Kyle Rittenhouse, now 18, stands accused of intentionally murdering two people and trying to murder a third at a Black Lives Matter riot in August 2020 in Kenosha, Wisconsin. Why didn t each one of them provoke a violent response?
00:00:00.480Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations.
00:00:12.180Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show and happy Veterans Day.
00:00:17.160We begin today with the extraordinary developments in the Kyle Rittenhouse trial, a case that has captured national attention.
00:00:23.120The now 18-year-old stands accused of intentionally murdering two people and trying to murder a third at a Black Lives Matter riot in August 2020 in Kenosha, Wisconsin.
00:00:34.040That riot took place in the wake of the lawful police-involved shooting of Jacob Blake, a man resisting arrest who pulled a knife on cops, who was then shot seven times by an officer.
00:00:44.860Days later, then 17-year-old Kyle Rittenhouse went to Kenosha to protect the city from the planned riot, burning, and looting.
00:00:53.120He was given an AR-15 by a friend in Kenosha and was heard on tape saying he wanted to help act as a medic and to keep the peace.
00:01:01.800Chaos ensued, and Kyle shot three people.
00:01:05.140For over a year, the media has condemned this kid as a vigilante domestic terrorist who went on an unjustified killing spree.
00:01:13.120No open-mindedness to his claim of self-defense, nor the videotapes that clearly back that up,
00:01:23.120or of others, when police would not or could not.
00:01:26.360Here's a sample of that media coverage.
00:01:28.440Kyle Rittenhouse, the 17-year-old vigilante.
00:01:33.220Kyle Rittenhouse, the armed teenage vigilante.
00:01:35.780A 17-year-old vigilante, arguably a domestic terrorist, picked up a rifle, drove to a different state to shoot people.
00:01:42.120Kyle Rittenhouse, a guy who's deeply racist, went with weapons to a Black Lives Matter protest, looking to get in trouble.
00:01:49.920He did, he murdered a couple of people.
00:01:52.020Rittenhouse, the 17-year-old kid, just running around, shooting and killing protesters.
00:01:59.000You see the 17-year-old, who was radicalized by Trumpism, took his AR-15 to Kenosha and became a killer.
00:02:06.080A white, Trump-supporting, MAGA-loving, Blue Lives Matter, social media partisan, 17 years old, picks up a gun, drives from one state to another with the intent to shoot people.
00:02:20.200A 17-year-old boy who drove across state lines with an AR-15 and started shooting people up, including a guy with a skateboard.
00:02:32.620There's so much misinformation and that butted soundbite, I don't even know where to begin.
00:02:40.240Kyle Rittenhouse's former lawyer was on the show yesterday saying there will be libel lawsuits, more than one.
00:02:45.660The Rittenhouse trial began on November 2nd, and it has been an utter disaster for the prosecution.
00:02:51.220Rittenhouse does not deny shooting the three men in question, two of whom died, one of whom was severely injured in the arm.
00:02:56.560Instead, he argues that he acted in self-defense.
00:03:00.420Self-defense is an absolute defense, and it is up to the prosecution to disprove it.
00:03:06.740Here, the prosecution is trying to do that by arguing that Rittenhouse provoked the attacks upon him, thus rendering the claim of self-defense unavailable.
00:03:16.320First, a brief primer on the relevant law.
00:03:21.140In Wisconsin, a self-defense claim generally will not prevail if the man raising it provoked the attack in the first place.
00:03:29.900Now, there are two kinds of provocation.
00:03:32.560Intentional, for example, goading someone you want to kill into attacking you so that you can murder him.
00:03:39.240That's not what happened here and doesn't seem to be what the prosecution is arguing, though with this DA, we cannot entirely rule it out.
00:03:46.420But then there's unintentional provocation.
00:03:49.900OK, unintentional provocation, which can but doesn't always prevent a defendant from claiming self-defense.
00:04:36.920First of all, just carrying a gun illegally is not likely to provoke a violent response.
00:04:43.520Do you know how many people were carrying illegal firearms that night in Kenosha?
00:04:47.060Why didn't each one of them provoke a violent response?
00:04:49.880The mere carrying of a gun illegally or not is not by itself a violent provocation.
00:04:58.380Second of all, there are real questions about whether the Wisconsin law applies to long guns like the one Kyle had and still more questions as to whether the law in question here is too vague to withstand constitutional muster.
00:05:14.840Andy McCarthy's got a great piece about this on National Review, which you should read.
00:05:18.980But let's assume for now that Wisconsin's gun law will be upheld and that Kyle was breaking it.
00:05:24.480And further, let's assume that the prosecution can convince a jury or this judge that a reasonable person would have known that unlawfully carrying an AR-15 was likely to provoke violence.
00:05:38.160Okay, already we are in legal la-la land, but let's do it.
00:06:07.460That's Rittenhouse's argument, that he was not breaking any gun laws, that even if he was, doing so by itself was not likely to provoke a violent response just by carrying a gun that you didn't have the law right to carry.
00:06:20.960And that even if it was, Rittenhouse still had the right to defend his own life when the violent response was attempted murder.
00:06:29.200So does the evidence support Rittenhouse's claim that his life was threatened by each of the men he shot?
00:07:03.460Rosenbaum was a convicted child molester on medication, only recently released from a mental facility, none of which the jury will hear because it's not technically relevant since Rittenhouse didn't know it at the time.
00:07:14.560Still, it helps us understand Rosenbaum's behavior that night, which was erratic and threatening.
00:07:19.200Now, Rittenhouse testified yesterday that Rosenbaum chased him and threatened to kill him.
00:08:27.120That exchange was witnessed by, among others, Daily Caller video journalist Richie McGinnis, who took the stand in this case and testified as follows.
00:08:38.080And you've already established that after the shooting, Mr. Rosenbaum never says it worked, correct?
00:09:10.800So your interpretation of what he was trying to do or what he was intending to do or anything along those lines is complete guesswork, isn't it?
00:09:27.040Now the focus of an angry mob after the shooting of Rosenbaum begins to run.
00:09:33.320He says he was heading for a police barricade to surrender himself to the cops, but that the incensed mob followed him, threw things at him and may have pushed him.
00:09:48.360Rittenhouse says just before he went down, a man named Anthony Huber swung his skateboard at Rittenhouse like a bat and that it did hit Kyle.
00:09:58.040Once Rittenhouse is down, which you can see right here, you can clearly see him being attacked from multiple flanks.
00:10:04.620An unidentified man in heavy work boots tries to jump kick him in the face, but misses.
00:10:10.320Rittenhouse fires his gun at that man, but Rittenhouse misses, too.
