In this episode, Dr. Jay Bhattacharya and Alex Berenson join me to talk about what's going on in America's schools and why we need to get back to school. Plus, we talk about COVID, the vaccine, and the teachers who are refusing to return to class.
00:01:02.600He's from the Great Barrington Declaration.
00:01:05.780I mean, that's something that he has helped author.
00:01:08.640He's actually a professor of medicine at Stanford.
00:01:10.480But 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.
00:01:22.800And he's got a good plan for how we can open up this country in the next 30 days.
00:01:28.620And so why aren't they listening to him?
00:01:30.780We'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.
00:01:47.740But he's been very brave in pushing back on some of the conventional wisdom.
00:02:29.340Like closing schools is unnecessary and does far more harm than good.
00:02:35.460Everyone from the Centers for Disease Control to the World Health Organization has said the schools present an infinitesimal transmission rate.
00:02:43.340And that closing them costs more lives than would leaving them open.
00:02:49.040And 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.
00:03:06.420Most 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.
00:03:14.460My 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.
00:03:52.200But 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.
00:04:01.860Right. 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.
00:04:10.920And Randy Weingarten, she's the president of the American Federation of Teachers, very powerful.
00:04:15.900It's the nation's second largest teachers union.
00:04:17.940You see her all over cable news is leading the stay at home charge.
00:04:27.540But their fear is not supported by the facts.
00:04:29.960But COVID infection rates in elementary schools have been minuscule, 0.2 percent for teachers, 0.1 percent for the children.
00:04:43.260Moreover, 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.
00:04:57.740OK, so there's no infections, virtually none.
00:05:00.500And the ones that are there were not acquired in the schools.
00:05:02.900There is no good reason not to return to in school learning.
00:05:07.300Still, the Chicago Teachers Union this week refused a direct order from the school district to return to school this past Monday.
00:05:16.040Same deal for the teachers in Montclair, New Jersey.
00:05:18.240It'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.
00:05:28.300The teachers there now defying an order to get back in the classroom.
00:05:46.220He's already reversed himself on that, bowing to the unions, which are huge Democratic donors.
00:05:50.460And 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.
00:06:01.520This 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.
00:06:13.800And they've been prioritized, teachers have, for vaccines.
00:06:16.820And here was the new White House chief of staff, Ron Klain, siding with the unions.
00:06:22.720We need to do the things to open safely.
00:06:25.060Most of the teachers I talk to, they want to be back in the classroom.
00:06:35.660And their standard of safety knows no bounds.
00:06:39.360The truth is no amount of safety measures is going to get these teachers back in the classroom.
00:06:42.740Even a direct order from their bosses hasn't gotten them back in the classroom.
00:06:45.800The Chicago schools have installed air purifiers in the classrooms, conducted ventilation tests, increased cleaning, procured rapid testing, among other things.
00:06:55.620But still, the teachers who are receiving priority on vaccinations say it's not safe, not safe enough.
00:07:01.300These people won't be satisfied until they get the hazmat suits appropriate for an overnight stay at Chernobyl.
00:07:05.220The 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.
00:07:18.280But still, Chicago teachers play the victim.
00:07:21.780And we're seeing this dichotomy happen across the nation between public and private schools.
00:07:25.860The 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.
00:07:34.520Remember 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?
00:07:42.560So 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.
00:08:19.400It was already the second leading cause of death among young people aged 10 to 24 before the pandemic.
00:08:24.960But 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.
00:08:35.800There are no school mental health counselors to keep an eye on them.
00:09:06.220It's gotten so bad there that they have had to create an early warning system that monitors students' mental health episodes.
00:09:13.040Like 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.
00:09:23.040That 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.
00:09:33.380telling him his son had been searching, quote, how to make a noose.
00:09:38.780Sure enough, the dad ran to his son's room at 2 a.m.
00:09:41.780and found his son trying to hang himself.
00:09:48.080By December 2020, okay, just last month, the Times report showed that over the previous nine months, okay, from December 2020 back nine months,
00:09:59.48018 Clark County students had taken their own lives.
00:10:03.420That's double the preceding 12 months.
00:10:07.380One left a note saying he had nothing to look forward to.
00:10:10.080One of the children was nine years old.
00:11:33.660We're going to be joined by Dr. J. Bhattacharya in one second.
00:11:37.540He'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.
00:11:47.380He's been jumping up and down trying to tell people this is going to happen.
