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Yeah, yeah. Welcome to the Making Sense podcast. This is Sam Harris. Okay, well today's podcast is
yet another PSA There have been many of them of late needless to say if you want to support what I'm
doing here, the way to do that is to subscribe to the podcast at SAm Harris dot org. It's really the
subscribers that make all of this possible. But given the kinds of topics I touch here, it's with
some regularity that I feel the need to put out a podcast in a form where the most people will hear
every word of it. And today, the topic that could not suffer a paywall is what is now universally
described as vaccine. Hesitancy and the general condition of misinformation and disinformation that
surrounds vaccines in general. But the Covid MRNA vaccines in particular, I think anyone who has
listened to the podcast in the last year or so, we'll have no doubt about where I stand on the topic
of the Covid vaccines but haven't focused on it because it seemed like there really has not been all
that much to say. And um, it's just a general error of futility around, um, persuading anyone who
has decided for one reason or another that there really worried about the Covid vaccines and not all
that worried about Covid. That's the bifurcation. Here. We have a very large cohort in our society
who think that Covid is not an especially big deal at minimum. The dangers of it have been
exaggerated. Of course, there are many millions of people who think it's a hoax and that there is in
fact, no problem at all. Any case. There's a spectrum of opinion on this side wherein people are
really not at all concerned about getting Covid, but they're quite concerned about the dangers or
imagined dangers associated with the vaccines for Covid. And then there are the rest of us who have
the the violence on those terms flipped. And we're quite concerned about Covid and not especially
concerned about the risk of vaccines. Rather, we were incredibly eager to get vaccinated and to get
our kids vaccinated. And we are fairly aghast at an increasingly troubled by the thinking and
unjustified certainties coming from the other camp. If people agree about anything on this topic,
it's that you can't shame the other side into compliance, right? And to talk down to them to cast
the vaccine hesitant as stupid or uneducated is generally deemed counterproductive. And it's also in
many cases just not true because there are many smart people who fall into this camp as will become
obvious. You know, the fact that this is possible. The fact that one can be smart and aggressively
misinformed and misinforming of others attests to just how bad the problem of misinformation has
grown in our society. Anyway. I was avoiding this topic because again, I don't think there's that
much to say on it, but it's pretty obvious now as the pace of vaccination has slowed to a crawl in
the United States. And the need for vaccination globally is fairly excruciating. And the delta
variant has tipped us into a condition where even those of us who are vaccinated can no longer enjoy
the light at the end of the tunnel because we have been pushed back into that tunnel by frankly the
confusion of our neighbors. The tipping point for me the other day was I was I was eating at a
restaurant and notice that about half of the waiters were wearing masks and half weren't. And I I
asked one of them what's the policy here we wearing masks or not wearing masks? And he said, well,
the policy of the restaurant was that if you're vaccinated you don't have to wear a mask. And if
you're not vaccinated you do I uh shoot on that for a few minutes after he walked away. And and then
I looked at all of these young men. They were all men with a kind of a fresh set of eyes and realize
that there is no reason these guys aren't vaccinated. But for the fact that they have some spurious
memes and bad ideas bouncing around their brains. And they were very likely put there by some of my
friends, some of my fellow podcasters who have either gone down this rabbit hole themselves or just
platforms. People who spread misinformation about vaccines and about Covid and not known enough to
push back in real time against these ideas. And in sitting in this restaurant looking at these
waiters who are all podcast listeners. I just know it. I've spoken to a few of them about it and
their advertising there dangerous confusion on their faces by wearing masks that would otherwise be
unnecessary for them. This was before the explosion of the delta variant in my city. I just figured
I have to say something. So the goal of today's podcast is to present a very simple case, which
hopefully stands a chance of persuading some number of the vaccine, hesitant and the punch line is
this even if you accept the worst claims about the risks of the MRNA vaccines, which are almost
guaranteed to be false. But even accepting them, the case for getting vaccinated is absolutely clear
cut. Given what else we know about the effects of the vaccines in preventing disease and about the
effects of Covid itself. Right. It's a very simple argument, but it requires that we get into some
of the details here about what's being claimed and about what we know thus far from what is really
one of the largest medical experiments ever performed. We now have over 100 million people in the US
alone who are fully vaccinated. We have an extraordinary amount of information about the dangers
here or lack thereof. So anyway, I wanted to produce a document that could be spread around to the
people in your life who may still be hesitating to get vaccinated and to help me do this. I decided
to speak with dr erIC. Topol. Eric is a truly world renowned cardiologist. He is also the executive
vice president of scripts research And one of the top 10 most cited medical researchers. He's the
author of several books. The patient will see you now the creative destruction of medicine and deep
medicine. How artificial intelligence can make healthcare human again. And even more relevantly for
our purposes. He's been very active on twitter for the last year and a half or so. Countering some
of the crazy ideas that have been spread around Covid and around vaccines. And you can follow him on
twitter at ERIC, Topol E R I C T O P O L. And I recommend you do that. He's continually surfacing
useful articles. But I thought ERIC was one of the best people I could find to walk me through what
we currently know or have every reason to believe about vaccines and about the state of our response
to Covid. We discuss the general problem of misinformation, the political and social silo wing that
people experience in our society. We cover concerns about MRNA vaccines, the emergency use
authorization by the FDA, what that means and what it doesn't mean and the false claims made about
it. Talk about the effectiveness of the vaccines and differentiate vaccine efficacy from
effectiveness. We discussed the Delta variant, the misuse of the vaccine, adverse event reporting
system, the vares database. We discuss concerns about the long term side effects of the Covid
vaccines, bad incentives in medicine I've ever met in government and corporate censorship and touch
upon vaccine mandates and other topics. Anyway, as you'll hear in the discussion, neither I nor eric
have any conceivable conflict of interest here. In fact, erIC has distinguished himself in the past
for going after big pharma. He had his career fairly derailed at one in his battle against Merck
over Vioxx and he was very much on the heroic side of the good. In that battle. Neither of us have
an idealist picture of the pharmaceutical industry or the incentives that might drive and a specific
decision there. The only reason for this podcast is I'm growing increasingly concerned about
misinformation leading to needless illness, disability and even death in our society and the world
over. So what that said, I hope you find this podcast useful and I bring you eric Topol. Mm I am
here with Dr eric Topol eric. Thanks for joining me again. Great to be with you Sam. So, uh let's
say you you've been on the podcast. I forget when that was. It was a while back. But let's uh
briefly introduce you properly. How do you, how do you describe your background and current perch
and medicine? Well, I'm an old dog. I've been around for a while now, you know, in the early years.