00:10:13.400And that's when Anthony Huber, Huber, the second man killed, appears on tape with his skateboard and begins to beat Rittenhouse for what Rittenhouse is the second time now with that skateboard, this time over the head.
00:10:26.540Rittenhouse described this exchange on the stand yesterday.
00:10:29.240As I'm running, at first I'm in the sidewalk and Mr. Likowski, Jason Likowski is in the sidewalk and I stop to talk to Mr. Likowski for a brief second.
00:10:45.320I remember telling him that I just shot somebody and I need help to get to the police because the crowd, there was a, not a crowd, a mob was chasing me.
00:10:55.580And did Mr. Likowski offer you any help?
00:13:38.440As I pointed out, the media has painted this kid as a monster in front of the jury pool and the country.
00:13:45.100Now, this is really just a kid, one who's been through hell this past year thanks to an overzealous prosecutor, a dishonest media, and public figures who don't care at all about facts appearing to smell blood in the water.
00:13:59.600Yesterday, it all seemed to catch up with Rittenhouse, who broke down on the stand.
00:14:02.900Once I take that step back, I look over my shoulder, and Mr. Rosenbaum, Mr. Rosenbaum was now running from my right side, and I was cornered from in front of me with Mr. Zeminski.
00:14:24.520And there were – there were three people right there.
00:15:02.420This is a kid that made the wrong decision that night, who felt frustrated by the lack of police presence and the ongoing destruction of property, and decided to do something about it, which is not the way.
00:15:13.600I mean, you can understand why, but it's not the way.
00:15:15.980He knows that himself now, whose life has been completely upended.
00:16:11.080And the natural product of what happens when the false ideological social justice crew meets actual fact-based courtroom justice, where truth and fairness still matter?
00:16:23.600Joining me now to discuss it all is Rob Grueler, a criminal defense attorney and founding partner of R&R Law Group.
00:16:32.460Rob, thank you so much for being here.
00:16:34.600So what do you make of my assessment of this case?
00:16:37.200First of all, Megan, thank you so much for having me.
00:16:43.420I've been following this case since August of 2020 when it happened.
00:16:47.460And I agree with your assessment that this case should have never been brought in the first place.
00:16:52.040We covered the probable cause statement, the original documentation that was supposed to justify the charges.
00:16:58.560And when we read through that, paragraph by paragraph, a lot of the evidence that you just sort of revealed to your audience was in that document.
00:17:06.980We heard from Richard McGinnis, even, who was sort of he wasn't shot, but he was a reporter who was running behind Rosenbaum.
00:17:14.380And he came out and confirmed a lot of the same things that we heard from other government witnesses, that Rosenbaum was the aggressor, that he was using the N-word, screaming that at people at supposedly a BLM protest,
00:17:26.300that he was the provocateur, he was the ultimate aggressor.
00:17:30.980And that set in sequence a series of events that led to the subsequent shootings.
00:17:35.600And so when you just break this down individually, you look at every alleged victim, whether it's Rosenbaum or Grosskowitz or Huber,
00:17:42.640it seems pretty consistent that Kyle Rittenhouse in every instance was defending himself.
00:17:48.160And so for people like me, I'm a defense attorney.
00:17:50.700I was able to sort of watch this at day one and see these facts clearly and communicate them on my YouTube channel.
00:17:58.040I was very frustrated by what I heard from the media.
00:18:00.600As you described, you said a lot of people were commenting on this case and characterizing it in a completely erroneous legal way that made it difficult to have a serious conversation about it.
00:18:10.960And this isn't some hardened criminal, like you said.
00:18:16.460He was frustrated with his environment in the middle of what many officers, even in this trial,
00:18:22.540Pep Moretti was an officer who came out and testified in the government's case in chief that they were in the middle of a war zone.
00:18:28.120And so not ideal for a 17-year-old young man to be over there, but he was there.
00:18:33.020And the fact that he was assaulted, attacked by multiple individuals, in my humble opinion, justifies him in his use of self-defense.
00:18:41.220And I think that what Thomas Binger has been doing throughout this trial has been really underhanded to sort of set in in motion this caricature that he's this lawless, reckless maniac running around Kenosha just trying to shoot people.
00:18:53.040Yeah, he he made it sound like trying to find this.
00:18:58.420I think it's soundbite number five, like he that Kyle Rittenhouse went there wanting to kill, intending to kill.
00:21:50.880I was really impressed with him yesterday.
00:21:52.620You know, I mentioned or you mentioned that maybe you'd have some questions about putting Kyle Rittenhouse on the stand, but he did an outstanding job.
00:22:00.060There were some some areas where I think his attorneys maybe could have jumped in to, you know, object and protect him a little bit more.
00:22:05.220But by and large, I mean, Kyle Rittenhouse, think about this young man.
00:22:08.280And I was communicating about the stressors and the pressures that exist upon anybody in the criminal justice system.
00:22:14.300But not to mention an 18 year old young man who is facing decades in prison, who is dealing with homicide charges, who's looking at a jury panel of now 18 people, all judging him.
00:22:25.540He's got a year of the media beating up on him for a year and a half.
00:22:28.860I even think some people in the Biden administration used his image as a white supremacist.
00:22:32.980And so, you know, you have this discussion about whether he should have taken the stand and the pros and the cons.
00:22:38.720And you can get into that till the end of the earth.
00:22:41.720I think a big part of it is he wanted to clear his name.
00:22:44.400He wanted to make sure that he could rebut all of the allegations that were were coming his direction, even if they weren't necessarily criminal legal charges.
00:22:53.540They were still, you know, accusations his direction.
00:22:55.920And he cleared a lot of them up and he did so, you know, masterfully.
00:22:59.360I think that the defense gave the prosecution sort of an opportunity on a silver platter and they totally blew it.
00:23:30.820So one of the other, I mean, there were so many bad moments from this DA, the assistant district attorney, Thomas Binger, to choose from.
00:23:44.640But one of the other areas in which it fell flat that the audience can hear for themselves is where he was questioning Rittenhouse about whether Rosenbaum, the first man killed, ever said he would take Kyle's gun.
00:24:02.800What was the risk to you of death or great bodily harm at the moment you killed Joseph Rosenbaum?
00:24:15.140If I would have let Mr. Rosenbaum take my firearm from me, he would have used it and killed me with it and probably killed more people if I would have let him get my gun.
00:24:26.980Mr. Rosenbaum never said anything to you about taking your gun, did he?
00:24:33.240He didn't say anything, but he tried to take my gun.
00:24:36.460And whoever's got that gun is a threat to everyone else?
00:24:39.200If he would have taken my gun, he would have used it against me.
00:24:45.040He didn't say anything to me about taking my gun.
00:24:50.360It's been very strange to try to tease out what Mr.
