Speaker 1: They've seen friends or relative either succumb or get very sick,
Speaker 1: and so they don't want that to happen, and they'll
Speaker 1: listen to anything that has potential believability. But believability is
Speaker 1: one thing. The data and the proof is another. Hey everyone,
Speaker 1: and welcome to the Psychology Podcast. As you know, I'm
Speaker 1: deeply interested in science and current affairs. In the era
Speaker 1: we are living through right now, I feel it's more
Speaker 1: important than ever to bring you topical conversations based in science,
Speaker 1: and that's what we're doing today and we'll be continuing
Speaker 1: to do in the coming months. I have been increasingly
Speaker 1: frustrated by the spread of unsubstantiated information being spread all
Speaker 1: across the Internet about the pandemic. It's important to recognize
Speaker 1: that when we're dealing with a very new or rapidly
Speaker 1: changing phenomenon like we have been with the pandemic, even
Speaker 1: the quote scientific consensus can easily be wrong because there's
Speaker 1: not been much time for the rigorous replicability studies to
Speaker 1: be conducted, or even sometimes to accurately measure the proper
Speaker 1: effect sizes. However, I also believe it's important that we
Speaker 1: don't create a false equivalency between very fringe ideas that
Speaker 1: are unsupported by the current evidence base and a scientific
Speaker 1: consensus that is grounded in rigorous methodology. This is why
Speaker 1: I sought out the council of doctor Eric Topoel on
Speaker 1: today's show. Despite being one of the top ten most
Speaker 1: cited researchers in medicine and being extremely well regarded in
Speaker 1: his field of cardiology, he has also been a bright
Speaker 1: light on social media, shining a light on the best
Speaker 1: available evidence in the pandemic. He thoughtfully considered all my
Speaker 1: questions and was very careful to make clear what the
Speaker 1: current evidence base says, without ruling out alternative possibilities in
Speaker 1: the future in light of new evidence. In this episode,
Speaker 1: we cover a number of hot button issues surrounding the pandemic,
Speaker 1: including the potential use of ivermectin to and the pandemic,
Speaker 1: the potential for increased risk of myocarditis amongst certain populations
Speaker 1: after vaccination, and we even discussed the role human psychology
Speaker 1: and human behavior has played in this pandemic. Ultimately, as
Speaker 1: you'll see, doctor topol is optimistic about the future of
Speaker 1: the pandemic and outlines things coming down the horizon that
Speaker 1: should give us hope. But as we discuss the major
Speaker 1: problems tend to be human problems. Please leave comments on
Speaker 1: our YouTube page or on our podcast website. I'd really
Speaker 1: love to hear your reactions to this episode. So, without
Speaker 1: further ado, I now bring you doctor Eric Topol. Hi. Thanks.
Speaker 1: I know you're a busy guy. I appreciate you coming
Speaker 1: talk to me today. Sure, yeah, yeah, So do you
Speaker 1: want to just jump into it? I'm ready? Oh, good, good, good, good. Well.
Speaker 1: First of all, I want to really thank you for
Speaker 1: talking today. I decided to do a bit of a
Speaker 1: PSA for my podcast. I saw a lot of information
Speaker 1: being spread all over and I've really appreciated your constant
Speaker 1: commitment in the public to try to show as much
Speaker 1: data as you possibly can. So I thought if we
Speaker 1: could kind of walk through some issues, that'd be really helpful.
Speaker 1: Can we start off by can you kind of tell
Speaker 1: our audience a little bit about about you and your
Speaker 1: main area specialization. Sure, Scott, I'm an old dog, you know,
Speaker 1: having been a physician scientist for thirty some years. I
Speaker 1: actually still practice as a cardiologist, but I also have
Speaker 1: a lot of grounding in molecular medicine, particularly genomics and
Speaker 1: digital and at the beginning of the pandemic, I decided
Speaker 1: to devote some effort to try to help understand it
Speaker 1: and help share what I hope is good information. So
Speaker 1: I've been staying on that in addition to all the
Speaker 1: other things I normally do, which is heading up the
Speaker 1: Scripts Research Translational Institute here in California. Are you reading
Speaker 1: all those tweets yourself? Because how do you have so
Speaker 1: much time? It's so helpful to us, But everyone comes
Speaker 1: from me, every single one. Since I've been on now
Speaker 1: what twelve years, is over forty thousand, every single one.