Well as a cardiologist, but research was more in clinical trials and then in the mid nineties that
switched to genomics and digital medicine. And so the I'm in scripts research, um a professor of
molecular medicine here and also executive vice president of the script research institution. Nice,
Nice. So I I'm talking to you today just because you know, I know you're a wonderful communicator of
science and and medicine and just you can just help people think about what is rational on this
topic. And also you've been very active on twitter throughout the pandemic, just forwarding articles
which you helpfully highlight for people and just cutting through what has become a truly a deluge
of misinformation and disinformation and conspiracy thinking, you know, malignant fantasies. It's
just that we're now dealing with a in information space that is so contaminated by um you know, the
digital entrepreneurship of people with, you know, with you know, various convictions that it's just
very difficult to get to anything like ground truth around Covid and vaccines and you know, sound
public health advice and this is coupled to a pervasive distrust in institutions now, people people
distrust the government, they distrust the media, they distrust science and scientists. You know,
our medical journals have have lost us standing, certainly organizations like the CDC and the W. H.
O. Have, you know, fairly emulated their their reputations over the last 18 months or so. And some
of this is understandable. I mean, there really has been some terrible failures of public health
messaging and instances of hypocrisy and double think, but you know, rather than perform an autopsy
on all of that, I want us to see if we can have a conversation about vaccines and vaccine hesitancy
and starting pretty much from first principles and from what we can be reasonably sure about you in
the current environment. So, um you know, I have a few other things I want to say by um by way of
getting us started here. But is there anything you you want to say you just to kick this off? Well,
your point in the intro here are spot on SAM the vaccine progression from the sequence of the SARS
Cov two in January January 10 to the clinical trial executed, completed in november and rolling out
vaccines all in a matter of months is of historic significance. There's never been a vaccine that's
been short of eight years as the average. Uh many many fail. So what we have here is one of the
greatest triumphs in in biomedicine history. And it's very sad to see that being compromised by Miss
and disinformation. Okay, so let's just talk about a few background facts here. So first, despite
that triumph of rolling out these vaccines at record pace, The vaccination rates in the us have now
plummeted or around 250,000 shots. First shots given a day now, which is like Something like 1/10 of
where we were at our highest rate and we'll focus on the US here. But anything we say will apply to
other countries where vaccines are available and where a significant percentage of people don't want
to get them. But I think we we have to recognize that everyone is very likely to be in a bubble of
sorts here. So it's you know, I think, I mean I honestly think I only know a few people out of the
hundreds of people I know, personally, I think I'm only aware of knowing one or two who aren't
vaccinated and I'm sure that anyone who isn't vaccinated is very likely surrounded by people who are
not vaccinated, right? So this is analogous to what happens with, with smokers, right? I think I
only know one or two people who still smoke cigarettes, whereas if you smoke cigarettes, I I
imagine, you know many of your friends or smokers, so we're impressively siloed here and this is all
making it very difficult to talk about what is rational and responsible because the silo wing is not
just socialist with respect to information and sources of information, that one deems credible.
There's one difference, though, about that Sam. Yeah, I think you're making an apt comparison to the
smoker circle orbit versus the non smokers, but the difference is that the smoker circuit isn't
directly trying to hurt the non smokers, whereas here we have uh we have a harm that's serious,
unfortunately. Yeah, it's worse than secondhand smoke. What's coming from exactly be unvaccinated
here. It's a flip of the model. You know the way it was supposed to work. Sam was that there was
this famous herd immunity which a lot of people had never heard of until they heard of herd
immunity. And then that idea was if we could just get 70% of people vaccinated Then the other 30%
would benefit because the virus wouldn't be able to find hosts so that they're the majority, the one
bubble would help the smaller one. But what's happened unfortunately is that we have we have a much
more transmissible contagious version of the virus with delta. So we've seen a flip of that model
where the unvaccinated because it's substantial minority are now leading to infections and the
vaccinated and that's not the way it was supposed to work. Yeah. So this is a bit of a stretch
psychologically too, build a bridge between where we are and where the unvaccinated. The resolutely
unvaccinated are. Right? So I mean I'm living in a world where I and all of my friends were
profoundly impatient to get vaccinated and many of us were going to vaccine centres early on and
lining up for hours, you know, even whole days hoping to get some overflow vaccine, right? This is
now months ago. And now vaccines are ubiquitously available and we have people who don't want them.
Right? And so, but I do think, you know, rather than stigmatize the unvaccinated or put the onus on
them in very judgmental terms, I just I just want to see if we can this is a pointless exercise. If
we can't say something, it stands a chance of being persuasive for these people. So, right. I mean,
first I think to understand who these people are. There's been a fair amount of polling on this. I'm
drawing these comments from the Kaiser Family Foundation vaccine monitoring website. So there are a
few ways in which our society is segmented here. The first is obviously political, right? So there's
a left right divide politically, that Accounts for a lot of this difference. So 2% of Democrats say
they definitely will not get the vaccine, Whereas 23% of Republicans say that, so there's a
significant significant effect and no surprise There's about a 30% difference in vaccination rates
among Democrats and Republicans, 86% of Democrats have received at least one dose, And only 52% of
Republicans have. And, you know, there have been exceptions to this with respect to public
messaging. I mean, some republicans and right wing media figures have said what I would consider the
reason the reasonable thing. But many have tended to amplify the message that Covid itself is not
really bad. It's, you know, just a flu or maybe maybe even a hoax. But these Newfangled Covid
vaccines are dangerous. And then you have people like trump slinking off to get vaccinated in secret
without using it as an opportunity to actually send a helpful public health message. So politics are
definitely part of it, but it's not the whole story. Age is also a major variable. So people over 65
are much more likely to be vaccinated than the young. This is actually fairly rational because
people over 65 understand they are much greater risk for serious illness or death from Covid. And
there's also a rural urban divide, which is again somewhat if not rational, understandable because
those people living in crowded cities are more likely to get exposed to covid and they're more
likely to be vaccinated as well. And you know, there are other cuts you can make at this. The
education is a variable college graduates are more likely to be vaccinated than than those who
haven't finished college or never went. And there's some stratification by race, whites are more
likely be vaccinated than blacks or Hispanics, but the effect is not that great. And then they're
weird pockets where there's a very strong anti vax sentiment like the yoga community apparently is
very wary of getting vaccinated for covid. And the reasons when you pull people in these various
groups, the reasons they give for not being vaccinated tend to focus on concerns about the newness
of the vaccines, right? And fear of side effects. You know, these are new vaccines, they could not
have been fully tested because they were produced so quickly and therefore they're likely to be
dangerous. Right? And then you add to this distrust of the government and you know, and also just a
belief that they don't actually need a vaccine because the risk of Covid has been greatly
exaggerated. This is basically the picture you get of why people are are not getting vaccinated. So
I think there's two prominent things that you've mentioned that deserve emphasis. Sam. So first you
did cite the Kaiser Family Foundation survey, a large survey of americans and in that one of the
most important reasons that people gave and you can understand it is that the FDA didn't give full
approval yet and it's still being categorized as an emergency use. And so that, you know, you can
understand people being skeptical, went out without this final blessing by the FDA. Then the other
thing I think you've alluded to, but I can't be emphasized enough. It isn't so much the problem with
the unvaccinated. It's the problem of the information being fed to them, which they actually believe
these things because a lot of this is purposeful. A lot of this is, you know, intentionally trying
to prevent the benefit from being actualized. So I think those are factors that I consider, you
know, pretty high on the list for where we are right now. What do you mean intentionally trying to
get the benefit from keeping the benefit from being actualized? Well, you know, in the political
specter, as you've mentioned, there is such a remarkable dichotomy between the republicans and the
democrat. And there was a great cartoon bye. One of my favorite cartoonists, uh, Bureau Bill Brown
Hall, who had a biden. You know, he's out there, you know, his sunglasses and he said, he says on
the cartoon, vaccines are bad and that's how you get republicans to don't get vaccinated. But there
is clearly a movement among many Republican leaders in Congress and states to not be supportive of
the vaccine front. And only in recent days, interestingly have they started to come out, you know,
with the message that this is important and that we're facing a very serious delta wave right now.
