJ to investigate Dr. Fauci and whether he lied

00:03:39.280 before Congress repeatedly about whether America knowingly funded the dangerous coronavirus

00:03:44.220 research at that Wuhan lab.

00:03:45.880 He's standing by.

00:03:46.880 But before we get to him, a quick look back at how the lab leak theory went from conspiracy

00:03:53.300 that you couldn't talk about to what appears to be true and a possible cover up.

00:03:58.100 Our pneumonia has hit central China's Wuhan city.

00:04:01.660 Authorities have reported 27 cases in total.

00:04:04.680 December 2019, a pneumonia-type virus begins to spread in China.

00:04:10.140 Within weeks, the entire city is sealed off.

00:04:12.900 Drastic measures to halt the spread of that deadly virus.

00:04:16.440 Wuhan, China, ground zero for the outbreak now under lockdown.

00:04:20.580 Initial reports focused on a wet market as the origin of the virus.

00:04:24.760 Most of the patients are reported to have worked at a local seafood market.

00:04:28.620 They said there was no reason to suspect the virus was transmitted through humans.

00:04:33.520 A storyline pushed heavily by the Chinese government and by the World Health Organization.

00:04:39.000 But critics take notice of the market's proximity to the Wuhan Institute of Virology,

00:04:44.120 a world-leading center for research on back coronaviruses.

00:04:48.180 We also know that just a few miles away from that food market is China's only

00:04:52.860 biosafety level four super laboratory that researches human infectious diseases.

00:04:58.620 In February 2020, Senator Tom Cotton said the U.S. government was investigating

00:05:03.300 whether the virus came from the lab.

00:05:05.960 The media responded by mocking him, calling him a fringe conspiracy theorist,

00:05:10.860 playing a dangerous game.

00:05:12.560 This question about the Wuhan lab, we know that it's been debunked that this virus was

00:05:17.880 man-made or modified or anything like that.

00:05:20.280 All the while, the World Health Organization continued to give cover to China.

00:05:24.320 This past March, it concluded in a joint report with the Chinese

00:05:27.420 that the lab leak hypothesis was extremely unlikely, despite WHO investigators spending just hours

00:05:34.840 on the ground in China without access to records, samples or key personnel.

00:05:39.760 Were there Chinese government minders in the room every time you were asking questions?

00:05:46.860 There were Ministry of Foreign Affairs staff in the room throughout our stay.

00:05:51.500 Absolutely.

00:05:51.840 They were there to make sure everything went smoothly from the China side.

00:05:55.780 In May, under pressure, President Biden ordered intel officials to redouble efforts to investigate

00:06:01.200 the theory.

00:06:01.940 We have to have access.

00:06:03.760 The world has to have access.

00:06:05.060 Senator Rand Paul says this fight is not just about China.

00:06:08.420 It's also about how the scientists who study potentially deadly viruses are funded by the U.S.

00:06:14.140 government.

00:06:14.420 Dr. Fauci, knowing that it is a crime to lie to Congress, do you wish to retract your statement

00:06:20.580 where you claim that the NIH never funded gain-of-function research in Wuhan?

00:06:25.100 Senator Paul, I have never lied before the Congress.

00:06:28.640 But now, Fauci's denial is coming under new scrutiny.

00:06:32.560 This week, The Intercept published documents reportedly showing the agency Fauci leads knowingly funded

00:06:39.260 research into bat coronaviruses that were deliberately manipulated to the huge known risk of mankind.

00:06:47.160 All the evidence is pointing that it came from the lab and there will be responsibility for

00:06:51.940 those who funded the lab, including yourself.

00:06:54.360 I totally resent the lie that you are now propagating.

00:06:58.480 What we're alleging is that gain-of-function research was going on in that lab and NIH funded

00:07:03.600 it.

00:07:03.940 That is not...

00:07:04.540 Get it away from it.

00:07:05.320 And if anybody is lying here, Senator, it is you.

00:07:10.020 Joining me now, Senator Rand Paul.

00:07:11.920 Senator, great to be with you again.

00:07:13.620 Thank you for coming on.

00:07:14.720 Thanks, Megan.

00:07:15.180 Thanks for having me.

00:07:15.960 That is unbelievable.

00:07:17.440 I mean, what happened, we've known it, but now we see the supporting documentation and

00:07:23.000 it was worse than we knew.

00:07:25.060 The NIH and Fauci's organization within the NIH, the NIAID, was offering grants, was funding

00:07:32.620 grants, not just approving them, they were funding, this group by this guy, Peter Daszak,

00:07:37.720 EcoHealth Alliance.

00:07:38.660 And that group was absolutely doing bat coronavirus research in Wuhan at the lab.

00:07:45.140 And it was gain-of-function research to try to take these bat coronaviruses and make them

00:07:50.300 more transmissible, more dangerous to humans.

00:07:53.640 They did it for, you know, supposedly good reasons to try to investigate the consequences

00:07:59.560 to public health.

00:08:00.720 But that was happening.

00:08:02.680 And that's exactly what Fauci told you was a lie in that exchange.

00:08:06.540 You know, I was kind of surprised by his answer.

00:08:08.240 I actually thought he would back down a little bit and say, well, in retrospect, we made an

00:08:12.880 error.

00:08:13.440 But he's actually doubled down.

00:08:14.880 And really, his opinion hasn't changed since 2012, when he said that, yes, a scientist could

00:08:21.960 become infected.

00:08:23.100 Yes, a pandemic could occur coming from a lab.

00:08:26.220 But even if it happened, the research would be worth it.

00:08:29.120 Even after 4 million people have died, in retrospect, he's still unwilling to look back and say,

00:08:35.120 my goodness, 4 million people died.

00:08:36.920 If this came from an experiment in the lab, shouldn't we do something differently?

00:08:41.400 The latest material that came from the Intercept, the Freedom of Information Act, actually shows

00:08:47.520 now that the funding goes on through 2025.

00:08:50.440 So I passed an amendment about a month ago, unanimously, to say no more funding to Wuhan

00:08:56.220 Institute from the U.S. taxpayer.

00:08:57.980 It hasn't been signed into law, but it passed unanimously in the U.S. Senate.

00:09:01.960 And yet, Dr. Fauci, Peter Dezak, they're still spending money with the Wuhan lab.

00:09:06.260 They have not learned a thing.

00:09:08.160 I mean, it's chilling to think about the fact that this may have come from this Wuhan lab

00:09:13.600 and that it may have been funded in part, to some extent, by the American government,

00:09:18.760 that the man we've been looking to and trusting as our chief authority on all things COVID for

00:09:25.520 the past 18, 19 months, Dr. Fauci, may have been part of the group that approved the very

00:09:32.360 project that ultimately endangered billions of people and cost 4 million lives so far.

00:09:37.940 I mean, it's that's what we that's what it looks like.

00:09:42.460 It's it looks like Peter Daszak's group was funding, if not the exact research that led

00:09:47.600 to COVID, that this this branch of coronavirus, then one that was very close to it.

00:09:54.600 Yeah.

00:09:54.700 And this is sort of this game that Dr.

00:09:56.980 Fauci plays.

00:09:58.500 In the end, he responds and says, well, the virus in question is molecularly so different

00:10:03.660 from COVID, it couldn't have been the COVID-19.

00:10:06.360 But we've never alleged that if it were COVID-19, everybody would know that it's a virus using

00:10:12.320 gain of function techniques that was made to be more transmissible in humans.

00:10:17.580 That's what gain of function research is.

00:10:19.620 But not one interviewer when he goes on to mainstream TV, which is all he does, mainstream

00:10:24.560 left wing TV.

00:10:25.540 They yuck it up, they laugh, they court all they think how hilarious these conspiracy theories

00:10:31.080 are, but never once does someone ask him, why is this not gain of function research?

00:10:37.140 What they were doing was taking the SARS virus, which is a coronavirus.

00:10:41.020 This caused a pandemic in 2004.

00:10:44.140 It was very deadly, 15 percent mortality, but not very transmissible.

00:10:49.080 So you have a very deadly virus that doesn't easily infect people.

00:10:52.680 It doesn't go very far.

00:10:54.160 Now, how smart would it be to take a very deadly virus that's not very transmissible and add

00:10:58.980 different S-protein genes to it to see if you could make it more transmissible?

00:11:03.800 So in one of the experiments, they got eight brand new viruses from a cave, hunting around

00:11:08.560 in a cave in South China.

00:11:10.080 They bring it, they take the genes for the S-protein on the unknown viruses, and they combine

00:11:15.040 it with the SARS backbone genome, and then they reverse the transcription to make a virus.

00:11:22.680 And lo of all, they found at least two out of the eight were transmissible to humans.

00:11:26.580 So they have created something that doesn't exist in nature.

00:11:29.800 And in fact, their argument that, oh, we can use this to study how to make vaccines, it's

00:11:34.140 not how we make vaccines now.

00:11:35.760 We don't make vaccines based on a novel virus that doesn't occur in nature.

00:11:40.300 We actually have the ability, which is incredible technology.

00:11:43.220 And I think ultimately, history will judge the development of the vaccine as one of the

00:11:47.440 most incredible scientific developments in such a short period of time.

00:11:51.260 But we can take a brand new virus that's infecting people and making them sick, and we can sequence

00:11:56.760 its genome.

00:11:58.040 They have automated technology.

00:11:59.420 They could do this within days.

00:12:01.160 They can develop a vaccine within days to an existing pathogen.

00:12:04.720 There's no reason to create pathogens to study for vaccines anymore.

00:12:09.020 The technology has gone beyond that.

00:12:10.780 And so I'm calling not only for an end to the funding in China, I don't think we should

00:12:15.180 be creating these super viruses in the United States either, because I think there's a potential

00:12:20.020 that we create something that is so terrible that it may cause, you know, incredibly more

00:12:26.140 harm than this one even did.

00:12:27.820 That's a great point.

00:12:28.640 And that's the sort of the sequencing that happened in China is important because while

00:12:35.940 Fauci denies gain-of-function research was done with any U.S. money, these documents

00:12:41.300 obtained by The Intercept contain several critical details about the research happening in Wuhan

00:12:46.320 by our guys with American money, including key experimental work with humanized mice conducted

00:12:56.060 at the lab in Wuhan Center.

00:12:58.240 All right.

00:12:58.340 So they were taking mice with more human characteristics to see if they could infect them with this terrible

00:13:04.460 COVID version, not COVID-19, but a terrible version of COVID.

00:13:08.200 And literally, literally, there was an article in The Wall Street Journal, an op-ed by two

00:13:12.780 really smart guys, Stephen Quay and Richard Muller, a couple of months ago saying this.

00:13:18.160 Here's what happened.

00:13:18.820 We actually looked at the genome of COVID-19, and we are telling you that optimization of this

00:13:24.320 virus has happened before it got to us.

00:13:26.240 It suggests a long period of adaptation that predated the spread, not of the virus that they

00:13:31.540 were working on under Daszak, but of COVID-19 itself.

00:13:35.260 They said, science knows of only one way this could be achieved, simulated natural evolution,

00:13:39.760 growing the virus on human cells until the optimum is achieved.

00:13:43.020 That's precisely what is done in gain-of-function research.

00:13:46.500 Mice that are genetically modified to have the same coronavirus receptor as humans, called

00:13:51.420 humanized mice, are repeatedly exposed to the virus to encourage adaptation.

00:13:56.940 That is what they are seeing in COVID-19, and it's what these documents show we were funding

00:14:04.280 the experiments on in these other COVID viruses that Dr. Fauci takes no responsibility for.

00:14:10.660 Right.

00:14:11.220 And so, well, we'll never know for certain that it came from the lab.

00:14:14.120 Here's the evidence for it.

00:14:16.360 Number one, they've studied 80,000 animals in those wet markets, and not one of them has

00:14:21.080 COVID.

00:14:21.420 The other thing is, is we take COVID-19 that's available in humans and being transmitted human

00:14:28.320 to human, and then they try to reinfect bats, and they find that COVID-19 is more adapted

00:14:34.260 for humans than bats.

00:14:35.580 So if it came from bats through an intermediate host, there should be some infectivity back

00:14:41.120 to either a host or to bats, and they find that it's more adapted to humans, which makes

00:14:46.660 people very, very suspicious that this was pre-adapted.

00:14:50.020 Some of the scientists have said this didn't evolve.