00:24:54.240Binger's acceptable standard of self-defense would be, because we've already heard from a number of the different alleged victims in this case that they've done something that is sort of aggressive, a little bit provocative.
00:25:06.420Again, we heard from Rosenbaum physically chasing Rittenhouse, but apparently that doesn't qualify.
00:25:12.000We heard about Anthony Huber, who was swinging a skateboard over the head and hitting Kyle Rittenhouse in the head.
00:25:17.960Apparently that doesn't justify self-defense.
00:25:20.180And then we saw from Gage Grosskowitz that he actually pointed a gun, his hands were up, but then actually reengaged Kyle Rittenhouse, who then used self-defense at that moment as well.
00:25:29.820But every single time that Thomas Binger asked Kyle Rittenhouse about this, he sort of makes it appear that that was totally unreasonable.
00:25:36.900And so it's, you know, we're sort of joking about this on the Internet and on LawTube and LawTwitter that the only time that it would actually be justified is maybe if Kyle actually was shot or actually got stabbed in the middle of an actual physical assault taking place.
00:25:51.140Maybe then Binger would be OK with self-defense.
00:25:53.400Yeah, that's right. So and by the way, what's with Binger asking all the open questions, right?
00:25:57.760You don't do that on cross. You only it should be yeses and nos on cross only.
00:26:01.400That's it. You you drive the dialogue. You don't let the witness drive the dialogue.
00:26:06.100OK, so the judge and Binger, the the ADA, got into it yesterday.
00:26:12.060And let me just set up this soundbite.
00:26:14.480So basically, Binger did two things that ticked off the judge and the defense counsel.
00:26:18.740Number one, he tried to bring into evidence Kyle Rittenhouse saying a couple of weeks prior to this incident in watching some sort of property damage.
00:26:27.820I think he just watched it online, right? He wasn't even there.
00:26:30.480I wish I had my gun so I could, like, shoot these guys.
00:26:33.460It's just like bullshit rhetoric, right?
00:26:35.580Fill me. Fill me in on that, Rob. Fill that out.
00:26:37.440Yes, it's a 17 year old kid who's just, you know, it's kind of body talk.
00:26:41.900And there was a prior incident back in August where Kyle Rittenhouse was in the area, in the vicinity.
00:26:47.620There was a CVS video where apparently he was outside of CVS.
00:26:51.380And there's somebody recording footage of him watching shoplifting happening and saying something to the effect, if I had my weapon, I would be able to stop this from occurring.
00:27:02.100And so what Thomas Binger wanted to do is bring that in as evidence and sort of show that Kyle was acting in conformity with that prior statement.
00:27:11.640And so the way he fleshed this whole thing out, it was very underhanded, in my opinion.
00:27:14.880But he started to walk down a line of questioning with Kyle Rittenhouse about property and about property defending property and says, you know, you can't shoot Rosenbaum to protect property, right?
00:27:26.300You can't use deadly force in order to save car source, which is the property that we were talking about there.
00:27:31.500And so he gets Kyle to agree a number of times that, yes, I agree.
00:27:35.520You can't use self-defense to protect property.
00:27:37.860So then he says, well, then why did you say that in that earlier August 17th or 15th date to that person who was recording you outside the CVS?
00:27:46.540And that at that moment, there was an objection from the defense.
00:27:50.800And the judge had already known that this was an issue that was discussed during the pretrial proceedings, that this shouldn't have been considered to be a wide open door for the prosecution to just walk through.
00:28:00.400Judge wanted Binger to give him some some.
00:28:04.920Acknowledgement that this might be coming so the judge could issue a ruling.
00:28:07.860And when Binger didn't do that, the judge really scolded him aggressively, right?
00:28:11.940Because the judge in the pretrial motions had said, I don't think I'm going to let that in.
00:28:15.620And when you're when that is said to you as a as a lawyer, that means if I try to get it in, I got to get the judge's approval before I go here.
00:28:23.620I can't just spring this in front of the jury because I've already been admonished by this judge.
00:28:31.160And the second the second sin committed by Binger was he said is followed as follows to to Kyle Rittenhouse.
00:28:39.640He basically questioned his his Fifth Amendment right not to count, not to testify.
00:28:44.140So Binger comes up and says to him, this is the first time you've told your story since August 25, 2020, isn't it?
00:28:51.340And you've had the benefit of seeing countless videos of your action that night and hearing the testimony of 30 some witnesses who have testified in this case.
00:28:59.080And the defense attorney, Mark Richards, objected.
00:29:16.400And it's one of the first things that I would I've never been a prosecutor, but I would imagine they tell you when you're going to trial practice as a lawyer, you know, don't cross those sacred constitutional boundaries.
00:29:25.340And Thomas Binger is not an inexperienced attorney.
00:29:28.280The DA's office over there in Kenosha is not very big.
00:29:31.500I think we did a count of all the different county attorneys there, something like nine to 12 different attorneys.
00:29:36.240And so you could presume that if a case of national importance comes across their desk, they're going to give it to somebody who they consider to be highly litigious, somebody highly competent who's been doing it for a while.
00:29:45.800And so that presumably was Thomas Binger.
00:29:47.900And Thomas Binger gets out there and in front of the jury starts commenting on the right to remain silent and a defendant's constitutional protection in that regard.
00:29:56.580Then starts to even thread the needle a little bit further by trying to get that other evidence admitted from the CBS video that took place earlier in August.
00:30:06.160And so the judge is just seeing a very experienced trial attorney looking like they might be intentionally trying to cause a mistrial or straddle that line in a way that is not permissible.
00:30:17.020Yeah. So that was some speculation that that the DA was trying to cause a mistrial is normally a mistrial is the case gets dismissed in the middle of the of the trial without prejudice.
00:30:28.440So you get a second try. And I mean, normally it's the defense attorney who wants a mistrial because you get the advantage of seeing the prosecution's whole case and then you get another bite of the apple.
00:30:37.720Right. You're better positioned in trial, too.
00:30:39.420But right now, the defense doesn't want a mistrial because they're winning if they want a mistrial.
00:30:44.360They want it with prejudice, which they did ask for at the end of yesterday's proceedings based on the things that you just mentioned.
00:30:50.940But just here is some of the judges leading up to now the accusations that this judge is some sort of a racist.
00:30:58.060This well-respected judge, he's, I think, the most senior judge in the Kenosha Circuit Court.
00:31:03.120So he is calling Binger to task for those two errors that you just outlined.
00:33:31.960And to be fair, I don't believe him either.
00:33:34.020I think that he was intentionally trying to kind of squeeze that one through.
00:33:37.900If you did listen to the pretrial proceedings in a little bit more depth, then you would have seen that they discussed a lot of this stuff.
