The Megyn Kelly Show - COVID Vaccines, Masks and Schools, with Alex Berenson and Dr. Jay Bhattacharya ｜ Ep. 57

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00:00:30.600 Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations.

00:00:41.780 Hey, everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly.

00:00:43.480 Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show.

00:00:45.020 Today on the program, COVID, the vaccine, and the never-ending lockdowns.

00:00:51.980 In particular, what's going on in the schools has got me really upset today.

00:00:56.320 We've got some really smart people on the show today, including Dr. Jay Bhattacharya.

00:01:01.040 He was with us not long ago.

00:01:02.600 He's from the Great Barrington Declaration.

00:01:05.780 I mean, that's something that he has helped author.

00:01:08.640 He's actually a professor of medicine at Stanford.

00:01:10.480 But that's that sort of memo that made a really strong case for how we could open back up the country as soon as humanly possible while protecting the most vulnerable.

00:01:21.260 Made a lot of sense.

00:01:22.800 And he's got a good plan for how we can open up this country in the next 30 days.

00:01:28.620 And so why aren't they listening to him?

00:01:30.780 We're also going to be joined by Alex Berenson, former New York Times reporter who's been very heterodox on these COVID lockdowns and the COVID information and the sort of COVID porn that gets shoveled at us day in and day out by people who, I don't know if they like the lockdowns or just have no problem with them.

00:01:47.740 But he's been very brave in pushing back on some of the conventional wisdom.

00:01:52.340 So we'll ask him some good questions.

00:01:54.240 But listen, I want to start with what's happening in our schools.

00:01:58.020 It's not getting enough attention.

00:02:00.020 Whether you have a child or you don't have a child, we got to talk about it.

00:02:04.380 COVID infection rates finally are falling.

00:02:06.980 They're down about over 30 percent nationwide right now, according to The Times.

00:02:12.200 Experts are now predicting new cases in the U.S. will only steadily decline.

00:02:16.160 So we really are starting to round the corner on this thing.

00:02:19.240 They're estimating now that approximately one third of the U.S. has been infected with COVID.

00:02:24.460 So we're on our way to herd immunity.

00:02:27.400 And we've learned a lot.

00:02:29.340 Like closing schools is unnecessary and does far more harm than good.

00:02:35.460 Everyone from the Centers for Disease Control to the World Health Organization has said the schools present an infinitesimal transmission rate.

00:02:43.340 And that closing them costs more lives than would leaving them open.

00:02:49.040 And yet still, still, the teachers' unions, in a disgracefully selfish act, continue to refuse to send in the teachers at the national and some local levels.

00:03:01.880 It's not all teachers, of course.

00:03:03.560 We should say that up front.

00:03:04.500 Most teachers want to work.

00:03:06.420 Most are courageous and selfless and deserve our deep thanks, as we've seen a lot over this past year, as we watch them teach our children.

00:03:14.460 My son's teacher has been in class all year, in class, in the classroom at age 65, with a room full of fifth graders, helping these kids come home joyful every day.

00:03:27.120 And we are grateful.

00:03:28.600 Same for our other two children.

00:03:30.800 Most teachers want to be in the classroom and want to be with the children and will tell you that these unions do not speak for them.

00:03:39.940 But others simply will not return to class.

00:03:44.500 They literally are refusing to go in and do their jobs.

00:03:47.820 And yesterday, the Biden administration backed them.

00:03:51.160 I'll get to that in one second.

00:03:52.200 But first, some district officials in various states are now saying schools, they may not operate normally, not just for the remainder of this school year.

00:04:01.860 Right. We're in January now, January through June, but for the entirety of the twenty twenty one to twenty two school year, all of next year.

00:04:10.920 And Randy Weingarten, she's the president of the American Federation of Teachers, very powerful.

00:04:15.900 It's the nation's second largest teachers union.

00:04:17.940 You see her all over cable news is leading the stay at home charge. 0.99

00:04:22.120 It's not safe, she claims.

00:04:23.980 The teachers are scared, she says.

00:04:25.940 That may be.

00:04:27.540 But their fear is not supported by the facts.

00:04:29.960 But COVID infection rates in elementary schools have been minuscule, 0.2 percent for teachers, 0.1 percent for the children.

00:04:43.260 Moreover, the infections that they've identified in schools were not acquired in the schools, according to the CDC, which is jumping up and down now, saying the safest place for K through 12 attendees is in school.

00:04:57.740 OK, so there's no infections, virtually none.

00:05:00.500 And the ones that are there were not acquired in the schools.

00:05:02.900 There is no good reason not to return to in school learning.

00:05:07.300 Still, the Chicago Teachers Union this week refused a direct order from the school district to return to school this past Monday.

00:05:16.040 Same deal for the teachers in Montclair, New Jersey.

00:05:18.240 It's basically right outside of New York City, very tony suburb of New York, where elementary school children have not been in school for 319 days.

00:05:28.300 The teachers there now defying an order to get back in the classroom.

00:05:31.580 Just halftime, hybrid learning.

00:05:33.360 Nope, won't do it.

00:05:34.340 The Biden administration, which released a plan to have the schools open within his first 100 days, which, by the way, isn't good enough.

00:05:42.300 That's basically the end of the school year.

00:05:43.860 Still not good enough.

00:05:44.900 But he's already gone soft on it.

00:05:46.220 He's already reversed himself on that, bowing to the unions, which are huge Democratic donors.

00:05:50.460 And instead of fighting these powerful donors, the unions, Joe Biden's now switched his message to the schools need to be safe before the teachers go back.

00:06:01.520 This after literally tens of billions of dollars have been spent to make the schools so they've gotten over 60 billion dollars from the feds to shore up their ventilation systems and so on.

00:06:13.800 And they've been prioritized, teachers have, for vaccines.

00:06:16.820 And here was the new White House chief of staff, Ron Klain, siding with the unions.

00:06:22.720 We need to do the things to open safely.

00:06:25.060 Most of the teachers I talk to, they want to be back in the classroom.

00:06:27.940 That's true.

00:06:28.180 They just want to know that it's safe.

00:06:29.620 And we as a country should make the investments to make it safe.

00:06:33.940 OK, so we have.

00:06:35.660 And their standard of safety knows no bounds.

00:06:39.360 The truth is no amount of safety measures is going to get these teachers back in the classroom.

00:06:42.740 Even a direct order from their bosses hasn't gotten them back in the classroom.

00:06:45.800 The Chicago schools have installed air purifiers in the classrooms, conducted ventilation tests, increased cleaning, procured rapid testing, among other things.

00:06:55.620 But still, the teachers who are receiving priority on vaccinations say it's not safe, not safe enough.

00:07:01.300 These people won't be satisfied until they get the hazmat suits appropriate for an overnight stay at Chernobyl. 0.53

00:07:05.220 The Wall Street Journal reports that children in over 130 parochial and private Chicago schools, and by the way, over 2,000 early learning centers there, have been in class safely since last fall.

00:07:18.280 But still, Chicago teachers play the victim.

00:07:21.780 And we're seeing this dichotomy happen across the nation between public and private schools.

00:07:25.860 The private schools go back, and the kids who are in the public school system, which doesn't have as much money behind them, they don't get to go.

00:07:32.440 And it's unfair.

00:07:34.520 Remember the school teachers in New York City, where I am, who showed up with cardboard coffins and fake body bags after they were ordered back into the classroom?

00:07:42.560 So concerned were they about their safety that these same teachers from the union, many of the same ones, got on buses a few weeks later, went to Washington, D.C., and marched with Al Sharpton and 50,000 others in support of BLM.

00:07:57.600 No social distancing there.

00:07:59.520 And old Randy Weingarten, she was there, too, repeatedly seen without a mask.

00:08:03.720 But it's all about safety.

00:08:06.340 Now, now we're seeing the spike in depression and anxiety and even death.

00:08:12.560 For children forced into months-long isolation.

00:08:16.700 CDC data showed the suicide.

00:08:19.400 It was already the second leading cause of death among young people aged 10 to 24 before the pandemic.

00:08:24.960 But the closure of schools and the related social activity that's been shut down, you know, no after-school sports, et cetera, has left children prisoners in their own homes.

00:08:35.800 There are no school mental health counselors to keep an eye on them.

00:08:39.320 No in-person teacher support.

00:08:40.740 That's usually the first line of reporting when you see a problem with a child.

00:08:45.680 Nonstop distance from their friends and kids who have abusive parents now trapped in the danger.

00:08:51.620 And indeed, suicides are frighteningly on the rise.

00:08:55.080 The New York Times had a disturbing report this past Sunday about the surge of student suicides in Clark County, Nevada.

00:09:04.340 That's the Las Vegas area.

00:09:06.220 It's gotten so bad there that they have had to create an early warning system that monitors students' mental health episodes.

00:09:13.040 Like they're able to electronically check the children's iPads from afar and they're doing remote searches for disturbing terms or searches that the kids have done on them.

00:09:23.040 That system has already sent more than 3,100 alerts to officials just since last March, including one that went out to a boy's father at 2 a.m.

00:09:33.380 telling him his son had been searching, quote, how to make a noose.

00:09:38.780 Sure enough, the dad ran to his son's room at 2 a.m.

00:09:41.780 and found his son trying to hang himself.

00:09:45.380 It appears he stopped it.

00:09:48.080 By December 2020, okay, just last month, the Times report showed that over the previous nine months, okay, from December 2020 back nine months,

00:09:59.480 18 Clark County students had taken their own lives.

00:10:03.420 That's double the preceding 12 months.

00:10:07.380 One left a note saying he had nothing to look forward to.

00:10:10.080 One of the children was nine years old.

00:10:15.280 And Las Vegas is not alone.

00:10:18.260 The Times reports death by suicide in Aledo, Texas, where a 12-year-old hanged himself after months of the lockdown.

00:10:26.560 In Maryland, a 14-year-old boy, quote, gave up after school remained shut in the fall.

00:10:33.240 In Sacramento, where an 11-year-old boy shot himself during his Zoom class.

00:10:38.480 In Maine, where a teen killed himself due to, his father says, the ongoing isolation.

00:10:44.380 This has to stop.

00:10:47.500 The schools have to reopen.

00:10:51.580 It's safe.

00:10:52.540 It's been proven safe.

00:10:55.040 The Chicago teachers who refuse to obey the district order to get back in the classrooms should be fired.

00:11:00.400 Same for those in Montclair, New Jersey, and any other district that puts the well-being of students last.

00:11:07.440 The grocery stores are open.

00:11:08.820 The hospitals are open.

00:11:10.080 The liquor stores are open.

00:11:11.620 The pharmacies are open.

00:11:13.220 And the schools essential to our children's well-being must open, too.

00:11:20.600 Teaching, they say, is supposed to be a noble profession.

00:11:24.220 Where is that nobility now?

00:11:30.940 All right.

00:11:33.660 We're going to be joined by Dr. J. Bhattacharya in one second.

00:11:37.540 He's the perfect person to have on about this because he's been sounding this alarm about the non-COVID deaths that result from these measures we've taken for a long time now.

00:11:47.380 He's been jumping up and down trying to tell people this is going to happen.

00:11:50.060 And they haven't listened.

00:11:53.160 But before we get to him, let's pay the bills.

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00:13:07.280 Joining us now to talk about the news of the day is Dr. Jay Bhattacharya.

00:13:13.280 He's a professor of medicine at Stanford University and one of the co-authors of the Great Barrington Declaration.

00:13:19.000 Doc, great to have you back.

00:13:19.880 Thank you for being here.

00:13:20.960 Thank you for having me.

00:13:21.640 So let's just kick it off with the schools and what's now become a real crisis.

00:13:29.140 I mean, those stories are heartbreaking.

00:13:31.680 And, you know, they were in the news on Sunday, the very same day, the Chicago's, the Chicago Teachers Union said, we're not going back.

00:13:39.040 We refuse even to do a hybrid.

00:13:43.460 So people don't care, Jay.

00:13:45.820 These teachers unions, they don't care. 1.00

00:13:48.840 Not going back.

00:13:49.440 And I don't know what kind of measure it would take to get them to bend.

00:13:53.380 I heard your intro.

00:13:54.380 And I think, I mean, you're spot on.

00:13:56.600 We have a responsibility to our kids to have them back in school in person.

00:14:01.660 The scientific evidence is overwhelming at this point.

00:14:04.400 But even early on, we kind of knew that children were not super spreaders.

00:14:08.920 Though they can get infected, they spread the disease for reasons we don't fully understand yet.

00:14:13.940 But it's so clear that they are much less likely to spread the disease to adults.

00:14:18.220 On the basis of this evidence, Sweden, for instance, kept its schools open all through the epidemic.

00:14:25.960 Much of Europe the same. 0.70

00:14:27.820 The United States is an outlier in this.

00:14:30.620 And your highlighting of the harms to kids is really on point.

00:14:35.760 Because if you look at it, kids really are much safer.

00:14:39.400 I'll just give you one data point.

00:14:42.960 Your reported child abuse rates have plummeted in the U.S.

00:14:46.080 But it's not because child abuse has dropped.

00:14:48.660 It's because schools are where child abuse cases are picked up and dealt with.

00:14:52.880 There was a study done in the Journal of American Medical Association that estimated, you know, like schools, it's not just for learning.

00:15:01.920 I mean, it breeds a lifetime habit that results in people being sort of healthier and wealthier their entire lives.

00:15:10.540 You cut school for a little while and children lead shorter, less healthy lives.

00:15:17.100 So someone did an estimate and published in the Journal of American Medical Association, a top medical journal, that just the school's closure in March and April led to five and a half million fewer life years for our kids.

00:15:29.180 Oh, my God.

00:15:29.780 It's really underscoring the socioeconomic differences, too, because the kids of lower socioeconomic status are the last to go back to school.

00:15:37.800 You know, here in New York City, the wealthy private schools, they're open.

00:15:42.740 You know, my kids, they're in school.

00:15:44.820 And yet the public schools have been totally unreliable and the upper schools in New York are still closed.

00:15:49.860 And so they're widening a gap between the haves and the have nots, you know, those who are struggling and those who have been successful financially in a way that in any other circumstance they would find completely unacceptable.

00:16:02.460 No, I agree with that, too.

00:16:03.920 It's an engine for the this is probably the single biggest drive of driver of inequality I've ever seen for it for an economic policy.

00:16:11.460 We basically have decided that the poor don't need to be educated in the United States, whereas the rich can confine to alternatives.

00:16:19.860 I don't really understand the I mean, I don't actually like the teachers I've talked with, many of them, the rank and file, they want to do a back to teach.