00:14:52.700 It was pre-adapted to be successful in humans, and that's very, very worrisome.

00:14:58.180 And even the possibility of that should give us pause.

00:15:01.220 But Dr. Fauci was asked a month ago by Senator Kennedy and committee, do you trust the Chinese?

00:15:06.280 And he said, well, that's where the bat viruses are.

00:15:09.320 It would be malpractice not to go there.

00:15:11.900 Well, it's one thing to study the bat viruses.

00:15:14.800 It's another to trust the Chinese Communist Party.

00:15:17.320 Some of the virology labs are populated with people directly from the military.

00:15:23.000 Now, while I don't think this was released on purpose as a bioweapon, I think they do

00:15:27.360 study bioweapons.

00:15:28.700 And I think that the Chinese communists have shown themselves not to be trustworthy.

00:15:32.560 But the fact that Dr. Fauci still considers themselves to be trustworthy, that he's still

00:15:37.040 funding this Chinese lab, shows him to be unfit to be in any position of authority.

00:15:41.580 So that's it exactly that we now we have yet another look by our intel community at how

00:15:46.740 this thing originated.

00:15:47.700 And it was utterly useless.

00:15:48.900 It was rushed.

00:15:50.300 It was basically another look at the first failed attempt.

00:15:53.060 And they came up with absolutely no useful conclusions whatsoever.

00:15:56.080 But you tell me, because my takeaway on all of this is here's the bottom line.

00:15:59.520 But the NIH, which is, you know, the organization that oversees Fauci's organization, his group

00:16:05.760 was women.

00:16:06.280 They were collaborating.

00:16:07.680 This is what Josh Rogan has said of The Washington Post, who's been doing great work on this.

00:16:10.920 They were collaborating on very risky research with a Chinese lab that has zero transparency

00:16:16.540 and zero accountability during this crisis.

00:16:19.460 And no one in a position of power has been willing to address or even acknowledge that risk.

00:16:25.840 In fact, Dr. Fauci appears to be arguing that the system worked and it most clearly did not.

00:16:32.860 Yeah, and this is one among a number of judgment errors that he's made.

00:16:37.800 The other incredible error, and this can't be underestimated how big an error this is,

00:16:42.360 is to discount natural immunity.

00:16:44.380 This is immunity you get if you've gotten COVID and survived.

00:16:47.740 There's about 40 million people officially who have gotten COVID.

00:16:50.920 But when you do antibody studies to see how many people got it and didn't know they had it,

00:16:55.260 there's over 100 million people now in America who have had it through natural immunity.

00:17:00.060 But he wants to pay no attention to that.

00:17:02.280 So if you're a 15-year-old, you know, he wants them to mask up.

00:17:05.420 But if you're a 15-year-old had COVID a couple of months ago, he still wants them to be vaccinated.

00:17:10.060 There's no sense behind that.

00:17:11.500 All of the studies are now showing that if you get COVID naturally,

00:17:15.100 your immunity is at least as good as a vaccine.

00:17:18.240 In fact, some studies are showing it might even be better.

00:17:21.040 Now, that's not an encouragement to get it.

00:17:22.660 It's a deadly disease.

00:17:23.540 You don't want COVID, particularly for those at risk.

00:17:26.680 But it is an argument for, I mean, my goodness, we have thousands of hospital workers.

00:17:31.640 When there was no vaccine who risked their lives every day, I was there with them,

00:17:35.880 taking care of patients as COVID was going through the roof.

00:17:38.780 The ones who got COVID and survived, don't they deserve to be given the credit for having had the

00:17:44.520 disease instead of saying, oh, we're going to now fire you from the hospital unless you get

00:17:48.180 vaccinated. Vaccine mandates that ignore natural immunity, ignore the science, are unscientific and

00:17:54.980 should not be adhered to or promulgated by the government.

00:17:58.960 It's crazy. People are losing their jobs, their travel rights, all sorts of access rights who have

00:18:04.880 had COVID, who have natural immunity just because they don't want to take the vaccine, too.

00:18:09.920 It goes against everything we know, even if we're not doctors like you are, about how one develops

00:18:14.760 immunities. It's the reason why I can take care of my kids who have terrible stomach viruses and

00:18:19.560 they can breathe all over me and I don't get sick because I'm 50 and I've had a lifetime worth of

00:18:25.080 exposure to these viruses that they're just now coming into. And we don't ignore that when it comes to

00:18:29.920 a parent taking care of a child, but we ignore it here when we're actually firing people and taking away

00:18:35.040 their liberty for not getting these vaccinations. It's unfair.

00:18:38.240 Dr. Fauci is also risking lives every day with misinformation on the mask. So if you're 80 years old and your

00:18:44.040 spouse has COVID and you're staying with them, and this is what happens across America, you're staying

00:18:48.680 with your spouse to take care of them. You're intimately with them. You're helping them get food

00:18:53.280 and clothing. You're taking care of your spouse. If you wear a cloth mask, you're putting yourself at

00:18:58.080 risk because there's no value in a cloth mask. So by telling people that all masks are the same and

00:19:03.280 that they all work, he's really putting people at home. He should be telling people, number one, if you're

00:19:08.340 dealing with someone at home, wear a N95 mask. But number two, he should also be telling people that

00:19:14.700 there is a treatment. The IV monoclonal antibodies can save your life. They're now approved even for

00:19:21.420 a spouse that's not yet sick or positive. They take it and it's an 85% reduction in hospitalization or

00:19:27.920 death. But instead, Dr. Fauci utilizes all of his 20 interviews a day to talk about putting masks on

00:19:35.040 that don't work, bad information, misinformation. And I've yet to see an interview where he's telling

00:19:40.140 people there's a window of time. And if you miss it, you can't get the treatment. Monoclonal

00:19:44.500 antibodies, they don't give them the first day, but they also don't give them the last day before

00:19:48.680 you're on the ventilator. There's a window of time as you're getting sicker, you're eligible.

00:19:52.980 But if you miss that window of time and you get admitted to the hospital, they won't give you the

00:19:56.660 monoclonal antibodies. Florida is doing a lot with that now, I know. And on the mask one,

00:20:00.740 we're going to cover that a little bit later about the local authorities say it helps,

00:20:05.040 it helps when it comes to adults. But with respect to children, there's just there's no data to

00:20:11.580 support the use of masks in schools. And in fact, the CDC's own study suggests of 80,000 kids that

00:20:18.940 they don't do anything, that they're actually not valuable at all to children in schools. But I'll

00:20:23.060 get into that in one second with my next guest. But I want to ask you, what should happen to Dr.

00:20:26.980 Fauci now? Because I mean, this it seems clear from these documents that he did mislead Congress.

00:20:31.720 He might have been trying to pull some sort of semantic trick on you. But you tell me what should

00:20:36.580 the DOJ be doing? What should Congress be doing? And should he be fired? Absolutely, he should be

00:20:41.860 fired immediately. We have referred him for a criminal referral to the Department of Justice

00:20:46.180 because lying to Congress is a felony punishable after five years. But at the very least, he should

00:20:51.380 be fired because the misinformation he is giving out is threatening lives. Number one, on masks that don't

00:20:57.480 work. But number two, on not promoting the one treatment that everybody in America needs to know

00:21:02.140 about. And this is IV monoclonal antibodies. And so, yes, absolutely, he should be fired.

00:21:07.940 So do you think there will be any follow up, you know, given that obviously it's a Democratic

00:21:11.380 administration that is siding with Fauci? Will there be any follow up for this?

00:21:16.380 I don't think that there'll be anything done by the Department of Justice. I think there'll be

00:21:19.980 politicized and there won't won't be any judgment. As far as him being fired, we know that

00:21:24.960 where everybody was once listening and thinking he was an objective scientist,

00:21:28.760 now that they know that there was a cover up on the Wuhan thing, that eight of his scientists

00:21:33.440 immediately told him it looked like it came from a lab. And then within days, he's emailing all night

00:21:38.900 and within days they have meetings and everybody now is on the same page. They've changed their mind

00:21:44.200 as to whether or not this came from a lab. This looks to me very much like a cover up, but he's lost a

00:21:49.300 great deal of credibility. But now he's involved with telling us whether we can play football,

00:21:53.340 whether we can be in the park, whether baseball should be played. He's become so incredibly full

00:21:58.680 of himself that his dictates now are seen as merely the ramblings of somebody who's an elitist,

00:22:05.300 who doesn't care about individual liberty, and really probably has a conflict of interest when

00:22:11.100 it comes to where the where the virus actually originated. They I know he calls he says, I am science

00:22:18.400 just to your point about the media. CNN's Jim Sciutto interviewed Fauci hours after the Intercept

00:22:24.080 report broke and didn't ask him a single question about it. You know what he asked him to do to tee

00:22:29.980 off on Ron DeSantis. It's just a shameful statement of how our media handles this kind of thing today.

00:22:36.560 And today you think everybody wanted would want to get to the bottom of what our government did when it

00:22:41.620 comes to funding this kind of research that led to a lot of deaths. But I got to ask you this before I

00:22:46.340 let you go, because I know that you wrote this op ed in early August and on Fox saying, you know,

00:22:50.880 resist, resist Mac mask mandates, choose freedom. I have people write me all the time saying how,

00:22:57.240 you know, my my kid can't go to school if I don't put the mask on him. They'll kick him out.

00:23:01.400 My my boss is telling me I can't enter the building unless I get this vaccine. What what can I do?

00:23:07.640 And it's hard because, you know, I put myself I have three kids, but my kids are now grown. I don't

00:23:12.000 have to fight the same battles. But I see people fighting the battle at the level of the school

00:23:16.660 board. Go to the school board meeting sound off. If you're able to teach your kids at home, teach

00:23:21.380 them at home. If you're able to go to private school, go to private school. We're seeing the

00:23:24.900 biggest growth in homeschooling and private schooling that we've ever seen, because people

00:23:29.080 want their kids to learn. If you look at who's suffering the most from all of these lockdowns and

00:23:34.320 absent schools and virtual schools, it's poor kids and minority kids. And so we've got to push back.

00:23:40.140 This is a time when we try to talk about educational choice, school choice. I have a bill in Washington

00:23:45.900 that says that the funds, the federal funds that go with poor kids, they should follow the poor kid

00:23:50.600 wherever the poor kid wants to go. If the kid wants to go to a private school, a church school, a

00:23:55.500 non-secular school, homeschool, the funds should follow the child and we should have school choice.

00:24:01.800 And guess what? Competition will improve the scores that are languishing throughout our country.

00:24:06.320 Wouldn't that be nice? Senator, so great to see you again. Thank you for everything you've been

00:24:11.240 doing. Thank you. All the best. Up next, the journalist who has actually taken the deep dive

00:24:16.860 into masks and the CDC's own research involving masks and kids. This is the study you probably never

00:24:23.000 heard of.

00:24:23.360 Welcome back, everybody, to The Megyn Kelly Show. Joining me now, somebody I've been wanting to talk

00:24:33.780 to for months, author and journalist David Zweig. David, thank you so much for being here. I've been

00:24:39.100 reading your stuff in New York Magazine and it's been a delight because now I know I'll just show my

00:24:44.640 own bias. I assume somebody writing in New York Magazine is probably a lefty and sort of catering to

00:24:49.360 more left wing audience. Well, I don't know whether that's true about you or not. What I know is that

00:24:54.080 your reports seem really fact based and fair and not agenda driven one way or the other. So you don't

00:25:00.700 have to answer anything about your own politics. I just want to compliment you. Let's start with this

00:25:04.740 because here's just a sampling of some of the stuff you've written. The problem with the CDC's six

00:25:09.120 foot rule for schools. Why public schools shouldn't offer a remote option this fall. New research

00:25:14.260 suggests numbers of kids hospitalized for covid is overcounted and is the second shot giving young

00:25:20.280 men a dangerous heart condition. I want to get into all of that with you. But let's start on the masks

00:25:24.220 because this article went viral. And then the title of that one dated August 2020 21 was the science of

00:25:31.200 masking kids at school remains uncertain. Can you just tell us just tell us what this study was that

00:25:38.080 nobody paid any attention to except for you, apparently? Yeah. So the CDC published a study

00:25:45.920 that was a really large study of I think it was 169 schools in Georgia. And it was something like

00:25:54.620 90,000 students. So this isn't, you know, in like one school with 100 kids, 90,000. And what they found

00:26:02.360 was, was that masking students along with another, a number of other interventions, including HEPA

00:26:10.000 filters, including distancing, including barriers, they found that none of these things, but as the,

00:26:16.200 the thing that people are so focused on, which is mass, none of them had a statistically significant

00:26:22.240 benefit, which means that they may have seen some benefit, but the way statistics works, that the sample

00:26:29.320 size, the study wasn't powered sufficiently, which means there weren't enough people or there wasn't

00:26:33.960 enough of a signal to say that this was statistically significant. And what I, what really caught my eye

00:26:40.960 was the fact that in the summary of the study, which is, you know, unfortunately what, what most people

00:26:45.980 typically just look at a summary and that's it, including journalists, they didn't mention any of

00:26:50.620 this in the summary. They mentioned that masking teachers, they did see an effect, a small benefit for

00:26:56.080 that as well as ventilation, you know, primarily getting fresh air. They saw benefits. So those

00:27:00.920 are the two things they added in the summary, but all these other, what are called null findings,

00:27:05.520 where you're not seeing a statistically significant benefit. Those were, you know, buried deep within

00:27:10.580 the study. And of course they were largely ignored. And what's crazy is not about a month or a little

00:27:18.260 bit more than a month after the CDC's own study of the 90,000 kids showing masks are of, looks like no

00:27:24.800 benefit. They issued a mandatory mask, uh, uh, order for kids in schools.