Speaker 1: And that includes you know, whether making graphs or doing analysis,
Speaker 1: reading the articles or pre prints. Yeah, that's what I
Speaker 1: tried to do, is process the data and put it
Speaker 1: out there. And if everybody did that in terms of
Speaker 1: sharing what they read it was interesting or worthy, then
Speaker 1: we always get smarter faster. Do you feel like you're
Speaker 1: constantly revising your hypotheses in light of new evidence? Like
Speaker 1: were there any things a couple of years ago where
Speaker 1: you maybe shared some data on Twitter and have some
Speaker 1: hypotheses and now you're like, you know, what I was wrong?
Speaker 1: Or that the data suggests that we need to think
Speaker 1: about things differently. Oh sure, I mean, I think we've
Speaker 1: learned a lot along the way. I mean, one good
Speaker 1: example was the Alpha variant, where it looked pretty ferocious
Speaker 1: in the UK when we first saw it, the concern
Speaker 1: was it was going to RecA it here in the US.
Speaker 1: But fortunately when it arrived, we were getting going with
Speaker 1: vaccination at full tilt, and in fact, those are the
Speaker 1: days where we got up to you know, three four,
Speaker 1: four and a half million vaccinations a day, so we
Speaker 1: thwarted it largely, had or a small bump, which was great,
Speaker 1: But if you were to looking as I did at
Speaker 1: the predictions coming from Europe, it looked like it could
Speaker 1: be a real concern. So you know, there's a lot
Speaker 1: of moving parts in the pandemic, no less the virus
Speaker 1: and our response and human behavior and im mean escape
Speaker 1: of new variants like omicron, so you can't possibly anticipate
Speaker 1: all you turned out that, you know, Delta and Amicron
Speaker 1: really did play out like Alpha looked like it was
Speaker 1: going to. So you know, it's kind of a forewarning
Speaker 1: about where we might be headed. But it was a
Speaker 1: subsequent variant that actually did what was the concern for Alpha? Okay, cool, Well,
Speaker 1: I definitely want to get into omicron and other juicy topics,
Speaker 1: but I just want to get something oither way. Now,
Speaker 1: you have no connection or conflicts with Big Farman anyway, right,
Speaker 1: not at all, in fact of anything. I've challenged them
Speaker 1: throughout my career. But I have no relationships with any
Speaker 1: of the vaccine manufacturer or any of the you know,
Speaker 1: obvious pharma biopharma benefactors of this pandemic. Yep, Okay, can
Speaker 1: you explain to our listeners what an emergency use authorization
Speaker 1: even means because you have a lot of people that
Speaker 1: are skeptical of that, and then can you kind of
Speaker 1: set the record straight on that a little bit or
Speaker 1: al ways qualifying Well, I mean we only had the
Speaker 1: Fight vaccine get it a full authorization and Maderna, you know,
Speaker 1: just in recent days. So the problem with the emergency
Speaker 1: Use authorization originally back in November twenty twenty, when both
Speaker 1: of those vaccines and then subsequently others got this EUA
Speaker 1: designation is that it is as it implies, it's not
Speaker 1: a full authorization. It's based on the sense that it's
Speaker 1: an emergency and the criteria for such an EUA is
Speaker 1: may be effective free words may be effective. So it
Speaker 1: turns out that it's a it's a way to basically
Speaker 1: get something out there, but you do want to eventually
Speaker 1: get all the data, which is one hundred thousand plus
Speaker 1: pages of data to the FDA for a full review.