00:33:44.460And the judge is a little bit different than some other jurisdictions.
00:33:50.160So, for example, if you say this judge, compare him to Judge Cahill that we saw in Chauvin, just a little bit of a different demeanor.
00:33:56.220He's a little bit more loose, sort of likes to hear stuff on the fly.
00:33:59.800We didn't have a lot of resolutions on the pretrial proceedings, a lot of these motions in limine.
00:34:03.860And so he did say, yes, at a later time when the evidence comes up, when the time is right, you need to flag this for me, Mr. Prosecutor, Mr. Defense Attorney, so that I can make a decision about where this line of questioning goes or where this evidence should, whether it should be admissible or not.
00:34:18.540And from my watching of it, it felt like there was a pretty clear understanding that that was going to be how this was going to work.
00:34:25.860It's you ask for permission when you get there.
00:34:28.640You don't just get to decide, well, the judge didn't make a ruling on this, so I'm just going to try to escape this one through.
00:34:33.960And you might you might excuse a prosecutor for making a mistake if they're a first year prosecutor or this is not a case of national importance.
00:35:04.300And, you know, very well, as a lawyer, you have to ask permission.
00:35:07.860It's not your courtroom. It's the judge's courtroom.
00:35:10.160He or she gets to set the rules. You're just there to follow them.
00:35:13.140And the last thing you want to do is take off the judge.
00:35:14.800The judge is getting guff for like being tough on the prosecutor.
00:35:17.440The prosecutor provoked it. When I talk about provocation, he provoked that.
00:35:21.400So what what now specifically is the defense basing its motion for a mistrial with prejudice on?
00:35:29.000Was it the Fifth Amendment thing that the attempt to get the that other CVS comment in or both or more?
00:35:35.580It's the idea that the prosecution might be intentionally trying to cause a mistrial.
00:35:41.220So there was a break later that afternoon and defense attorney Corey Chirifisi went out, did some research with his defense team and came back and he cited a case.
00:35:49.140I don't remember what it was, but he says, Judge, there's two things that you need to consider here moving forward.
00:35:53.780Number one, whether the government, the prosecutor's conduct was intentional.
00:35:57.780So, you know, did they intend to do these things? Was this a mistake?
00:36:00.940Was this an accident that they commented on this or tried to get this evidence introduced?
00:36:22.700But if that if that element has been met, then you can move on to the second element, which is that the court finds the judge makes a finding that the government may have been doing this or was, in fact, doing this to cause a mistrial.
00:36:34.920You know, it's such sort of a boneheaded mistake that when you're in the middle of of a trial, in particular, a middle of the defendant's testimony where you start to try to, you know, walk along those constitutional lines, not so that it's a direct violation where you get in trouble, you get a bar complaint, you lose your law license, nothing like that, but enough that it just kind of crosses that line so that the case is tainted and you have to have a mistrial.
00:37:01.160And if the court makes that finding that maybe these highly experienced prosecutors were trying to tip the scale so that they can get a do over, as you mentioned earlier, they know that they're losing.
00:37:12.120And so if if they lose, they can't get a do over.
00:37:17.740And if there's that little bit of sort of underhanded nefariousness there, if the court makes that finding, that would justify a motion to dismiss with prejudice so that they cannot bring this back.
00:37:27.060It would be the end of the case for Kyle Rittenhouse.
00:37:29.620Oh, my gosh, that would be huge for the defense.
00:38:00.340And if you compare that with a lot of the other clips that we have seen and testimony from the trial, the judge has been very unhappy with this prosecutor consistently.
00:38:09.260Even in some of the clips you played here today said, I warned you about that this morning and you're continuing to do it again.
00:38:16.300But I still think it's probably a little bit of a long shot just because this judge has made multiple statements saying that he wants to make sure this is done the right way.
00:38:25.420He wants to make sure the jury is considered to be the fact finder.
00:38:29.680So I don't think that the judge politically wants to take this away from them.
00:38:33.200I think he wants to allow the process to work itself out without causing anything that would derail this long process because it has been a long one.
00:38:41.880Especially in a case this carefully watched to take it away from the jury and say it can't be refiled.
00:38:48.900I mean, that would just be incredibly bold.
00:38:50.880And I would say in the prosecutor's defense, it was a sin.
00:38:55.300I don't think it was a dismissal with prejudice level sin.
00:38:59.100I know other lawyers disagree with me.
00:39:00.500I just think if he had sort of gotten all over Kyle and said, you know, you didn't testify.
00:39:05.240You didn't say anything because you knew you were guilty.
00:39:08.100You didn't want to take a position that now we're talking, but like just sort of this is the first statement you've made since the beginning.
00:39:19.540It was not kind of the right thing to do.
00:39:21.500He had, I think, some plausible deniability there.
00:39:24.020He could go back and reference the judge's prior statement and said, well, you left the door open.
00:39:28.040And the judge did. And, you know, this is sort of the downside of having a little bit of a looser format in your courtroom where you don't have all of the motions and eliminate ironed out before the trial even starts.
00:39:40.120So, you know, Thomas Binger, I think, was exploiting that to some degree.
00:39:43.640I think that if you're going to be an aggressive litigator, you're always sort of, you know, pushing the envelope a little bit, not doing anything unethical, but you're trying to win.
00:39:51.780And that's the sort of the point of being a strong advocate is you're you're using the tools that are in front of you.
00:39:57.760I don't excuse anything Binger did, but I'm just saying, like, I don't know that it rises to the level of the trial goes away immediately and can't be refiled.
00:40:05.100But I will say, you know, you're in there as a prosecutor.
00:40:06.960You're you're supposed to be on the side of justice.
00:40:09.400You're actually not supposed to be on the side of get a conviction.
00:40:12.840It's supposed to be that on the side of justice and you're representing the state and its interests.
00:40:18.120And so he has sort of a higher calling and he's not living up to it, that you're not supposed to behave like that.
00:40:24.600Listen, that exchange and and some others now are bringing some fire on this judge, a very well respected guy.
00:40:32.280I guess his longest service longest serving circuit court judge in Wisconsin.
00:40:36.520And there was a moment where his cell phone rang and it played a certain tune.
00:40:41.400And that's going to play into these accusations that he's some sort of a racist.
00:40:45.420We're going to pick it up right there after I squeeze in this quick break.
00:40:50.840And remember, folks, you can find the Megan Kelly show live on Sirius XM Triumph Channel 111 every weekday at noon east and the full video show, which you really should watch today.
00:40:59.860Go ahead and subscribe if you haven't, because you can see all the videos along with my monologue at the opening and some clips, too.