00:27:31.580 Yeah. I mean, to me, what I find most persuasive, perhaps even more than, you know, that one study,

00:27:38.300 which, which didn't find a statistically significant benefit is that we have to, what I've, and I've done

00:27:45.000 this with my reporting continually since, uh, since the spring of 2020, which is I continually to look

00:27:52.100 outside the United States. And I think that's been one of the biggest problems in the reporting on

00:27:57.860 COVID in general. And then my area of focus specifically regarding children and schools

00:28:03.300 is that time and again, people are reporting on this and the, and not only journalists, but the

00:28:08.680 public health authorities themselves issue decrees or give information without providing any context

00:28:14.060 on how other countries around the world are handling this. And in regard to masks, there are

00:28:19.280 countries throughout Europe, none of them are masking little kids. They're all at different cutoffs.

00:28:24.480 Some of the countries, none of them are below six because the world health organization has repeatedly

00:28:30.180 re-upped its guidance saying, we do not recommend anyone under six years old wearing a mask. So, um,

00:28:37.420 but beyond that, a number of the countries in Europe, it's not only below six, it's, they don't want anyone

00:28:41.560 under 12 wearing a mask. And there are a number of countries that are saying no masks at all, all the

00:28:46.660 way through secondary school, which is, you know, their term for high school, um, only wearing them

00:28:51.360 in a certain circumstance, like in a hallway. So what I think your listeners really need to understand

00:28:57.120 what I think, what I always try to do with my reporting is look at not only what's being, um, what

00:29:03.300 guidance is being issued in the United States, but seeing how, or if our guidance is different from

00:29:09.040 other places around the world. And is there any evidence of more outbreaks in those schools that

00:29:15.680 are not requiring the masking of children overseas versus American schools that are requiring it?

00:29:21.140 I have not seen any evidence in a, any sort of like wide scale way that shows that children in

00:29:28.740 Europe are at a higher risk than children in America, you know, relative to not wearing masks or,

00:29:34.900 you know, pinning it on schools being open or what have you.

00:29:37.580 One of the problems, Megan, is that continually in the media and also some of the public health

00:29:43.440 authorities cite, um, specific sort of anecdotes or examples as if that, and that's not how science

00:29:50.180 works. We know this, that you need to actually look at the larger picture to see what's happening.

00:29:55.740 So of course you're going to hear about an outbreak in a school or many outbreaks. We have,

00:30:00.140 you know, 50 million children in this country. You're going to hear about things.

00:30:04.700 The bigger question that people need to focus on is not some scary anecdote, but what is the broader

00:30:10.560 picture that we're looking at? And time and again, I mean, study after study has shown that schools

00:30:17.440 tend to have either the same or lower incidence of transmission than we are seeing in their

00:30:23.860 surrounding communities. You know, it's, it's like all the studies that you, you point this out in

00:30:30.200 your piece that have taken a look at masks outside of this massive one, they just sort of tick them

00:30:35.400 off as one of many things that were part of the preventative measures in the school. And then say,

00:30:39.320 these are the effective mitigation measures, but that's like me saying, okay, in order to prevent,

00:30:44.500 uh, the measles, I wore a coat, I wore mittens, I used hand sanitizer. Oh, and I got vaccinated for

00:30:53.180 measles. Like, and then we just require all children everywhere to wear the coats and use

00:30:57.980 the hand sanitizer. You know, it's like, well, you have, that's not how science is supposed to be

00:31:01.760 conducted and figuring out what is an effective mitigation measure.

00:31:05.240 Right. So I talk about this in the article and you raise a very important point, which is

00:31:09.780 the CDC has continued to recommend what they call a layered approach where you're doing a whole

00:31:14.940 variety of things with, with ventilation, with masking, with, you know, this, that, and the other

00:31:19.840 thing. Um, and HEPA filters and, and, you know, the list goes on. Plexiglass, social distancing.

00:31:26.400 All of it. Yeah. And hand hygiene. And to what degree each of these individual, um, interventions

00:31:33.800 are beneficial. You can't tell if you're doing them all at the same time, there's no way to

00:31:39.000 differentiate and know. So if you're throwing the kitchen sink at a problem, that's fine.

00:31:43.660 And that makes sense initially, um, you know, with sort of precautionary principle, if this is

00:31:49.060 March, 2020, of course we appreciate, no one knows what's going on. We're, you know, wiping our

00:31:54.760 groceries down with like a bleach or whatever, but I never did that. Yeah. That's wise, but you can't

00:32:02.160 continue doing a long list of things without looking at them individually and then claiming

00:32:09.580 that they all work as certain, you know, that as you said, if you're wearing mittens and pants and

00:32:14.240 all these other things. So, but that's exactly what the CDC has been doing that they say, we know

00:32:20.360 mass work because there's a low incidence of cases in schools while they do mass and ventilation,

00:32:27.220 et cetera. And a number of the experts who I've spoke with for the article and who I talk with

00:32:32.580 on a regular basis, and these are infectious disease specialists, epidemiologists, and aerosol

00:32:38.220 scientists have said it's entirely possible that almost the full benefit of the low transmission in

00:32:45.820 schools is related to ventilation. That's entirely possible. And that mass may be provide a marginal or

00:32:51.720 no benefit at all. We don't know. So to continue to insist that it's mass when you're doing a whole

00:32:57.400 variety of things is unscientific. Now people continue to say, well, but we know mass work.

00:33:04.480 We know they work. And I'm not an anti mask person necessarily. There is good evidence. I think that

00:33:10.880 some mass do work in some circumstances. So it's not that there's zero benefit of mass, but there's a

00:33:17.380 difference between a kid wearing a mask in school that they bought off of Etsy or, you know, Amazon

00:33:23.660 or something for seven hours in a classroom versus an adult wearing a well-fitted N95 in a healthcare

00:33:31.120 setting or popping into Costco for 20 minutes. These are very different environments. So there

00:33:36.740 needs to be a lot more nuance, I think, in how the guidance is distributed and how we look at the

00:33:42.780 science, especially when you look at the CDC's guidance that two year olds need to be masked

00:33:48.360 all day, two year olds. Sure. Anybody with a child understands how easy that is, how compliant they

00:33:53.200 are, how they're definitely going to keep it over their mouth and their nose all day long. It's like,

00:33:57.340 I think the CDC has said, OK, you can take it off during their school nap time. Oh, thanks for that.

00:34:01.380 So they don't suffocate. We appreciate that CDC, a two year old who's got virtually no risk from COVID,

00:34:05.740 but does from your mask. By the way, I had no idea that there was something called an aerosol

00:34:09.400 scientist job. That's something to consider if things fall through here. I do want to talk about

00:34:15.440 Delta, though, right? Because this is what what we're hearing now is, OK, David, but this article

00:34:21.820 was dated August 20th and the CDC study was, you know, six weeks prior to that. And dun, dun, dun,

00:34:30.100 Delta has changed everything. What say you? You know, so what's interesting, I'm writing a book on the

00:34:37.360 topic of kids in schools. And one of the challenges I've been confronted with as I work on the book

00:34:42.700 is that, you know, the story keeps evolving and we keep there's new things. There's the new,

00:34:47.080 you know, and after Delta, there'll be Lambda and Epsilon. We're going to run through the Greek

00:34:50.540 alphabet. But one of the things that has kind of crystallized for me is that the same themes

00:34:57.980 repeat themselves. And one of them is that I'm not minimizing Delta. It is more contagious.

00:35:04.000 But the evidence is very mixed at best as far as Delta being more virulent. And the same fundamental

00:35:11.960 things apply regarding masking or other things, if you're still specifically referring to kids

00:35:17.600 wearing masks in school. One of the scientists who I spoke with gave me a good analogy. He said,

00:35:23.100 look, imagine you're wearing kind of a junky old raincoat. Maybe it's ripped in places, it's very thin,

00:35:29.220 and you wear it and it's drizzling outside. You're going to get wet. Some of the water is

00:35:34.240 going to leak through. Now, if that's the benefit of that kind of junky old raincoat when it's

00:35:39.300 drizzling, what do you think is going to happen with that raincoat if you wear it in an absolute

00:35:43.400 downpour? So that was the sort of like metaphor he gave for if masks are at best perhaps marginally

00:35:49.680 beneficial in schools before Delta, what makes you think they're going to be beneficial

00:35:54.760 after Delta, which is even more contagious and more transmissible.

00:36:00.680 You, you know, you look at the numbers of children now being hospitalized and so on.

00:36:06.720 We're going to get into this with our next guest, too. And it's it has a lot of parents alarmed.

00:36:12.800 But there is a question about whether it's that more kids are that doesn't necessarily mean that

00:36:18.300 more kids are dying or actually suffering from severe disease as a result of covid.

00:36:23.500 What what the media does is it takes cases and it takes any kid who's in the hospital with covid

00:36:29.300 as evidence that covid put them in the hospital and then they scare people without a lot of context.

00:36:35.560 So, yeah, this is another great point and it's an important one. I wrote about this. I broke the

00:36:40.720 story on two peer reviewed studies that were published by a journal put out by the American Academy of

00:36:46.560 Pediatrics and both studies. They were done independently of each other. Both of them found that at least

00:36:53.420 roughly 40 percent of the pediatric covid hospitalizations were incidental or were for

00:37:01.300 cases that were not significant. So, you know, this could be, for example, a trauma. Someone breaks

00:37:08.020 their breaks their ankle. You're in the hospital. Automatically, the hospital tests you for covid

00:37:12.520 because that's the policy. Boom. That's a covid hospitalization. So they found 40 percent

00:37:19.060 of what we are told are covid hospitalizations are not necessary for pediatric cases are not

00:37:26.060 necessarily because the child had severe symptoms of covid. They could have been for any number of

00:37:33.040 other things that send people to the hospital. So to me, anytime you see the pediatric hospitalization

00:37:40.140 numbers, bear that in mind. Again, this is not my opinion. This is from two peer reviewed studies

00:37:45.000 that were published by the American Academy of Pediatrics. So there's not as far as your research

00:37:51.160 shows. Again, we'll bring this up with our doctors coming on next to there is not a greater risk of

00:37:56.600 hospitalization or death from the Delta variant in children. Well, Delta is more contagious. All the

00:38:05.120 evidence seems to show. So if you have a larger denominator, meaning if more and more people are becoming

00:38:11.180 infected, you're going it makes sense, you're going to see an uptick in hospitalizations through through

00:38:17.980 whatever it is, in particular children, if they're unvaccinated. But again, that doesn't mean necessarily

00:38:23.980 that Delta is more dangerous on an individual basis to each person who becomes infected. There's also some

00:38:30.540 really interesting information, which is that an unvaccinated child based on certain metrics is

00:38:37.980 actually at the same or lower risk than a vaccinated adult. So this notion of the kind of like panic

00:38:46.380 around kids, I totally appreciate it. I have kids, I don't want my kids to be sick. No one does. That's

00:38:52.220 normal. But what's happened is because I think largely of the media environment that we're in, coupled

00:38:58.700 with some of the public health messaging, that people's perception of the risk has divorced from the

00:39:06.060 reality of the risk. It doesn't mean it's zero. Of course, some kids are going to become sick and

00:39:10.460 have become sick. Unfortunately, some have even died. This is not something we want. But the world

00:39:16.060 is filled with risks. And when you look at the risks of COVID to your child versus any number of other

00:39:21.500 things, it's way, way down on the list. I mean, look, more than double the number of kids die drowning

00:39:28.540 each year than they have from COVID, for example. I mean, we could start taking off a list,

00:39:32.460 whether it's drowning, car accidents, suicides. All of these things present risk to children at a

00:39:39.660 different scale than COVID ever has, including even during the era of Delta. I was reading a

00:39:45.420 Washington Post piece talking about, you know, the pediatric cases, saying that they're surging as

00:39:50.380 children head back to school. Again, cases is not the relevant metric. We're going to have cases.