Speaker 1: It's called a Biologic Licensing Application BLA. That was done
Speaker 1: for Pfizer, now done for Maderna, likely will be done
Speaker 1: for other vaccines. But also that final approval isn't for
Speaker 1: like all ages for example, I mean there's separate amendments
Speaker 1: have to go in. So currently there's a lot of controversy,
Speaker 1: which is quite understandable regarding this age less than age
Speaker 1: five for the Fisier vaccine. But you know the original
Speaker 1: was age eighteen plus that got an EUA that now
Speaker 1: has a final approval. But you know, we've already seen
Speaker 1: how euas can go off the track. So hydroxychloroicline had
Speaker 1: to be withdrawn, convalesce in plasma had to be withdrawn.
Speaker 1: So it's not just about vaccines. I mean there's been drugs,
Speaker 1: there's been lots of rapid tests and PCR tests. It
Speaker 1: had to be withdrawn. So euas are in a kind
Speaker 1: of tentative status. So I think it'd be really helpful
Speaker 1: for you to explain to our listeners a little bit why,
Speaker 1: as you say, this will go down in history as
Speaker 1: one of science and medical researcher's greatest achievements, perhaps the
Speaker 1: most impressive. I don't know if people really fully have
Speaker 1: the scope of why this is such an amazing scientific achievement,
Speaker 1: having vaccines at the rapid speed it has all right, Scott, Well,
Speaker 1: here I guess reference is that it's taken about ten
Speaker 1: years on average from identification of a pathogen to a
Speaker 1: successful vaccine. But there are many pathogens where we never
Speaker 1: had a successful vaccine, like HIV and malaria and a
Speaker 1: long list. Okay, So the fact that we not only
Speaker 1: shortened the ten years to less than one year from
Speaker 1: the identification of SARS CoV two and it was successful
Speaker 1: with anninety five percent reduction of symptomatic infections is unbelievable
Speaker 1: and replicated to two different vaccines. So it wasn't just
Speaker 1: the hyper compression of time or acceleration. It was also
Speaker 1: the super efficacy at least to start with. Of course,
Speaker 1: that change over time and with variance, so that is
Speaker 1: a momentous finding. It obviously builds on about three decades
Speaker 1: of Mr and a efforts that required amazing amount of perseverance,
Speaker 1: so it wasn't just a flash in the pan sort
Speaker 1: of thing. And you know, obviously was facilitated by the
Speaker 1: sequencing of the virus that helped to build a template
Speaker 1: and all sorts of major science steps and large clinical
Speaker 1: trials that made this possible. So it's the culmination of
Speaker 1: a huge amount of basic science, clinical science and trials,
Speaker 1: and I think it's extraordinary. And not only that, but
Speaker 1: these same vaccines that were against the original ancestral strain
Speaker 1: have held up now two years plus into the pandemic,
Speaker 1: with a third dose given to a very different strain omicron.
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Speaker 1: to the show. Yeah, you say, what if there was
Speaker 1: a way to prevent ninety nine percent of COVID deaths
Speaker 1: and ninety six percent hospitalizations, safety was validated and billions
Speaker 1: of people it was free and there was an unlimited
Speaker 1: apply right, So fair enough, Yeah, fair enough if we
Speaker 1: all used them, if we all took the vaccines and boosters,
Speaker 1: you know, this pandemic would be not very concerning at all.
Speaker 1: But obviously today we will hit nine hundred thousand confirmed deaths.
Speaker 1: We have a lot more of actual excess mortality, and
Speaker 1: you know, an immense amount of morbidity, which was much
Speaker 1: of it unnecessary, especially after the vaccines rolled out. Do
Speaker 1: you see any legitimate concerns coming from some of the
Speaker 1: anti vaxxers like, do you ever hear anything where you're like,
Speaker 1: you know what, that's fair if we don't have the
Speaker 1: full data yet, and so maybe we should keep an
Speaker 1: open mind about X, Y and Z or anything in
Speaker 1: particular you could think of at the top of your head. Well,
Speaker 1: I don't have a Well let's put it this way.