00:16:30.240 They understand the role, the important, the vital role they play in in their their students lives.

00:16:36.060 And I think I think I don't really understand the political dynamic at this point.

00:16:40.720 It's for teachers themselves, the schools are I mean, compared to like, you know, we ask our clerks to go in and and and, you know, sort of work all day.

00:16:52.660 We ask doctors and nurses to go in, work all day.

00:16:56.540 We we ask all kinds of people who perform essential services to continue to perform them despite the risk of the epidemic.

00:17:03.340 In some cases, much, much, much, much less safely than a teacher would have.

00:17:07.400 And yet I would say that the teachers are are performing an absolutely essential service if they were just agreed to go do it.

00:17:14.580 I think a lot of teachers around the country want that.

00:17:17.360 I mean, they understand the responsibility that they that they have in their hands, the power they hold for their to make their lives of their kids better.

00:17:25.660 And I think they just I think the teachers need to start listening to their own teachers.

00:17:29.700 Exactly. So that's where it is.

00:17:31.080 It's it's that's been my experience, too.

00:17:33.080 I have quite a few friends who are who are teachers and the union doesn't always speak for them.

00:17:38.820 The union is this powerful like amoeba that moves on its own, depending on what Randy, in the case of, you know, the second largest teachers union wants.

00:17:48.720 And it may not be what the teachers want.

00:17:51.940 And, you know, it's like a lot of these teachers would actually like to get back into into the classroom.

00:17:56.680 A, they want to get out of their own house.

00:17:58.680 Right. They're sick of sitting around their own house and trying to teach.

00:18:01.040 They know it's not meaningful.

00:18:02.080 And B, they care about their students, maybe reverse the order of those.

00:18:04.900 But they're being told they can't.

00:18:07.460 And even here in New York, there's one private school that's mandating only virtual teaching.

00:18:13.880 OK, so you can only have a virtual experience even for the children who come back to the school.

00:18:20.800 So kids, the school's open.

00:18:22.880 The kids can file into the classroom, but their teacher is going to be remote in every classroom.

00:18:28.280 And even, Jay, if the teacher is inside the school, if the teacher shows up at school, they'll put her, let's say, in the nurse's office and she will teach remotely to her class.

00:18:40.920 That's one story up because somehow they think this is more equitable.

00:18:46.320 Somehow they think this is more equitable for the students who can't make it into the school, that everyone needs to have a virtual experience.

00:18:52.500 Doing anything else is inequitable. 0.63

00:18:53.920 And so everyone gets screwed. 0.74

00:18:56.340 I mean, that's the bottom line. 0.97

00:18:57.160 They don't have it figured out.

00:18:58.460 And the real harm we're seeing in places like Las Vegas, right, where kids have been driven to a very dark place during a time of life that's already really fraught.

00:19:08.740 Yeah, I mean, I think that's I think we really do have a responsibility to our kids.

00:19:11.960 We can do this safely.

00:19:12.820 So, for instance, we know that people, teachers who are older might be at higher risk if they get COVID.

00:19:19.920 Prioritize them for vaccination.

00:19:22.920 Allow them alternate if they haven't been vaccinated or the vaccination hasn't been completed.

00:19:27.420 They can give them alternate arrangements so that maybe they help with curriculum with younger teachers.

00:19:31.840 For younger teachers, the risk of COVID is very, very, the risk of dying from COVID is incredibly low.

00:19:37.100 I mean, it's on par with the risk they normally take from from other infectious diseases.

00:19:42.140 So for those folks, they can teach safely because the kids are passing the disease on at much lower rates than adults.

00:19:53.240 Kids are not the super spreaders of this disease.

00:19:55.120 Well, that's exactly right.

00:19:57.040 So nobody's saying that people who are immunocompromised or older or, you know, we can identify now what makes you more at risk.

00:20:04.120 Nobody's saying that they need to rush back to the classroom.

00:20:05.960 Nobody.

00:20:06.780 No school saying that they're all still offering a remote teaching option for those who are at most at risk.

00:20:12.720 Like, it's not acceptable.

00:20:14.600 The young, healthy teachers.

00:20:16.380 I just saw the thing out of Chicago where the teacher, I thought it was a joke.

00:20:21.340 It's not.

00:20:22.220 The teachers from the dance program in Chicago did some interpretive dance to show how they didn't want to go back to their.

00:20:30.200 These are able-bodied, perfectly healthy young people like dancing their way back to their couch.

00:20:36.600 And it's like I said in the opening, you know, talking points that they're not going to be happy until they're in like a hazmat suit that you'd get if you were working on an IBM clean room, you know, assembling the computer chips.

00:20:49.320 Like, there's nothing that approaches 100% safe.

00:20:55.600 But I think we've gotten as close as we're going to get.

00:20:58.120 I mean, I think the thing is, I think there's this misperception about the deadliness of the disease, right?

00:21:03.020 So, for people who are over 70, the survival rate is 95%.

00:21:07.520 5% is a high death rate from a single disease.

00:21:10.040 So, I mean, you don't want to downplay that.

00:21:11.620 Older people really are at high risk.

00:21:13.720 For people under 70, the survival rate is 99.95%.

00:21:18.060 And for people under the age of 30, it's, I mean, it's on par with the flu.

00:21:23.160 The flu is more dangerous than COVID for children.

00:21:28.240 I'm 52.

00:21:29.120 My death, survival rate from COVID infection from worldwide studies is something on the order of 99.8%.

00:21:37.260 I would, I love teaching in person.

00:21:40.220 I would happily go back to teaching my classes in person if my school would let me do that.

00:21:45.600 I mean, I think, because it's just much more effective in person in conveying the information I want to get across than I am on Zoom.

00:21:52.320 I think that's most people have felt that, that teach.

00:21:55.640 I think, you know, in life, we all take some risks.

00:22:00.620 This is not such a high risk that we should, I mean, we have to consider the risk we pose to the kids, as you've rightly emphasized.

00:22:08.300 There's a trade-off here.

00:22:09.180 And as I feel as a teacher, I have a responsibility to my students.

00:22:12.900 I suspect a lot of people feel that way.

00:22:14.840 A lot of teachers feel that way.

00:22:15.880 So we just have to tell them what the real risks are, address the panic, and then let them take the responsibility seriously to their students.

00:22:26.300 And like that human touch, everybody knows how important that is.

00:22:30.300 You know, we've already become so isolated in this world, always looking down at our phones, never looking out the window, making less and less conversation.

00:22:38.260 And yet, thank goodness, there are still some places where forced socialization occurs. 0.89

00:22:43.740 And schools are one of them.

00:22:46.120 And especially at an age where you're coming of age, you're figuring out your body, your hormones, your place in life, who you are.

00:22:55.960 Like, then more than ever, you need the support of friends and teachers and mentors and guidance counselors and coaches.

00:23:03.760 And we just whipped it away with very little consideration for what we were doing.

00:23:09.100 And maybe you could excuse that in March, but it's now January of 2021, and there's no excuse for it now.

00:23:16.560 That's why I admire what you guys have done at the Great Barrington Declaration, because you've tried to find a way.

00:23:21.960 It's not just about schools.

00:23:22.800 It's about everyone.

00:23:23.940 It's about businesses, because all of what we've said can be extrapolated.

00:23:27.840 The isolation, the dangers, the depression that comes from these lockdowns.

00:23:32.900 You had a piece just last month, and your declaration came out months ago, but saying we could open in January.

00:23:38.840 We could open, we could end the lockdowns in January if they would just do what you guys are calling focused protection, which, for the audience who doesn't know that at this point, what is focused protection?

00:23:49.400 So focused protection is prioritizing the protection of people we know to be vulnerable to COVID disease, high mortality risk of COVID disease.

00:23:57.860 People who are over 70, people over 65 and actually have chronic conditions that put them at higher risk.

00:24:03.920 You know, even people maybe under 65 that have these chronic, some of the chronic conditions that are very high risk should they get infected.

00:24:09.900 Practically, now that we have the vaccine, that means prioritizing those folks for the vaccine.

00:24:15.380 So just to give an example, in Florida, for instance, Governor DeSantis actually has done this.

00:24:21.900 He's prioritized nursing home residents where something like 40% of all deaths from COVID have happened.

00:24:28.260 And by the end of January, that's only a few days, every single nursing home resident and a vast number of the facilities will have offered a vaccine in Florida.

00:24:40.980 In California, we just barely gotten started.

00:24:43.680 My 80-year-old mom lives in Los Angeles.

00:24:45.500 She still has not gotten vaccinated.

00:24:47.140 She's really high risk.

00:24:48.600 I'm not going to go visit her until she's vaccinated.

00:24:51.340 I think it's a choice.

00:24:53.580 It's a policy choice to do this.

00:24:55.120 We can protect the vulnerable.

00:24:56.780 But once we've done that, once you've protected the vulnerable, at that point, the lockdown harms are way worse than the disease itself.

00:25:06.840 They're just – and, you know, we can – this is something we're going to be endlessly talking about and cataloging, basically, the civilizational suicide that we've undertaken through these lockdowns.

00:25:17.680 But I think, just to give some sense of this, what argument is there if we have removed from the population by protecting them with the vaccine so that they're no longer at risk from infection and death from infection?

00:25:33.800 What argument is there to keep the lockdowns in place?

00:25:36.060 There really isn't a good one, I think.

00:25:37.500 Well, when you – you're obviously very immersed in this and in the medical community, so why are they doing it?

00:25:46.880 You know, I mean, what is it with the Jones for lockdowns and interminable masks and restaurant closures and business closures and school closures?

00:26:00.140 Why?

00:26:01.440 I think they've forgotten what public health is about.

00:26:03.960 Public health is not just infection control.

00:26:06.660 Public health is about promoting, in sort of a holistic sense, the health of the population.

00:26:12.600 And health doesn't just mean I don't have COVID.

00:26:14.580 Health means all kinds of things.

00:26:16.560 And as you've emphasized, Megan, correctly, mental health, emotional health, physical health in other ways, you know, cancer screening, good diet, good sleep, good – you know, so all these things are part of a healthy life that public health normally would think about.

00:26:33.980 And, you know, there's tradeoffs involved in that.

00:26:36.180 I mean, sometimes, you know, you can't have absolutely everything.

00:26:40.200 And so public health is about giving people the tools to manage those tradeoffs in their lives appropriately, trusting people to make decisions once you've given them good tools.

00:26:51.060 What's happened is this is a monomania about infection control as if it were the only priority in public health.

00:26:58.020 And that is an enormous mistake because what happens is then we let slip all these other things that are absolutely vital for human functioning and human flourishing.

00:27:05.780 And as if – and as if this disease has a 100% death rate, you know, it's like that – or treating it really like it is the plague.

00:27:14.520 To your point, I go to see a cardiologist every year because my dad died at age 45 of a heart attack.

00:27:20.060 So I'm always very on top of that just to make sure I'm okay.

00:27:23.220 And I asked him how has the office been?

00:27:26.740 You know, has it been busy?

00:27:27.420 Has it been slow?

00:27:28.720 He said disturbingly slow.

00:27:31.220 This is one of the top cardiologists in New York.

00:27:33.200 Well, it's not because people's heart disease and heart concerns just went away over the past year.

00:27:38.140 It's because they're not coming in, right?

00:27:40.000 They're staying locked inside of their houses.

00:27:42.200 And I said, have you had any problems?

00:27:44.280 Like serious problems arise as a result of that?

00:27:45.920 And he said, yes.

00:27:46.900 He said one guy didn't come in for his annual appointment, wound up having chest pains.

00:27:51.320 He told him get to the hospital immediately.

00:27:52.760 The guy didn't want to go to the hospital because he was so worried about catching COVID at the hospital and he died.

00:27:57.720 Like, it's just one example, but it's an example of the way in which this is hurting people in other ways.

00:28:04.320 I've heard those stories.

00:28:05.180 And, you know, like what we're going to see is, just give another small data point, but it's going to be huge, is women with late stage breast cancer. 0.53

00:28:13.680 That's going to sharply increase next year because a lot of women skip their mammograms this year. 1.00

00:28:18.620 I mean, we're going to start to see another, another data point.

00:28:22.620 How do you teach a six-year-old to read over Zoom?

00:28:25.380 The answer is you don't.

00:28:26.780 We're going to start to see illiteracy creep back up after we've been, made an enormous amount of progress against it.

00:28:32.740 I mean, I just, it's, there's just a whole host of things that we care about that we've forgotten because we only look at COVID.

00:28:39.160 And I think it's just an, I think it's just a mistake.

00:28:42.040 And on the schools, there's such a disparity between like the schools in Florida are open.

00:28:45.440 Um, so the, this is, this is, these are terms that parents actually might care about.

00:28:51.080 So the ninth graders down there are getting a leg up on the ninth graders in Chicago, right?

00:28:56.280 They're, they're learning at a faster rate.

00:28:57.720 They're learning a lot more.

00:28:58.600 And when they get to that SAT, they're going to be better prepared.

00:29:00.840 Like that's the stuff that normally drives parents crazy, but it's happening.

00:29:04.500 And even the United States versus other countries, like you point out, Sweden, that have been open and providing information.

00:29:10.220 And we know we're stuck on this remote learning, which is barely a step above nothing.

00:29:15.660 We're going to be behind, like considerably behind.

00:29:18.820 As you point out, this could be generational at this point.

00:29:22.200 Yeah.

00:29:22.400 And as you pointed out, the inequality effects are just, I mean, I think for minority populations, minority students, it's been much worse than for, for, uh, for others.

00:29:30.920 It's, it's, it's, um, it really is a doubt dereliction of duty.

00:29:34.060 So what about, so now they're on, on unveiling the vaccines, right?

00:29:39.580 And the latest information I had was that about 41 million doses have been delivered to states.

00:29:47.100 About 19 million people have received at least one dose.

00:29:50.580 And of course they need two doses.

00:29:51.660 So, you know, if you assume 40, 40 million doses are out there, that means 20 million people should be getting dosed, fully dosed, fully vaccinated.

00:29:59.640 So far, they say only 3.3 million have been fully vaccinated.

00:30:03.480 About a million a day are getting the vaccine.

00:30:05.740 By the way, that was the same under president Trump as it is right now.

00:30:08.600 So at this rate, when is everyone who needs to get vaccinated going to be vaccinated?

00:30:16.520 I guess that question is who needs to be vaccinated immediately, right?

00:30:19.880 Because the question, if you're talking about the entire population, it'll take a year and that's just the United States.