00:39:54.860 There's a pandemic. There's there's this thing called COVID and Delta is really contagious. Cases is not

00:40:00.460 really what we should be looking at, but it's what the media touts. But the Washington Post

00:40:04.380 talking about how the pediatric COVID cases surpassed 250,000 for the first time since the

00:40:08.780 start of the pandemic. Most are not severe, they add. But nearly twenty four hundred kids were

00:40:14.380 hospitalized nationwide with COVID again with COVID, not necessarily because of COVID in the seven days

00:40:21.980 ending this past Tuesday. All right. And and then they go on to talk about how, OK,

00:40:26.140 hospitalizations for children seem to be sharply increasing as Delta surges to the point that you

00:40:31.180 just made. And then they say they go on and say that they've gone up a lot, though it remains slightly

00:40:37.260 below the January peak, the number of hospitalizations. And then at the very bottom of the article, Dave, they

00:40:42.300 say. But based on the limited data available so far, it does not appear that the Delta variant is affecting

00:40:49.660 the incidence of severe disease or deaths among children, which have been somewhat steady and relatively low

00:40:54.700 throughout the pandemic. So it's basically like we're going to scare the living daylights out of

00:40:59.580 you and then tell you actually nothing's changed other than it seems to be a little bit more

00:41:02.540 contagious. Just what you just said. I mean, I'm I'm communicating with pediatricians at top

00:41:08.300 university hospitals around the country, basically on a daily basis, pediatric immunologists,

00:41:13.980 as well as infectious disease specialists. And depending where you are, the hospitals are not overflowing.

00:41:19.740 It doesn't mean that there hasn't been a spike in cases in different areas. But as you noted, the actual

00:41:27.820 risk to children of severe illness does not appear to be any more significant than it was before, even if

00:41:35.260 Delta is more contagious. And again, I find those two peer reviewed studies very persuasive and compelling

00:41:41.740 regarding this sort of as you noted, the if you're hospitalized from covid rather than hospitalized with covid.

00:41:49.820 One of the things that's been rampant is is a infectious virus called RSV, along with a number of other respiratory viruses

00:41:57.980 from a number of experts I've spoken with. That is what we're really seeing a high prevalence of.

00:42:02.620 And that's actually really dangerous, particularly to little kids. So what they believe is happening,

00:42:09.740 at least for a certain segment of them, is a kid comes into the hospital. They very well may have a

00:42:13.980 co-infection. You may have RSV and you may have covid. So but that's always going to be checked as a covid

00:42:21.660 hospitalization because they can run a panel and they test for all of them. So if it comes up positive for

00:42:26.700 RSV for covid for something else, you still are marking off the covid box on there. But the data given to,

00:42:35.260 you know, regular citizens, all we know is, oh, a kid is in there for covid. But that's not necessarily the case

00:42:40.940 if there's a covid is not the same as with covid. It's like if I'm walking around with, you know, basal cell carcinoma

00:42:46.940 on my face and God forbid somebody shoots me and I go to the ER and I die from my gunshot wound. You could say I died

00:42:52.780 with cancer, but it doesn't mean I died of cancer. It's an important distinction. All right. Coming up,

00:42:57.980 Dave and I are going to discuss the new emails showing the CDC completely bowing down to the

00:43:03.660 teachers unions on mask mandates. They weren't going to do it. Then the teachers union objected.

00:43:08.700 And that is why your kids now have to wear these masks in a lot of these schools. Do you have a

00:43:13.340 thought about what your school district is doing? Call me. Tell me about it at 833-44-MEGYN.

00:43:19.260 That's 833-446-3496.

00:43:29.420 Welcome back to The Megyn Kelly Show, continuing now with my conversation with author and journalist

00:43:33.740 David Zweig. So, Dave, one of the things we saw this week is that the CDC didn't really appear ready

00:43:40.300 to issue mask mandates. The American Academy of Pediatrics had been calling for it, but originally

00:43:45.600 the CDC wasn't saying we're going to do that. We're going to recommend that for kids in schools.

00:43:49.920 And now we know the teachers union got involved and had one on one conversations with the CDC

00:43:57.200 muckety mucks. And suddenly they they shifted. And it appears to be as a direct result of pressure from

00:44:04.240 the teachers unions, which is crazy to me, considering that New York City, something like almost 40 percent of

00:44:09.600 the teachers declined to get vaccinated. But they want me to mask my kid to make them feel better.

00:44:14.960 Yeah. I mean, I think that the interesting part about this story, rather than the sort of gotcha of

00:44:20.240 like, look, we know they're colluding behind closed doors or so to speak. I mean, not that that's

00:44:25.760 not important. But to me, the bigger story is why are they doing this if we if if we know that vaccination

00:44:35.440 and ventilation are far more important for mitigating the spread of COVID that this is it's become a bit

00:44:43.440 of a distraction more than a bit. This this kind of like battle over mass. Again, you're not seeing

00:44:49.440 this kind of like hyperbolic conversation and emotional thing regarding it in most of Europe when

00:44:57.520 kids there are not wearing masks. So to me, the thing that the takeaway of the teachers union thing

00:45:03.600 is less about what's going on with with influencing the policy again, not to say that that's not

00:45:09.120 important and worth looking at, but it's more about the idea if an adult is vaccinated, they're at,

00:45:15.280 you know, and barring having some sort of underlying conditions, they're at incredibly low risk. And the

00:45:19.840 all adults in our country have now had the option to be vaccinated should they so choose. And we know

00:45:25.840 that kids are at incredibly low risk. So you have to ask yourself to what end? What exactly are we

00:45:32.960 making little kids wear masks all day for for what's now going to be years of their lives years,

00:45:39.200 not a week, not a month, but for years all day, every day in school? And you have to ask why? What

00:45:44.080 are we accomplishing? Who are they protecting? We know that kids are at incredibly low risk

00:45:48.160 themselves. It's not zero, but it's very low. And we know that adults who are vaccinated are at

00:45:53.200 incredibly low risk of severe illness. So what are we exactly trying to achieve? And when you look to

00:45:59.440 many countries in Europe, clearly they've come to a different conclusion than we have here.

00:46:04.960 And I find that fascinating. It doesn't mean that it's apples to apples. Of course,

00:46:08.720 every country is different, but I looked up, Megan, I looked at the vaccination rates,

00:46:13.680 the overall per capita mortality rates and the current case rates within all these different

00:46:20.240 countries in Europe. And it's all over the map. It's not like all of them have higher vaccination rates

00:46:25.440 or all of them have worse case rates or mortality. It's up and down. The U.S. is kind of in the mix

00:46:30.880 with all of them. Yet the one unifying thing amongst those countries in Europe is that they're

00:46:35.680 not making little kids wear masks. And in many circumstances, they're not making making any kids

00:46:40.080 wear masks all the way through high school. One of the frustrations is what are the metrics?

00:46:43.920 When do the masks come off? What are they? What are we waiting for? And will anybody tell us? Well,

00:46:48.640 they won't. And wait until you hear what Rochelle Walensky, who I think is a hysteric,

00:46:53.120 she's a hysterical person, is saying about that. We'll pick it up next when we pick it back up with

00:46:57.600 Dave. And then our doctor will be joining us. Don't go away. Welcome back, everyone,

00:47:06.960 to The Megyn Kelly Show. Coming up, Dr. Vinay Prasad. He's here to answer any of your questions about

00:47:12.560 COVID. That'll be fun. By calling me at 833-44-MEGYN, M-E-G-Y-N. That's 833-446-3496.

00:47:21.760 Get your questions about the vaccine, about boosters. We're going to get into that.

00:47:26.560 About masks. Ready. First, though, we're going to continue my conversation with author and

00:47:31.060 journalist David Zweig. David, OK, so we talked about why it looks like the CDC reversed itself and

00:47:37.560 said, oh, we do have to have mandatory masks in the schools because the teachers union, many of whom

00:47:41.060 will not get vaccinated. I think this is my theory. They want my kid to wear a mask because

00:47:46.380 they've chosen not to get vaccinated and they think that's going to protect them, whereas it

00:47:49.140 should be exactly the opposite. They should be getting vaccinated as the grown up to protect my

00:47:52.640 kid who should not be forced to wear a mask. But anyway, I want to get back to their justification

00:47:59.300 because you as a journalist did what most people don't do. And when they issued that new guidance

00:48:03.720 saying, you know what? Actually, we do want mandatory masks for everybody in these schools. You called

00:48:07.960 them up and you called up the American Academy of Pediatrics, too, which was recommending the same

00:48:12.460 and said, what? So give me your data to explain what you said and then explain what they gave you.

00:48:18.240 Yeah. For for the piece I wrote for New York about the masking guidelines in schools and specifically

00:48:23.580 regarding this Georgia study. One of the things that we hear all the time is we know that masks work,

00:48:29.700 you know, and just and you're a piece of garbage if you disagree with that. You know,

00:48:34.080 there's and I'm approaching this apolitically. I'm not a Republican operative or someone who who's

00:48:39.540 against masking on some sort of like freedom or libertarian standpoint. I'm just looking at the

00:48:45.400 science. And what I did was not only did I reach out to the CDC and the American Academy of Pediatrics,

00:48:51.380 but I reached out to a handful of very prominent public health people who, you know, doctors who you

00:48:58.360 see on TV all the time who have really large Twitter followings and some of whom who I have a sort of

00:49:03.720 private dialogue with. And I reached out to them privately and said, hey, I know you are really

00:49:08.380 in favor of kids wearing masks in school. Please send me the best evidence you've got. You know,

00:49:14.620 what do you got? And it was incredible. I mean, one of the people, the first thing she sent me was

00:49:20.300 a study from Massachusetts, which was where they found that there was no benefit of three feet versus

00:49:25.700 six feet in the classroom. I said, that doesn't say anything about masks. She sent me something else

00:49:30.780 about a Wisconsin study. I said, that doesn't say anything either. And I saw this pattern over and

00:49:37.060 over that when you actually push some of these people, show me evidence that masks work on kids

00:49:43.200 in schools. They're sending you stuff, as we talked about earlier, where they're doing masks with a

00:49:48.820 whole variety of interventions. And on the CDC's own website where they have, I went through point by

00:49:54.700 point, there was something, a zillion different citations for studies. I made a huge spreadsheet. I went

00:49:59.500 through it with an epidemiologist to make sure I wasn't confused because I'm not a medical expert.