Speaker 1: After you've given over ten billion doses, for there to
Speaker 1: be claims about safety concerned or lack of efficacy, it
Speaker 1: doesn't work. I mean, these are all completely bogus, all right.
Speaker 1: I do share the anti vaccers typically are very strong
Speaker 1: proponents of infection acquired immunity, the buzz term natural community,
Speaker 1: and I actually see that that provides a very important
Speaker 1: type of immunity which is complementary to vaccines. And I've
Speaker 1: argued strongly with the CDC that people who have had
Speaker 1: a confirmed infection should be recognized as having some immunity
Speaker 1: at least equivalent to one dose of vaccine, and that
Speaker 1: would have reduced the polarization between these groups, because you
Speaker 1: can understand if you've gone through COVID, you don't feel
Speaker 1: that you should be mandated to be getting two shots
Speaker 1: of a vaccine, right, So this is why I think
Speaker 1: this lack of recognition of a large body of data
Speaker 1: about prior COVID natural immunity. It's to me, it's sickening
Speaker 1: because basically it not only is ignoring the science, but
Speaker 1: it's also making the divide even more intense than it
Speaker 1: needs to be. That's really unfortunate. I mean, there's concerns
Speaker 1: about various side effects that may come obviously the myocarditis controversy,
Speaker 1: and I've been looking into that, and if I just
Speaker 1: do my usual Google scholar search, I don't find many
Speaker 1: papers that argue that at risk is greater with the
Speaker 1: vaccine than if you get COVID itself. There's some you know,
Speaker 1: if you hone in or you double click on very
Speaker 1: specific age groups among males, and maybe the second shot
Speaker 1: is a higher risk than with the booster. Can you
Speaker 1: kind of set the records here and where's the data
Speaker 1: on that right now? Because to me, even to me
Speaker 1: as a scientist, reading all these kinds of papers and
Speaker 1: reading the debates, it's still a bit confusing. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: it's been used, unfortunately as against the safety of vaccines,
Speaker 1: when I don't think that's true. It's unfortunate that in
Speaker 1: the teen group not so much in the group under
Speaker 1: age twelve, but in the teen group of twelve to
Speaker 1: seventeen and in young adults, mostly males. Across these ages,
Speaker 1: that is, between eighteen and thirty odd there is an
Speaker 1: increased risk of vaccine induced microditis with mRNA vaccines. It's
Speaker 1: more with Maderna than Pheiser, because the Maderna dose is
Speaker 1: much higher than that of Peiser. It's almost a doubling there.
Speaker 1: It's extremely rare though, and most of the cases are
Speaker 1: self limited. However, the point that you're getting at Scott
Speaker 1: is that the covid induced microdatis is much higher incidents.
Speaker 1: It's still low, but it's much high instance in the vaccines,
Speaker 1: so there is a risk there. It's million million the
Speaker 1: second dose. It's mainly in males. It's barely shown up
Speaker 1: in the younger than age twelve, that is, in five
Speaker 1: to twelve. There's been twelve documented cases. All of them
Speaker 1: were self limited. They did, they recovered, and that's among
Speaker 1: nine million doses administered to age five to twelve. Now
Speaker 1: that's Fizer. There hasn't been a Maderna in the five
Speaker 1: to twelve age group, so I understand there's a there's
Speaker 1: a I mean I'm a cardiologist. I have deep respect
Speaker 1: for microditis. I can tell you so the covid microditis
Speaker 1: is more common from the infection. It's also more severe
Speaker 1: and worrisome. We don't understand the mechanism of the myacrititis
Speaker 1: from the vaccine, from mRNA vaccines. They don't occur with
Speaker 1: other vaccines. It's troubling when you don't understand how it occurs. Okay,
Speaker 1: I don't like that. I like to know why it occurs, right,
Speaker 1: But I would not at all hold back on using
Speaker 1: the vaccines in the teens because of this low risk,
Speaker 1: very very low risk side effect. So that's kind of
Speaker 1: where i'd sum up the data at this point. Thank you.