So this is, of course, very late in the game where we're now, you know, highly dominant with this
very formidable version of the virus. And so the messaging from politicians to buck, you know, a lot
of things have been blocked politically and it's not an area that I want to even get into as far as,
you know, politization of the vaccines. But unfortunately it has happened. And you the data you
cited, I mean, there are other other service that suggests it's even worse than that. So you know,
never before you have vaccination in this country been so highly political and I remember, you know
as a kid, I know I'm older than you I think Sam but when I was a kid and getting polio vaccine,
everybody got the polio vaccine. There was there was no politics. And you know, if you go back in
time, we've never had anything like this. And it's the sad part is the people who are not getting
the benefit of the vaccine. A lot of it's because they're just you know, they're on social media
that are getting fed misinformation and by the way, we also know the Russians are involved. This is
part of this mission of their divisiveness and we haven't had a counter offensive in this country to
all this misinformation. In fact, you know, I pleaded with Vivek murthy are certain general back in
May to do that. And I think he saw just last week he he did make that announcement that but it
hasn't really been aggressive. It isn't calling out the sources of this. So what we have is a
problem of of lots of misinformation. Some of it quite deliberate and lack of a counter Yeah. The
reason why this is so upside down is you have many, many millions of people who believe some
combination of the following that the risk of Covid, the disease has been vastly exaggerated, right?
Covid is a hoax or it's just a flu or it's just not a factor. But the vaccines are scary and
dangerous. Right? So it's the we just haven't literally tens of millions of people Who are totally
saying one about the prospect of catching COVID. But really averse to the idea of getting vaccinated
for covid. And obviously from our point of view, that's totally upside down. But this is the
balance. That has to be, you know, the results of which you have to be fairly judged on. The one
side. You have the risk of covid plus the effectiveness of the vaccines weighed against the risks of
vaccination. Because, I mean, this is this is really a forced choice for all of us. Unless you're
going to be perfectly in hiding. You're going to be exposed to the novel coronavirus and is some
variant or many variants thereof. And you can either be exposed having been fully vaccinated or not
having been fully vaccinated. And this should be simple to talk about. And, you know, the
comparative risks should be simple to assess now because we we have many, many millions of people
who have run this experiment. We've got millions of people who have caught covid without the benefit
of a vaccine, we've got millions of people have been vaccinated and we can assess the negative side
effects of getting these vaccines. All of this can be assessed. But again, this is happening in a
context where many, many millions of people believe that, for instance, everything that has been
going on here has been part of a vast totalitarian conspiracy. I mean, there are people who think
that the lockdowns and the masking has been not for the purpose of mitigating real illness. The
whole point has been to acclimatize otherwise free societies to regimes of extreme social control,
Right? And then you add to that paranoia, the belief that any emphasis on vaccination rather than
treatment of covid with existing compounds like Ivor Mactan, that's based on a pure profit motive
coming from big pharma and and the mercenary manipulation of government, right? We're all doing the
bidding somehow. A Pfizer and Moderna. I mean, so I can say for like for instance, someone's going
to think that of us in this conversation, I should go without saying that I have absolutely no
entanglement with big pharma. And you know, there's there's no, there's no pressure on me to do a
podcast about the benefits of vaccines. So it's, you know, this is just a pure pizza from my point
of view, but that's the environment in which we're having this conversation. Yeah, I would add, you
know, I have no connections conflicts with pharma, but even everyday people on twitter say you're a
tool, you're a shill for farming when in fact I've been attacking them throughout the in fact,
before the vaccines were approved, I was attacking them for not posting their protocols during
advisor and all the rest of them. And also, you know, more recently for a premature pronouncement of
need for boosters and no, this is this is all as you say, just part of that kind of multidimensional
conspiracy accuse elin theory and it's really it's saddening to watch in a way be part of that.
Yeah. Okay. So, so what do we know about the effectiveness of the vaccines at this point? Right. So
the vaccines, when we had the first trials that came out in november december was a formal review,
We learned that they were 95% effective, both Pfizer and then subsequently short, shortly after
moderna that was against any infection or as it turned out, which wasn't the primary endpoint of the
trials, the same was at least against any severe illness like death Or hospitalization. So the
trials were just designed 75,000 participants. Multi country means is the largest trials ever
performed in vaccines. And they showed this remarkable. You may recall SAM that at the time when the
trials were done, the FDA had set the bar for 50% 50%. Now enough confidence intervals that would
qualify as approval here. We had 95% striking. There's only one other vaccine in history that's been
at this level of efficacy, not efficacy. So then you have of course the different world which is
effectiveness when you put the vaccines in the real world. And what's striking wherever you look,
whether it's Israel or the U. K. Or, you know, the various centers that are reported in the US. We
see the same effectiveness as efficacy. Now, that's unusual too. Because what's happened here is the
real world isn't like that ideal situation of, you know, the the inclusion criteria, the exclusion
criteria exactly the right way that the vaccines were given and you know, they're frozen into the
moment and you know, all the perfect things. Usually you see a drop off in effectiveness and in fact
it's held up now that was with the original strain. And uh of course there's been some evolution
first, you know, from what was what is called the ancestral or Wuhan strain to the D 6.4 G which had
a little bit more transmission. And then we went through this alpha beta gamma and finally now to
Delta. Now Delta, there is a small drop off in effectiveness. We don't have an efficacy trial. We
have now effectiveness in the real world. And what we're seeing now is like a five or six point
drop. So instead of 95% it's like 88 90% effectiveness. That's exceptionally good against any
symptomatic infection and 96% against death or hospitalization, which he is extraordinary. So here
we have, you know what, what most would consider the best vaccine and data sets in history. And it's
ironic that we have such a substantial number of people or as you position it bubble that just are
still not believing this. And and of course the safety has gone along with that. Yes. So there are
many natural experiments happening here. So one thing you can do is compare the rates of
hospitalization and death for the vast and unvaccinated, granted their context, in which this can be
misleading. So, I mean obviously in a society where 100% of people are fully vaccinated, Well then
100% of people who are hospitalist or dead from COVID will also be fully vaccinated, right? But
presumably there'll be very few of them if the vaccines actually work. But we have many situations
where Around 50% of people are fully vaccinated And 50% aren't. And we can compare what's happening
at the hospitals and in morgues. And it means you take a place like Virginia where about just under
54% of the population is fully vaccinated. If you look at the hospitalization data, Over 98% of the
people hospitalized are not fully vaccinated And over 99% of the deaths are for people who are not
fully vaccinated. So it's just our hospitals are not filling with the vaccinated in places where
there is a, you know, comparable cohorts of vaccinated and unvaccinated people. So what we have is
what we appear to have now is a a raging pandemic among the unvaccinated. And of course some number
of vaccinated people will experience breakthrough illness and even severe illness and death. But the
numbers are are minuscule by comparison. Is there any way in which this this doesn't speak to the
effectiveness of the vaccines? I mean is to say yeah I mean I think you're bringing up what has been
used again by the same people who are the anti-vaxxers anti science. But what is being used is the