00:30:25.520 I mean, worldwide, I mean, the United States is lucky we vaccinated more people, uh, than any other country on earth.

00:30:31.180 Uh, so the, the, the question to me, isn't how many, how long until we vaccinate everybody?

00:30:37.940 That's, that's a mistake in thinking.

00:30:39.540 The question is how long till we vaccinate the people who are vulnerable?

00:30:44.040 That if we, if we, uh, uh, uh, put our minds to it and make it policy to prioritize the vulnerable, then we should be able to be done in a month, in two months.

00:30:56.200 I mean, that, you know, different states have different, uh, you know, will be more and less efficient at it.

00:31:01.260 But I mean, two months, um, no, so Florida, for instance, has done that, but California has not.

00:31:07.760 I think California, I think was just in the middle of, I think January 13th or 14th is when we first started vaccinating people over 65.

00:31:14.700 My 80 year old mom still is not vaccinated in LA.

00:31:17.340 I don't, whereas Florida, I mean, I think I just saw a 1 millionth person vaccinated, uh, in, in, uh, or offered the first dose of vaccine in, in, among the elderly.

00:31:27.840 I mean, I think it's, it's, uh, it's a, it's a policy decision who to choose to vaccinate first and, uh, states that have made vaccinating older people a priority have done that.

00:31:39.180 I think West Virginia has done pretty well.

00:31:40.980 Uh, uh, I mean, there's, there's, there's a, there's a few states that have made that a priority and have done quite well at that.

00:31:45.320 And other states have, have sort of waffled at that.

00:31:48.260 Well, here in New York, now that you mentioned it, we, we did the opposite.

00:31:50.840 We said you couldn't get it if you were over like 65, it was, it was a relatively low senior's age and, and vaccines were going to waste. 0.98

00:31:58.220 And then our dumb ass governor, forgive me, but not, no love lost there. 0.99

00:32:03.460 Finally reversed the policy. 1.00

00:32:04.840 I'll let you continue your thought.

00:32:06.420 Yeah.

00:32:06.740 I mean, I think, I think there was this, I mean, in New York, it was like, they're trying to make the perfect enemy of the good.

00:32:10.980 Like they were like, okay, you can't, you can't give the vaccine unless they're on the one, a priority list.

00:32:16.500 Uh, but then like someone just hanging around that, you know, you know, the vaccine is this, this thing that has to be stored at minus 70 degrees.

00:32:23.560 You open it up.

00:32:24.420 You basically have to give to everybody.

00:32:25.720 You have to use up the vial immediately or else it goes to waste.

00:32:28.640 So you may as well give it to people that are, if they're hanging around, if you have, but, but like, realistically, what you should be doing is you should be prioritizing the elderly.

00:32:37.620 So go to your nursing homes. 1.00

00:32:39.540 That's a, that's a really easy place to find a lot of elderly.

00:32:42.340 Go to your assisted living facilities, go to, go to senior centers in neighborhoods, try to find out where the multi-generational homes are, uh, where, where all of the people live.

00:32:51.960 You know, public health officials actually have access to that kind of information and call them up and say, look, we'll, we'll come to you and give you the vaccine.

00:32:58.440 Um, I mean, that those kinds of programs are certainly within the capacity of public health in all across the country.

00:33:04.760 And that's something we should be doing.

00:33:06.540 I think.

00:33:06.760 What do you make of, you know, now they're talking about the variants that there's suddenly, you know, when you weren't allowed to say China virus, but now you can say Brazil virus and South American virus, South Africa.

00:33:19.000 Like that now, now that Trump's gone, we're allowed to note where the virus, the new strains are coming from.

00:33:24.340 And what they're saying is that.

00:33:26.980 They're not sure, I guess, whether the vaccine has a total overlap with some of these new variants, like the one from Brazil.

00:33:35.940 Well, and what's your take on it?

00:33:38.560 Like if you get this vaccination now, the one from Pfizer, the one from Moderna, do you have to worry?

00:33:44.440 So I've, I've looked, I haven't seen the Brazil variant, but the, the, uh, but I've seen a sort of careful work done on the UK variant and the, uh, and the South African variant.

00:33:53.580 And both of the Moderna vaccine and the Pfizer vaccines see, uh, so they've done these tests on monkeys to see if the variant, uh, the vaccine actually protects, produces antibodies that can neutralize the variant.

00:34:09.820 And for the UK variant, it seems like it's a hundred percent neutralization for the South African variant, there's slightly less neutralization, but enough to protect, protecting the monkeys against this, this variant other than that.

00:34:22.720 So I think, um, it's, it's actually very, very promising.

00:34:25.380 Uh, and I, from what I understand the, the, uh, Pfizer and Moderna are both looking at, uh, sort of booster shots.

00:34:31.400 The idea is, is, uh, let's put, uh, an, an MR, an MRNA sequence that, uh, that covers the variant.

00:34:37.820 I think the variant is something to look at, uh, and, and think about, but at this point I wouldn't worry about it.

00:34:43.900 I mean, I think the, uh, the, the, the, the vaccine will protect against them, uh, the, the, at least the ones we've seen thus far and the biologists that look at this, I mean, they, they, they, they seem like they're, that this is something that's, that's pop that they, that they're thinking about, but that, that they're not deeply worried about as yet.

00:35:00.160 Do you think at this point, if you get the vaccine, you know, both doses and possibly a booster, you'll ever have to get it again?

00:35:08.440 Um, it's hard to say, cause we don't know how long lasting the immunity is from the vaccine.

00:35:13.960 I think that it's likely that, uh, like the, the, the vaccine, just like if you get infected will induce relatively long lasting immunity, but there's no proof of that yet since the vaccine's only been around a couple of months.

00:35:25.680 Um, we know from actually, if you're from lots of studies that natural infection induces very long lasting immunity, um, you know, year, two, three years.

00:35:34.900 And, um, even after antibodies fade, you still have some memory cells, uh, that protect you against severe infection.

00:35:43.120 I think the long run of this disease, the very long run is it becomes like a, another coronavirus, a common cold virus.

00:35:51.060 Uh, you get it when you're young, it doesn't, it just causes mild, mild symptoms when you're young, you don't die from it.

00:35:57.140 Um, and then through life, you keep getting it, but it just causes a cold because you've built up immune memory around it.

00:36:03.620 Um, I think that's the long run of disease.

00:36:04.940 I don't think the long run is yearly vaccinations forever.

00:36:07.420 Although that may be the case for a few, uh, a few years, I think.

00:36:11.400 Well, there's a lot of, um, information going around on the web about the vaccines potentially being dangerous.

00:36:16.820 I mean, everything from long-term, it's going to come back to haunt you to, it's secretly going to insert some sort of a chip that Bill Gates is going to be monitoring you through.

00:36:27.740 I mean, this is right.

00:36:28.840 This is like, if you spend a lot of time on the internet, you're going to go down these dark rabbit holes.

00:36:33.380 Can you respond to, to that?

00:36:35.360 Like, do you have concerns about the vaccine?

00:36:37.560 Do you, you know, long-term, short-term, I'm assuming you don't think Bill Gates is part of a massive conspiracy, but what do you think?

00:36:42.420 It's this, this, that technology itself is kind of, it's really an amazing technology in one sense.

00:36:50.080 Like basically you can design a vaccine relatively quickly.

00:36:53.020 The mRNA sequence that's put in the vaccine isn't the whole virus.

00:36:57.080 It's just a snippet of the virus.

00:36:58.940 Um, and the mRNA is actually getting your body degrades it as soon as, as soon as it produces the protein more or less.

00:37:05.800 Um, so I think it's a, it's a, it's a, uh, and then the protein induces the immune response.

00:37:09.660 Um, so I think it's, it's, it's, it's not one of these, there's no chip involved.

00:37:13.800 There are safety concerns with every vaccine and the, the, you, and that's actually, I think, uh, being monitored very, very closely.

00:37:21.980 You know, I think, uh, there's, there are, uh, cases of people getting allergic reactions from the vaccine, uh, the cases, things like that.

00:37:30.080 Um, for the most part, the severe adverse event rate has been pretty low.

00:37:34.280 I mean, it's, it's, it's, you know, it's on par with other vaccines.

00:37:36.940 Uh, are there going to be very, very long-term effects?

00:37:39.920 I mean, again, the vaccine has been around for a couple of months.

00:37:42.160 It's not possible to say that, uh, with certainty that there aren't.

00:37:46.860 Uh, but I think for the older population for whom COVID is really deadly, um, the vaccine is way, I'd rather take that uncertainty over the long-term effects of the vaccine, which are probably very unlikely.

00:38:00.440 Um, versus the certainty that COVID for someone who's over 70 has a, you know, 5% death rate.

00:38:07.280 I mean, I told my mom to take the vaccine, for instance.

00:38:10.060 Right.

00:38:10.660 What, now, a couple of questions there.

00:38:12.400 So, I, I read that severe reactions to the vaccine are very rare.

00:38:15.580 10 people out of more than 4 million had severe reactions.

00:38:19.200 And they said out of those 10, I think 9 out of 10 all had serious allergic reactions to other vaccines before.

00:38:26.420 So, it's like, unfortunately, you may be a person, and you'd probably already know it, who has very negative reactions to vaccines, including anaphylaxic shock.

00:38:35.360 Some of them had had on other vaccines.

00:38:37.120 So, just to put people's mind at ease on that, it does seem like that the most severe reactions come to people who might have reason to expect a severe reaction.

00:38:46.020 Um, and obviously, plan accordingly and talk to your doctor about what to do there.

00:38:50.820 But, um, I wanted to ask you whether there is a, do they know whether there's a long-term negative effect of having COVID?

00:39:01.140 I mean, so there's a lot of interest about that in the literature.

00:39:05.060 Uh, so, so, um, there are some longer-term outcomes, uh, from almost any respiratory disease in a small fraction of the population.

00:39:13.460 So, that, that happens with the flu, for instance, for a small fraction of the population that can get some, some, some severe outcomes.

00:39:18.880 And that's true for COVID as well.

00:39:20.900 Um, there's, there's this phenomenon that people talk about called long COVID, where people have sort of extended, for an extended period of time, fatigue and some other symptoms like this, um, that, that, that make life difficult.

00:39:33.140 So, you get, you get this, for instance, with mono, right?

00:39:35.820 Sometimes, uh, you get sort of extended.

00:39:37.780 Now, how common that is, is actually not well-established in the literature.

00:39:42.640 My sense is that it happens for some people, but not very commonly.

00:39:46.240 Um, but that's something that still, again, needs some further investigation.

00:39:49.720 I'd say, again, it's a, it's a balance of risks.

00:39:52.040 We have to face uncertainty, face the fact that a lot of these things are uncertain.

00:39:56.240 And when I look at the balance of risk, what I see is, um, for older people, COVID is relatively deadly.

00:40:02.060 The vaccine may have some, some side effects, but it's unlikely to be a, a, a, a huge problem for most people.

00:40:07.900 And the balance of the risk favors the vaccine.

00:40:11.120 Um, for, for, for younger people, the lockdown harms are devastating.

00:40:15.320 And we talk, that's why we started with them.

00:40:16.740 I think it's more important to think about.

00:40:17.860 And so the, the small probability of, of, of, of, of COVID harms, um, you have to balance that against the certainty of these massive lockdown harms.

00:40:27.340 Um, and, and there the balance says lift the lockdowns, right, to me.

00:40:31.460 Um, and so I think the other, the other, as far as the vaccines in younger people, I think, you know, I think the, the, the vaccine should be made available to younger people.

00:40:38.620 If they were tested in younger people, certainly works in younger people, but they shouldn't be prioritized for them.

00:40:42.740 Kids, by the way, haven't been tested with the vaccine as yet.

00:40:45.540 Um, so they just, they haven't run the test on the vaccine.

00:40:47.700 I don't think it's right to vaccinate children yet with the vaccine that hasn't been tested on them.

00:40:52.240 And if you've had COVID, you don't need the vaccine.

00:40:55.620 Uh, if you've had COVID, you certainly should not be prioritized for the vaccine.

00:40:58.720 That, cause you're, you're already immune.

00:41:00.500 Uh, they actually did test people with previously had COVID with the vaccine and they found that the vaccine didn't do anything for them.

00:41:06.900 Um, so I think, uh, yeah, I think the answer is, yeah, if you previously had COVID, you, you almost, you probably don't need the vaccine.

00:41:12.820 You may want it to feel safe, but you certainly shouldn't be prioritized for it.

00:41:17.000 Yeah.

00:41:18.020 My, my primary care physician in New York, who's, um, has a specialty in infectious disease was saying, he thinks not only do you not need the vaccine if you have COVID, but you shouldn't get it because he said he's seen some severe, not severe, but some unfortunate reactions to getting the vaccination after you've had it.

00:41:36.600 It's a balance of risk, right?

00:41:37.740 So if you have had COVID before the benefit of the vaccine is almost zero, and there are some, uh, you know, probabilities, some harm, right?

00:41:45.920 Cause you've, there are, as we talked about up for, with a small probability, some side effects on the vaccine.

00:41:50.560 And you think now, now do not, do not vaccinate your kids.

00:41:54.280 I mean, let's say at the point when it's available, like if you could.

00:41:57.520 Yeah, I have three children that I'm not going to vaccinate them until, until the, until there's good safety, until, until they've actually been tested on kids.

00:42:05.880 How do they do that?

00:42:07.060 Who, who volunteers their kid to be the Guinea pig for the COVID vaccine?

00:42:10.680 They're actually, they're running, they're running studies.

00:42:13.360 So parents are doing this.

00:42:14.460 Um, I think for, I mean, for kids, it is really close because that's a really good question.

00:42:18.860 Good ethical question because, uh, for kids, the COVID infection is not particularly deadly relative to other risks they face, including the flu, for instance.

00:42:28.480 Flu, I think is on, is typically more deadly than COVID for kids.

00:42:31.940 Um, so I think, uh, it's, it's, it's a close question whether the kid should be tested really at all for, for COVID, uh, for the COVID vaccine.

00:42:38.860 Mm-hmm.

00:42:39.740 Um, this is a weird question, so forgive me, but sometimes I get sucked into this vortex when I see the death rates.

00:42:46.200 And I understand we've lost over 400,000 people here in the United States due to COVID.

00:42:50.260 I get it.

00:42:51.100 And I understand there may be an asterisk on that number too, because it's not necessarily the case that COVID caused each of those deaths.

00:42:58.580 It's people died with COVID.

00:43:00.980 Um, but sometimes I wonder whether we, we've been sucked into this vortex that's a little disconnected from reality.