00:50:04.340 So I had an expert run through it with me. And every one of these studies that they were citing,

00:50:09.820 either A, where the low transmission rate may have been due to any number of factors. It could have

00:50:15.780 been masks. It could have been just because they're children and they're less likely to become

00:50:18.680 infected to begin with. It could have been because of ventilation. That, or they had a thing where it was

00:50:23.380 in a hair salon or they had something incredibly, a number of the studies that the CDC stated actually

00:50:31.360 didn't have kids wearing masks at all. I'm like, how is that listed as evidence? So there's a lot

00:50:36.420 of stuff when you start digging into the details, don't quite add up. I will say this, it's possible

00:50:42.500 that masks do offer some marginal benefit in schools. What I'm saying is we haven't seen sufficient

00:50:48.020 evidence. And the one study and the CDC themselves, they say, this is the only study that's done this,

00:50:55.280 where they're looking at different cohorts in schools, where they said we were comparing schools

00:50:59.140 where they did use masks and where there wasn't a mask mandate, didn't find a statistically significant

00:51:04.340 benefit. And that was with 90,000 students. So it's entirely possible there could be some benefit

00:51:09.740 if we have a larger pool, if we bump up to several hundred thousand or a million kids,

00:51:14.220 we might see some benefits regarding transmission. We don't know. But then you have to ask, and a woman

00:51:19.140 named Tracy Hoag, who is an epidemiologist, and she was a senior author on another study published by

00:51:24.840 the CDC. She made the point, she said, at what point do we then have to ask, is it worth this marginal

00:51:30.980 benefit? Remember, a case is not the same thing as illness. Those are two different things. And just

00:51:37.340 becoming infected doesn't mean you're ill. According to the CDC, they estimate that it's possible up to 50%

00:51:43.220 of children who are infected are asymptomatic. So that's a really high bar to clear if half the

00:51:49.940 people who are infected don't even know it, as far as being kids. So I think these are all these

00:51:57.200 sort of nuances that get lost. Now, maybe that's, I'm not an expert in public messaging from the

00:52:04.180 government. So maybe they feel that making a very blunt recommendation is the only way to do things.

00:52:10.360 But we can see in other countries around the world, that they are doing very different type of advice,

00:52:16.740 whether it's for masks, whether it's for vaccinating kids, you may have seen Megan, just recently, the

00:52:22.820 advisory committee in the UK recommended against a blanket vaccination for 15 to 17 year olds, that or excuse

00:52:32.040 me for 12 to 15 year olds. That's very different from the guidance here in America. So these are

00:52:39.240 things, again, I'm always looking elsewhere. It doesn't mean that their country functions the same

00:52:43.460 as ours. But boy, that's quite a different conclusion for an advisory committee in another major Western

00:52:49.480 country to say, you know what, we don't think it's the best idea unless your kid has severe underlying

00:52:55.100 conditions. We're not going to recommend that everybody get vaccinated, the 12 to 15 year olds.

00:52:59.480 That's very different. As you know, we are speeding toward approving a vaccine for kids under 12. So

00:53:06.700 that's quite an interesting contrast. It doesn't mean they're right and we are wrong. But to me,

00:53:12.160 as a journalist and someone who's just curious, it does raise questions about why are they coming to

00:53:16.860 a different conclusion than we are here? Me too. Me too, as a journalist and as a mother, as a parent.

00:53:23.100 Can you just tell us what happened when you contacted the American Academy of Pediatrics and said,

00:53:26.940 what data did you base your recommendation on?

00:53:29.480 Right. What happened was I was met with crickets and the CDC, interestingly, sent me back

00:53:35.660 like two studies that had absolutely nothing to do with with masking students. And then they had kind

00:53:41.180 of a banal statement about the Delta variant and we think everyone should wear masks. So neither of

00:53:46.400 them. So but I gave them the benefit of the doubt, even though they didn't send me the best study,

00:53:50.300 as I mentioned before, I went through and started reading every single citation they had

00:53:54.660 in their guidance to see. Maybe I'm missing something. Yeah. You tried to steel man their

00:53:59.240 argument. You were unable to. Exactly. Like maybe I'm missing something. Let me keep digging and digging.

00:54:04.520 And by the way, I also reached out to, you know, a dozen different specialists who I talk with on a

00:54:10.540 regular basis. Hey, am I missing something here? And that that's the thing that it's worth looking at.

00:54:16.400 It's not that we're automatically wrong and other places are automatically correct. But you have to

00:54:21.560 actually look at what's being recommended elsewhere. And you have to actually I recognize

00:54:26.020 the average person. I guess that's why I'm here. The average person is doing a different job than

00:54:29.960 I'm doing. They don't have time to start pouring through, you know, CDC studies and whatever else

00:54:35.060 and seeing this stuff. So, of course, they're not going to be aware of this. And kind of dovetailing

00:54:39.900 with that point. You know, I mentioned I keep mentioning looking at other countries,

00:54:43.080 but the other really important piece of context I found, Megan, and this is something that's going

00:54:47.720 to be a really big theme in my book, is that there is a fair amount of dissent within the medical

00:54:54.620 community and public health community to what's being messaged. But people are afraid to speak out.

00:55:01.460 I from the beginning, I have had doctors and others and epidemiologists and others reach out to me,

00:55:06.760 say, thank you so much for writing that article. You know, I really strongly disagree with what's

00:55:11.560 going on. But then they won't talk on the record. And I have a long list of people who I talk with on

00:55:16.760 a regular basis. And either they are explicitly told if you are at a major university hospital

00:55:22.160 and the chair of your department says, you're not doing it, don't speak out against, you know,

00:55:27.160 the guidance or it's implicit. You just know there is a, you know, this is within your field. You have

00:55:32.700 colleagues. There's a group think going on. It's a big deal if you're a doctor to actually speak out

00:55:38.300 against the CDC. That's not something that's easy to do. So there are both explicit and implicit

00:55:43.560 kind of baked in reasons why people have been discouraged from speaking out. And I'd say,

00:55:48.980 and then we talked to a guy who was on the CDC advisory, the vaccine advisory group, and he spoke

00:55:53.820 out against where they were going with it. And he probably got booted off the group.

00:55:57.320 Yeah, that that has happened with a number of people. And there's enormous pushback against

00:56:02.940 others. This is sort of the last piece I was going to say, it's not just about your boss

00:56:06.280 or your colleagues, but the people who do say, and I face this pushback as a journalist as well.

00:56:11.880 If there's any questioning, any sort of doubt against the sort of popular narrative, you're

00:56:17.760 automatically, you know, not only are you wrong, but this ad hominem attacks that you're a bad person,

00:56:24.300 you want to kill people. You're a lunatic. But again, is everyone in the UK and Denmark and Sweden

00:56:30.860 and Switzerland, are they all lunatics? Or do they want children to die there? So it's, I think the,

00:56:38.320 to me, one of the biggest things, Megan, is that there's just this, there's this complete squashing

00:56:44.180 of debate, and particularly in something related to science, that it should be not only reasonable,

00:56:50.540 but expected for there to be dissent, and for there to be discussion, and for it to not be

00:56:56.160 these ad hominem emotional attacks, where you see certain doctors or epidemiologists with a big

00:57:01.880 Twitter following, who are completely smug and obnoxious against journalists and against some of

00:57:08.500 their peers. I've heard it said that science is a verb, not not a noun. And, you know, it's an ongoing

00:57:14.660 process where new information gets added, new conclusions are reached. And that's why it's so

00:57:19.600 frustrating. I mean, I'll tell you at our school, which is very, very tough on all the COVID things,

00:57:24.440 like mandatory masks all day long, and everyone and mandatory vaccinations now for any kids who

00:57:29.160 are 16 and up, or you're expelled, or you're expelled. I mean, that's crazy when you see about,

00:57:34.440 you know, as you point out what's happening in other countries, you know, and there are side

00:57:38.160 effects and so on that some of us need to worry about. Anyway, they presented a doctor from Yale New

00:57:44.480 Haven, and the doctor was very pro mask and very pro vaccine. It's like, well, you know what,

00:57:48.380 I would love to hear a doctor who has a different opinion than this guy's because this guy does not

00:57:52.500 represent every doctor and be able to make up my own mind. But of course, we're intentionally

00:57:57.360 spoon fed different, you know, just what the school wants us to hear. All right, let me let me ask

00:58:00.860 about Rochelle Walensky. Because I know one of the points you've been making is that the mask mandates

00:58:06.080 the mass in general, they have no endpoint. There's no specifics being offered to us about when can I

00:58:10.840 take the mask off of my child? And here's what she said. This is everything she says is just so out

00:58:16.760 there. Remember she cried? Anyway, okay, sorry, that's me, Dave. She said, if our children are

00:58:23.240 vaccinated, we have full vaccination in schools, we have full vaccination in teachers, we have disease

00:58:30.840 rates that are low. I think then we can start thinking about how we can loosen up. Okay, so

00:58:40.400 basically, there has to be zero COVID is essentially what she's saying. And then maybe we can start

00:58:45.880 thinking about taking off the masks. I don't, I don't even know what to do with that.

00:58:49.680 Yeah, I mean, and I quote a number of experts in my article who speak to this exact issue. And it's

00:58:54.400 a real concern that the term du jour is off ramps. There's no off ramps. One of the reasons I think

00:58:59.920 why they're not coming up with specific metrics is that they would be made up. No one knows. No one

00:59:04.780 knows the specific community rate or whatever else that you should tie them. I know when they should

00:59:11.060 the teachers union says it's okay, then we can take off the masks. Right? I mean, so that's one

00:59:15.340 of the problems is that we don't actually have a good sense of when it is or isn't appropriate. And

00:59:20.200 this kind of gets to a larger issue, just sort of like pulling the lens back that I think about a lot

00:59:24.900 that also I hope to, you know, put in my book in a really big way is we also have to ask, who are the

00:59:33.180 people making guidance for how society should run. And at the beginning of the pandemic, it's entirely

00:59:40.780 appropriate for those people to be infectious disease specialists and others in that area,

00:59:47.140 because no one knows what's happening. And there's a panic and we have to prevent a catastrophe.

00:59:52.100 But we are now more, you know, a year and a half into this. And at a certain point along the way,

00:59:58.520 you need to bring in other people, whether it's child psychologists, pediatricians, economists,

01:00:05.860 there's philosophers, there's a variety of people whose voices and opinions because mitigating a

01:00:12.260 virus is not the same thing all the time as human flourishing. And so it is not, I'm not here to

01:00:19.620 minimize COVID. I mean, COVID is horrible. And no one wants anyone to get sick, let alone for people to

01:00:26.960 die. But we have to understand a context of COVID versus other things. I mean, to me, one of the

01:00:32.740 most persuasive things is when you look at, you know, in 2018, 2019 flu season, I think it was 477

01:00:39.640 kids died. These are the CDC's numbers. Yet in COVID, the number is something around 400 in a much,

01:00:45.980 much longer timeframe. That's cumulative over, you know, a year and a half. So we've had fewer children

01:00:51.060 die from COVID than they did in a much shorter flu season. And by the way, remember those numbers,

01:00:56.020 that's without subtracting this roughly 40%, according to those two studies about, you know,

01:01:01.680 the sort of with versus from argument. So the numbers really change. Oh, and I'll take it one

01:01:07.060 step further. You know, with the flu, they don't do universal testing typically when a kid goes. So

01:01:11.740 these comparisons are very specious about, oh, you know, with the flu versus COVID that CDC has made

01:01:19.420 in the past saying that COVID is more dangerous than the flu. There's really no evidence of that.

01:01:25.120 Oh, wait, I got to ask you this, because we're a little short on time. But I really need to ask

01:01:29.420 you about the side effects of the vaccine. Because I know you did an article, as the mother of three

01:01:33.720 kids, two of whom are boys, and this particular side effect seems to affect boys more than girls.

01:01:38.740 You did a piece about the heart inflammation that is, it's recognized, it's been announced by the

01:01:44.260 public authorities to the CDC and others. Heart inflammation that's coming from the vaccine in

01:01:49.780 some cases, not, not a huge number, but a statistically significant number in boys who

01:01:55.140 get the vaccine. So how, what did you find when it comes to that side effect and how, how concerning it

01:02:01.060 is? Well, what we did find is that there are certainly, and this is the CDC zone number. So I'm

01:02:08.260 not making, you know, it's not me making up the numbers. It's from the CDC when they had their advisory

01:02:13.180 committee meeting about this, that the number of young males who had what's called myocarditis,

01:02:20.900 this inflation, excuse me, inflammation of the heart or pericarditis, that's the inflammation

01:02:25.480 around the heart, that the numbers for young males were like, off the charts, it was something like

01:02:31.820 60 something per million, where they had expected zero to four per million. And the thing that bothered

01:02:37.880 me was, and it bothered a number of other, not other, but it bothered a number of specialists who

01:02:43.100 I spoke with was that when you have, when you merge different groups together, which is what the CDC did,

01:02:50.120 they took young males and combine them with young females, but the females had an entirely different

01:02:55.640 risk perspective than the young males. So, and then on top of that, they added in, they took

01:03:01.780 young males and took, and young females and made a co-ed and took it all the way up to age 39.