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00:41:36.520Yes, that's what I call my little Strudwick Shredder, because that's what he's doing to everything, destroying it.
00:41:41.500My puppy. Sorry, it's a longstanding issue.
00:41:43.480So the judge has made a bunch of pretrial rulings, one of which was you may not refer to the three men shot to whom died, one of whom did not as victims.
00:41:55.920But you may refer to them as as looters, rioters or something else.
00:42:25.820It means that somebody was the actual victim of a crime.
00:42:28.480So it's got sort of this public perception of being a negative word and a legal connotation to it as well.
00:42:32.840And so when you're talking with a judge about a criminal defendant who has not been adjudicated or convicted of anything yet, has not been found guilty at all, that person is still innocent.
00:42:44.340They still retain the presumption of innocence.
00:42:46.160And so even though it might make the prosecution feel good to start labeling Gage Grosskruitz and Anthony Huber as the victims, they have not been legally found to be the victims yet.
00:42:57.360Kyle Rittenhouse still maintains the presumption of innocence until that's until that's disproven.
00:43:01.940It's not fair. It's not right to call them that because it's not legally accurate.
00:43:06.300Right. We're trying to figure out who the real victim was here.
00:43:09.180So the judge in the midst of how long is the soundbite with the with the with the phone?
00:43:30.480It's that I think was proud to be an American.
00:43:34.080Now, listen to what Ellie Mistel of he's a justice correspondent for the nation, Harvard undergrad,
00:43:38.640Harvard Law School, his summation of this judge.
00:43:42.300And we've heard this elsewhere. Take a listen.
00:43:44.260So if you look at all the decisions that Bruce Schrader has made, they have been heavily balanced and weighted towards Rittenhouse towards his defense.
00:43:53.380There I see very few neutrals decisions in his history.
00:43:57.860What we have is a judge who, from my perspective, has prejudged the trial in favor of Rittenhouse and has decided, again,
00:44:05.640even at the pretrial stage to use every bit of his power to put his thumb on the scale towards Rittenhouse's side,
00:44:14.160not just saying that these people can't be called victims.
00:44:17.940Look, legally speaking, they were victims of homicide.
00:46:34.840He's a chemist based in Utah, and his wife, Brianne, took part in a U.S.-conducted trial of the AstraZeneca COVID vaccine with disastrous results.
00:46:46.380And now they're speaking out about it publicly.
00:46:49.240Hours after taking the very first dose, Brianne began to feel dizzy and her symptoms continued to worsen, eventually leaving her unable to walk.
00:46:57.000When the trial information was released, you know, her participation in the trial, to the Dressen's surprise, Brianne's data was not accounted for.
00:47:06.280They didn't mention what happened to her.
00:47:08.240They say the CDC knows about the severe symptoms that some people are experiencing and the harm to vaccines that the vaccines pose to children.
00:47:15.520And now they're fighting to share her story in the short story of others like her.
00:47:18.460Brian, thank you so much for being here.
00:47:22.580You guys testified before the FDA panel when they were considering the vaccine for five to 11 year olds.
00:47:29.360And your wife did take place in this trial for AstraZeneca.
00:47:33.120And she was living a healthy, robust life prior to this.
00:47:35.940She wasn't somebody somebody who had some sort of chronic illness or psychological issues that continue to make her feel ill at every turn.
00:48:14.220And so she was presented with the opportunity to to partake in the trial and chose to sign up.
00:48:20.220You know, she was so confident in, you know, the vaccines being developed that, you know, she would be able to get a vaccine potentially and then not have to experience COVID herself and help protect her family and her community as well as further the science.
00:48:33.900And so when did she take place in the first in the trial?
00:48:36.400So she had her first dose November 4th of 2020.
00:50:47.500So each of the clinical trials, you know, they're, they're essentially performed by all these trial sites and all of the different states and cities.
00:51:15.000And they, they didn't offer any, they didn't offer any help to you.
00:51:19.560You were on your own in dealing with the fallout from it.
00:51:22.380And then it's, it seems like, you know, the other shoe to drop was when you saw her negative outcome was not included in the results of the clinical trial.
00:51:36.300So the clinical trial report wasn't released until last month, but I was a little bit suspicious given that the test clinic sort of didn't seem super interested.
00:51:45.820The feedback we were getting from AstraZeneca was essentially, we need a diagnosis.
00:51:51.840We need a diagnosis, anything that would essentially absolve them of any responsibility.
00:53:04.020So, I mean, was any did anything show up on any test?
00:53:07.840Because one of the things I read was that she started to suffer severe brain damage and was obviously advised by those running the trial not to get the second dose.
00:53:17.540Was that something that manifested in a CT scan or something?
00:53:20.980No, so all of the adverse reactions were essentially symptomatic until we actually were able to go to the NIH and get proper testing done.
00:53:31.740And so all of these symptoms, you know, the neurological decline and everything else was very, very concerning.
00:53:39.200But nobody really knew what to do with it because when you do the, you know, the CT or the MRI, everything looks normal.
00:53:47.100All of her testing essentially was coming back normal.
00:53:49.680Hmm. So did you ever make it to the NIH?
00:53:53.600We did. We went to the NIH in June where they did a whole battery of testing and she was eventually diagnosed with a bunch of vaccine-caused injuries.
00:54:15.880So in a clinical trial, essentially the participants are given an app on their smartphones where they report any of the side effects.
00:54:24.680However, the only side effects you're allowed to report is a bulleted list of selected adverse events.
00:54:31.420The things like fever, muscle aches, injection site pain, headache, you know, tiredness, things like that.
00:54:38.040There is no free form where you can write, you know, I can't walk anymore or I can't be in bright light or my ears are so sensitive or any of the other things that she experienced.
00:54:48.340So you have to call the test clinic, explain to them what's going on, and then it's up to them to report up the chain, right, with potential reporting and clinician bias, you know, the adverse events.
00:55:06.600When they said it's a vaccine-caused injury, did they explain what the injury is that's causing all these symptoms?
00:55:13.380So their hypothesis is that it's an immune-mediated response to the spike protein that in certain individuals results in severe neurological injury.
00:55:26.960So you, here's a, I know you connected with Senator Ron Johnson and Senator Mike Lee, and your wife gave some testimony before a Senate committee about what has happened to her.
00:55:37.360We've got a clip of that so we can see Brianne here.
00:55:42.280We all suffered the same constellation of symptoms, and we reached out to our elected representatives, both blue and red.
00:55:49.620We reached out to the COVID committee.
00:55:51.860We then reached out to the media, being repeatedly told that we can't make the vaccines look bad.
00:55:57.740We reached out to our state health boards, our state health departments, all of them persisting in the narrative that if this was really happening, the CDC and the FDA would have said so.