00:43:08.380 You know, like we've done so much damage.

00:43:11.260 Your term civilizational suicide was really poignant for a, for a virus that the vast majority of Americans have a 99.95 chance of surviving.

00:43:22.700 You know, when you look back now, we're, we're almost a year into this whole thing and you, you look how the United States and the world has responded to this.

00:43:32.540 How would you sum it up?

00:43:33.940 I mean, I think we, we have had a vast overreaction to this in one, in one sense.

00:43:40.560 Uh, the, the lockdowns we thought would protect us haven't really protect us.

00:43:45.240 It's, and, and actually the inequality effect is, is, is so, I've, I've, I've come to think of it as trickle down epidemiology.

00:43:51.420 Um, we've used the lockdowns to protect the rich, uh, whereas we, we, we essentially expose the, like in, in California, for instance, it's the poor areas that have had the high death rates from COVID.

00:44:03.180 The lockdowns haven't protected people living in places where there's high poverty, uh, minority populations, especially Hispanics have been hard hit.

00:44:09.860 Uh, you know, I think it was like 50% or over 50% of people who've had COVID deaths that are Hispanic in California.

00:44:15.880 Um, the, the lockdowns have, have been an enormous and ineffective overreaction, not actually protecting the population from COVID.

00:44:24.320 While at the same time, the collateral damage is absolutely devastating.

00:44:28.880 It's a, it's a, it's a unfocused overreactions, how I characterize it.

00:44:33.780 And I think we just, we should have focused on the population.

00:44:37.720 We knew it to be at risk, protected them, thought of creative ways to protect them from the beginning of the epidemic.

00:44:43.620 And we knew who they were, older people, the nursing homes.

00:44:46.380 I mean, in New York, uh, Pennsylvania, they sent old infected patients back to nursing homes.

00:44:53.180 Uh, they did this in Quebec too.

00:44:54.460 I mean, it's, it's just a, it's just shocking given what we knew.

00:44:58.020 Even in March, we knew who was at risk.

00:45:00.020 We should have designed, uh, policies to protect them.

00:45:03.380 And for the rest of the population, the lockdown,

00:45:05.720 we should have been thinking about the collateral damage from the very beginning.

00:45:09.340 Um, it's, it's, it's an unfocused overreaction.

00:45:12.620 And it doesn't seem like, uh, we learned so good because here we are doing it again, more lockdowns, school closures.

00:45:19.680 And honestly, can we just spend a minute on the masks?

00:45:23.200 Because more and more mask mandates, that's one of the first things we got from Joe Biden,

00:45:28.140 mandatory masks on all federal property and transportation.

00:45:31.160 And now they actually are talking about double or triple masks being something we should consider.

00:45:39.680 I mean, honestly, there's going to be a revolt in the country if, if any sort of mandate comes down along those lines.

00:45:46.080 But what do you make of masks?

00:45:47.780 And now the growing call for possibly double masks?

00:45:51.900 I, I've looked at the evidence on double masks.

00:45:53.860 I don't, I mean, it seems very weak to me.

00:45:55.860 Um, the, there are places where masks are useful.

00:45:58.400 So if you're in a, uh, in a hospital, um, masks are really useful if you're, cause you know,

00:46:03.380 how there's high viral load potentially there in places where it's crowded, uh, masks can be useful.

00:46:08.960 Uh, but masks alone in a car on a federal highway by yourself, I don't understand what the,

00:46:15.520 the public health reasoning is behind that.

00:46:17.800 No, I, I feel sorry for those people.

00:46:20.680 Yeah, I just, I don't, but I mean, if there's a mandate, like you could,

00:46:23.400 can the cop pull you over and say, look, you're not wearing a mask, just like you're not wearing a seatbelt.

00:46:27.080 Um, even if you're alone in the car by yourself, I just, I mean,

00:46:30.080 I think if this is one of these things where, um, uh, it's, there's this action bias in people

00:46:35.280 and, and this is something we can do.

00:46:37.560 So we, we, we, we, we will require you to do it.

00:46:40.200 Even if, um, even if in places where it doesn't make so much sense, I, I'm not against masks.

00:46:45.640 I think they can be useful.

00:46:46.800 I think one thing I will say about masks that I think sometimes people overestimate exactly

00:46:51.020 how effective they are in protecting you.

00:46:52.680 So, uh, an older person wears a mask, goes to a grocery store in a room that's relatively

00:46:58.240 crowded, feels safe there because they're wearing the mask.

00:47:01.540 Um, well, they're not necessarily safe there.

00:47:03.480 Instead, we should have policies that help give, deliver groceries to people that are in

00:47:07.020 their, in their seventies that live in the community.

00:47:09.520 Um, you know, sort of for, for free or maybe, um, and this is actually something people could

00:47:14.740 get there at who in that are listening can do just by themselves.

00:47:18.000 Like they, if the, if you know, an older person living alone, uh, or living without other

00:47:22.680 people that don't have, don't have a lot of help, you can offer to buy groceries for

00:47:26.460 them or, or deliver groceries for them.

00:47:28.080 They may not have, they don't know how to use DoorDash, but they may have neighbors that

00:47:31.920 can help.

00:47:33.460 At this, at this rate, you know, given that they're not listening to you, Jay, and your,

00:47:39.020 your colleagues who have been pushing for this focus protection, how long do you think

00:47:43.980 we're going to be living like this with these at least partial lockdowns and school closures

00:47:48.600 and masks, whether it's single, double, or triple?

00:47:51.360 I mean, how long, because I know Fauci and Bill Gates are both saying lockdowns may have

00:47:55.400 may quote, have to continue through the fall of 2021 and even into the following year.

00:48:04.600 I think by April, we will have vaccinated.

00:48:07.920 I'm all, even though the slow States will have, like California will have vaccinated nearly 0.66

00:48:11.460 every elderly person at that point, the death rate from COVID will come down very sharply.

00:48:17.760 I think the demand for the lockdowns has to do with the death rate, the fear that comes

00:48:22.460 from the idea that COVID is this deadly disease.

00:48:24.660 So when COVID death rates start to come down after the vaccinations have been widely disseminated

00:48:29.540 among the older populations, I think that fear will start to get addressed and the demand

00:48:34.060 for the lockdowns will collapse.

00:48:35.380 I don't, I think the political support for the lockdowns has everything to do with that

00:48:38.340 fear.

00:48:39.140 And I'm, I'm optimistic, actually.

00:48:41.680 And I think by April, May, we will have vaccinated most people that are older.

00:48:48.360 And I think no matter how hard the public health authorities push for it to control COVID to

00:48:53.160 down to zero, which is an impossible goal, people won't have it.

00:48:57.520 So you don't think we have to wait until we have true herd immunity to stop with the masks

00:49:02.560 and the lockdowns?

00:49:03.380 No, I think the key thing is the, the, the key thing is protecting the vulnerable.

00:49:08.440 I do think that there, you know, like people, it's hard to unring the bell.

00:49:12.140 Once you panic the population about something, it's hard to completely dissipate the fear

00:49:16.620 overnight.

00:49:17.280 So I think people will continue to wear masks.

00:49:19.620 Some people can continue to social distance.

00:49:21.920 You'll start to see, you know, it's funny, like what you'll have as a secret handshake for

00:49:26.700 people who aren't, who aren't scared of the COVID once, once the older people are vaccinated,

00:49:30.180 the secret handshake will consist of a handshake.

00:49:33.220 You'll just shake hands and say, it's so true. 1.00

00:49:36.880 Well, it's funny because, you know, you'll, you'll see people come over, you know, let's

00:49:41.240 say it's somebody who's going to like fix your dishwasher and they've got their mask

00:49:43.960 on and, you know, they're going to come in, this happened in my place.

00:49:46.440 They're going to come into my apartment.

00:49:47.860 They're going to walk into my kitchen by themselves.

00:49:49.500 They're going to spend some time with my dishwasher and leave.

00:49:51.260 I'm like, you don't have to wear your mask.

00:49:53.000 We're not going to get anywhere near each other.

00:49:54.740 I'm certainly not wearing my mask in my home.

00:49:57.200 And, but it is sort of like, you know.

00:50:00.180 Hey, you think that mask is necessary?

00:50:03.280 Cause I'm not going to, you know, like you just sort of put the toe in the water.

00:50:07.060 People have very different perceptions about the, about the deadliness of the disease.

00:50:11.040 Some much closer to the truth where it's, you know, relatively not deadly for people

00:50:14.020 under 70 and some there, yeah, there's a USC survey that apparently people, like people

00:50:19.020 in this survey of American population set, they believe that, that seven, that the death

00:50:24.600 rate from disease is 17%.

00:50:26.280 Oh, good gracious.

00:50:27.640 So, yeah.

00:50:28.520 So you have this like situation where some, some person has that very, very misperception

00:50:33.280 about this high death rate meets someone that has a sort of more accurate perception about

00:50:37.940 how deadly disease is.

00:50:39.360 And, you know, you get a predictable response.

00:50:41.420 The person who thinks the disease is incredibly deadly is shocked by the behavior of the person

00:50:45.700 who thinks the disease is not that deadly.

00:50:47.280 And when you meet someone new, you know, there's always this dance about how deadly do you actually

00:50:52.940 believe the disease is, right?

00:50:54.780 And it's sort of an unspoken dance.

00:50:57.400 And eventually you come to some agreement, you know, you both take the mask off or you

00:51:01.640 both are making sure that you stay socially distanced masked with, you know, three masks.

00:51:07.500 I think that will start to, it'll take, that'll take longer to get rid of.

00:51:11.740 Well, I don't think anybody would object to somebody else wearing a mask because it makes

00:51:15.960 them feel better or wanting to socially distance because it makes them feel better.

00:51:19.140 It's the fact that, you know, it's these government officials telling us we must to be on the

00:51:25.080 street or we must to walk into any store.

00:51:28.240 And as soon as that can end, you know, people are going to feel a lot, a lot better or we

00:51:32.840 must wear it everywhere and we may not go into schools and so on.

00:51:35.940 And I hope that comes sooner rather than later.

00:51:38.240 Last question.

00:51:38.900 I think I, I'm not sure I asked you this, but I know you said you'd get, get your mom

00:51:42.120 the vaccine, but when it becomes available to you, are you going to take it?

00:51:45.880 Yeah, I'll take it, but I don't want to wait my turn.

00:51:48.240 I don't, I shouldn't, I'm 52.

00:51:49.760 I shouldn't have it now.

00:51:51.000 I should have it after, uh, after my mom and all the people older than me get it first.

00:51:57.080 Exactly.

00:51:57.800 Well, I know for a fact here in New York city with some of the hospitals, very rich people

00:52:02.580 are offering a bunch of money to jump the line. 0.79

00:52:04.940 And it's so disgusting.

00:52:06.220 People with money just gross me out sometimes.

00:52:08.580 And you know, if they make the right donation into the right fund, who knows whether they'll

00:52:12.420 get it, but that's between them and their God, right?

00:52:14.860 You're going to steal the vaccine from grandma.

00:52:16.960 Good luck.

00:52:17.800 You know, you take it up with St. Peter when you get up there and you have to argue your

00:52:20.520 way in.

00:52:22.420 I agree with you.

00:52:23.320 Wait our turn.

00:52:24.300 It's, it's not moral for somebody to take it before my, before anyone older than me.

00:52:28.040 It's just not right.

00:52:29.160 That's right.

00:52:30.220 Listen, Jay, thank you so much for all the good work that you guys have been doing on this.

00:52:33.160 Appreciate your voice of reason.

00:52:34.320 Thank you, Megan.

00:52:35.360 Thank you for having me on.

00:52:37.080 Up next, we're going to be joined by former New York Times reporter, Alex Berenson, who's

00:52:41.300 been making waves online now for 10 months.

00:52:44.760 He's been pushing back on some of these COVID narratives that we've been fed from the mainstream

00:52:48.860 media from the start.

00:52:50.740 Some of the data, some of the facts that they've given us about the alleged number of deaths,

00:52:55.760 and now some of the, some of the narratives about the vaccines and certainly the lockdowns.

00:53:00.780 So I'm going to ask him about all of that, about masks, about the new push to double and

00:53:04.480 triple mask and see what Alex is saying about the latest conventional wisdom.

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00:54:59.220 And now, Alex Berenson.

00:55:06.180 Alex, it's wonderful to have you here.

00:55:07.900 It's been a lot of years since I had you on my show at Fox.

00:55:11.960 And I don't even remember what you're talking about.

00:55:13.740 But I remember, how is a New York Times reporter sounding anything other than hard left, which

00:55:19.380 is where you were at the time?

00:55:20.820 Yes.

00:55:21.560 Well, I think we were talking about the John Wells novels, by the way, which, you know,

00:55:26.200 I took a break from the Times to write those.

00:55:28.160 And now I'm sort of back into hardcore journalism.

00:55:31.540 It's been so fun watching you on Twitter because you're kind of I think you might drive people

00:55:36.380 crazy in the same way I feel like I sometimes do, which is because you were at the Times

00:55:40.760 people and because I would challenge Republicans on Fox.

00:55:44.300 I'm going to challenge both people.

00:55:45.320 But, you know, I guess people found it extraordinary when I would go after Republicans.

00:55:48.960 The liberals wrongly assumed that, like, we had an obligation to, quote, be on their

00:55:52.780 side, you know, like they're on our side and they need to stay on our side.

00:55:56.120 And, you know, I all along was like, I'm the side of truth.

00:55:58.880 And I think you're on the side of genuine facts and truth pursuit.

00:56:03.920 And it drives people nuts.

00:56:06.040 And you've been you've been trying to sound the alarm on some of these, quote, facts that

00:56:11.980 have been shoveled on us by the mainstream media on COVID from the beginning.

00:56:14.860 So can we just start big picture?

00:56:16.740 Like, when you look back on what's what you've reported over the past year versus what has

00:56:21.980 been spoon fed to us by the mainstream media, how would you describe it?

00:56:25.840 Sure.

00:56:26.200 I mean, the biggest the biggest issue of all.

00:56:30.080 And I mean, I guess this sort of makes me in the sense a small C conservative is this idea

00:56:35.420 that a lot of what we can do can make much difference to this.

00:56:39.380 OK, and and and if you look back pre-COVID, pre-March 2020, there was a lot of sort of

00:56:46.360 humility in the epidemiology community and the infectious disease community about the

00:56:52.660 value of a lot of what they called non-pharmaceutical intervention.

00:56:56.320 So that could be anything from a travel ban to a school closure all the way up to locking

00:57:00.520 down society.