00:14:42.960Your reported child abuse rates have plummeted in the U.S.
00:14:46.080But it's not because child abuse has dropped.
00:14:48.660It's because schools are where child abuse cases are picked up and dealt with.
00:14:52.880There was a study done in the Journal of American Medical Association that estimated, you know, like schools, it's not just for learning.
00:15:01.920I mean, it breeds a lifetime habit that results in people being sort of healthier and wealthier their entire lives.
00:15:10.540You cut school for a little while and children lead shorter, less healthy lives.
00:15:17.100So 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.
00:15:29.780It's really underscoring the socioeconomic differences, too, because the kids of lower socioeconomic status are the last to go back to school.
00:15:37.800You know, here in New York City, the wealthy private schools, they're open.
00:15:44.820And yet the public schools have been totally unreliable and the upper schools in New York are still closed.
00:15:49.860And 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.
00:16:03.920It'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.
00:16:11.460We basically have decided that the poor don't need to be educated in the United States, whereas the rich can confine to alternatives.
00:16:19.860I 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.
00:16:30.240They understand the role, the important, the vital role they play in in their their students lives.
00:16:36.060And I think I think I don't really understand the political dynamic at this point.
00:16:40.720It'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.
00:16:52.660We ask doctors and nurses to go in, work all day.
00:16:56.540We we ask all kinds of people who perform essential services to continue to perform them despite the risk of the epidemic.
00:17:03.340In some cases, much, much, much, much less safely than a teacher would have.
00:17:07.400And yet I would say that the teachers are are performing an absolutely essential service if they were just agreed to go do it.
00:17:14.580I think a lot of teachers around the country want that.
00:17:17.360I 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.
00:17:25.660And I think they just I think the teachers need to start listening to their own teachers.
00:17:31.080It's it's that's been my experience, too.
00:17:33.080I have quite a few friends who are who are teachers and the union doesn't always speak for them.
00:17:38.820The 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.
00:17:48.720And it may not be what the teachers want.
00:17:51.940And, you know, it's like a lot of these teachers would actually like to get back into into the classroom.
00:17:56.680A, they want to get out of their own house.
00:17:58.680Right. They're sick of sitting around their own house and trying to teach.
00:18:22.880The kids can file into the classroom, but their teacher is going to be remote in every classroom.
00:18:28.280And 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.
00:18:40.920That's one story up because somehow they think this is more equitable.
00:18:46.320Somehow 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.
00:18:58.460And 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.
00:19:08.740Yeah, I mean, I think that's I think we really do have a responsibility to our kids.
00:20:22.220The teachers from the dance program in Chicago did some interpretive dance to show how they didn't want to go back to their.
00:20:30.200These are able-bodied, perfectly healthy young people like dancing their way back to their couch.
00:20:36.600And 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.
00:20:49.320Like, there's nothing that approaches 100% safe.
00:20:55.600But I think we've gotten as close as we're going to get.
00:20:58.120I mean, I think the thing is, I think there's this misperception about the deadliness of the disease, right?
00:21:03.020So, for people who are over 70, the survival rate is 95%.
00:21:07.5205% is a high death rate from a single disease.
00:21:10.040So, I mean, you don't want to downplay that.
00:22:15.880So 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.
00:22:26.300And like that human touch, everybody knows how important that is.
00:22:30.300You 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.
00:22:38.260And yet, thank goodness, there are still some places where forced socialization occurs.
00:23:23.940It's about businesses, because all of what we've said can be extrapolated.
00:23:27.840The isolation, the dangers, the depression that comes from these lockdowns.
00:23:32.900You had a piece just last month, and your declaration came out months ago, but saying we could open in January.
00:23:38.840We 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?
00:23:49.400So focused protection is prioritizing the protection of people we know to be vulnerable to COVID disease, high mortality risk of COVID disease.
00:23:57.860People who are over 70, people over 65 and actually have chronic conditions that put them at higher risk.
00:24:03.920You know, even people maybe under 65 that have these chronic, some of the chronic conditions that are very high risk should they get infected.
00:24:09.900Practically, now that we have the vaccine, that means prioritizing those folks for the vaccine.
00:24:15.380So just to give an example, in Florida, for instance, Governor DeSantis actually has done this.
00:24:21.900He's prioritized nursing home residents where something like 40% of all deaths from COVID have happened.
00:24:28.260And 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.
00:24:40.980In California, we just barely gotten started.