01:03:06.860 And they said, Hey, look at this. There's only 12 cases per a million. Well, sure. I could just,

01:03:12.040 you can keep making the pot bigger and bigger where, you know, you get the point where you're

01:03:16.040 going to bury the signal amid the noise. So I just couldn't understand why you would possibly do that

01:03:22.240 when the evidence is actually there to differentiate. And I keep mentioning this, but other countries

01:03:27.700 are coming to different conclusions about whether it makes sense to just boom, vaccinate everyone

01:03:33.780 immediately. I'm not against vaccination. I'm vaccinated. And I think the risks are relatively

01:03:39.600 speaking, very, very low. So I think to put things in context, the risk of COVID to a healthy kid is

01:03:46.460 incredibly low. And the risk of the vaccine to most kids is incredibly low. But when you look at the

01:03:52.520 actual numbers and how they weigh out, it's not as clear cut as the CDC has made it seem. And again,

01:03:58.780 there are other public health authorities who are coming to different conclusions about it.

01:04:03.500 Yeah. I mean, this is how I feel. I said this to Dan Abrams. I was, we had a little spar on his

01:04:08.440 SiriusXM show yesterday saying, look, you know, in my own family, I, my dad died at age 45 of a sudden

01:04:16.300 heart attack. I've got a heart issue. It's a thing in my family. And the last thing I want to do is

01:04:22.400 anything that would in any way compromise my boy's hearts. I mean, every parent feels that way. And

01:04:29.320 some of us have extra medical reasons to feel that way. And so I do not want Rochelle Walensky or our

01:04:36.360 head of school or anyone else telling me I have to, I've got to risk their heart health for to protect

01:04:44.840 against a virus that they are at absolutely next to no risk of being hurt by. Right. They don't have

01:04:51.920 any of the immunocompromising factors that would lead to, you know, death or hospitalization based

01:04:57.960 on what we've seen so far. So that's, I mean, it's just trying to get people to understand when it

01:05:01.900 comes to one's children, like we have a responsibility. We got to be careful. I have

01:05:05.280 to advocate on their behalf. They're not 18 people, you know, that Joe Biden today is going to make a

01:05:11.120 hard, hard push for mandatory vaccinations. And it's common for kids and mandatory vaccines. And I just

01:05:15.760 think people need to keep in mind, there are all sorts of reasons why these mandatory policies with very

01:05:20.760 few allowed exceptions, by the way, uh, are problematic. Dave, you're amazing. I hope you

01:05:25.600 come back. Thanks for having me. Anytime, anytime. And coming up next, we're going to be joined by Dr.

01:05:32.500 Vinay Prusand. Uh, if you're not following him on Twitter or watching his great YouTube videos,

01:05:37.260 you should be. Uh, and we're going to talk to him about masks, about the Biden, um, announcement

01:05:43.140 we're expecting. And what about the I word? Ivermectin. Uh, plus if you've got questions for the good

01:05:48.360 doctor, he's here to answer them. Call us at 833-44-MEGYN. That's 833-44-3496. Coming up.

01:06:01.760 Welcome back everyone to the Megyn Kelly show. I think one of the most chilling things that has

01:06:05.600 happened during this pandemic is the demonization and silencing of doctors. It's not just journalists,

01:06:10.700 all right? As Dave was saying, it's also doctors who dare not fall totally in line with the CDC's line

01:06:15.840 of thinking. It's crazy. But one of the doctors not afraid to speak his mind is my next guest,

01:06:21.320 Dr. Vinay Prusand, Prusand, sorry. He's a hematologist, oncologist, and an associate professor

01:06:26.540 in the department of epidemiology at the university of California in San Francisco. Welcome doctor.

01:06:32.440 Great to have you here. Thanks for having me so much. Okay. So there's a lot to go over. Can we just

01:06:37.040 pick it up at the, at the beginning of our show we had on Rand Paul, who was talking about masks and he

01:06:42.580 was making the point that he doesn't think masks work. And I know that when it comes to cloth masks,

01:06:48.100 I think you agree, but can we start with the overall thought about do masks work?

01:06:53.520 Okay. It's a good question. I guess the first thing I would try to say is that may not even just be a

01:06:59.040 yes or no answer. It might depend on the circumstances. So I think, you know, if you are

01:07:03.460 taking care of somebody in the hospital and they're known to have SARS-CoV-2, I think most of the providers

01:07:07.820 would wear an N95 mask. And we believe that's an important mask to wear because you're going in a room

01:07:11.800 with someone with known disease. But I think we're asking about community masking. The average

01:07:15.880 person when they go to the grocery store or kids in school, which we can talk about. And I think we

01:07:20.140 had a piece of evidence that came out last week, which was the Bangladesh cluster randomized control

01:07:24.760 trial. Of course, Bangladesh is different than the United States. That's for sure. And in this study,

01:07:29.720 it took place at a time where there was essentially a 0% vaccination rate and very few people had had

01:07:36.740 natural immunity to the virus. And in that setting, a surgical mask, so not the N95 mask, but rather

01:07:43.800 that surgical mask that surgeons wear in the operating room, that mask demonstrated a benefit,

01:07:48.580 but cloth masks failed to demonstrate a benefit on their primary endpoint, which was you had symptoms

01:07:53.300 and then you were found to have SARS-CoV-2. So I think that's the best evidence we have to date,

01:07:57.200 which is that cloth masking, even in Bangladesh, in this well-done study, didn't work. Surgical masks did

01:08:02.760 work, but this is a population that essentially had zero immunity going into it. So how much it

01:08:07.120 extrapolates to the United States, there are a lot of questions. Does it extrapolate to schools we can

01:08:10.960 talk about? Okay. So then let's take children and let's slap N95 masks on them and make them wear

01:08:16.820 them eight to nine hours a day. What's wrong with that plan? So I think that's a plan that will be

01:08:23.260 unpalatable for a few reasons. One, I think, thank goodness, despite how zealous restrictions have

01:08:29.960 gotten. I haven't heard anyone seriously make that claim. Thank goodness. And here's the challenge,

01:08:35.380 I think. Anyone who's worn an N95, especially when you wear it correctly, it puts a great deal

01:08:39.860 of pressure on the face. And even as a doctor, and I've worn it for extended periods of time,

01:08:44.440 I find it uncomfortable for a certain amount of time. To do that to kids day in and day out,

01:08:49.340 given that the risks they face from this virus, I think it's a recipe for people aren't going to use

01:08:53.860 it correctly. One, I don't think we even have the supplies to do it if we wanted to do it.

01:08:57.780 Two, I don't think they would wear it correctly. And I think there'd be a number of problems that

01:09:01.860 would ensue. And so I think, you know, the reality is if you go to most of the schools where there is

01:09:06.320 a mask mandate, the kids are wearing the cloth mask. I think that's what we see. 90 plus percent

01:09:10.700 of them wearing a cloth mask. Which is like the comfort check at the airport when you take your

01:09:14.180 shoes off. It's not doing anything. I guess my position on this issue is always that a couple

01:09:20.320 things. One, we have to acknowledge the United States is very different than our peer nations.

01:09:24.240 And I think your last guest spoke to this. The United Kingdom, UK, they have never masked a

01:09:29.480 child in school under the age of 12. Sweden, they have not masked children, particularly elementary

01:09:34.820 school children. And Denmark and some of their peer nations, they have not done this. And I think the

01:09:39.240 reality is, the truth is, we simply don't know if asking children to wear cloth masks, particularly

01:09:44.460 very young children, confers a benefit. The last thing I'd say is in the United States, we've gone so

01:09:49.020 far the other direction, the American Academy of Pediatrics and the CDC, they advise two-year-olds

01:09:53.460 in daycare to wear cloth masks. And that's a recommendation that's actually contrary to the

01:09:57.900 World Health Organization's guidelines, which actually do not encourage it younger than the

01:10:01.920 age of six. And it's a recommendation where I have written about because I think it's a place where if

01:10:06.820 you want to do that, go beyond the WHO, you really need to bring rock solid evidence that kids benefit

01:10:12.460 from that. I've looked at the evidence. It's certainly not rock solid. It's far from that. So I would be very

01:10:16.900 reluctant to make such a recommendation.

01:10:18.620 And we haven't even gotten into the significant downsides to a child and having a mask on his or

01:10:23.740 her face all day, the social barrier, the language barrier, the inability of the young ones to pick

01:10:28.840 up on emotional cues. I mean, sort of your EQ, your emotional intelligence is formed by looking at

01:10:34.920 facial expressions and so on. And we just take it away without any real data on the other side. In fact,

01:10:41.020 as our last guest was saying, the data appears to be that it doesn't help the masks in school. All

01:10:45.660 right. There's so much to go over. So I want to move on. Ivermectin. How do we feel about that?

01:10:49.560 Is that an effective treatment of COVID in your view?

01:10:51.940 I will say my view is I remain open-minded. You could persuade me and there are four ongoing

01:10:58.580 randomized control trials of ivermectin. And if any of one of them shows an impressive result,

01:11:02.840 I will be persuaded. But I'm the kind of doctor that until I see strong evidence that a therapy works,

01:11:08.120 I'm generally apprehensive. I'm reluctant to prescribe. And the reason is B is simply that most of the

01:11:13.740 things we think work in biomedicine. Most of the pills the pharmaceutical companies develop,

01:11:17.480 most of the pills that people repurpose or use for a different purpose, they just generally don't work.

01:11:22.460 So I really require that kind of gold standard evidence, the same kind of evidence that I sort

01:11:26.080 of asked for masking, to prove to me ivermectin works. But I will say one thing, Megan,

01:11:30.120 ivermectin has become a culture war issue. And I think that I'm also concerned about the demonization.

01:11:36.520 I'm concerned that people who seek out these alternative remedies, they don't deserve our scorn.

01:11:42.380 They deserve our compassion. They deserve an explanation as to why a doctor is or is not

01:11:47.480 prescribing that. And I think some of the people who are heaping a great deal of scorn

01:11:51.080 on users of ivermectin are the same people who early in the pandemic were very happy

01:11:55.780 to recommend therapies without good evidence as well. So they have been there. They've committed

01:12:00.500 that error. And I think ivermectin is the kind of thing that's really become sort of a cultural issue.

01:12:05.440 And that's problematic in my mind, if science takes on political dimensions.

01:12:09.120 I know, because if we could come up, forget the controversies over the vaccines, mandatory or not,

01:12:14.100 if we could come up with a cure, imagine how wonderful that would be. Then we could take

01:12:18.200 off the mask. Then we can we can not mandate vaccines to enter buildings. But we don't have

01:12:23.040 a cure. And I don't know, are we working as aggressively on finding one as we were on finding

01:12:27.120 a vaccine? That's a good question. We've had a number of drugs that offer some modest benefit.

01:12:31.560 If you were to develop SARS-CoV-2 and get ill or get hospitalized, or even if you came into contact

01:12:37.460 with somebody with SARS-CoV-2, we have a few drugs, you know, the monoclonal antibody.

01:12:42.240 You like that? You like the monoclonal antibody? Rand Paul was saying, this is amazing.

01:12:46.160 I think where it has proven benefit, it's a useful therapy. It's a little bit tricky to give,

01:12:51.120 because you got to give it in the IV. But where it has proven benefit is proven benefit. No one can

01:12:54.600 take that away from that. But, you know, I think that the challenge is that I think it will be very

01:13:00.240 unlikely that anyone will find any medicine that can take somebody who's suffering from the throes of

01:13:05.080 SARS-CoV-2, severe COVID-19, and 100% cure them with like a single magic pill. I think that's

01:13:11.160 unlikely. So I think the best we can hope for is try to mitigate the damage by vaccinating adults by,

01:13:17.980 you know, I think that's really the best thing we can do, vaccinate adults, and then we'll see

01:13:23.060 where natural immunity gets us. And the combination of those two might get us to sort of a steady state.

01:13:27.020 But this is an endemic virus. It's going to be here until the next thousand years. It'll just keep

01:13:31.540 circulating. So I like the vaccines. I've taken the vaccines. My husband and I did Pfizer. And I

01:13:36.560 think it's it's a testament to American ingenuity that we that we came up with them, that we have

01:13:40.580 them that, you know, our scientists found a way. But I do I do wonder, you know, do I need a booster

01:13:47.900 because now because I've seen the reports like this is a money grab by Pfizer, Moderna. Of course,

01:13:52.360 they're like, oh, you definitely need a booster. I'm like, well, I'm healthy. I don't really I wasn't

01:13:56.500 really worried about dying from covid even before I got the vaccine. So what do you make of boosters

01:14:01.260 and whether I know older people may need them? But what about the vast majority of us?