increasing number of breakthrough infections with delta. So in prior you know Delta we know has a
viral load or the number of copies of replicant virus that is capable replication thousandfold or
more compared with the ancestral Strange. So we know it's a more challenging virus. Much more
contagious transmissible now with that the breakthrough infections of people winding up in the
hospital with prior variants versions of the virus was less than 1% and even less than a fraction of
one and something like .1% for death. Now it has gone up some for delta, that is, you know, now it's
a couple of percent, you know, a few percent hospitalizations and you know, Perhaps it will approach
1% in death. But the point here is that this is a formidable now version of the virus and what we
have is a problem with mathematics because people who don't understand that, like for example, let's
say in Israel where you have more than half of the current breakthrough infections, people are in
the hospital and say, oh well look that vaccines aren't working well, that's just because in Israel,
Among these people that are being looked at, you know, 89% of adults have been vaccinated, so
there's no one else, There's No one left to get sick. Right. Right. It's that whole point if 100% of
the people are vaccinated and everybody's having, you know, uh, and anybody who's in the hospital,
obviously that defined to break through illness. People are missing the point about denominators and
fractions. But if you calculate the vaccine efficacy as has been done in the UK and in Israel
effectiveness, I should say It stays at the 90% level. It has never changed with Delta. So here, I
think is again, whenever there's just a slight of hand with statistics, it's being used in a way by
anti Baxter's uh, what I consider to be deliberate, a lot of these people are intelligent, they know
better, but this feeds their narrative. Yeah, there's another comparison here, which should be
pretty straightforward. I mean, we have something like 159 million people now who have been fully
vaccinated in the US. Right? And we have a probably a similar number of people who have been Exposed
to the coronavirus. I mean there's only 34 million confirmed cases according to the CDC. But we know
it's got to be higher than that. So we can compare. And we have, you know, tens of millions of
people in each cohort, people who've been vaccinated and people who have gotten covid. Now, if the
people have gotten covid we have around 600,000 who have died for the people who've gotten
vaccinated. When we asked how many people have died as a result of getting vaccinated messages, this
is just a comparison of just how dangerous is covid compared to the danger of getting vaccinated,
these data are kind of hard to get your hands around because it seems like there's just there are
reports of people dying after getting vaccinated without there being any real assessment of whether
the vaccine was causally responsible for their death. I mean, people who happen to drop dead from
something after being vaccinated and that the highest number I've seen there is 12,000. Yeah, but
that that is probably 12. Yes, probably how many if it is if it's that many. But I think this is the
problem you're bringing up is this is this unfortunate situation. You know, we all like open
science, open data, but the CDC when they set up the the mayor's this is the adverse event reporting
system. They didn't they didn't recognize that this was going to be used by anti-vaxxers because
these cases are are not adjudicated. They've not, as you say, not been reviewed, they have no idea
whether the death has any linkage because we know, you know, people when you have 100 and 62 million
americans which we have as of today who are fully vaccinated, you know, some people are going to die
naturally with the vaccination. And so these are people part of the various reporting system. Now,
what is extraordinary here is that this is used on a daily basis. The likes of, you know, Fox News,
tucker, Carlson, laura Ingraham, you know, mainstream television stations and lots of other entities
are using this data. And it's obvious misuse because unlike the clinical trials Where no one died of
a vaccine, vaccination is the safety was I mean, it was just extraordinary. No one died of the
vaccine in either moderna or fighter. You know, when the 75,000 pages trials, because every case,
every potential side effect is, is reviewed by an event committee. Now, you know, we have one of the
ways you could die of a vaccine would be if you had anaphylaxis, just profound allergic reaction.
But there's been multiple reports of the people who had anaphylaxis with the specifically with the
M. RNA vaccines and they haven't died. I mean they got treated and a few, you know, a small number
had to get hospitalized. But that would be the one thing you could link with death. Now there are
these exceptionally rare rare side effects like you know, with the J. And J. And astrazeneca, this
blood clotting issue which is called vaccine induced trump aside a Penick thrombosis more. What we,
you know, we have seen very rare myocarditis right? In young people, particularly men with MRNA
vaccines, these are exceptionally Gambari with you know johnson johnson One cases among 12 million
people vaccinated. So if you just look at these rare things, first of all, they don't die. Most
these people don't die. They recover myocarditis. Almost all recover. And it's very mild with the
blood clotting issue. Well if it does occur where there's a cerebral sinus thrombosis. Yes, that has
a high fate out of it. But it's it's incredibly rare. You know, one in hundreds of thousands of
people with astrazeneca or with J and J. Not seeing with Mrna. So just to review the composite here,
the safety is overwhelming. But the bears open data registry of un adjudicated data is what's
causing the problem because it's being basically used by people who either don't know or unknowingly
are using it to spread false information, right? Yeah. So I take all those points and undoubtedly
That's the correct way to look at it. But even if we took the bearers numbers at face value, even if
we acknowledge that 12,000 people have been killed outright by these vaccines, it still makes covid
look a hell of a lot more dangerous than the vaccine for covid. Right. I mean, I mean, it's like
you're still talking about When you have on the order of 160 million people who have been fully
vaccinated 12,000 people dying. That's less than one in 10,000 people dying based on this
intervention. It would be a depressing number. But it's so much better than the number for getting
covid without having the benefit of the vaccine. That people still have this upside down. Even
taking those numbers at face value, which of course we can't do. I couldn't agree with you more. In
fact, you're looking at it overall with respect to the exceptionally rare side effects that I've
mentioned. The chance of you having any of those from covid. Yeah, it's considerably higher orders
of magnitude higher. So, yes, across the board the relationship between getting Covid risk versus
any risk of the vaccine. It is overwhelming That the vaccines are providing in exceptional net
benefit and that can't be questioned. That's real data. That's the most solid evidence data set that
I that I've known in my 35 years in academics. And it's just it's important to realize that when
you're talking about numbers this large, when you're talking about 160 million people being exposed
to any intervention, there will always be some number of bad reactions that if you focus on those
without understanding the background statistics, you know, could make, you know, a rational person
and otherwise rational person nervous about that intervention. But the truth is, if we were giving
people peanut butter As a prophylactic against coif, peanut butter were 100% effective against
COVID. Some number of people would die outright from peanut butter. That's right. I mean, that's
just that's the nature of human biology. But, you know, obviously it would be we would consider an
absolute gift beyond words if peanut butter could prevent this disease. Well, one other thing I just
want to mention, because what you're saying is so spot on. But the issue about the concerns of long
term effects of the vaccine, I do want to address that, because a lot of people say, well, you know,
I I I think the data look good. But what about could something happen later? You know? And the
answer there is, I think pretty astounding in that, in the history of vaccines, there has never been
something that showed up Beyond two months after the vaccines were in common use. Okay, we're now,
you know, beyond seven months. So there is never, there is no reason to think that these vaccines
are going to be different than vaccines that have been going on for, you know, many, many decades
and so many different diseases and platforms. So the long term people should have confidence in