00:57:03.000And if you tell them that some people aren't doing well with it, you know, it would increase the number of people who might not get the shot.
00:57:09.540And you're not, you're actually not vaccine hesitant.
00:57:13.480Is it true you actually got vaxxed after this happened to your wife with a different vaccine?
00:59:40.540And in Pfizer's own data, they were unable to determine that there was a medical benefit to vaccinating this young of an age group.
00:59:48.440So they chose to model what the risk-benefit analysis would look like.
00:59:54.000So they chose five scenarios and they had what the rate of COVID spread was, the assumed vaccine effectiveness, as well as one risk, which was myocarditis, which we know is an actual risk to these vaccines.
01:00:10.260And it seems to increase in probability the younger the people are that receive it.
01:01:04.480And do you believe that our public health officials, I mean, the NIH, I'm encouraged that they had you out there and actually did the testing and concluded what they did.
01:01:12.820But do you believe that they're complicit in, for lack of a better term, the cover-up of these cases and this data?
01:01:20.180Interestingly enough, the NIH was very communicative from January on.
01:01:27.320And we've actually had meetings, Zoom meetings with the heads of the FDA.
01:01:31.500And after we had those meetings and brought up the NIH information, the NIH has since gone dark.
01:01:38.200They will no longer talk to any of the injured.
01:01:40.760My wife wasn't the only one that went out there.
01:01:42.760There was approximately 50 to 60 vaccine-injured individuals who went out to the NIH for testing and treatment, and none of them are getting any more response from the NIH.
01:01:59.000So the vast majority of the vaccine injured in the U.S. are from the other brands.
01:02:03.420And the injuries are all the same of this neurological time.
01:02:06.540Okay, let me ask you, having met them, having met the other people, is there reason to believe these are kooks, these are people, you know what I mean?
01:02:14.780Because that's what a lot of people think, they're just psychosomatic, they needed attention, they found a way of creating this sort of injury so they could, whatever, have more time at home.
01:02:28.040I mean, these are real people with real stories, real moms, real sisters, real dads, real children, you know, that they're real people, and they're suffering, and they're doing it alone.
01:02:41.360Would you tell people to get the vaccine for themselves, for their children?
01:02:45.800I think that we need full and informed consent.
01:02:48.820So I think all of the information needs to be provided, and then you can make that choice for yourself.
01:02:54.560If you believe that you're in a risk category where it makes sense, I would say that, yes, you should get the vaccine.
01:03:00.540However, for most healthy young adults, and certainly children, the risks begin to outweigh any benefit of the vaccine.
01:03:10.300And I know they told you, don't give it to your kids, because obviously what happened with Brianne.
01:03:14.980And now, of course, your kids will not be given an exception to go into the restaurants in New York or San Francisco, because they have a legitimate medical exemption.
01:03:22.940No one cares. And these schools, the L.A., they've gotten rid of recognition, a lot of these places, of even medical exemptions.
01:03:29.200That includes our school, where the only medical exemption they'll give you for your child is if he or she, not the parent, had an adverse reaction to the first shot.
01:03:38.540You have to stick the needle in them and see how they do.
01:03:42.160It's insane that you guys would be in that position, too.
01:03:56.160The sound sensitivity has reduced the light sensitivity, those sorts of things.
01:04:01.140She still has this electrical sensation throughout her whole body 24-7.
01:04:06.360And then the other symptom that's most plaguing is what most people describe as internal vibration, as if you had like a whole mess of cell phones inside your body or a massager that is just sort of vibrating all the time.
01:04:58.180We're going to continue the discussion next when we're joined by Dr. Michael Minna, an immunologist and epidemiologist and physician at the Harvard School of Public Health.
01:05:07.480We'll talk about the new COVID antiviral pills and how he says at-home testing can put an end to this pandemic.
01:05:20.480Oh, still so moved by my last guest in that story.
01:05:23.500And joining me now to discuss it more is immunologist, epidemiologist and physician at the Harvard T.H.
01:05:30.020Chan School of Public Health, Dr. Michael Minna.
01:05:32.560Dr. Minna has been a champion for COVID testing.
01:05:35.220Testing, I say, since the beginning of the pandemic.
01:05:36.960He thinks it is the key to keeping us out of future lockdowns, making your holiday plans safe, saving lives and potentially helping us take those masks off and ending all the vaccine mandates, too.
01:05:49.840Now, what do you make of Brian's story?
01:05:52.120I mean, I found him very credible and I find the whole thing really disturbing.
01:05:55.280Well, when we're talking about potential adverse effects of vaccines, we have to always place those in the context of what would happen otherwise if you got infected.
01:06:08.400I have spoken with many, many groups over the years about concerns around vaccines, around vaccine safety.
01:06:16.520And I think that it is absolutely right for people to have personal concerns about vaccine safety because this is something it's one of the few things that we actually put into people when they're healthy and to protect them in the future.
01:06:32.220And so when we're talking about potential inflammatory effects, like we just heard, we have to recognize that they might occur associated with the vaccine, but they also occur associated with the infection.
01:06:46.700And I think oftentimes that piece is lost.
01:06:49.400And so from a public health perspective, it becomes, which I will distinguish from the personal choice, but from a public health perspective, we have to weigh the costs and benefits at a whole aggregate community level.
01:07:04.140And sometimes that means that we have to recognize that despite having potential, and I say potential because we're not sure, adverse effects of a vaccine, sometimes the risk of that is so much lower, even though they might be real, than the risk of the actual infection and those exact same types of effects happening after somebody gets infected, that it just makes it, it clearly pushes the balance towards the vaccine.
01:07:32.440But that's not to say that these types of, that these types of events don't exist.
01:07:40.520But I do not believe from a public health perspective that they are, that they would warrant a rethinking of whether or not the vaccine is appropriate to give to individuals at a public health level.
01:07:54.060What about, doesn't this totally undermine the mandates though?
01:07:58.000I mean, there are a lot of people out there are going to hear that story.
01:08:00.300Could be deemed by the NIH to be a vaccine injury and say, I don't think it's worth the risk for me.
01:08:09.200And I should be, what if, what if there's a woman sitting at home right now who says that to herself and she's forced to get the vaccine or lose her job, right?
01:08:17.640By, let's say she's a New York city cop, right?
01:08:23.980Well, I have, I mean, when it comes to that, I would argue for myself here that I am not a bioethicist.
01:08:32.780You know, vaccine mandates are, have to be looked at through many angles.
01:08:37.260And I look at it through, you know, one or two angles and the president of the United States looks at it through different angles for me.
01:08:44.480And I do think that there's arguments to be made on both sides.
01:08:48.520There's personal choice about whether or not you need to have something put into you that could protect you, but could also have a very, and I want to emphasize, very minimal risk.