00:24:43.680My 80-year-old mom lives in Los Angeles.
00:24:56.780But once we've done that, once you've protected the vulnerable, at that point, the lockdown harms are way worse than the disease itself.
00:25:06.840They'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.
00:25:17.680But 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?
00:25:33.800What argument is there to keep the lockdowns in place?
00:25:36.060There really isn't a good one, I think.
00:25:37.500Well, when you – you're obviously very immersed in this and in the medical community, so why are they doing it?
00:25:46.880You know, I mean, what is it with the Jones for lockdowns and interminable masks and restaurant closures and business closures and school closures?
00:26:16.560And 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.
00:26:33.980And, you know, there's tradeoffs involved in that.
00:26:36.180I mean, sometimes, you know, you can't have absolutely everything.
00:26:40.200And 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.
00:26:51.060What's happened is this is a monomania about infection control as if it were the only priority in public health.
00:26:58.020And 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.
00:27:05.780And 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.
00:27:14.520To your point, I go to see a cardiologist every year because my dad died at age 45 of a heart attack.
00:27:20.060So I'm always very on top of that just to make sure I'm okay.
00:27:23.220And I asked him how has the office been?
00:28:05.180And, 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.
00:28:13.680That's going to sharply increase next year because a lot of women skip their mammograms this year.
00:28:18.620I mean, we're going to start to see another, another data point.
00:28:22.620How do you teach a six-year-old to read over Zoom?
00:29:22.400And 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.
00:29:30.920It's, it's, it's, um, it really is a doubt dereliction of duty.
00:29:34.060So what about, so now they're on, on unveiling the vaccines, right?
00:29:39.580And the latest information I had was that about 41 million doses have been delivered to states.
00:29:47.100About 19 million people have received at least one dose.
00:29:51.660So, 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.
00:29:59.640So far, they say only 3.3 million have been fully vaccinated.
00:30:03.480About a million a day are getting the vaccine.
00:30:05.740By the way, that was the same under president Trump as it is right now.
00:30:08.600So at this rate, when is everyone who needs to get vaccinated going to be vaccinated?
00:30:16.520I guess that question is who needs to be vaccinated immediately, right?
00:30:19.880Because the question, if you're talking about the entire population, it'll take a year and that's just the United States.
00:30:25.520I mean, worldwide, I mean, the United States is lucky we vaccinated more people, uh, than any other country on earth.
00:30:31.180Uh, so the, the, the question to me, isn't how many, how long until we vaccinate everybody?
00:30:39.540The question is how long till we vaccinate the people who are vulnerable?
00:30:44.040That 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.
00:30:56.200I mean, that, you know, different states have different, uh, you know, will be more and less efficient at it.
00:31:01.260But I mean, two months, um, no, so Florida, for instance, has done that, but California has not.
00:31:07.760I 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.
00:31:14.700My 80 year old mom still is not vaccinated in LA.
00:31:17.340I 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.
00:31:27.840I 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.
00:31:39.180I think West Virginia has done pretty well.
00:31:40.980Uh, 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.
00:31:45.320And other states have, have sort of waffled at that.
00:31:48.260Well, here in New York, now that you mentioned it, we, we did the opposite.
00:31:50.840We 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.
00:31:58.220And then our dumb ass governor, forgive me, but not, no love lost there.
00:32:06.740I 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.
00:32:10.980Like they were like, okay, you can't, you can't give the vaccine unless they're on the one, a priority list.
00:32:16.500Uh, 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.
00:32:24.420You basically have to give to everybody.
00:32:25.720You have to use up the vial immediately or else it goes to waste.
00:32:28.640So 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.
00:32:39.540That's a, that's a really easy place to find a lot of elderly.
00:32:42.340Go 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.
00:32:51.960You 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.
00:32:58.440Um, I mean, that those kinds of programs are certainly within the capacity of public health in all across the country.
00:33:04.760And that's something we should be doing.
00:33:06.760What 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.
00:33:19.000Like that now, now that Trump's gone, we're allowed to note where the virus, the new strains are coming from.
00:33:38.560Like if you get this vaccination now, the one from Pfizer, the one from Moderna, do you have to worry?
00:33:44.440So 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.
00:33:53.580And 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.
00:34:09.820And 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.
00:34:22.720So I think, um, it's, it's actually very, very promising.