Speaker 1: I appreciate you being so reasonable, doctor Tobel. It seems
Speaker 1: to me and I just wanted to get your take
Speaker 1: on it, that there are some topics that are a
Speaker 1: taboo to even discussed. It seems taboo to discuss the
Speaker 1: risks of over vaccinating young people. Seems like just a
Speaker 1: taboo topic in general, just even talking about it. I
Speaker 1: did find a very interesting perspective from doctor Paul Alfitt,
Speaker 1: who said that he did not personally feel young people
Speaker 1: benefited from boosters, that he advised his own son against
Speaker 1: getting a booster, and I respect doctor O fitz credentials
Speaker 1: and his background. I just wanted to just have a
Speaker 1: reasonable conversation your thoughts about that. Do you think it's
Speaker 1: reasonable to even discuss and look at different sources of
Speaker 1: data to allow people to make the decision. Why not
Speaker 1: they want to vaccinate, especially within certain age growth? Well,
Speaker 1: I mean, I know Paul offered very well, we're friends.
Speaker 1: I've interviewed him multiple times. I've been very surprised about
Speaker 1: his views about adults getting boosters, because I think the
Speaker 1: data there is absolutely unequivocal for reduction of hospitalizations the
Speaker 1: teens and younger children. I mean, there's obviously some divide there.
Speaker 1: It's harder to argue with the children, and because of
Speaker 1: their risk being low. However, remember it's not just vaccinating
Speaker 1: for prevention of death or hospitalization, which the rates are low.
Speaker 1: It's also vaccinating because we know vaccines are reducing long COVID,
Speaker 1: which does occur in children. We also know that with children,
Speaker 1: we want to avoid secondary attacks to their parents and
Speaker 1: their network and their grandparents, and also we want to
Speaker 1: keep schools open. Obviously, we missed out on that almost
Speaker 1: the first year of the pandemic. We should don't want
Speaker 1: to keep seeing that happen. So there are good reasons
Speaker 1: because of the safety to use vaccines in children and teens.
Speaker 1: In my view, many good reasons, and there are the rare,
Speaker 1: very very sick kids across these different age groups. Paul
Speaker 1: Offitt has been against boosters from the get go, all
Speaker 1: boosters of all against all ages. And I have to
Speaker 1: say that among the various vaccinologists and experts, he and
Speaker 1: a few others stand alone. They are not Their views
Speaker 1: are not shared by the majority of experts in the field.
Speaker 1: I mean, you're obviously open to even discussing it and
Speaker 1: open to new day that may come out. Do you
Speaker 1: think it's possible that data could come out someday that
Speaker 1: shows that it's probably not necessary to boost use the
Speaker 1: booster for certain age groups. Oh, we were just talking
Speaker 1: about vaccination in young age groups. As far as the
Speaker 1: booster right now, the data that we have is eighteen plus.
Speaker 1: I'm not talking about boosters of children, No, no, or teens.
Speaker 1: You could argue the teen story with boosters if you
Speaker 1: want to maintain that high level of efficacy because of
Speaker 1: the weaning issue, yes, but I'm not arguing here that
Speaker 1: boosters need to be given to less than age sixteen
Speaker 1: because we don't have data in that regard. Wonderful, Thank you, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I was really I was worrying about that ivermactin. Okay,
Speaker 1: I've remactin. So what confuses me about it? Because I'm
Speaker 1: I'm trying to read all the studies and get to
Speaker 1: the truth. I do see that this meta analysis that
Speaker 1: came out that people like Bret Weinstein we're talking about
Speaker 1: and using that as data, I see a lot of
Speaker 1: problems them in analysis, small sample sizes, et cetera. What
Speaker 1: I'm trying to say and is when I read Andrew
Speaker 1: Bryan at All's response to that, they said that even
Speaker 1: if they exclude this particular study by Algazar, there's still
Speaker 1: a queer result showing that forty nine percent mortality in
Speaker 1: favor of ivermectin and eighty seven percent reduction COVID nineteen
Speaker 1: infection in favor of iromectin. That can you kind of
Speaker 1: set the record straight from that or kind of clarify
Speaker 1: what the best available data you've seen says, because even
Speaker 1: from a scientific paper approach, it's a little bit confusing
Speaker 1: to get to the truth. Yeah, I mean I reviewed
Speaker 1: all the data at the time with Sam Harris on
Speaker 1: his podcast. I love that episode, by the way. Yeah, yeah, thanks.