00:57:01.420 And when people looked when they were to wearing masks, for example, when people looked at the

00:57:08.160 effect of all of these things, for the most part, they were unable to show much benefit.

00:57:14.520 And that sort of dated all the way back to the 1918 flu epidemic.

00:57:19.220 And so what happened was China appeared to show that a really hard lockdown, you know, a lockdown

00:57:27.140 harder than anything that that Western societies have been able to accomplish, was able to

00:57:33.660 eliminate the disease.

00:57:37.300 And, you know, and by the way, it's like, you know, it's China.

00:57:40.320 Everyone wonders about the data.

00:57:41.880 It's not clear.

00:57:42.820 But but that that certainly was the takeaway that a lot of people had in March 2020.

00:57:49.940 And and all of a sudden, all this stuff that's never been proven to work and that, you know,

00:57:57.280 and that sort of cuts against the grain of Western society and individual rights and freedoms

00:58:02.080 and making your own decisions.

00:58:04.460 All this stuff got suddenly thrown into not just thrown into the conversation, but it was

00:58:09.940 we're going to do all this.

00:58:11.360 OK, and the second thing way back then that we hadn't been way back, it's only a year

00:58:15.980 ago, is there was a belief based on the early Chinese data that this that this illness was

00:58:22.060 very, very dangerous.

00:58:24.160 OK, that that maybe three percent of people who got covid were going to die from it, which,

00:58:29.540 you know, three percent on the one hand, it's you know, it's one person in 30.

00:58:33.080 So it isn't that many.

00:58:34.580 On the other hand, it would mean 10 million Americans if the disease spread to everyone.

00:58:38.200 So that's a lot of people.

00:58:39.140 So there was you know, there was a there was a belief we must take extreme action here

00:58:44.440 because this is so deadly.

00:58:46.980 And those numbers, you know, turned out to be completely wrong.

00:58:51.220 You know, it is very clear after a year that that the what they call the infection fatality

00:58:56.100 rate, which is not the rate of people who get covid and have symptoms and then ultimately

00:59:00.940 die.

00:59:01.340 But the rate of everyone who gets covid, because a lot of people get covid, especially if they're

00:59:04.600 young and healthy and never have symptoms at all, is much, much lower than three percent

00:59:09.540 that it is probably worldwide in the zero point one to zero point two percent range.

00:59:15.400 Now, in a country like the U.S.

00:59:16.620 that has a lot of older people, it might be closer to zero point three percent.

00:59:21.400 But but it's very low.

00:59:23.180 OK, but we have never really gone back and adjusted our policies based on that knowledge.

00:59:31.960 And one other which is one of the things I know you have a lot of questions, but when

00:59:35.180 you when you survey people and you ask them, what is your risk of dying of covid and how

00:59:40.160 many people in the United States have died from covid?

00:59:43.420 People math is hard.

00:59:44.520 OK, and you know what we we teach all this math that people don't really need in high

00:59:49.500 school, like algebra or, you know, algebra is OK, but calculus, trigonometry, we should

00:59:54.240 be teaching people statistics because people don't have any idea what the difference between

00:59:59.080 one in a thousand and one in ten and one in a million.

01:00:02.220 These all just sound like low risks.

01:00:04.160 But there's a huge difference, obviously, between one in ten and one in a million.

01:00:09.060 But when you survey people and you ask them, you know, how many Americans have died of covid?

01:00:14.640 You know, I saw a number a few months ago.

01:00:16.540 Ten.

01:00:16.840 There's a ten percent.

01:00:18.400 I mean, temper that would be 30 million people.

01:00:20.540 That's that's far, far from the truth.

01:00:22.700 And then you say to people, you ask people under 40.

01:00:25.440 This just came out.

01:00:26.820 What's your risk of dying from covid?

01:00:28.400 Your personal risk under 40.

01:00:30.420 People say 12 percent.

01:00:32.580 OK, that's off by a factor of thousands.

01:00:35.460 OK, that would be one person in eight.

01:00:37.480 And if you're young and healthy, it's probably more like one in two or three or four hundred

01:00:42.760 thousand.

01:00:44.020 OK, it's almost.

01:00:45.540 And when I say young, I mean under 40, not under 20.

01:00:48.040 If you're under 20 and healthy, your risk is essentially too low to measure.

01:00:51.700 So we have never adapted to the reality of the seriousness of the disease.

01:00:57.720 Not that the disease is not serious, but it is not societally destroying in any way.

01:01:03.080 And at the same time, we've done all this stuff that before March of last year, people were

01:01:08.980 sort of agreed didn't work.

01:01:11.460 And we've just decided to do it.

01:01:13.000 And guess what?

01:01:13.880 It does not seem to work.

01:01:15.720 Just as we thought a year ago in California, you know, you have a hard lockdown for months.

01:01:20.640 Nothing matters.

01:01:21.960 And you compare it to a state like Florida.

01:01:24.500 It doesn't matter.

01:01:25.960 Now, if you're New Zealand, OK, and you're willing to essentially cut yourself off from 1.00

01:01:30.740 the rest of the world indefinitely and you're willing to, you know, go into lockdown whenever

01:01:36.080 you see cases and you're willing to make this thing run your whole life, your whole

01:01:40.640 country indefinitely, you have a chance possibly of keeping it out or keeping it under control.

01:01:46.220 I say chance because we'll see next summer, which is winter in New Zealand, what happens.

01:01:50.820 But, you know, they may be able to do it.

01:01:53.100 But that comes back to how many people this actually kills and knowing that and knowing

01:01:58.040 whether that tradeoff makes sense.

01:01:59.740 But none of this stuff is being talked about at all.

01:02:03.420 And we're now almost a year in.

01:02:05.740 And why do we think that is?

01:02:07.640 Like, why?

01:02:08.420 Because it seems impossible that they'd be so anxious to avoid data that is settling.

01:02:16.200 That makes you feel a little better.

01:02:18.400 That's right.

01:02:19.800 Look, I think for a while it was pretty clear that this was a very, very useful way to bash

01:02:25.700 Donald Trump.

01:02:26.720 And, you know, he certainly didn't cover himself in glory in his response to this.

01:02:32.500 You know, if you think about what Trump's strengths are, they're basically sort of being

01:02:36.620 blustery and sometimes taking chances.

01:02:39.040 You know, when he killed Qasem Soleimani in Iran and people say, oh, we're going to have

01:02:43.400 a war with Iran.

01:02:44.320 You know, guess what?

01:02:44.980 We didn't have war with Iran.

01:02:46.100 We just got rid of a really bad guy.

01:02:48.200 You know, he did that.

01:02:50.340 Those his strengths are not the strengths that you would like to manage a pandemic.

01:02:55.940 And so it's pretty clear that he, you know, was kind of the wrong guy for the job.

01:03:01.540 And the media saw this and they were able to bash him over and over again.

01:03:06.480 And I mean, I think it's pretty clear he would have won the election if not for COVID.

01:03:09.620 The economy would have been a lot stronger.

01:03:11.760 And if you look at sort of the, you know, all the prediction models, you know, when the

01:03:16.220 economy is strong, the incumbent usually wins.

01:03:18.540 So that was sort of, that was part of it.

01:03:21.920 I also think there was a lot of genuine fear in the media.

01:03:25.300 You know, the media is very New York centric and New York suffered quite a bit in March

01:03:30.180 and April of last year.

01:03:31.640 And we could talk about why that is.

01:03:33.180 There's reasons for that, that, you know, that, that, that are sort of unrelated to the

01:03:36.580 severity of the pandemic and sort of decisions that New York City and state made.

01:03:40.400 But nonetheless, there was a lot of fear last year.

01:03:42.920 And, and it took, and I think, I think, I think once you commit to being afraid of this,

01:03:47.860 it's hard to pull yourself out of that ditch.

01:03:51.080 And so, and then from the public health point of view, once you commit to doing

01:03:54.740 all this stuff, it is hard to acknowledge that it hasn't worked.

01:03:59.480 So what do you see?

01:04:00.360 We're now at the absurd place of telling people to wear two masks.

01:04:04.040 Okay.

01:04:04.540 Why are we telling people that?

01:04:05.740 Because one mask does nothing.

01:04:07.680 It doesn't protect you.

01:04:09.300 And it almost certainly, I'm not going to say certainly, because there's a slight chance

01:04:12.320 it might slightly reduce the risk of outbound transmission, but one cloth or surgical mask

01:04:17.880 is basically useless.

01:04:19.280 So now we're telling people where two of them.

01:04:23.000 Right, right.

01:04:23.640 Or more, or more.

01:04:24.740 How about, how about three?

01:04:26.400 Why, why stop there?

01:04:28.500 I literally walking down the streets in New York, like two weeks ago, followed a man in

01:04:33.420 a full hazmat suit.

01:04:34.740 Not even kidding.

01:04:35.740 He was walking his dog in a full hazmat suit.

01:04:39.880 I like, okay.

01:04:41.280 So maybe he's immunocompromised and has found a way of having a boy in the plastic bubble type

01:04:46.020 existence in this city.

01:04:47.040 I don't know, but people here are scared.

01:04:50.460 And I do think the media is part of the problem.

01:04:52.820 You know, they look at any media that didn't go full scare tactic as having been irresponsible.

01:05:00.360 But we knew early on when this broke that they sensed it was going to be bad for Trump

01:05:05.060 and loved playing it up.

01:05:06.920 And I had sent out a tweet right around that time saying it was around Trump's first press

01:05:10.900 conference where he said a bunch of wrong things about I'm shutting down travel from

01:05:15.280 Europe.

01:05:15.560 And then it was like, actually, no, he's not.

01:05:17.380 And, you know, he's it was the very first time he tried to have a presser on this.

01:05:20.400 And I think it was March and I sent out a tweet saying it's really frustrating not knowing

01:05:25.320 who to trust.

01:05:26.100 I don't trust the media on this is they have a an obvious stake in trying to hurt Trump.

01:05:30.980 And also they just love anything that panics people, outrages or panics.

01:05:34.800 They love it.

01:05:35.280 I can speak from the inside on this and I don't trust him either because for the same reasons

01:05:40.440 he sees his political fortunes at risk and has every incentive to downplay it.

01:05:43.880 Now we know he was intentionally downplaying it.

01:05:46.700 And and you should have seen, Alex, the sanctimonious responses I got from, you know, this sort of

01:05:51.480 mainstream journalist like, how could you say that?

01:05:54.720 You know, so someone like you, you know, from the media, you should know, you know, to trust

01:05:59.340 the media with something this important.

01:06:01.420 And then I got other people like, oh, sweetheart, just check out the WHO or the CDC.

01:06:07.440 You can trust them.

01:06:08.980 And as you know better than anybody.

01:06:12.080 No, you cannot.

01:06:12.660 No, we were given totally incongruous information from both of those bodies when it comes to

01:06:18.540 things like masks and our own surgeon general, when it comes to things like masks versus what

01:06:23.480 they were saying just two months later, you know, that it's been one of the huge frustrations

01:06:27.360 of this pandemic.

01:06:28.820 There's yes, you don't know who to trust.

01:06:31.420 So here's what I'd say.

01:06:32.660 You you the recommendations are very driven by politics.

01:06:37.140 You have to be able to trust the data.

01:06:38.720 OK, if we can't if we can't trust the data that's coming out of a place like the

01:06:42.640 WHO or the CDC or the states, then we're really in a bad place.

01:06:46.920 OK, then we're sort of in a post truth world.

01:06:49.420 And that's very dangerous.

01:06:50.980 So so am I you know, like when I when I point to stuff, you know, I'm not saying like and

01:06:56.200 you know, and this is why people the left hates me on Twitter and they keep begging Twitter

01:07:00.520 to ban me and Twitter will not ban me because they know that I source everything and I source

01:07:06.640 it to real sources.

01:07:07.800 Right. So if I say here's what's happening in the state of, you know, Wisconsin or here,

01:07:13.540 you know, or here's some coroner's reports.

01:07:15.800 I give you the links.

01:07:17.520 OK, or here's a paper that was published out of China or Switzerland or wherever I link

01:07:23.480 it to to.

01:07:24.540 I link it for you or I screenshot it and link it so you can see it yourself.

01:07:28.800 And I mean, we have to we have to be able to trust something or we're in a really bad

01:07:34.420 place.

01:07:34.840 But but what but but so there's so there's the data and then there's the recommendations

01:07:40.380 and the public policy measures and the political games that are being played.

01:07:46.580 And so and and one of the things that, you know, I think that I'm such an irritant to

01:07:50.760 people is because so often the data is fairly obvious.

01:07:54.180 OK, it's it's like, you know, right now or or, you know, we talk about masks is a good

01:08:00.180 example. So so there's all these signs.

01:08:02.560 There are all these papers that were written pre 2020 about how masks don't really do anything.

01:08:06.820 And then you look at places that have had mask mandates for a long time and what's

01:08:11.580 happened to the illness or, you know, to the number of positive tests, the number of

01:08:15.680 cases. And you can see they've skyrocketed.

01:08:18.300 And so once you like once you show people that visually, you know, a light just goes off

01:08:23.920 and that's not me.

01:08:25.180 You know, I'm not making that up.

01:08:26.700 I'm not saying, oh, you know, mask give you, you know, mask.

01:08:30.540 Bill Gates wants you to wear a mask so he can, you know, get 5G into your brain.

01:08:34.720 You know, it's like, here's here's the here's the data.

01:08:38.140 The mask mandate happened on this date.

01:08:40.580 And three months later, cases were 50 times as high as they were.

01:08:44.620 OK, but let me ask you this because they'll say they'll say, OK, but there are studies.

01:08:48.560 I was reading this in The Times.

01:08:50.580 They studied some Beijing households and said when everyone wore masks before an infected

01:08:56.080 person in the house showed symptoms, the risk of transmission was cut by 79 percent.

01:09:01.260 We'll get things like that.

01:09:02.960 And then you you see what you said, like all the major cities with the mask mandates,

01:09:07.620 the coronavirus spikes.

01:09:09.180 And you say, hey, the masks don't seem to be really doing much.

01:09:11.940 And the response you'll get is things like, oh, look at the Beijing studies.

01:09:15.340 And then the second point will be it would have been much worse if they didn't have the

01:09:19.300 masks.

01:09:20.400 Yeah.

01:09:20.600 How much worse could it be?

01:09:22.860 And, you know, and countries that don't have mask mandates, it's not worse.

01:09:26.320 And so so, you know, they the people who are people are desperate.