vaccines because we're not gonna there's no more surprises. You know, the surprises have been
unveiled either in the clinical trials or the first two months. When they get into, you know, you
have 100 and 90 million Americans who have been exposed to at least one dose. We have hundreds of
more millions around the world. We know what these vaccines do. There's no long term surprises that
we could see at this point. But even if we were going to give hostage to paranoia here and grant
that we just we don't understand the long term implications of the vaccines. You still have this
head to head comparison with the actual disease of Covid which makes the vaccines look comparatively
benign. Like so if you're worried about the long term possibilities of vaccines, you should be
doubly worried about the long term possibilities of having caught covid without the benefit of
having been vaccinated. You know if you're worried about people, you know there's people circulating
an article that suggests that the spike protein born of the M. RNA vaccines could be bad for the
blood brain barrier, right? But what does covid due to the blood brain barrier? Right? Like? Well
yeah I mean firstly that that is absurd. You know I saw this through commentary that bret Weinstein
put out that people who get a headache as a side effect of a Covid vaccine which is not uncommon to
get a headache. That that could be brain fog from the M. R. And getting into the brain. This is
totally unsubstantiated totally. And to try to make a parallel where the true brain fog. That is the
cognitive effect. A hit to people who do get covid so called long covid or long haulers. Which is
happening at least 10% of the people with confirmed infections. And you know I I know many people
colleagues, people I work with who are affected by long covid who have brain fog and have profound
fatigue have difficulty breathing. You know can't even go on a long walk that they used to be
healthy and athletic. So for anyone deposit that people who get a headache is having Marnie going
into the brain that is totally irresponsible. It's reckless, it's sick and it casts unnecessary
doubts to these people. The innocent. You know it's in a way, Sam, I have to say it's predatory.
It's taking people who want to believe in a conspiracy or don't know what to believe and making
vaccines look like they're intended to harm with no evidence whatsoever. It's really sad. Yeah. So
there's a conspiratorial frame of mind here which is given just enough Pavlovian reinforcement to be
almost impossible for people to break out of. Because, you know, there are occasional conspiracies,
there certainly bad incentives that can be detected where it's easy to allege a, you know, a profit
motive on the part of Pfizer's you referenced the fact that Pfizer was prematurely recommending
booster shots. Right? Well, the reason for that is, you know, the cynical reason for that is fairly
obvious to see, because this would mean literally billions of dollars falling to their bottom line
if that were, that were our health policy. And so there's this background concern about a profit
motive in medicine that is deranged in people's thinking here. And I mean, bret Weinstein is an
example of this and I know that he's very concerned that the emergency use authorization for these
vaccines required that there be no valid therapeutic for covid in order to get triggered. And so,
you know, by definite this is on his account. By definition, it had to be judged that there is
nothing in the armamentarium of Medical science that could treat Covid in principle in order to fast
track these vaccines. And therefore we overlooked the nearby panacea of I've ever met in a old
compound that is generically available and from which no pharmaceutical company stands a chance of
profiting. And through there in Brett's mind, you have the perfect storm of bad incentives and
greedy pharmaceutical executives driving policy toward a you know, windfall profits and disregarding
the life saving opportunity of handing out ivermectin to one and all and driving us toward some kind
of abyss of novel risk. Right? Because on his account, these MRNA vaccines are are new and therefore
have to be assumed to be dangerous because they they by definition are, you know, untested or we're
testing them on ourselves now on his account. So this is where we have to deal with the claim about
ivermectin and uh, how, why it's not a rational alternative to these vaccines. Yeah, well I do want
to go over this because the notion about the emergency use authorization is incorrect. Firstly that
is the definition in the setting of a pandemic or crisis for the FDA is may be effective. That's all
it takes. Maybe effective. It doesn't have to be that there is no other treatment. Okay. As long as
it's something may be effective in an emergency situation, the FDA has the ability to push forward
as they did. You may recall, they gave an EU A for hydroxy chloroquine. They gave an EU A for
convalescent plasma. There already was other things, you know, like for example, when the
convalescent plasma was granted, which was wrong and had to be withdrawn as was the
hydroxychloroquine. Both of those were there were other things out there for treatment that is when
the plasma there already. So you know, we we've been through this where there were all sorts of the
sense whether it was then president or other people following the president that hydroxychloroquine
was, you know, some magical drugs and it proved not only to not have an effect but to also have some
dangers. The convalescent plasma, We're over 600,000 Americans got convalescent plasma because of a
tortured data analysis without a randomized trial that was given an emergency use authorization
which promoted hundreds of thousands to get the treatment and may have actually helped to spur on
these variants because they were getting these polyclonal. you know, antibodies that certainly
wasn't helping the situation helping them. So, you know, then comes ivermectin. Now I've reviewed
that data carefully because you know, on twitter, if I put anything on twitter, you know, I usually
get at least some comments about did they get I ivermectin or if only they had ever met, they all
had ever made and no one needs a vaccine. This kind of stuff. Right. So I said, well, where did this
come from? So it turns out, you know, there are a bunch of small studies, right? And they've been
meta analysed multiple times by different parties. And you know, I think the best Breaking over of
the data was by this fellow Gideon Meyerowitz Katz who put together is I've Ramekin for COVID-19
based on fraudulent research. And that was just, you know, earlier this month on a medium. Now in
it, he takes an unbiased view and very careful youth of ivermectin, which is an anti parasitic
medicine. As you mentioned, it has been used for river blindness. It is used for lice, it is used
for various parasitic diseases and it's relatively safe. I mean there are some serious side effects
but they are uncommon. Now. The point here is that what about these trials, do we have any large
trials trials like You know, I did one of the largest clinical trials in in medicine with 41,000
patients in 18 countries around the world for heart attack. And you know, I know what a large trial
is when I see it mega trials over 10,000, which is what you want and what the UK has done in the
recovery trials. You know, we haven't had one large trial in the whole COVID-19 pandemic done in the
United States. But these trials, these trials have Iram acted are exceptionally small. And the
largest one was this one from Egypt, which Gideon Meyerowitz Katz Shows was highly irregular. 1/3 of
the people who died from COVID and the trial were already dead. You when the researchers started to
recruit them. I mean, these are you just don't see this kind of stuff. You need a time machine to
trial. You have quote if this is an outright fraud, the ethical concerns of randomizing people into
a clinical trial before the ethical approval comes through is enormous. And you know, his piece, you
know, takes this hard in terms of the fact that this trial from Egypt, the largest, which wasn't
large at all. I mean, this a few 100 people in either arm of I've met in this is not what you would
call any evidence for making I've ever met in a standard drug. Now, I I see a signal there that I
remember getting could be beneficial. I don't know why, I don't know the mechanism and I would also
hasten to add that, you know, our place and many others have raked through every drug known to
mankind for repurposing that is. Most molecules drugs have been characteristic. We know their
structure and we can match up whether it would work against this virus and I've removed and has
never shown up despite hundreds of others that have for having an antiviral specific qualities. But
putting the biology aside, it looks like there's a signal. But for anyone to say that this should be