01:14:06.360 Yeah, I guess it's a great question. I am, again, willing to be persuaded, but I haven't seen anything

01:14:11.500 that's persuaded me to date. And I think there's some problematic things in this booster saga.

01:14:15.640 Now, you may remember that the way kind of all got started was Pfizer, I think, announced that they

01:14:20.820 thought that boosters are going to be necessary. And then there initially was pushback from Fauci,

01:14:24.680 from CDC, and they scheduled a meeting in the White House to talk to leading white leading

01:14:28.900 officials in the administration. They had that meeting. Israel has met with the White House

01:14:32.280 talking about the possibility of waning immunity from the vaccines over time. And then the White

01:14:36.860 House launched about a month, a month and a half ago, a campaign to promote boosters. And they even

01:14:41.600 gave us a target date, September 20th, the date that many people thought there would be widespread

01:14:45.920 availability of boosters. In response to that, two leading officials at the Food and Drug

01:14:50.160 Administration, the two senior officials in vaccine research and review, they resigned. And it has been

01:14:56.340 leaked in multiple news stories that one of the reasons they resigned was they resented political

01:15:00.520 pressure to approve a booster on this timeline. Now, for me, what I want to see to prove to me that

01:15:06.960 it's worth it for me to get a booster is you need to show me that if I get a booster, I'm going to have

01:15:12.720 a reduction in hospitalization and severe SARS-CoV-2 than if I didn't get a booster. That's the kind of

01:15:18.480 evidence I want to see that I'm going to benefit from getting this booster. I think it's a lot

01:15:22.440 easier to show that when somebody is older and frailer because their probability of being

01:15:26.220 hospitalized despite vaccine is higher than a younger, healthier person. But I really need

01:15:30.660 that evidence. And again, that's another controlled study that I think they have to show before we jump

01:15:35.540 into boosters. The last thing I'll say, Megan, is the World Health Organization. The WHO has begged

01:15:39.760 member nations not to give boosters in very wealthy nations before we can at least give older,

01:15:45.660 vulnerable adults globally the first shot. And I think that's an important question of fairness

01:15:49.660 and equity in combating this pandemic. Well, especially because, I mean, even if you don't

01:15:53.440 want to be fair about it, you're just selfish. The more variants go around the world, they eventually

01:15:58.940 wind up here in America. So we should want as many people worldwide to be vaccinated and protected

01:16:03.120 against this virus as possible. I heard something interesting on The Daily today, the New York Times

01:16:07.160 podcast, where they said it's like offering a booster to Americans, you know, people who are

01:16:12.560 young like we are and want a third shot is like offer. It's like somebody like the Titanic goes

01:16:18.000 down and people are in the water wearing life jackets. But the life jacket gets a little frayed

01:16:22.100 and somebody comes by and gives you a new life jacket. Meanwhile, there are other people who have

01:16:26.380 no life jackets. They have no life jackets. It's like, well, never mind what happened to those poor

01:16:30.240 people who actually went down on the ship. That's another you could see it in the movie. It's worth

01:16:33.260 rewatching. Anyway, OK, let's talk about the scientists and being demoralized because you

01:16:39.920 mentioned it. Our last guest mentioned it as well. And what one of the reasons why I think

01:16:45.240 there is vaccine hesitancy, why people are no longer listening to Dr. Fauci and so on

01:16:49.800 is because they feel science has been politicized. Scientists who don't go along with sort of the

01:16:55.400 most restrictive, you could say, woke. I don't know what it is, but line on covid or frankly,

01:17:03.080 you know, transgender transitions and so on get ostracized and silenced. And I think

01:17:10.360 it's making a lot of us look at our scientists a little differently. You know, like I, I don't have

01:17:16.040 absolute trust anymore. I'm starting to wonder whether the American Academy of Pediatrics, for

01:17:20.840 example, has an agenda that I should question. I guess what I'd say about that is I think you're

01:17:27.760 hitting on something that I think is true and interesting, which is that the more you demonize

01:17:33.660 people rather than engage on the merits of the argument, the more scientific points of view and

01:17:38.980 policy positions become tied to political party, the worse we are in a state of science. You know,

01:17:45.040 it doesn't make sense that, you know, that that ivermectin may be embraced more by one political

01:17:50.420 party than the other. That just doesn't make sense. You know, it's something that's worth testing and

01:17:53.760 there are four ongoing tests of it. It doesn't make sense that masks are embraced by another

01:17:57.740 political party or lockdowns are embraced by one political party. These should be things that

01:18:00.980 if they work insofar as they work, we should all get behind. But I think you're speaking to,

01:18:05.480 I think, a broader problem in in the culture, which is when we hear people say things that don't

01:18:11.280 agree with our worldview, we'd rather they just not say it or insult them or demonize them or think

01:18:17.060 poorly of them than actually try to explain why we disagree. We don't have conversations. And I think

01:18:22.400 you're terrific about actually trying to go talk to people who don't always agree with you and have

01:18:26.940 meaningful conversations. No. Well, thank you. I try because I actually do want facts, you know,

01:18:32.000 and then and then fine. You can put a partisan spin on them if you want. I'm I'm open to listening to

01:18:35.700 that, too. But we're still we're not living in a post post truth era. Truth is still knowable.

01:18:41.300 And I appreciate it when people like you say, I don't know yet, you know, and I I didn't get to this

01:18:45.960 with Rand. But one of the things Senator Paul had said earlier was I can't tell you in one of the

01:18:50.060 articles I read. I can't tell you about ivermectin because we haven't yet pursued enough studies on

01:18:55.260 it. And that and there that made that, too, may be politically motivated. You know, it's sort of

01:18:59.300 put in this class of like, oh, that's hydroxychloroquine stuff. You know, that's crazy tinfoil

01:19:03.360 hat stuff. And to this moment, I can't tell you the truth on either one of those, because I feel the

01:19:07.600 same as he has. As much as I look for information, I see big question marks everywhere. I think you will

01:19:12.960 find that if one of these four well done randomized control trials shows a benefit of ivermectin. And I think

01:19:17.680 there's another thing to point out here is that when we talk about drugs in COVID, whether it's

01:19:20.840 ivermectin, the monoclonal or steroids, you know, the question is, not only does it work, but if so,

01:19:26.360 where does it work? Does it work if I came into contact with someone in COVID to prevent me from

01:19:30.420 acquiring it? Some drugs work for that. Does it work if I have a mild cough or cold from preventing

01:19:34.760 me from that getting worse? Does it work if I'm hospitalized and I don't require oxygen? Does it work if I

01:19:39.680 require oxygen? And does it work if I have to be on the ventilator? And a drug may work in some

01:19:44.000 circumstances, but not others. Steroids work amazingly if you require the ventilator or if

01:19:48.460 you're on oxygen. But if you're hospitalized, not on oxygen, they may even be detrimental.

01:19:52.400 So, you know, a drug doesn't always work for everything. It might work for some, not others.

01:19:55.620 All the more reason to do well done studies. What about the vaccines? Because I know you've said when

01:20:00.340 it comes to teenagers, 12 to 18, let's say around there, you say it's a tough call whether to vaccinate

01:20:06.600 your teenager. I'm definitely wrestling with this. I don't have teens yet, but I have 11, 10 and eight.

01:20:11.720 And I'm not looking forward to when my oldest turns 12 and my school looks at me and says he

01:20:17.880 has to get it. Yeah, we can talk about that, the mandates as well, because LA County has just

01:20:22.340 announced plans for doing this. But first we can talk about this issue. So, I mean, I think no one

01:20:28.380 would be opposed or have any questions about vaccination if there was absolutely no safety

01:20:32.260 signal at all and there was only this benefit on SARS-CoV-2 reduction. And the truth is we did know as

01:20:37.160 early as April of this year that there is a safety signal and that safety signal is myocarditis.

01:20:41.700 Which your last guest talked about, which is an inflammation of the heart. It's more common

01:20:45.180 in boys and it happens to hit a certain age range of like 12 to 24-ish. That's kind of the peak,

01:20:50.600 the peak increased incidence of myocarditis after the vaccine. And the reason it gets so tricky is

01:20:55.640 if you, if this, if the same myocarditis happened in 85-year-olds, we wouldn't be having this

01:21:00.180 conversation, I don't think, because the risk of SARS-CoV-2 in an 85-year-old is colossal risk.

01:21:04.440 It's extremely bad, but it's happening in an age group where you really do have some genuine

01:21:08.660 difficulties in reconciling whether or not to do one dose or two doses because most of the risk is

01:21:15.400 after two doses. So I should mention that. Most of the risk is after the second dose. That's the

01:21:19.060 increased risk. One dose provides some level of immunity. The second dose provides probably a

01:21:23.620 marginal increase in immunity, but comes at the price of myocarditis. The United Kingdom has taken

01:21:28.100 a different view. If you're 16 or 17 in the United Kingdom, they're offering one dose currently.

01:21:32.620 If you're younger than 16, they're not giving any doses. Their expert body has advised them not to

01:21:38.200 give doses younger than that age. The United States, of course, is aggressively pursuing

01:21:42.420 two doses in everyone 12 and up, whether they're a boy or a girl. Girls have a much,

01:21:47.000 they don't appear to have this massive increased risk of myocarditis. So I think, you know, we talk

01:21:51.280 so much about personalized and precision medicine. We have to do it, which means we should consider age

01:21:56.660 and consider gender and make the appropriate choice and have that dialogue. And I think I've written

01:22:03.120 many commentaries on this. I feel like the CDC has not done a good job of actually thinking through

01:22:08.180 all the alternatives. The alternatives aren't always two or nothing. There could be one. There

01:22:12.220 could be perhaps refinement and dosing. These are strategies that could be pursued.

01:22:16.020 I like that. I like that because I also read in reading up on things that you had talked about

01:22:19.820 and things that are in the news. I mean, there's obviously a risk to kids in getting COVID. It's not like

01:22:24.200 they're totally risk-free. And one of the weird things that's happening with COVID now

01:22:27.040 is potential kidney damage. It could happen to kids. It could happen to adults who have suffered

01:22:33.740 from COVID. I saw that paper and I've seen so many papers about, you know, all the bad things COVID can

01:22:39.180 do to you. And I guess I struggle with a lot of them because one, I will concede anything that makes

01:22:44.000 you really sick that sends you to the ICU, there's going to be a convalescence period. And a lot of your

01:22:48.140 organ systems are going to be impaired. But the question that comes in my mind is, you know,

01:22:52.140 how much does COVID do more than other things if you adjust for the level of how sick you got?

01:22:57.760 Like, in other words, if I just had a mild respiratory infection, should I be more worried

01:23:01.260 if it was COVID than three years ago, rhinovirus or influenza? And I think that's a really tough

01:23:06.160 question to handle. One of the challenges with that paper on, I think, renal dysfunction or kidneys

01:23:11.040 getting worse over time is that, you know, some of those people got really sick from COVID. And if you

01:23:15.900 get really sick from anything, you know, your kidney function is not gonna be as good as somebody who

01:23:18.940 never got sick at all. So I think it's kind of tough to tease out the long term consequences of

01:23:23.980 COVID-19 from just being that sick from compared to other illnesses. And I actually think, and by

01:23:29.440 the way, I didn't mean to skip over the fact that myocarditis that if heart inflammation, it can

01:23:34.940 actually, it can, it can be mild, and it can be nothing that goes away. But it can also potentially

01:23:41.240 be fatal. And so it's, I mean, the stakes are high. And we really do need answers on this stuff.

01:23:45.960 All right, listen, enough of my questions. What about your questions? I'm sure you want to talk

01:23:49.260 to the good doctor. We've got the lines firing up right now. We're going to do that next. If you

01:23:52.560 want to call in, there's still time. It's 833-44-MEGAN. 833-446-3496.

01:24:02.500 So our doctor of an eye is still here with me, and we're taking your calls at 833-44-MEGAN. The phone

01:24:07.780 lines are lit up. 833-446-3496. We're going to start now with Jenny from the block. No, it's Jenny from

01:24:14.320 Tennessee, who's got a question for Dr. Prasad. Jenny, what would you like to know?