01:09:31.160 I mean, this has really, you know, sort of fractured my my faith in the public health

01:09:36.080 establishment in a very serious way, unfortunately, because people are so desperate to find points

01:09:40.880 that support the preconceived notion about whether it's masks or lockdowns or school closures,

01:09:45.600 that they will rely on these really lousy observational studies.

01:09:49.600 And the problem, so the kind of study you want, and there was one of these studies done

01:09:54.960 last year, is you give two sets of people, you know, you split them in half, you take

01:10:00.760 a group of people, say, say, for example, because this is a real example, 6000 people

01:10:05.400 in Denmark, and you give half of them masks, surgical grade masks, not N95s, but pretty

01:10:10.860 good masks.

01:10:11.800 You tell half of them to wear masks and half of them just go about your business.

01:10:14.880 And most people were not wearing masks back at this time.

01:10:17.600 I mean, this was last spring, and you see how many people get COVID, you know, get, and

01:10:25.240 it turned out that the mask wearing group had no fewer cases.

01:10:30.060 I mean, they had slightly fewer, but it was not a statistically significant number of cases

01:10:33.780 than the people who who did not wear masks.

01:10:36.980 And so that's a good study.

01:10:39.080 Okay, that tells you that mask wearing appears to provide no benefit to the wear.

01:10:44.860 And, you know, that and by the way, that study was completed in June, it was, you know, the

01:10:49.820 outcomes were sort of tallied up by July, it was written by early August, and then the

01:10:54.820 people who wrote it couldn't get it published in a major journal for almost four months.

01:11:00.120 And that's clearly because it said something that people found, you know, that the scientific

01:11:04.640 establishment didn't want to hear.

01:11:06.300 Finally, it was published.

01:11:07.840 And guess what?

01:11:08.620 It got one day of coverage.

01:11:10.300 And it's been what you and I call in the trade memory hole.

01:11:13.640 You know, it's as if this never happened.

01:11:16.080 And meanwhile, these crummy observational studies keep getting, you know, from two hairdressers

01:11:21.720 back in Kansas in June, get talked about as if they're the gospel.

01:11:27.540 Can I just say so this what's disturbing here, just to tie it all together is we're seeing

01:11:31.240 this in so many different places.

01:11:32.480 It's not just with respect to covid same thing we had over the summer when we had the Black 0.99

01:11:38.080 Lives Matter protests and the narratives going around about all cops being racist and, you 0.95

01:11:43.400 know, on the hunt to kill innocent black men. 0.79

01:11:47.160 People would cite studies that had been done prior to the tumult, you know, in more calm, 0.95

01:11:53.380 objective times, proving that you do not have a greater risk of being shot by a police officer

01:11:58.160 if you're black. 0.94

01:11:58.780 In fact, you have a greater risk of being shot by a police officer if you're white. 0.82

01:12:03.480 And when some of that data was brought up by people like Heather McDonald in The Wall

01:12:07.280 Street Journal, there was such outrage.

01:12:09.800 People went back to the original people who had done the study and said, you got to revoke

01:12:13.300 this.

01:12:13.600 And they started to.

01:12:14.680 We started to see legitimate scientific studies that have been done in calmer times get taken

01:12:19.080 down, walked back because of the public pressure.

01:12:22.980 Abigail Schreier has talked about this when it comes to the craze of trans girls. 0.84

01:12:28.540 You know, suddenly there had never historically been real trans girls.

01:12:31.500 And now suddenly they break out in clusters in high schools right around the time girls 0.72

01:12:35.240 get acne or girls gain weight or girls start to feel socially unacceptable.

01:12:38.260 And studies that look at that get shamed, get have to go through another review, have to

01:12:43.240 get an asterisk put on them like this is dangerous.

01:12:46.560 What's happening right now when it comes to wokeism and sort of this shoving down your throat,

01:12:51.100 whatever the mainstream narrative is, is dangerous.

01:12:53.740 And with respect to COVID, and we started off the show by talking about how these narratives,

01:12:59.000 these false narratives are leading to real deaths now.

01:13:02.440 And I'm not saying COVID hasn't killed people.

01:13:04.060 Obviously, it has.

01:13:05.540 But but the overreaction to to the actual problem is leading to unnecessary deaths, including

01:13:11.900 amongst our youngest and brightest and sweetest, you know, a little nine year old boy in Las

01:13:17.680 Vegas, Nevada, killing himself because of the isolation out there that was not necessary.

01:13:22.920 Yeah, I mean, that's absolutely true.

01:13:25.480 Now, you know, we do not we count COVID deaths obsessively.

01:13:29.460 OK, and we and we certainly overcount them.

01:13:31.240 We can argue about how much, but there's no question there's overcounting going on based

01:13:34.600 on the rules that the WHO and the CDC created for counting deaths, which mean basically that

01:13:40.040 if you have a positive test and you die, you know, in some states up to two months later,

01:13:44.920 you're going to be counted as a COVID death.

01:13:48.160 We are overcounting COVID deaths.

01:13:49.860 But but let's be clear, there are there are plenty of COVID deaths.

01:13:52.060 But we do not count, OK, in anything like real time overdose deaths.

01:13:57.500 And the United States has a terrible overdose crisis and which predates COVID.

01:14:02.020 Let's be clear, which, by the way, is another, you know, this is sort of another the geniuses

01:14:07.240 in the in the medical establishment decided 25 years ago that we should be treating pain

01:14:11.960 much more aggressively.

01:14:13.340 And, you know, this sweet little company called Purdue Pharma came along.

01:14:16.880 And, you know, ever since then, you know, overdoses have been out of control in this country.

01:14:21.980 They've gotten worse year after year after year.

01:14:24.180 We can tell you this is a this is another this is, again, a story for another day.

01:14:26.980 But, you know, that that's to me another example of where a small C conservatism in in sort

01:14:34.140 of medical care, you know, would have treated would have would have been a very smart move

01:14:38.660 instead of being much so aggressive.

01:14:40.040 But the reason I say this is last year in 2019, there were about 70,000 overdose deaths

01:14:46.720 in the United States, which is a horrific number.

01:14:49.560 We aren't we don't know how many there were in 2020.

01:14:52.460 CNN has that cute little thing where every day they tell you or every minute they tell

01:14:56.140 you exactly how many COVID case and deaths there have been.

01:14:58.660 They don't tell you that for overdoses.

01:15:00.640 But based on the early data that I have seen from because some jurisdictions have now given

01:15:05.540 you some clue of what 2020 looks like, you know, Cook County, which is Chicago.

01:15:10.040 Maricopa County, which is Phoenix, big counties.

01:15:13.360 It looks like overdose deaths are going to be up 30 to 60 percent in 2020 compared to

01:15:19.020 2019.

01:15:20.000 Now, at the high end of that, that would be 40,000 more people dying of overdoses.

01:15:25.700 And those are deaths of despair.

01:15:27.980 Those are lockdown deaths.

01:15:29.440 Those are people who've been laid off or bored, who are stuck at home, who are, you know, getting

01:15:34.340 their stimulus check and don't have anything to spend it on and can't go out and can't

01:15:38.480 go to, you know, music, you know, they can't go to a bar or a live show.

01:15:43.200 They're they're playing video games and they are and they are and they're shooting up.

01:15:47.620 OK, or they're using fentanyl and they've had a problem in the past and they've gone to

01:15:51.680 a 12 step meeting and those meetings are virtual now and virtual doesn't help them.

01:15:55.680 And they're using again and they are dying.

01:15:58.900 And those deaths are lockdown deaths.

01:16:02.180 And we should be ashamed.

01:16:05.400 Yeah, we should be ashamed.

01:16:07.300 Can I ask you about the numbers?

01:16:09.280 You know, there's what, 425,000 deaths attributed to COVID in the United States, something like

01:16:16.920 2 million worldwide.

01:16:19.180 So do you think I realize I know I know that if you have COVID, then you die.

01:16:24.560 Even if you die of something else, you could have been a cancer patient who had to go to

01:16:28.940 the hospital because things were going downhill and then you caught you caught COVID and then

01:16:33.380 you died and they'd say you died of COVID.

01:16:35.120 You'd be counted.

01:16:36.880 So do you have any way of knowing what the real number is likely to be?

01:16:42.780 So there's a lot of guesswork in this.

01:16:45.640 So here here's here's the thing.

01:16:48.740 If you if you have a if you have a death of like, let's say, pneumonia, a respiratory failure that,

01:16:54.560 you know, follows COVID, that's that's probably a COVID death.

01:16:57.720 OK, I mean, and there's a lot of those.

01:16:59.360 Those are about half of the deaths.

01:17:01.220 OK, everything else, maybe a little less than half.

01:17:04.420 So I'm talking about pneumonia, you know, or or or other lung infections that follow COVID.

01:17:11.060 If so, so that's one basket.

01:17:14.180 And then on the complete other side, there's this sort of classic and you can you can find

01:17:19.220 cases of this.

01:17:19.980 This is not rare.

01:17:21.360 The gunshot wound and the person tested positive for COVID a week before.

01:17:25.580 And that's listed as a COVID death.

01:17:27.000 OK, that's clearly those deaths should not be listed as COVID.

01:17:30.980 OK, so so so.

01:17:32.540 And then then in the middle, there's a spectrum.

01:17:35.040 OK, and the spectrum is everything from somebody with severe dementia who who gets COVID and,

01:17:43.180 you know, and dies a day later.

01:17:45.240 And, you know, did that person die with COVID?

01:17:47.100 Did they die from COVID?

01:17:48.380 Were they were they going to die?

01:17:50.000 Were they going to die anyway that day if they were going to die two weeks later and they

01:17:53.960 were 98 years old?

01:17:55.260 Is that properly counted as a COVID death?

01:17:57.500 I don't know.

01:17:58.320 But there's a lot of those.

01:17:59.940 OK, based on the number of elderly people in nursing homes who have died of COVID, we

01:18:05.440 know there's a lot of those.

01:18:06.540 And based on the CDC's reports on dementia and Alzheimer's, you know, listed on the death

01:18:12.980 certificate along with COVID, there's a lot of those there.

01:18:15.960 You know, that that might be at this point, that's probably, I think, 50 to 75,000 deaths

01:18:21.520 fall into that category.

01:18:23.140 And then there's then there's deaths that are a little bit closer to what you know what you

01:18:26.540 would call, quote unquote, real COVID death.

01:18:28.700 You know, somebody who might be overweight and unwell, but but, you know, they're not

01:18:33.840 they're not a death's door.

01:18:35.100 And then they get COVID and they wind up, you know, on a ventilator and they die.

01:18:39.120 And those I mean, I think you should you should probably classify those deaths as being from

01:18:43.980 COVID.

01:18:44.960 But but, you know, in terms of there's something known as quality adjusted life years, those

01:18:51.800 people generally don't have that long to live.

01:18:54.420 But but, you know, those are COVID deaths.

01:18:56.460 So so when you until somebody at some point does a really good death certificate review

01:19:05.740 of, you know, of a thousand or five thousand deaths that are classified as COVID, we aren't

01:19:10.640 going to be able to get, you know, granularity here.

01:19:13.560 But I would say that it's it's probably clear that at least half of deaths are, you know, are

01:19:20.880 real COVID deaths.

01:19:22.160 OK, and then the and then the other half are with COVID or completely misclassified.

01:19:30.420 But but, you know, some of those with COVID deaths might have been, you know, not somebody

01:19:35.420 who's going to die the next day, but it was going to die in months.

01:19:39.260 And so, you know, I think there's there's essentially a medical argument to be made about how that's

01:19:45.300 properly classified and but but and almost a philosophical argument, too.

01:19:50.660 But but but the number is when I say it's overstated, it's not slightly overstated.

01:19:56.340 It's it's substantially overstated.

01:19:58.420 Now, some people would say, oh, only six percent of people who died with COVID died with COVID.

01:20:03.340 That's clearly wrong, too.

01:20:04.540 And let me let me just throw one more thing out, because this gets complicated, but I

01:20:07.820 want to circle back to excess deaths.

01:20:10.500 So there's this notion that the United States has had 400,000 COVID deaths, and we've also

01:20:14.360 had 400,000 excess deaths.

01:20:16.540 There's two problems.

01:20:18.140 And so that means that all the COVID deaths are real deaths.

01:20:20.620 There's two problems with that.

01:20:21.680 The first is that the CDC, probably for reasons that are not clear, under set last year's baseline

01:20:31.160 death rate.

01:20:31.920 Now, that sounds a little technical, but what it means is they said, oh, we expect about

01:20:36.500 2.85 million people to die last year.

01:20:39.860 Really, if you look at the trends from the previous years, the number you should have expected

01:20:43.920 was closer to 3 million.

01:20:45.480 OK, so that that's actually a pretty big difference, because it means that instead of having 400,000

01:20:50.260 excess deaths last year, maybe we had 250 or 300,000, which is a lower than the number of

01:20:55.380 reported COVID deaths, which go back, which goes back to what I'm saying.

01:20:58.580 Some COVID deaths would have occurred anyway.

01:21:00.980 The second problem is that some of those deaths are going to be overdose deaths, right?

01:21:05.420 If we've had 25 or 30,000 extra overdose deaths, plus extra homicide, plus extra people who

01:21:11.720 didn't get cancer treatment last spring and died of cancer, some of those are going to

01:21:16.860 contribute to the excess death numbers too.

01:21:19.100 And I'm sorry, I don't mean to be confusing about this.

01:21:21.460 I don't mean to sort of walk people down this rat hole, but it's really important to understand

01:21:26.420 that the numbers you're seeing are essentially there's I'm not going to say they're made up.

01:21:31.360 There's a reality to them, but there's a lot of guesstimation happening inside them.

01:21:38.000 In one minute, I'm going to ask Alex the question that may not be asked, and that is the terrible

01:21:43.900 comparison of COVID to the flu.

01:21:46.480 How does it actually stack up, right?

01:21:49.240 I mean, you're not going to tell us here on the show that we can't talk about this stuff.

01:21:52.480 That's what they've been doing for far too long.

01:21:54.520 So we're going to talk about it and get some data.

01:21:56.760 So stay tuned for that.

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01:23:12.040 Let me ask you the scary question.

01:23:16.480 The question you're not allowed to ask the Voldemort question.

01:23:19.880 And that is the comparison to the flu death rate.

01:23:22.860 Because when I look at the World Health Organization is saying over 100 million people worldwide have

01:23:27.780 had COVID, whether they know it or not.

01:23:29.980 And 2 million plus people have died, you know, with COVID, from COVID.

01:23:35.880 I don't know what those numbers.