00:34:25.380Uh, and I, from what I understand the, the, uh, Pfizer and Moderna are both looking at, uh, sort of booster shots.
00:34:31.400The idea is, is, uh, let's put, uh, an, an MR, an MRNA sequence that, uh, that covers the variant.
00:34:37.820I think the variant is something to look at, uh, and, and think about, but at this point I wouldn't worry about it.
00:34:43.900I 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.
00:35:00.160Do 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?
00:35:08.440Um, it's hard to say, cause we don't know how long lasting the immunity is from the vaccine.
00:35:13.960I 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.
00:35:25.680Um, 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.
00:35:34.900And, um, even after antibodies fade, you still have some memory cells, uh, that protect you against severe infection.
00:35:43.120I think the long run of this disease, the very long run is it becomes like a, another coronavirus, a common cold virus.
00:35:51.060Uh, 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.
00:35:57.140Um, and then through life, you keep getting it, but it just causes a cold because you've built up immune memory around it.
00:36:03.620Um, I think that's the long run of disease.
00:36:04.940I don't think the long run is yearly vaccinations forever.
00:36:07.420Although that may be the case for a few, uh, a few years, I think.
00:36:11.400Well, there's a lot of, um, information going around on the web about the vaccines potentially being dangerous.
00:36:16.820I 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.
00:36:58.940Um, and the mRNA is actually getting your body degrades it as soon as, as soon as it produces the protein more or less.
00:37:05.800Um, so I think it's a, it's a, it's a, uh, and then the protein induces the immune response.
00:37:09.660Um, so I think it's, it's, it's, it's not one of these, there's no chip involved.
00:37:13.800There are safety concerns with every vaccine and the, the, you, and that's actually, I think, uh, being monitored very, very closely.
00:37:21.980You know, I think, uh, there's, there are, uh, cases of people getting allergic reactions from the vaccine, uh, the cases, things like that.
00:37:30.080Um, for the most part, the severe adverse event rate has been pretty low.
00:37:34.280I mean, it's, it's, it's, you know, it's on par with other vaccines.
00:37:36.940Uh, are there going to be very, very long-term effects?
00:37:39.920I mean, again, the vaccine has been around for a couple of months.
00:37:42.160It's not possible to say that, uh, with certainty that there aren't.
00:37:46.860Uh, 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.
00:38:00.440Um, versus the certainty that COVID for someone who's over 70 has a, you know, 5% death rate.
00:38:07.280I mean, I told my mom to take the vaccine, for instance.
00:38:10.660What, now, a couple of questions there.
00:38:12.400So, I, I read that severe reactions to the vaccine are very rare.
00:38:15.58010 people out of more than 4 million had severe reactions.
00:38:19.200And they said out of those 10, I think 9 out of 10 all had serious allergic reactions to other vaccines before.
00:38:26.420So, 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.
00:38:35.360Some of them had had on other vaccines.
00:38:37.120So, 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.
00:38:46.020Um, and obviously, plan accordingly and talk to your doctor about what to do there.
00:38:50.820But, um, I wanted to ask you whether there is a, do they know whether there's a long-term negative effect of having COVID?
00:39:01.140I mean, so there's a lot of interest about that in the literature.
00:39:05.060Uh, so, so, um, there are some longer-term outcomes, uh, from almost any respiratory disease in a small fraction of the population.
00:39:13.460So, that, that happens with the flu, for instance, for a small fraction of the population that can get some, some, some severe outcomes.
00:39:20.900Um, 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.
00:39:33.140So, you get, you get this, for instance, with mono, right?
00:39:35.820Sometimes, uh, you get sort of extended.
00:39:37.780Now, how common that is, is actually not well-established in the literature.
00:39:42.640My sense is that it happens for some people, but not very commonly.
00:39:46.240Um, but that's something that still, again, needs some further investigation.
00:39:49.720I'd say, again, it's a, it's a balance of risks.
00:39:52.040We have to face uncertainty, face the fact that a lot of these things are uncertain.
00:39:56.240And when I look at the balance of risk, what I see is, um, for older people, COVID is relatively deadly.
00:40:02.060The vaccine may have some, some side effects, but it's unlikely to be a, a, a, a huge problem for most people.
00:40:07.900And the balance of the risk favors the vaccine.
00:40:11.120Um, for, for, for younger people, the lockdown harms are devastating.
00:40:15.320And we talk, that's why we started with them.
00:40:16.740I think it's more important to think about.
00:40:17.860And 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.