given universally. And as bret Weinstein has said and others that it's 99% effective. Uh this is
there is there is no drug that's 99% effective, no demand. And then to say it reduces mortality,
your improved survival by 70, 80, 90%. These are impossible. They have never occurred. This is, you
know, just not acceptable. Yeah, Well it's I'm what's conspicuous here is what I am not saying in
Brett's defense. I mean, bread is somebody who I consider a friend, he's definitely a colleague,
he's moderated some of my debates. I know his brother eric very well. He's a fellow podcaster who
had been on each other's podcast I guess. I would say that I haven't heard everything he has said on
this topic and has gone on for many, many hours. I know, but I've heard enough to be very
uncomfortable with what he has put out there. And I do consider it dangerous. What strikes me as
just frank misinformation, getting pushed out there to millions and millions of people. But it is,
you know, in in Brett's case uh born of uh almost a uh characterological bias against institutions
at this point, some of which I do understand. I mean, so like for instance, one thing that it's
really animating him is the response to what he's doing from the big tech companies. Right? So the
fact that Youtube will d monetize the episodes of his podcast where he discusses ivermectin, I'm
torn even here. I don't I don't know what Youtube and facebook and all of these companies should be
doing. I mean there's certainly a straightforward argument but that they should be censoring what is
obviously misinformation. But the problem here is that many things that were wrong yesterday are
considered good information today, right? It's like they're very unlikely to get censorship right.
You know, what is outlier thinking and can be deemed dangerous or irresponsible can in the fullness
of time proved to be the only correct view. So it's just a difficult problem that they show no sign
of being able to solve. And you know, Brett and everyone who's listening to him incredibly animated
by their clumsy efforts at censorship because they can always point to the instance where what they
censored was, you know, actually is now C. D. C. Policy, right? You know, like at one point C D C.
Was against mask wearing right? And if so what are you going to censor? The people who said we
should have been wearing masks a year ago? It was just obvious we should have been wearing masks.
It's a hard problem to solve in terms of a response and it's easy to see how people get freaked out
by the authoritarian implications of having these virtually monopolistic companies closed down
conversation on specific topics, but it's it's a nightmare what's happening in terms of how friction
free the spread of misinformation has become. So I don't know what your thoughts are on the front of
what what we should be doing. And also just to close the loop on bretz concern here. It's not just
that the big tech companies are doing it, but there really is a conspiracy that's happening out in
the open where you have the government asking the big tech companies to do this. It's not that no
one ever conspires. Even in this case, they even admit that they're conspiring, but certainly viewed
from one side, it seems counterproductive. As bad as the misinformation and disinformation problem
has become Yeah, no, I am sympathetic to the point that everyone should be heard and things should
be censored. That I think is clear. However, when it has come to a point where it's leads to harm of
people, then you have to say, well, he's just crossing the line when you're harming a lot of people.
Now. I think the conspiracy theories and theorists get tremendous amount of fuel when this happened.
So, for example, if we go back to the lab leak origin versus the natural zoonotic origin of the
virus from, from zoonotic to human. You know, there were a lot of people who initially in the
science community advance that this had to be a natural not a leak at the Wuhan virology Institute.
And then as time went on, you know, there were more and more irregularities, still no definitive
evidence either way. And we may never get that definitive evidence. But basically for the people's
voices who were not being heard regarding the Wuhan Institute lab leak, you know, assuming an
accidental lab leak. They got more, it got more concerning substance. And then the conspiracy
theorists would say, huh, there you go. Right. And they were saying that at the beginning, and so
now you have another parallel where, you know, whether it's either Mactan or vaccines, you have
people who are pushing these agendas And you know what, I don't have a problem with pushing ever met
and as advancing it as a candidate drug that we need to totally, there's 2200 people in randomized
trials. Most of the randomized trials are, You know, 2040, 60 people, 2000 people to say it should
be given universally and has 99% effective. That's not you can't make that assertion. And you know,
I listened to Brett a couple of his podcast interview with Test Laurie, one of the UK scientists who
he has been aligned with. And I can tell he's an intelligent fellow. I mean he's bright fellow, but
he doesn't know how to do clinical trials and he shouldn't be passing himself off as an expert to
interpret that data. But these are not what we would consider definitive trials now. It should be
pursued I've ever met in is very inexpensive and relatively safe drug and it may indeed have, you
know, very positive effects but shouldn't be, you know, having emergency podcast and then the people
that he brings together, like for example the doctor Kirsch Who said the COVID vaccines have caused
more deaths than have all other vaccines combined over the last 30 years. This is somebody he
brought on as a guest. Okay. And then you have also lined up with the frontline Covid 19 Critical
Care Alliance for an emergency podcast with joe Rogan Making these claims there's something serious
a foot. The public is largely unaware. They have been placed in kind of danger 99% effective I ever
met in the pandemic would end in a month. That is complete Balderdash. Okay. The pandemic will not
end in a month and there is no drug or no vaccine that's 99% effective. So the problem here sam I
see is that he is overstepped. That is he's aligned himself or had guests who are are saying things
that he then has a large following instead of taking a critical view. He this is I'm sure he's upset
with the century. I would be too, but it doesn't mean it should go, you know, across the line as to
advancing things or people who have and saying things like, you know, for example, the headache,
which is, you know, the Mariana crossing into the brain. These are unfounded things and they're
dangerous things and that's where I have a concern. What do you make of the fact that some of these
people who he's brought on his show? And at least one, I think he was on with Rogan with at least
one other person. These people are Mds with seemingly relevant credentials, caring for people with
Covid. And I mean, he's not Mds who have been sidelined from malpractice years ago and they should
be credible sources of information here. And it is should be, it's genuinely bewildering even to
very smart people to see an MD who purports to be close to the data. And in one case in one of these
people who even claimed to be the originator of M. RNA vaccine technology. I don't know how spacious
that claim. Yeah this is this is actually one of the chief offenders. I'm glad you mentioned it. Sam
this doctor Malone dr Malone who puts out that he was the inventor of the M. RNA vaccines. Well
guess what, he wasn't the inventor. And what he does is he's now the person who is leading the
charge against the vaccines and and people unknowingly because he identifies himself as the inventor
there. They this is the perfect fuel for the conspiracy there. It's incredible you you couldn't make
this stuff up. That person who positions himself as the inventor having worked, you know, decades
ago on a path. But he is not the inventor of either of the M. RNA vaccines. Okay. And then you also
you know the frontline doctors, the frontline doctors that one of which one of whom I should say was
part of this. They are the ones who are suing the government right now that the vaccine should be
taken off the market. Okay. So we have a problem here. You know, this is this is a group of people
who are either unwittingly or knowingly harming people who don't know better, who I have to say. You
know, there their channel of disinformation is I consider predatory because it's not based on the
right evidence data and I don't want to see it centered but I also want to see it toned down and
stick with the facts. Don't make stuff up. Yeah. So again people are going to find this hard to
adjudicate because on the one hand it's you and me talking about this and you know, you're an M. D.