01:23:37.380 I think they have the same problems that our 400,000 do.

01:23:39.540 Um, so that would not, that would be a relatively low death rate.

01:23:44.900 And I think the flu death rate would be higher.

01:23:51.300 But you're not allowed to say that, Alex.

01:23:53.560 So I don't know.

01:23:54.160 You tell me because you start comparing it to the flu and people lose their minds.

01:23:57.060 So, so that, that's, that's not correct.

01:24:01.000 Um, if I, if I could be so blunt.

01:24:03.000 Um, no, no, I'm looking for information, not giving it.

01:24:05.260 So, so, so here, there's two problems with that.

01:24:08.280 Um, the first is a lot more people have gotten COVID than have had positive tests for COVID.

01:24:13.120 And we don't know how many, but this was back in September.

01:24:15.860 Mike Ryan of the WHO, who's a senior guy at the WHO.

01:24:19.880 I remember this.

01:24:20.700 I learned this from your Twitter feed.

01:24:21.960 Keep going.

01:24:22.460 Yep.

01:24:22.700 He said 750 million people at the time had had COVID by their estimate.

01:24:27.540 He said one per 10% of the world's population.

01:24:30.300 That would mean that the death rate again is in this one per thousand,

01:24:34.400 maybe two per thousand.

01:24:36.480 Here's the thing.

01:24:37.640 And, and I, that number, now the WHO has never gone back to that.

01:24:41.740 We know though, that many, many, many people get COVID and recover from it and are never

01:24:48.360 tested, especially if they're young.

01:24:49.980 And when you, and sometimes, I mean, it's amazing actually, if you, in cases where mass

01:24:54.360 testing was done, um, you know, like on an aircraft carrier, for example, or, uh, you

01:25:00.160 know, or in some cases like a dormitory filled with, you know, that where homeless

01:25:03.260 people live, something like we're, or a dormitory filled with, you know, people, uh, uh, who

01:25:08.500 are working at a meatpacking plant, something like that.

01:25:11.020 You see asymptomatic rates as high as 90%.

01:25:15.200 So, and, and when you do these, what are called antibody tests, which we seem to have

01:25:19.840 stopped doing for reasons that are not clear to me, you saw much higher rates of antibody

01:25:24.060 testing than, uh, positives with antibodies, meaning people had recovered from this and was

01:25:29.140 called PCR testing, meaning people are actively infected or quasi actively infected.

01:25:33.700 So it looks like, I mean, at this point, if 750 million people were infected back in,

01:25:39.500 uh, in September, and we've now had, you know, kind of a big second wave are well over a billion

01:25:45.080 people have now been infected.

01:25:46.480 So we don't know how many though, but what we know is that, is that a hundred million number

01:25:50.800 is low.

01:25:51.660 Okay.

01:25:52.100 So two divided into a hundred, 2 million divided into a hundred million would be a death rate

01:25:57.100 of 2%.

01:25:57.940 That is not the death rate.

01:26:00.000 The death rate is much lower than that.

01:26:02.180 We don't know exactly what it is, but we know it's much lower than that.

01:26:06.180 But I will say one other thing.

01:26:07.740 The flu death rate is even lower.

01:26:09.840 The flu death rate is usually quoted at one in 1000, or even sometimes one in 2000.

01:26:15.480 So, so, so COVID is, is not that dangerous on a population-wide basis.

01:26:20.540 The flu is even less dangerous, but I will throw one more thing out of you.

01:26:24.660 COVID is dangerous to the very elderly and very sick.

01:26:29.260 All the excess death effectively occurs in those populations.

01:26:33.620 When the flu can be dangerous to kids, it is sometimes dangerous to middle-aged people.

01:26:39.120 And then again, it's dangerous to the elderly.

01:26:41.440 So the flu actually is dangerous to people, not just at the end of their lives, but beginning

01:26:46.720 their lives.

01:26:47.420 And so, you know, we do have reason to, to be wary of the flu.

01:26:51.400 I think that's an excellent point.

01:26:52.860 And I, you know, I've been frustrated because I'm not very good at math, as you can tell,

01:26:57.040 but I, when I actually sit down and take a hard look at it, because I saw that thing

01:27:00.600 and I went and I watched the soundbite myself, um, of that guy from the WHO saying 10% of the

01:27:06.040 world's population.

01:27:06.780 And, um, I started to do the math and thought, if you just, if you believe him, if you just

01:27:12.200 believe him, then the death rate would be lower than the flu.

01:27:15.660 And then I, and then I learned, you know, you, you can't say that it's, it's one of those

01:27:20.200 you just, well, you just can't say that you can't screw you irresponsible.

01:27:23.700 Nothing that says the flu is more deadly than COVID will be allowed.

01:27:28.480 I didn't tweet it, but I just saw the blowback to everybody who had asked that question.

01:27:31.960 I thought, this is crazy.

01:27:32.920 Why, why can't we take an honest look?

01:27:34.960 That information is from the WHO, who again, the mainstream journalist told me, oh, sweetheart,

01:27:39.460 you can trust.

01:27:40.000 Um, so I don't, I, and your point about the young children is well, is well made and well

01:27:46.360 taken because I'll tell you back to my, my own experience here in New York, we have a

01:27:49.940 great pediatrician, a great pediatrician.

01:27:52.600 And, um, if, if I get the flu or if Doug, my husband has gotten the flu, they, they're

01:27:59.500 very aggressive about preventing it in my kids.

01:28:02.820 Like they want the kids to be on Tamiflu before they get it.

01:28:07.140 Like they actually worry about the flu and children.

01:28:11.240 It's not like a common cold.

01:28:12.680 It really, it can potentially be deadly in a way that you do need to be concerned.

01:28:17.120 Yes.

01:28:17.520 And, and that, and by the way, that is not true of COVID.

01:28:20.420 I mean, when you either, I know that some people under the age of 18 have died of COVID,

01:28:25.720 but, uh, you know, first of all, when you look at the individual details of the cases,

01:28:28.900 they're often very strange.

01:28:30.360 And when they're not, when they're not strange, it's people, for example, the British, the British

01:28:35.840 paper, paper came out a few months ago, about six, uh, people under 18 in Britain who died

01:28:42.100 and they were profoundly ill.

01:28:43.700 I mean, I think two had late stage cancer, uh, you know, three were neonates who, um,

01:28:49.540 you know, who had really severe birth defects.

01:28:52.120 And, uh, that's, you know, that's who the, that's who COVID kills in, you know, in children.

01:28:57.240 Right.

01:28:57.700 And nobody ever looks that stuff up.

01:28:59.360 So let's talk about, let's spend a minute before we move on to vaccines.

01:29:02.820 So I do want to ask you about them.

01:29:03.820 Can I just ask you something I've been dying to ask you, do you wear a mask and how do you

01:29:08.180 feel about wearing a mask?

01:29:09.800 Well, I have to wear a mask if I want to, you know, go, go to, you know, go shopping, basically.

01:29:14.560 If I want to go to Walmart or whatever, you know, um, I got to wear a mask.

01:29:17.200 So I wear a mask.

01:29:17.820 I was on a plane last month.

01:29:19.620 I wore a mask.

01:29:20.880 Um, I mean, I'm not going to fight with people about the mask.

01:29:23.380 I will, I will wear it below my nose as a sort of quiet protest or, or, you know, on the,

01:29:30.400 on the plane, if they'll let me get away with not wearing it because I'm eating and

01:29:33.880 drinking, I'll find ways to kind of eat and drink the whole flight.

01:29:36.700 But, you know, if somebody says you got to put the mask on, you got to put the mask on.

01:29:39.260 It's, it is not worth, it is not worth upsetting people or certainly getting into a fight about

01:29:45.460 it.

01:29:45.680 I will say this, you know, the mask people, even in Florida, which where, where I was, uh,

01:29:50.960 you know, a few weeks ago where you don't have to wear masks statewide.

01:29:54.800 The mask has become this talisman of it protects me.

01:30:00.100 And so, so people, at least, at least we're kind of, you know, like, like, I don't want

01:30:05.400 to, I don't want to say, you know, rich white people, but like people who, people who are

01:30:10.040 scared, uh, like they want you to wear your mask.

01:30:13.540 And, you know, in other demographics, people where people have maybe like a little bit more,

01:30:18.420 um, uh, you know, they have a, they have a slightly less crazy attitude about risk.

01:30:23.900 Uh, and they're slightly, you know, they're slightly more fatalistic maybe, or they have

01:30:28.460 other problems.

01:30:29.140 They have other things to worry about.

01:30:30.360 Exactly.

01:30:30.840 That's what I was going to say.

01:30:32.380 They don't, they don't, they don't worry so much about it, but you know, you get them

01:30:36.640 in an elevator or in Florida and you know, the mask is down and people, people are like,

01:30:42.460 Oh my God, he's going to kill me.

01:30:43.820 And so, you know, you can choose to fight the fight and just annoy people or not.

01:30:49.260 And generally it's not worth annoying people.

01:30:51.780 So, so I wear the mask, but, but the mask is useless.

01:30:55.400 I mean, especially the way I wear it.

01:30:57.900 Let's be honest.

01:30:59.520 I agree with you.

01:31:00.440 This has been a total overreaction and they're just so obsessive about it.

01:31:04.360 I mean, here in New York city, the rule outside has been the mask or six feet, right?

01:31:09.660 So you don't actually have to have it on.

01:31:11.180 You could be six feet away from the people on the sidewalk.

01:31:14.080 And as long as you do your, you know, your OJ Simpson jumping around the, the, uh, the

01:31:20.140 airport carousel things, uh, you're fine, but man, they look at you like you are running

01:31:25.140 around, like hacking, spewing virus on everyone.

01:31:29.740 You're totally fine.

01:31:30.580 And you're 12 feet away.

01:31:31.720 I will say this.

01:31:33.300 I won't wear it outside.

01:31:34.540 I mean, like, I just won't.

01:31:35.820 And you know, if you're walking by me on the sidewalk in Midtown, like too bad, there's

01:31:40.460 that's, that's my limit.

01:31:42.380 Yeah.

01:31:43.320 And you know, here in New York, they'll, they'll yell at you.

01:31:45.720 Where's your mask?

01:31:47.120 And it's always somebody who's got a vote logo on their mask.

01:31:52.020 It's right.

01:31:53.020 It's some 25 year old wearing an N95.

01:31:55.200 And it's like, please stop.

01:31:59.320 You're fine.

01:32:00.500 Okay.

01:32:00.880 Let's talk about the vaccines.

01:32:02.140 How do you feel about them?

01:32:04.340 Okay.

01:32:04.860 So this is bad growth now because, because I don't want to fight about the vaccines.

01:32:09.140 Just like I didn't want to fight about the masks.

01:32:10.900 Okay.

01:32:11.200 Fighting about the mask. 0.99

01:32:12.080 People talk about you like you're a crazy person. 0.88

01:32:14.200 Unfortunately, the data is what it is.

01:32:16.100 And we have a problem right now with these vaccines.

01:32:19.080 And let's be clear.

01:32:20.300 There's different kinds of vaccines.

01:32:22.180 I'm talking about the two approved vaccines in the United States right now, which are called

01:32:27.220 mRNA vaccines, which, which is a technology that had never been used for an approved pharmaceutical

01:32:33.820 product before this.

01:32:35.560 Okay.

01:32:36.840 And basically didn't exist about 10 years ago.

01:32:40.200 I mean, there was, you know, it did certainly, there were no, there were no, there were no products

01:32:44.420 being developed at that time and didn't, and, and, and didn't exist as an approved product

01:32:49.840 until December when the, and still technically these vaccines have not been approved fully

01:32:55.520 there.

01:32:56.000 The FDA did something called an emergency youth use authorization for it.

01:33:00.900 Okay.

01:33:01.240 Here's, here's what's good about the vaccines.

01:33:04.160 Here's what we know from the clinical trials.

01:33:06.980 They appear, I'm not even going to say they appear, they reduce the level of moderately symptomatic

01:33:14.280 or, or, uh, mildly symptomatic infections in people.

01:33:18.920 Okay.

01:33:19.280 We know that we've, we've looked at the data and many more people who got the placebo, which

01:33:25.700 is a, you know, a saline solution.

01:33:27.480 You didn't get the real vaccine.

01:33:28.820 Then who got the vaccine, um, uh, became infected with SARS-CoV-2.

01:33:35.700 Okay.

01:33:37.140 That's a, and, and, and they might, and, and, and had a symptom.

01:33:41.040 I mean, a very, the symptom could be a mild cough, but had some symptom.

01:33:45.440 That's it.

01:33:46.380 B, we know that the vaccines produce, uh, they cause people to produce antibodies to the spike

01:33:53.120 protein on SARS-CoV-2.

01:33:54.700 That's good.

01:33:55.640 That's what your body does after you get infected.

01:33:58.000 So we want that.

01:33:59.780 All right.

01:34:00.680 The third thing we know from the clinical trials is that the vaccines produce serious

01:34:05.400 or severe side effects in a lot of people who get them.

01:34:08.480 Okay.

01:34:08.740 Usually transient, um, but that could be a fever of 102.

01:34:13.500 It could be a fever of 104.

01:34:15.140 It could be really serious fatigue.

01:34:16.920 It could be nausea.

01:34:18.180 It could be diarrhea.

01:34:19.300 A lot of people could be a big swelling of the lymph node.

01:34:22.600 A lot of people who get these vaccines have severe short-term side effects.

01:34:27.200 Okay.

01:34:28.200 Especially after the second dose and especially after the Moderna vaccine.

01:34:31.760 So there are two companies making them vaccines.

01:34:34.200 The Moderna vaccine seems to have more side effects.

01:34:37.220 That's what we know.

01:34:38.740 Here's what we don't know.

01:34:40.360 We don't know if the vaccines reduce serious disease.

01:34:43.260 Now you can say the Moderna vaccine seemed to reduce serious disease, but the way serious

01:34:49.060 disease was defined actually wasn't that serious.

01:34:51.880 Okay.

01:34:52.100 We don't know if they reduce hospitalizations meaningfully.

01:34:56.620 We don't know if they reduce ICU visits.

01:34:58.940 We don't know if they reduce deaths in COVID because there were essentially no deaths in

01:35:03.640 COVID.

01:35:04.080 There was one death in the placebo arm and no deaths in the vaccine arm in about 70,000

01:35:09.240 people who got these vaccines or placebo.

01:35:11.180 We don't know if they reduce overall deaths.

01:35:14.340 We don't know if they increase overall deaths.