01:08:59.000But a real risk, even if it's extremely minimal, you know, that should probably be somebody's choice.
01:09:06.620But the question is, does, you know, does society deem that the population level risk of not mandating a vaccine, does it overwhelm the risk to individuals, to the small minority who do end up having some sort of adverse reaction?
01:09:22.800And that is, I would argue that it's really for, it's for society to choose.
01:09:29.620And, you know, I can speak about biology and medicine, but whether or not, you know, when it comes to freedoms and liberties, I think I can give my own end of one opinion, but I don't think it's worth very much.
01:09:40.200How do we know it's minimal risk when you have the people who run the clinical trials and the drug makers keeping results like Brianne's out of the public eye?
01:09:57.860On the one hand, we have the clinical trials that occur initially, and then we have, especially with these vaccines, a massive, massive post-market ongoing evaluation.
01:10:10.000And what I can say is we haven't seen the number of adverse effects becoming so significant that we actually start to think that it's a real reason to recommend against vaccination.
01:10:25.640But what's the data? What data are you looking at?
01:10:28.360I mean, I'll tell you just anecdotally, but this, this, I can speak to this firsthand.
01:10:32.160A female friend of mine of childbearing age, when the first thing broke about Johnson & Johnson, you know, causing blood clots, and they said there are six women who have had blood clots.
01:10:41.720She, she had a blood clot right after getting J&J.
01:11:13.660And this is, it had happened prior to them announcing we've had six, right?
01:11:17.480So I just, there's reason to question these numbers.
01:11:20.660And I, I had the vaccine and I would recommend the vaccine.
01:11:23.800I had Pfizer, but I, these are some of the reasons why I questioned the mandate.
01:11:28.080And I really question it when it comes to children who don't need this vaccine.
01:11:33.960Yeah, I do think, I mean, we have like, just to be very clear, we have given millions and millions and millions of vaccines.
01:11:40.580And the problem has always historically been with vaccine adverse effects.
01:11:46.280And again, I do not want to pretend like they don't exist.
01:11:49.740I do want to be clear that they're rare.
01:11:51.920But the problem with them is that because vaccines are one of the only medical interventions that we actually give to people during a period of health,
01:12:00.240we have almost no tolerance for, for error and for any sort of adverse effect, which is good.
01:12:08.560But what is often lost is that side effects from a vaccine rise to the top very quickly and become compounded in the media.
01:12:16.980But what is not discussed very much is that those identical side effects do occur when somebody gets the infection itself as well.
01:12:29.600And so it's very easy to talk about the side effects from a vaccine while pretending like the side effects from the actual infection don't exist because they're not side effects.
01:12:40.140They're, you know, we think of them as real effects of the infection that we're trying to avoid.
01:12:43.540But I guess this is the way that I balance it.
01:12:46.300And I do want to, like, I don't, I personally don't ever pretend to think that anyone's side effects are not real.
01:12:55.040I believe that they are the, anytime we initiate an inflammatory response in somebody's body, we cannot pretend that that doesn't come with a risk.
01:13:03.360But the way that I look at it is that that same inflammatory response or a much worse one does also occur with the infection.
01:13:11.100And I think it's not as clear cut a story, but when it comes to mandates, I think it's absolutely reasonable to be having this discussion.
01:13:19.720But 100%, I think we should all be having the discussion and it's not wrong to talk about it and try to figure out what is the best path forward for society.
01:13:29.840A news item to our listening audience.
01:13:33.200And then I want to ask you about testing and also these new therapeutics, which, you know, maybe those those two things are the answer to vaccine hesitancy and all of this.
01:13:42.360But just an update on the on the news.
01:13:44.920California, this is according to a Wall Street Journal article, is increasingly scrutinizing doctors who are providing medical exemptions to parents for their children who are subject to the vaccine mandates.
01:13:56.780One doctor's one doctor's in trouble for, quote, considering parental input on the risks to their child.
01:14:24.100Right. Because it's like like I said, Brian and Brianne, if they were at my school, their kid would have to take the vaccine, even though their kids clearly should not take the vaccine, given what's happened to their mom.
01:14:50.840I guess they haven't yet, but they apparently they had such great results.
01:14:53.460They're no longer taking new patients in their clinical trial due to the the overwhelming efficacy, they say, of their new therapeutic and experimental pill that treats covid.
01:15:03.040They say it could cut hospitalization rates by nearly 90 percent.
01:15:06.200They say in the clinical trial it prevented death in 100 percent of the cases.
01:15:10.320Because you have to start it within three days of symptoms.
01:15:27.400Yeah, I think that this is a tipping point or at least a real game changer in this pandemic.
01:15:34.020The fact is, if we what we really want to avoid during the pandemic is our severe outcomes.
01:15:40.580And if we have therapeutics that can limit and potentially prevent the most severe outcomes, then it really changes the balance of the overall risk of this pandemic to society.
01:15:52.260And but one of the most important pieces here is what you mentioned, which is that these drugs have to be started very fast.
01:16:01.140You know, they generally have an EUA that says that they need to be started within three days or three to five days.
01:16:06.900But the reality is the benefit does start to fall off quickly with each passing day.
01:16:13.020And so the quicker that we can get people diagnosed and get them a therapeutic, you know, ideally delivered to their door.
01:16:21.800And we can talk about what I call test to treat is going to be crucial.
01:16:26.800And that's also where we'll also discuss rapid tests and how we can use testing and greater availability and access to fast tests to our major advantage here.
01:16:38.680When we consider that we now have therapeutics coming down the pipeline that are really going to be life saving entities.
01:16:48.580I haven't really been paying attention to the status of testing at home testing, you know, since the beginning when it was impossible to get a test.
01:16:55.640And people were like, unless you knew or related to Andrew Cuomo, you know, how has that come along?
01:17:02.380Where are we now in terms of testing and its availability?
01:17:09.560Yeah, I mean, I think testing in the U.S. has been one of the greatest failures of this pandemic.
01:17:14.760We've done it all wrong in what I would argue has been wrong.
01:17:18.860We focused on the wrong metrics around the test at the expense of focusing on the metrics that would actually curb transmission.
01:17:27.600And so all of 2020, we had a real focus on laboratory PCR testing for the most part.
01:17:33.740And even when tests were taking 7, 10, 12 days to return, we were still recommending, you know, we, the scientific community, we're still recommending that people got tests to limit transmission.
01:17:46.800But when you have a test that's taking 5, 7, 10 days, it's essentially absolutely pointless from a public health perspective.
01:17:54.120You need a test result that's going to be given very fast so that if you're infectious, you know your results before you go out and infect other people.