01:24:19.280 Hi, I am an eighth and ninth grade English teacher, so words matter to me. Why do we call

01:24:24.780 this thing a vaccine? And here's my rationale. Never in my life have I once ever feared small

01:24:30.080 box or polio or MMR. Why? Because I'm vaccinated. I'm kind of ticked off. The kids today don't have

01:24:36.960 to suffer through the rite of passage of chicken box because they are vaccinated. Yet, we call

01:24:42.480 it the vaccine, and it's still, it's never going to be eradicated. So do you think that we misnamed

01:24:47.300 it? Shouldn't it be more aligned with like a flu shot that we get once a year? It's got several

01:24:51.660 different strands in it. You have the probability of getting the flu. If you do get it, it may not

01:24:56.660 be as severe, or you may get the full-blown one. Okay, go ahead, Doc. Yeah, so I guess I would say

01:25:01.380 that I think, I mean, I think the reason we call it a vaccine, I guess, is that just means that you're

01:25:06.140 getting a little bit of the bad thing. So you're training your body's immune system that when you

01:25:10.200 actually see the bad thing in real life, you're going to fight it off better. And you're right,

01:25:13.440 I think some vaccines are so good that the disease in question is a disease we almost never talk about,

01:25:18.720 but other vaccines are not as good, such as the flu vaccine. And so you can still get the flu,

01:25:23.600 even if you've been vaccinated. And it does appear increasingly like that there are breakthrough

01:25:27.760 infections of SARS-CoV-2 for people who've gotten this. So, you know, your point's well taken.

01:25:32.960 What I would say is like, you know, what is the reason to get it? Why do, you know, we advise adults to

01:25:37.080 get it, is that I think your risk of bad outcomes and your risk of even acquiring it in the first

01:25:40.740 place are massively reduced by getting this vaccine. It does have a massive reduction in the risk of bad

01:25:46.660 outcomes from having gotten it versus not having gotten it. And that's been shown in many series,

01:25:50.400 including in Israel, United Kingdom, and including in the randomized trials that led to approval.

01:25:54.580 So quick follow up on that, you know, because we've had breakthrough infections,

01:25:57.600 they call them breakthrough. But are you still more, I know Delta is more contagious,

01:26:01.680 you can still get it if you've had the vaccine more so than the earlier variants,

01:26:04.440 but are you still more protected than an unvaccinated person from getting COVID if you've

01:26:10.740 had the vaccine, even with Delta? Yes, and certainly more protected from the thing that

01:26:15.540 we were always should not forget what the goal was. The goal is, you know, not that the virus goes in

01:26:20.420 your nose and you can detect it on a swab. The goal is to avoid you getting really sick,

01:26:24.560 going to the hospital, feeling terrible and being intubated and dying. And this vaccine protects

01:26:28.980 against that marvelously. Okay. All right. Let's go to Robert in Florida, who's got a question

01:26:32.820 about the vaccine and also boosters. Hey, Robert. Good afternoon. Quick question.

01:26:38.780 Got the Pfizer vaccine, you know, four or five months ago. And they're saying now that Madura is

01:26:45.400 a little more effective than the Pfizer. Has anybody done any studies or anything else to see if

01:26:51.880 in the near future, we could go ahead and get a Madura vaccine on top of the Pfizer?

01:26:56.580 That's my question.

01:26:57.220 That's a good question. I would say one that the dose was always different. Moderna's dose was

01:27:03.620 always more than the Pfizer dose. And there are many, many studies that are coming out trying to

01:27:08.560 calculate what we call vaccine efficacy or how well both of these work. I will tell you, you got to

01:27:13.640 take all these with a grain of salt. And here's a couple of reasons why, you know, in all of the

01:27:18.040 countries that debuted these vaccines, who were the people who got them first? You know, some places

01:27:22.500 was healthcare workers. But in a lot of places, we start by giving them to the oldest folks among us

01:27:26.860 because they had the highest risk of bad outcomes and gradually gave them to younger and younger

01:27:30.380 folks. So when you start to look now and say, well, you know, what's the risk of breakthrough

01:27:34.400 infection in people who got it nine months ago? Well, that's enriched with older people. Why? Because

01:27:39.260 they were the ones who got it nine months ago and younger people may have gotten it sooner.

01:27:42.260 So these are kind of very tricky variables to kind of adjust for. So what I would say is,

01:27:47.840 I think that question, your specific question is being looked at like, as we speak, people are very

01:27:53.260 interested in knowing if you got two Pfizer's, do you need a third Pfizer? You potentially could get

01:27:57.720 a Moderna. And I think we will learn the answer to that probably the next couple of months. But right

01:28:03.160 now, I don't think they have, there's an authorization to give that booster in your situation. The only caveat

01:28:09.700 I would add is if you are severely immunocompromised. So I would say to go talk to your doctor,

01:28:14.960 there is an EUA for people who are immunocompromised, how that's defined, you know,

01:28:19.520 you need a doctor to sit down with you and go over your medical history. But they do have an

01:28:23.540 authorization for boosters.

01:28:24.880 EUA, Emergency Youth Authorization. By the way, is there any booster for people who have gotten J&J?

01:28:30.680 It has not happened yet, although that's something where not, there's a lot of interest in doing that.

01:28:35.740 And there've been some really nice op-eds, I think one of the New York Times by Paul Sachs that people

01:28:39.320 can read sort of making the case for that. But that's, that's right on the cusp, I think, of happening.

01:28:43.220 Okay. We're going now out west. Let's go to Michael in Colorado. Hey, Michael, what's your

01:28:48.260 question? He's looking at the mountains. He's thinking about going out for a hike. No, here he,

01:28:53.460 oh, oh no. Okay. We, we lost him. But I think we've got Chris in Michigan teed up next,

01:28:59.120 if, unless my team tells me I'm wrong. Hey, Chris.

01:29:01.520 Hey, Megan. How are you?

01:29:02.620 Good. How are you doing?

01:29:03.600 Good. So we've got kind of a unique situation up here. I'm one of the, I'm up in Northern Michigan.

01:29:08.200 And one of the few things that Governor Whitner did lately was allow each school district to decide

01:29:13.240 for themselves what their masking policy would be. Now, our school board locally came up with a

01:29:18.940 great plan to satisfy all sides. No mask. If you don't want to, if you want to wear a mask, great.

01:29:24.480 They provide a sterile classroom and clean it, or you can do online virtual learning. So everybody

01:29:30.060 was in support of it. And on a Friday afternoon at five 30, our local four county health department,

01:29:37.380 the Northwest Michigan health department decided to trump the school district and issue a mask

01:29:42.860 mandate for four counties. And since then, uh, this was without board approval. Since then,

01:29:49.440 they had a board meeting in which there were six hours of public comments from health professionals,

01:29:54.020 parents, ultimately in which the health department board decided to rescind the order in which she is

01:29:59.580 refusing to do so. So in response, we've got a group of high school students, which, uh,

01:30:04.200 reached 60 today that refused to wear masks and ultimately had local law enforcement called

01:30:09.700 and asked them to leave the school. Wow. What a mess. I'm like, poor, poor Chris. What, I mean,

01:30:17.360 what do you make of that doc? Is the school board comes to a reasonable decision that the parents are

01:30:20.640 happy with and the local health officials step in and say, we know better. You will mask those

01:30:24.920 children, especially in light of, you know, the questionable mask data. Yeah, I will say this. I'll say

01:30:30.200 that, you know, what I view as the, I mean, I think this is a question that there's so many

01:30:34.320 people who want the answer to this. There are people who strongly believe you need the mask

01:30:37.760 mandate. And then there are people like, I think Chris, who points out that what about the other

01:30:41.740 option, which is, there's an optional system. You can wear it. If you want, you don't have to wear it

01:30:45.100 if you don't want to wear it. And I think the truth is, this is where the CDC has failed us.

01:30:49.500 This is a, this is a massive research priority. If I worked at the, if I was in charge of the CDC,

01:30:54.480 I would run a study, a hundred, 200, 300 schools. And we randomly assigned them to those two

01:31:00.560 strategies, the mandate versus the optional, the control is optional. So no one is not allowed to

01:31:04.840 do it. If they don't want it, if they want to do it, they can do it. And then let's ask,

01:31:07.620 is SARS-CoV-2 spread lower in that school? Are fewer children hospitalized? The truth is we just

01:31:12.380 don't know the answer. And to me, it is nails on a chalkboard. When I go on and I watch people,

01:31:17.800 scientists who I respect say that this is proven beyond a doubt. It is not. There is not that level of

01:31:23.660 evidence. And that is a big problem. We can't live in this pandemic world into year two and not

01:31:29.640 generate this evidence that people, there's a crying need from the public. So I would say

01:31:34.060 we need to push on the CDC to do the studies, to answer the question, is that push for mask mandate

01:31:40.100 beneficial? Or is the solution that the school board came to in Chris's region sufficient?

01:31:45.320 I have to say, I don't trust them. I don't trust the CDC. You know, they had that, that study of the

01:31:49.300 90,000 kids in Georgia, and it found that there was no conclusive evidence that masks worked

01:31:53.620 at all. In fact, it looked like they didn't have any much of a factor, if any. And they didn't even

01:31:58.860 tout it. They didn't put it in the summary. They totally ignored it. And then they issued mask

01:32:02.260 mandates. So I don't trust them. I have to say studies are great. I don't trust. I'll agree with

01:32:06.440 you. I mean, I agree with you in the sense that anytime you live in a world where people become

01:32:10.180 true believers in any direction, it's very difficult for them to impartially adjudicate

01:32:14.500 the evidence. They become true believers. I do think there are ways in which you can create

01:32:19.260 a diverse group of people, not just solely run in the auspices of the CDC, but bring in other people

01:32:23.920 who are more critical and get them to agree on a study design. And let's just see where the chips

01:32:27.780 fall. That Georgia study, I think it's a problematic study in the sense that I just think it's not

01:32:32.580 useful to draw any firm conclusion. But you're right. I think the CDC did not emphasize that

01:32:37.820 conclusion. And I said so as much to David in his article.

01:32:39.980 Yeah. And there's a reason why. Okay. I think we've got Michael from Colorado back. He's done looking at

01:32:43.700 the mountains and he wants to ask you a question. Michael, what's happening?

01:32:46.140 Hi, how are you guys? Thanks so much for having me on.

01:32:49.760 My pleasure.

01:32:50.240 If this vaccine is doing work, reducing the risk of an adult getting a major side effect and major

01:33:00.540 illness from COVID-19, and we are going to be living with this for so long, where is the messaging

01:33:06.620 about doing what you can to stay healthy so that you are generally a healthier person and much less

01:33:11.660 at risk of getting severely ill from COVID, going out and getting a run in, getting some sunshine,

01:33:18.340 losing 15 pounds. I mean, all of these comorbidities that we are walking around with are just as

01:33:23.440 dangerous as anything else.

01:33:24.520 All right. We got 40 seconds for you on that, Doc. Go ahead.

01:33:27.140 My answer is I could not agree with you more. I've heard people say this over and over again,

01:33:30.800 which is why doesn't public health messaging include general well-being, losing some weight,

01:33:35.280 which are modifiable risk factors for bad COVID outcomes. I couldn't agree with you more.

01:33:39.240 We need to invest in that. That needs to be part of messaging, living a healthy life and doing the

01:33:43.640 things you talk about, I think are reasonable things. And I would like people to say it more,

01:33:47.120 just like you do.

01:33:48.340 Oh, so helpful, you guys. This has been a delightful call in session. Really appreciate you guys

01:33:52.980 phoning in. Doctor, appreciate your expertise so much. And don't forget to join us tomorrow,

01:33:57.520 please, everybody. We're going to take a look back at 9-11, 20 years later. Dan Crenshaw will be

01:34:02.020 here. Deborah Burlingame, whose brother died captaining the flight that went into the Pentagon and much,

01:34:07.940 much more. And don't forget, you can check out the show on YouTube and on podcasts later today.

The Megyn Kelly Show - September 09, 2021

COVID Truth on Fauci, Vaccines, and Masks, with Sen. Rand Paul, David Zweig, and Dr. Vinay Prasad ｜ Ep. 156

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