01:35:16.960 We don't know if they might cause the coronavirus to mutate in a way that becomes more dangerous,

01:35:23.760 which is a real risk.

01:35:24.700 We don't know if there are long-term side effects.

01:35:28.020 There probably aren't based on the data that we have, but we don't know that right now because

01:35:33.080 we didn't run the studies for very long.

01:35:36.180 We don't know how well they protect against new variants.

01:35:39.640 There's some suggestion that there's a variant that's coming out of South Africa that the vaccine

01:35:45.100 doesn't protect that well against, which is why Moderna is already talking about a booster. 0.76

01:35:49.660 We don't know if a booster shot or, you know, third and fourth shots next year might cause even worse

01:35:56.360 side effects.

01:35:58.460 And there's one more thing we don't know, and this comes out of Israel right now.

01:36:03.160 Israel has vaccinated more of its population than anywhere else in the world.

01:36:08.180 The vaccination started on December 19th, so that's about six weeks ago now.

01:36:13.220 People have been waiting, and now 60% of people over the age of 70 in Israel have now had both

01:36:21.020 shots.

01:36:21.760 This is the Pfizer vaccine, and 90% of people in that age range have had at least one shot.

01:36:28.500 People have been waiting now for weeks for serious cases, hospitalizations, and deaths in Israel,

01:36:35.760 and overall cases to go down.

01:36:38.100 They have not gone down.

01:36:39.680 Israel has one of the worst epidemics in the world right now in terms of the number of positive

01:36:44.900 tests it has, and it's had more deaths in the last week than in any previous week in

01:36:50.620 the last year, and its serious cases are going up.

01:36:54.800 We don't know why this is.

01:36:58.020 It could be just that the vaccines do work, and they haven't worked yet, although that case

01:37:04.840 gets harder to make with every day that goes by.

01:37:07.320 It's still possible.

01:37:08.720 It could be that it happens that the ultra-Orthodox population in Israel has not been properly

01:37:15.260 vaccinated, even though everybody else has, and some of the Arab communities haven't been

01:37:18.660 vaccinated, and that's where people are still getting sick.

01:37:21.520 That case is also harder to make now because so much of the rest of the population has been

01:37:27.680 vaccinated.

01:37:28.220 So the cases would have to be going way up in that remainder.

01:37:33.020 It is also possible that the vaccines simply don't work at all in the people who they need

01:37:38.340 to work in.

01:37:39.080 In other words, maybe the vaccine causes your immune system or my immune system to generate

01:37:44.240 antibodies, but unfortunately, in my 76-year-old mother, it doesn't help her because her immune 0.99

01:37:52.040 system isn't great, and she's the one who COVID can really target.

01:37:55.160 I'm not saying that's true.

01:37:57.120 I'm saying we don't have evidence at this point from anywhere to rule that out because

01:38:03.640 we didn't test this enough in people in that age range to know.

01:38:08.080 We should have focused our testing on people 75 and over, 80 and over, 85 and over in nursing 0.87

01:38:14.460 homes.

01:38:14.920 We didn't do that.

01:38:16.020 The companies didn't do it, and the regulators didn't make them, and that is a giant, giant

01:38:21.160 flaw that probably, to my mind, should have been corrected before these vaccines were

01:38:26.020 allowed to be sold, okay?

01:38:27.740 And the other possibilities are worse.

01:38:29.640 The other possibilities are that the vaccine is either driving some kind of mutation that

01:38:33.580 we don't understand for reasons we don't understand yet.

01:38:37.040 I'm not saying that's happening.

01:38:38.300 I'm just saying it is a possibility.

01:38:40.200 Or that the vaccine is producing what's known as antibody-dependent enhancement, which is a real

01:38:45.620 risk from vaccines, although we don't know what's happening in this case either.

01:38:49.120 And that would mean that some people are getting sicker post-vaccination than they would have

01:38:55.000 otherwise.

01:38:56.080 I'm not saying we know.

01:38:58.360 What I'm saying is the data coming out of Israel should scare people.

01:39:02.840 And based on the fact that the clinical trial data doesn't support anything except evidence

01:39:09.000 that this reduces mild or moderate disease and that it does produce spike in antibodies to spike

01:39:17.360 protein, we don't know what we should right now.

01:39:22.300 And that bothers me a lot.

01:39:26.560 Wow.

01:39:27.520 Well, I mean, I'm concerned by all of that.

01:39:32.220 I don't like what I heard.

01:39:33.340 I much prefer 90% effective, 95% effective, and we have a cure.

01:39:39.620 But, you know, I will say all along I've sort of gone with my own doctor who I trust, right?

01:39:44.040 Like that's what I did with my kids and the vaccines too.

01:39:46.640 And in their case and in my case, they both said, get it.

01:39:49.600 When it's available, get it.

01:39:51.560 There's no reason to believe based on the way the vaccine works that there's any long-term

01:39:55.100 harm.

01:39:56.260 Maybe some symptoms when you get it, but they, for the most part, have been mild.

01:39:59.680 And, you know, there might be a question about long-term effects of COVID that we haven't

01:40:05.780 yet seen either.

01:40:06.820 You know, so there's risks on both sides, like getting COVID.

01:40:10.260 How does that affect you 20 years down the line?

01:40:12.760 We don't know yet, you know?

01:40:14.920 I don't know.

01:40:15.600 I think I like hearing alternate viewpoints because I do think you raise some good points

01:40:21.180 and the data are the data.

01:40:22.720 Like people should follow what's happening in Israel and make up their own minds, right?

01:40:25.940 It's like shutting down people from access to data that doesn't fit one narrative is

01:40:30.260 not the answer here.

01:40:31.920 Yes.

01:40:32.120 And let me say one last thing about the vaccines because I'm not an anti-vaxxer, okay?

01:40:35.260 I was vaccinated as a kid.

01:40:36.840 My children have been vaccinated against all the, you know, standard stuff.

01:40:40.160 It is possible in three weeks or a month, the Israeli data will look completely different.

01:40:45.320 Okay?

01:40:45.560 It is possible, but it hasn't happened yet.

01:40:48.940 And now we're six weeks out.

01:40:50.220 I would also say if in three weeks or a month, the Israeli data doesn't look different, we

01:40:54.500 should all very, very seriously be talking about it because that will be really bad.

01:41:00.580 You have an invitation to come back if that happens.

01:41:03.020 Yes.

01:41:03.740 And I hope the data gets better.

01:41:06.000 We should all hope the data gets better from Israel.

01:41:08.920 The other thing I'll say is there are going to be more vaccines approved that use a different

01:41:13.780 technology, okay?

01:41:15.500 That use various different technologies.

01:41:17.600 And those vaccines may have a better side effect profile.

01:41:21.300 They may be less dangerous to, you know, to the people for who, whatever reason, seem

01:41:28.660 to have bad side effects about the MNRA vaccines.

01:41:31.620 I will say at this point, I am not taking the MNRA vaccine, I'm sorry, mRNA vaccine.

01:41:38.320 I will not take either the Pfizer or the Moderna vaccine.

01:41:41.600 My mother asked me if she should get it.

01:41:43.320 And I said, look, given your risks, I still think the risk-benefit ratio is in favor of

01:41:47.280 getting it.

01:41:48.080 She did get it.

01:41:50.040 You know, frankly, that was a few days ago.

01:41:52.820 Now that there's even more bad data out of Israel, I'm a little bit concerned.

01:41:56.280 But you know what?

01:41:57.600 She got it.

01:41:58.180 No side effects.

01:41:59.160 It seems so good for her.

01:42:00.640 And I certainly would not let my kids get these vaccines.

01:42:04.300 Maybe, maybe, maybe different, you know, vaccines based on different technology.

01:42:08.580 But given the risks to them of COVID, which are essentially zero, I'm not sure what the

01:42:13.260 upside for them getting these vaccines would be.

01:42:17.080 And that's a personal decision.

01:42:17.700 Exactly.

01:42:17.920 That's what our doctor said, too.

01:42:20.160 That's right.

01:42:20.700 Personal decisions.

01:42:21.220 I mean, Dr. Jay Bhattacharya.

01:42:22.840 Oh, did he?

01:42:23.600 That's, you know, I think those of us were-

01:42:25.460 Yeah, he said not for the kids.

01:42:25.960 He said it hasn't been tested on kids and kids have basically zero risk, next to zero

01:42:31.400 risk of COVID.

01:42:32.440 So why would you?

01:42:33.560 That's right.

01:42:34.460 One last thing.

01:42:35.420 These are personal decisions, right?

01:42:36.780 These are decisions that you should be allowed to make after talking to your doctor, after

01:42:40.460 doing your own research.

01:42:43.040 You know, given, I think given the novel technology here, I think it's totally reasonable.

01:42:48.500 And I don't think that's true necessarily about, let's say, the measles vaccine, okay?

01:42:52.240 Vaccines that have been around for generations.

01:42:54.160 This is different for kids.

01:42:55.500 And if parents aren't comfortable letting their kids be vaccinated, they should not

01:43:00.320 have to.

01:43:01.040 And that should not be a condition of them returning to school.

01:43:04.360 It is not right.

01:43:06.020 I agree.

01:43:07.200 And by the way, schools need to open up and so does the country.

01:43:10.240 I know you've been advocating that right from the get-go.

01:43:13.680 And I mean, you've been proven right about that.

01:43:15.940 You really have.

01:43:16.780 Like, what we've done, and Jay, Dr. Bhattacharya, was calling it civilizational suicide that we've

01:43:23.620 been trying to commit.

01:43:24.300 And we just won't let up.

01:43:27.180 You know, we won't turn off the gas, even though we can see ourselves struggling to breathe.

01:43:32.660 And it's gotten worse since Biden was elected, right?

01:43:35.020 I mean, he's basically on the side of the teachers' unions.

01:43:38.260 Totally, totally.

01:43:40.140 Totally.

01:43:40.540 Yeah, and it's because those are his donors.

01:43:44.320 You know, I mean, he came in with a little swagger saying, we've got to open up the schools.

01:43:48.140 I mean, at some point, he must have been looking at real data.

01:43:50.600 And then, you know, those are his big donors.

01:43:53.080 And before you knew it, they were saying, we don't want to go back.

01:43:55.280 And he was like, oh, yeah, you know, we really need to make it safe first.

01:43:58.220 I was like, how much more do we?

01:43:59.260 We spent billions of dollars, tens of billions of dollars, over 100, trying to make them safe.

01:44:05.320 Ventilation systems, prioritization in the vaccine line, you know, cleansing, closed down in the middle of the week for extra cleansing.

01:44:13.820 Hybrid models.

01:44:14.760 You don't even have to be there full time.

01:44:16.240 You can do half remote, half.

01:44:18.820 No, I don't feel safe.

01:44:21.360 And here in New York City, with the people showing up with the little coffins, Alex, the teachers with the little coffins before they had to start to teach the children at schools where there's been zero proof there's any transmission at all.

01:44:34.620 Yep.

01:44:35.740 It's gross. 0.81

01:44:36.620 It's so gross. 0.97

01:44:38.500 Yeah, the schools really infuriate me. 0.92

01:44:40.160 All right.

01:44:40.440 Well, listen, I appreciate all the great reporting on it.

01:44:42.520 Um, I, I feel like you're brave.

01:44:45.800 One of my personal goals has been to get you to follow me on Twitter.

01:44:49.260 I don't know why you don't.

01:44:50.260 It feels like a personal slate.

01:44:51.760 So, OK, while I have you here, I really need you to do that so that we can DM because sometimes I have questions that I want to send them to you and I have no way.

01:45:02.020 Are you going to slide into my DMs now?

01:45:04.620 Well, maybe I think I probably have your phone number now.

01:45:07.040 So I'm just going to bother you that way.

01:45:09.260 I'm kidding.

01:45:09.840 Because if you remember that, I mean, I think you saw that slate thing.

01:45:13.540 I'll never forget that.

01:45:14.620 That was a great, um, uh, that's a great moment.

01:45:18.400 Yeah.

01:45:18.740 What was that?

01:45:19.380 They were calling me hot or I can't remember what they did.

01:45:21.940 So I think I said something to you like any red blooded American male would be glad to be on with you or something like that.

01:45:28.480 Which, which I'll, I'll stand by that comment.

01:45:30.940 Um, but, uh, but, and then slate, you know, slate used that as evidence that you were the Fox on Fox.

01:45:37.880 Oh, well, listen, I, I'm definitely not one of those women who finds it sexist to be told that she's attractive.

01:45:42.580 So bring it.

01:45:43.520 Um, well, you are, you're now followed on Twitter so we can, uh, so we can talk, uh, over Twitter.

01:45:50.660 Thank you, sir.

01:45:55.320 Our thanks to Dr. Jay Bhattacharya and to Alex Berenson today.

01:45:59.280 I want to tell you that this hour was brought to you in part by The Zebra.

01:46:02.460 Find out how much money you can save on car or home insurance by visiting thezebra.com slash Kelly now.

01:46:10.240 And don't forget before I lose you to go subscribe to the show because we have an extraordinary, extraordinary interview coming up for you on Monday.

01:46:19.460 And I'll tell you the story quickly.

01:46:20.680 It's a woman named Lindsey Graham, not the Lindsey Graham, the senator, but a woman from Oregon.

01:46:25.700 And we booked her to talk about her lockdown rebellion. 0.73

01:46:29.400 She, she engaged in what she's called an act of civil disobedience against the lockdowns in Oregon. 0.99

01:46:33.780 And the governor unleashed a whole lot of retribution on her.

01:46:36.880 Well, we wanted to talk to her about it as part of our COVID show.

01:46:39.580 But it's spun into something extraordinary because it turns out Lindsey was at the Capitol Hill protest that turned into a riot, though she didn't participate in that, she says, on January 6th.

01:46:50.960 And if you want to see a window into how somebody loses their faith in government, in media, and as it as that same faith rises in one man, Donald Trump, to the point where she really believed that she was in the midst of what she called a holy

01:47:09.560 war that day, tune in on Monday, I promise you, you'll find this fascinating in the meantime, have a great weekend.

01:47:18.840 Thanks for listening to The Megyn Kelly Show. 0.94

01:47:20.740 No BS, no agenda, and no fear.

01:47:25.080 The Megyn Kelly Show is a Devil May Care media production in collaboration with Red Seat Ventures.

01:47:39.560 Thank you.

01:47:54.800 Thank you.

The Megyn Kelly Show - January 29, 2021

COVID Vaccines, Masks and Schools, with Alex Berenson and Dr. Jay Bhattacharya ｜ Ep. 57

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