With a seemingly relevant background and we're up against bret Weinstein and his Mds. And it's a he
said, she said situation where you sort of have to pick the authority who you trust. But that I mean
there's more information than that, that's a standoff. But we're living in the presence of the
largest vaccine and disease experiment ever run, right? We're talking about tens of millions, even
hundreds of millions of people getting the disease under conditions of being vaccinated or not. And
the disparity in the results is so clear at this point. And again, even if you take the worst
numbers from the most vaccine avoidant as the ground truth for what these vaccines due to you, it's
still an easy decision to get vaccinated to mitigate your risk. Yeah. I mean, when you have a
vaccine trials done around the world, You know, the first to the NHS and 75,000 people. And then,
you know, since that time, 100,000 more participants and randomized double blind trials. I mean,
these are the real deal. Then you have 2200 people and all of the ivermectin trials. Total. Yeah.
You know, around the world, I mean, there's a little bit different in the weight of evidence. The
totality of evidence also with the safety. And I think that is that should drive people if they if
they truly are data driven evidence based, even if you're not with a medical or science background,
you want to see totality of evidence and you don't want us to see things that are just either made
up or you know, fueled by these, I would say, you know, a good example of somebody who I know known
from the past is Alex Berenson. Okay. He's a formerly an excellent new york times journalist. He
then wrote a bunch of novels that were highly successful and spy thrillers. And now he's a regular
on Fox News, talking badly about vaccines and and making stuff up and using data, manipulating data.
Okay. And of course, you know, he's a he's a hit with this group, right? But he has no he has no
background, he has no clinical trials background, no science background, but he is a darling of
those who want to be fed with this kind of. But how do you explain the the people who do have the
relevant background going this far down the wrong rabbit hole? Just the Mds who Brett has in his
stable, what are they up to, what has happened one way to explain it? It's a fairly invidious thing
to say. But there's some percentage of Mds and phds and people who have all the right credentials on
paper who snap for one reason or another. I mean they're just they're going through some inordinate
stress in their life or their actually Delusional. We basically have a background level of
schizophrenia in any human population of 1%. Right? So you will occasionally find crazy Mds and phds
who will testify about anything. Now I'm not making a specific allegation with respect to the people
we've named, but you have to expect that you can always find a crackpot PhD or MD for any, I mean
you can find them to defend Big Tobacco. There are people who will either cynically or based on some
derangement, will back any cause and put their credentials to that purpose. But do you have any
other sense of what's going on with with these guys? Yeah. You're making a really valid point here.
And that is we have seen people who have a medical degree, who are not supporting the body of data
that's so overwhelming regarding safety of vaccines or the lack of adequate proof. For example, in
the case of ivermectin. And you know, the the answer for that is difficult to come up with a why.
But I think the thing that hasn't been done, I'll go back to something we discuss early in our
conversation. If we had a counter offensive to the for the facts, that is if we had said, you know,
remember when trump was very frequently lying and there was a fellow on CNN there was an official
fact checker and he would take them on one by one and get the facts okay. And he did an exceptional
job that he's pretty busy. And you have to say, throughout the time Of 20,000 documented lies or
something. Right. Right. Anyway, we don't have that in the pandemic. If if the people were called
out for lying or for a fact fact free, you know, they may, they may back off. But when, when they
have a license to just make stuff up or twist things, you know, to not acknowledge that the various
registry is none. None of that has been adjudicated. None of it. We know of any events are we know
that they actually happened and what was potentially known root cause of the of these events, but
they don't do that. They use this, that that's a data set that's abuse and the and the highest way.
But there's there's something about being a contrary to, I mean, you know, you're a minority. You're
in a different circle. The people in this group are are very, you know, seemed to be close in it and
uh you know, kind of spurring each other on and, you know, perhaps the fellowship of of being in
this in this group is alluring. I just don't know. It's sad to see though, because I know these
people are intelligent and they must recognize the lapses in what they're they're pushing Yeah. What
what? I don't think people recognize people who have a conspiratorial style of of explaining
anomalies don't tend to recognize that their explanations don't actually run through. I mean,
there's no plausible background set of incentives that could explain Given conspiracy coming
together. So, you take, like the 9-11 truth conspiracy as an analogy you talk to conspiracy minded
people on that topic, and they'll they'll just toss off one claim after another without
acknowledging the truly insurmountable obstacles around getting people whose incentives are not
perfectly aligned to collaborate in such an awful project, right? So like who rigged the twin towers
to explode? Right? Like just what just how many hours does it take to go into those buildings? Un
observed and rig them to explode? Right, And how do you get hundreds or thousands of people to
collaborate in that project of murdering their neighbors on a bright fall morning and then never
breathe a word of it afterwards. I mean no one feels guilty, no one, no one divorced their husband
and then spilled the beans. I mean it's just perfect silence, perfect collaboration. And so it is
with many conspiracies that get alleged in this context, just like the influence of big pharma. The
truth is there is absolutely no conspiratorial explanation for what you and I are doing on this
podcast, right? There's no connect like like I've got no connection to big pharma. I will criticize
Big Farm in the next podcast. On another topic. You know, with absolute freedom, I've got no fear of
Youtube d monetizing me. I mean it's just I'm completely free and this is I'm doing exactly what I
want and you're the person I wanted to do with and this is what we're doing Right now. And as you
know, Sam I almost my career almost ended back in 2004, because I took on Merck about right? Yeah.