00:40:27.340Um, and, and there the balance says lift the lockdowns, right, to me.
00:40:31.460Um, 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.
00:40:38.620If they were tested in younger people, certainly works in younger people, but they shouldn't be prioritized for them.
00:40:42.740Kids, by the way, haven't been tested with the vaccine as yet.
00:40:45.540Um, so they just, they haven't run the test on the vaccine.
00:40:47.700I don't think it's right to vaccinate children yet with the vaccine that hasn't been tested on them.
00:40:52.240And if you've had COVID, you don't need the vaccine.
00:40:55.620Uh, if you've had COVID, you certainly should not be prioritized for the vaccine.
00:40:58.720That, cause you're, you're already immune.
00:41:00.500Uh, they actually did test people with previously had COVID with the vaccine and they found that the vaccine didn't do anything for them.
00:41:06.900Um, 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.
00:41:12.820You may want it to feel safe, but you certainly shouldn't be prioritized for it.
00:41:18.020My, 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.
00:41:37.740So 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?
00:41:45.920Cause you've, there are, as we talked about up for, with a small probability, some side effects on the vaccine.
00:41:50.560And you think now, now do not, do not vaccinate your kids.
00:41:54.280I mean, let's say at the point when it's available, like if you could.
00:41:57.520Yeah, 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.
00:42:14.460Um, I think for, I mean, for kids, it is really close because that's a really good question.
00:42:18.860Good ethical question because, uh, for kids, the COVID infection is not particularly deadly relative to other risks they face, including the flu, for instance.
00:42:28.480Flu, I think is on, is typically more deadly than COVID for kids.
00:42:31.940Um, 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.
00:42:51.100And 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.
00:43:00.980Um, but sometimes I wonder whether we, we've been sucked into this vortex that's a little disconnected from reality.
00:43:08.380You know, like we've done so much damage.
00:43:11.260Your term civilizational suicide was really poignant for a, for a virus that the vast majority of Americans have a 99.95 chance of surviving.
00:43:22.700You 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.
00:43:33.940I mean, I think we, we have had a vast overreaction to this in one, in one sense.
00:43:40.560Uh, the, the lockdowns we thought would protect us haven't really protect us.
00:43:45.240It'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.
00:43:51.420Um, 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.
00:44:03.180The lockdowns haven't protected people living in places where there's high poverty, uh, minority populations, especially Hispanics have been hard hit.
00:44:09.860Uh, you know, I think it was like 50% or over 50% of people who've had COVID deaths that are Hispanic in California.
00:44:15.880Um, the, the lockdowns have, have been an enormous and ineffective overreaction, not actually protecting the population from COVID.
00:44:24.320While at the same time, the collateral damage is absolutely devastating.
00:44:28.880It's a, it's a, it's a unfocused overreactions, how I characterize it.
00:44:33.780And I think we just, we should have focused on the population.
00:44:37.720We knew it to be at risk, protected them, thought of creative ways to protect them from the beginning of the epidemic.
00:44:43.620And we knew who they were, older people, the nursing homes.
00:44:46.380I mean, in New York, uh, Pennsylvania, they sent old infected patients back to nursing homes.
01:44:21.360And 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.
01:44:51.760So, 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.
01:45:02.020Are you going to slide into my DMs now?
01:45:04.620Well, maybe I think I probably have your phone number now.
01:45:07.040So I'm just going to bother you that way.
01:45:55.320Our thanks to Dr. Jay Bhattacharya and to Alex Berenson today.
01:45:59.280I want to tell you that this hour was brought to you in part by The Zebra.
01:46:02.460Find out how much money you can save on car or home insurance by visiting thezebra.com slash Kelly now.
01:46:10.240And 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.
01:46:20.680It's a woman named Lindsey Graham, not the Lindsey Graham, the senator, but a woman from Oregon.
01:46:25.700And we booked her to talk about her lockdown rebellion.
01:46:29.400She, she engaged in what she's called an act of civil disobedience against the lockdowns in Oregon.
01:46:33.780And the governor unleashed a whole lot of retribution on her.
01:46:36.880Well, we wanted to talk to her about it as part of our COVID show.
01:46:39.580But 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.
01:46:50.960And 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
01:47:09.560war that day, tune in on Monday, I promise you, you'll find this fascinating in the meantime, have a great weekend.
01:47:18.840Thanks for listening to The Megyn Kelly Show.