01:18:03.220And you need that test to be accessible.
01:18:05.640A test once a month or a test once you're feeling symptomatic isn't sufficient if your goal is to stop transmission.
01:18:12.740And so given that backdrop, something I've been calling for since really April or May of 2020 has been to increase accessibility in the United States to rapid tests, tests that people can have in their home.
01:18:27.480So that the moment you start to feel symptoms or the moment your friend calls you and says, hey, you know, I just turned up positive and we had dinner last night together.
01:18:36.620There's no barrier to entry for somebody to get tested.
01:18:39.020We need inexpensive tests to just be at our disposal, similar to Band-Aids.
01:18:44.680We don't go out and buy Band-Aids when our child gets a cut.
01:18:47.900We have them in our cupboard already so that we can put them on and stop the bleeding when it's necessary.
01:18:53.240And it's the same thing with COVID tests.
01:18:56.620If we can put these fast, accessible, simple tests into people's homes, then we can really do a good job at stopping transmission, even in the era of vaccines.
01:19:14.100It's been a very long slog to try to work on how to encourage scientific bodies and the FDA and such to understand these tests, as I think of them as transmission indicating tests.
01:19:28.060They're tests that turn positive when you're infectious and they don't turn positive when you're not infectious, unlike a PCR test, which stays positive for way too long.
01:20:06.220But, you know, I am frustrated that these tests were not in every individual's home, you know, a year ago.
01:20:11.300Yeah. Did we put any of that money, you know, that we put towards finding vaccines and so on behind this?
01:20:17.940Not really. You know, the U.S. has been has generally historically been very, very poor at recognizing what are appropriate uses of money when it comes to public health.
01:20:28.380We have a very biomedical centric enterprise when it comes to how we allocate funds.
01:20:34.860And so if it's something you can inject into you, great, we'll dump all the funds into it.
01:20:38.300But if it's something that really is designed to stop transmission and work at a public health level, the public health strategies themselves are generally underfunded.
01:20:47.300And that's why, for example, when the vaccines finally did come about, it was like a shock to the system.
01:20:52.500Nobody knew how to really allocate them and actually distribute them in the states.
01:20:56.700You know, it's kind of a surprise that we put all this money into developing the biology behind it.
01:21:01.700But then the logistics and the real public health part of it was sort of short sighted and not really developed enough.
01:21:08.300Like, why wasn't Fauci talking about this? Because this is an easy sell.
01:21:11.420I mean, even the most vaccine hesitant wouldn't be opposed to testing and making sure they don't have it, even if they don't want a vaccine, especially with these new therapeutics coming out.
01:21:21.840They would 100 percent get a test and probably get a pill to stop hospitalization or death.
01:21:27.720So, I mean, why don't why don't we put more energy into this?
01:21:34.900It's and I have I've talked to both sides of Congress, Senate, you know, the White House, both administrations.
01:21:40.940This is one of the most bipartisan efforts that could be in place.
01:21:46.740We've published on it an enormous number of times the last 18 months.
01:21:50.360It appeals to everyone because, like you say, everyone is happy to know if they, you know, if they're testing, especially this can be a test that is done in the privacy of your home.
01:21:59.580So those folks in the country who don't want the government involved.
01:23:10.300There was a slew of these tests that were really poorly created and just not accurate back in early 2020.
01:23:19.180And these were fast antibody or immune tests.
01:23:23.260And that kind of put the whole the FDA and the government, everyone kind of like pushed down antibody tests.
01:23:28.400Antibody testing and understanding immunology of pathogens is what I normally do in my research.
01:23:35.260And so it's been frustrating to see that even these antibody tests have been sort of downplayed.
01:23:40.620But now we're starting to see that they are becoming more available.
01:23:44.080There's one company that does it with just a swab of your gums.
01:23:47.080You take a swab of your gums and you can get a good antibody result.
01:23:50.660And I think we're underutilizing those because what we could do is we could say, hey, do kids really need two vaccines to be or does any person really need two vaccines to be considered fully immunized if they've already been infected and have a strong antibody response?
01:24:08.580Maybe what we could do is we could take these fast antibody tests.
01:24:12.900And when somebody goes to get their first vaccine, they also take an antibody test.
01:24:17.120And if the antibody test is positive, then they get one vaccine because they've already been infected based on the antibody positivity.
01:24:25.380And then they are considered fully vaccinated without or fully immune without having to get their second dose.
01:24:31.900Now, that type of efficient public health thinking just has more or less been absent.
01:24:55.720I don't want people to go out and get infected so that they only have to get one dose of a vaccine.
01:24:59.380But the fact is, many people have been infected and we can't undo that.
01:25:03.920So we may as well utilize it to our benefit.
01:25:06.020Well, and I think that there's a real role there, but we haven't really brought it for kids in particular, because the negative effects of the covid vaccine on like young teenage boys tend to come after a second shot, like the myocarditis and so on.
01:25:18.700And so what if you could avoid that altogether?
01:25:21.800If you have to get a shot, you have to get vaccinated.
01:25:24.080Perhaps you could at least avoid the second shot if you've had covid and the antibody show.
01:25:28.840But I'm sure a lot of my audience out there is saying, why do you need even one shot if you have the antibodies?
01:25:37.600Study showed it's 27 times more effective at preventing infection, reinfection as the vaccines.
01:25:45.120And this is why a lot of people say we, like some countries in Europe, should be counting natural immunity already as an exemption to these vaccine mandates.
01:25:55.960Yeah, I do think that we should at least be considering it.
01:26:01.080You know, do I am I going to get up here and say to you that I don't think we should give a single dose vaccine for people who are immune?
01:26:07.880The reason I would say that is because we do know that the that the vaccine kind of supercharges the the immunological memory for people who have been infected.
01:26:19.380Do I want to say that maybe we don't need both vaccine doses?
01:26:23.380I think there's good data to support that.
01:26:26.040But I think going to say that people who have any antibody level don't need to get a vaccine.
01:26:31.700You know, that's not I would say that the data is less robust to suggest that.
01:26:37.660But I do think we should absolutely be considering it.
01:26:41.080You know, and especially we should really be looking at what are called immune correlates of protection.
01:26:46.400So can we come up with quantitative values, quantitative antibody values that would say whether somebody who has been infected actually has sufficient immunity that they don't need any vaccine or not?
01:27:56.060And then you can make the decision, you know, what to do from there.
01:27:59.160I don't think most people want covid, especially seeing, you know, what it does to older people and so on.
01:28:04.680But they don't also want to be ordered around by Uncle Sam and what to do with their health care.
01:28:09.820All right. Listen, I want you if you're willing to stick around, because I know our audience is calling in and folks, you can call in right now.