You know, I I am the least person in the world that's pro Farma. Okay. And I've taken a big risk
about taking them on and I still have during the pandemic. So no, we're trying to play this thing
straight, trying to, you know, go with what is the body of evidence that is extraordinary. We are in
a momentous time in life science where we learned how to you know, develop vaccines in at scale in a
time velocity that no one could ever have imagined. And to basically end the pandemic, we could have
had we been able to get vaccine widely distributed throughout the world, potent vaccines throughout
the world early on. The pandemic would essentially be over now. Okay, we wouldn't have a delta
variant, we wouldn't even have beta and gamma right? We probably would have just been able to arrest
it largely and contain it at the alpha stage. The problem is, though, we we aren't able to make the
Vaccines at for for 7-plus billion people. Right? Not fast enough. But the other problem is in the
United States, which is far worse than any other place that I know of in the world. We have a very
significant proportion of these anti-vaxxers, conspiracy theorists, anti science. I mean, it started
of course before the pandemic, but it's been, you know, gone much higher levels. So we are not
reaping the advantages and the protection here that we could. And you know, I have to say I was
really looking forward to the summer this time of year because I thought, you know what, we could
get right back to pre covid life. I could stop having to put my attention on covid and get it back
to the things that are much more enjoy. And basically it's been screwed up because of Delta. It's
now going to last a lot longer. We'll get through delta. It'll take a couple of months. We'll get
over this wave. But the toll it will take on the deaths on the hospitalizations and particularly the
large number of cases we're going to see with long covid that was unnecessary. Had we not had so
much resistance and hesitancy an anti vaccine for the people who will be part of the protection
instead of part of the liability and vulnerability group. Okay, So let's conclude on some
recommendations or confessions of uncertainty about what we should do going forward before we talk
about vaccine mandates and related matters. What's taking so long with the the full FDA
authorization of the vaccines? Why is that not already accomplished? Yeah. Well, I've been pushing
hard on that. And as you saw ahead of new york Times op ed a few weeks ago and prior to that trying
to get DR Woodcock, who's the acting commissioner to come out and talk to us, tell us what is going
on. So, I know the former FDA commissioner as well, some of them, a few of them, I've spoken to it
some length about this and as you know, I've been on several FD advisory committees over the years.
So I know the workings and I understand what's happened here. Is that the usual so called biologic
licensing application? That's the full approval. That is 100,000 plus pages of documents. It
requires plant inspections. It's not just the clinical trials, it's not just does the drug does the
vaccine work? And is it safe? It's more than that. But in this case because of this pandemic crisis,
back in december when the when the MRNA vaccines were given their emergency authorization, the
company started submitting, you know, packet by packet to get FDA review. And so we've had seven
months since that time for the FDA to have complete their completed their review. And indeed in
speaking to FDA Commissioner's, they believe it should have been done by now. Okay. In fact, it
should have been done in june at the latest. And we now have heard just last week from Dr Woodcock
that this could be take till january. Well, we can't wait till january. This should have been done
now. There is no excuse except that this is not the number one priority. And as you saw, there was
an Alzheimer's drug that was approved highly irregular concurrent with this. And so it's really
unfortunate we do not have an FDA that's functioning at the level it needs to in the midst of this
pandemic. Especially as the U. S. Is confronting this very formidable, formidable version of the
virus. Yeah. And in defense of the people who are worried about the quality of our information. The
truth is we need institutions we can rely on and it's pretty clear we don't quite have them the FDA,
the W. H. O. The C. D. C. All of them have at various moments, Covered themselves in embarrassment
in the last 18 months. So, you know, that's the, again, there's there's a rational way to understand
that and then there's the paranoid way to exaggerate the nature of that problem. But it's, yeah, I
mean we we do need a rebooting of our institutions here and there's no question, what do you think
we should do around requiring vaccination in the public or private sector in various contexts? So
mandates in schools or hospitals or businesses or for travel and what are your thoughts? Yeah.
Really it's really tight in Sam to the question, you just asked about the full approval because
general counsel of our health system and if you talk to private large companies, municipalities,
even though there have been some that have said like for example at the university of California,
you have to be vaccinated and you can't come on campus, it can't be a student, you can't be on the
faculty. But that's the rarity right now. The day that we get full approval, which should have
happened by now, all these things open up and there will be a requirement for vaccination or
there'll be accommodations for those who don't want to get vaccinated. You have to wear a mask at
all times at work and you have to get tested on a frequent basis. And I would submit to you that the
people that opt for the non vaccination after a couple of weeks, they're not going to want to go
through all that and they'll go ahead and get vaccinated. So I actually think tens of millions of
americans soon after full approval will be required to be vaccinated or will be given an option that
is unpalatable. Yeah, we should acknowledge that there are some people who actually can't get
vaccinated. I mean there are people in various stages of cancer treatment. I believe there are
people who just have weird immune systems who go into anaphylaxis over vaccines that are as benign
as possible. And so herd immunity is the only way to protect those people because they can't get
vaccinated. And under any regime where vaccines are required, there would still be a medical
exemption for certain people. Right? Yes. Yes. And but you know, those same people want to have
protection with mass. They want to have protection from like for example, if they did get infected,
I'm testing, they were found to be they want to get monoclonal antibodies to the virus as soon as
possible because they don't have an intact immune system. So yes, you're absolutely right. Some
people can't get vaccinated is very rare. But they for them that same option of masks and frequent
testing is is part of their defense. You know, if we didn't have the anti force, we would have
passport, right, We would know that you had an option. Either you had your vaccination, digital
proof or you had a rapid antigen test very soon. Around that time you had proof that you're good to
go whether it's a restaurant or to work or want to trip on a plane. Whatever we are against
passports in this country, just like we've had the anti force against mask and you know, so and
vaccines and and stay at home when things were really rough. So that's unfortunate. But several
countries, as you know, are adopting a passport system and it's working well. I mean there there
there are countries like in Denmark, they rely heavily on rapid energy tests and while they're
getting their vaccinations up to the highest level, it's working extremely, extremely well for
suppressing infections and and many other places as well. So we aren't taking advantage of the rapid
testing side. Which we should. I mean a lot of these companies are are us companies but that's
another misfire. I wish we could do that. It would help the situation we're in right now. Well eric
I mean to my ear I feel like we've covered it. I'm sure not to the satisfaction of the people who
are un persuadable. But is there anything else left to be said in your view on this topic? Well, you
know, I just think when we go forward years from now, well after this pandemic is over and hopefully
we'll be at a time when we can really be reflective Well think about this momentous science, advance
science and medical advance of vaccines and the extraordinary proof track record of potent efficacy
safety. And we'll wonder what happened. Why did the US who failed as a country in the early part of
the pandemic With, as you said, 600,000 and more deaths still, why did they not become the world
model for blocking the virus is harmed? And I think a lot of things we discussed today sam well,
will be written about for years to come because we have the potential to just show the world that we
could build the delta wall of immunity, whether it be from the vaccines or as you mentioned, 100
million plus people who had prior covid had had some natural immunity. How did we botch it up? How
did we become as vulnerable as we are right now and in the weeks to come. It's really unfortunate.
And I maybe maybe after all this, we'll have a movement back to being data driven, evidence based
and not allow for the misinformation to propagate, which is something that should be emphasized. We
know that the the misinformation gets spread far better than truth, right? That's been documented.
So maybe maybe out of all this, it won't happen now. But in the years ahead we can get back to where
we were, where we were in the old days when the polio vaccine is being rolled out and all the other
one says it. Yeah, as always. Eric thank you for your wise counsel. In your time. I look forward to
the next occasion. We'll talk about a happier topic. We'll talk about human health somehow rather
than our needless misadventures and own goals around disease. But until then, thank you so much.
Thank you. Sam real, real pleasure. I look forward to the next chance that we get to talk. Yeah.
Mhm. Mhm.