Speaker 1: And you know, I think the important thing here is,
Speaker 1: as I pointed out then and I stay with it now,
Speaker 1: is there may be a signal of ivermecin having some efficacy. However,
Speaker 1: we can't be sure because there hasn't been any good
Speaker 1: trial large enough with the same dose, and also you
Speaker 1: want to ideally see it replicated to prove it. So
Speaker 1: that's why what we have is we've had two studies
Speaker 1: that had to be retracted because of fraud, and those
Speaker 1: were the largest studies, and we're left with this hodgepodge
Speaker 1: of many different small trials and another one just came
Speaker 1: out and preprint this week where it's not significant on
Speaker 1: its own, and just you know, lumping them together, you
Speaker 1: stitch something with different doses and different indications, and it's
Speaker 1: basically you can't conclude anything from that, right. So I
Speaker 1: would love to see, you know, large trials with ivermectin
Speaker 1: versus placebo, with a fixed dose or testing multiple doses
Speaker 1: for the different indications, that is, as a treatment or
Speaker 1: as a prevention, but for people to go ahead and
Speaker 1: assert that it would cure the pandemic, it would end
Speaker 1: the pandemic, and that in ninety nine percent of cases
Speaker 1: would be prevented by ivermectin and do emergency podcasts on
Speaker 1: Joe Rogan for example. That's where you cross the line. So,
Speaker 1: you know, I think until there's proof, like there's proof
Speaker 1: for paxelovid right and other treatments that are done properly,
Speaker 1: then you can't be you know, hyperbolic and make these
Speaker 1: ridiculous claims. And so that's the unfortunate part. I have
Speaker 1: never used the word horse pills or any of this
Speaker 1: demeaning stuff because I think there's potential for ivermectin. It's
Speaker 1: not over yet, but just get the darn data before
Speaker 1: you broadcast about how it will pure and end the pandemic.
Speaker 1: You're seeing that all over the place. You're seeing people
Speaker 1: running with the slightest of data that that fits what
Speaker 1: some people seems like what they want to be true.
Speaker 1: What's your take, Yeah, there's various reasons for this ivermectin.
Speaker 1: We saw with hydroxychloroicline too, right, and yeah, we did
Speaker 1: you know everybody who everybody wants kind of a cure
Speaker 1: and a miracle and something that's very easily attainable, that's
Speaker 1: inexpensive and you know, mass produced. Sure, we all want that.
Speaker 1: And it's in some ways it's predatory because if you
Speaker 1: say it does that and you don't have the data,
Speaker 1: and you know it's widely available, whether it's through veterinarians
Speaker 1: or whatever the way you get it, it creates trouble
Speaker 1: because you give people false hopes and it's really unfortunate,
Speaker 1: and we don't want that to happen because a pandemic
Speaker 1: obviously a lot of people are subject to They're worried
Speaker 1: and they've seen friends or relative either succumb or get
Speaker 1: very sick, and so they don't want that to happen.
Speaker 1: And they'll listen to anything that you know, has potential believability.
Speaker 1: But believability is one thing. The data and the proof
Speaker 1: is another. You know, you raised some really good points here.
Speaker 1: I mean, we're living through such a time of uncertainty
Speaker 1: and it's almost like the scientific method itself is coming
Speaker 1: under attack because people really just don't have patience for it.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, as a graduate student, you spend
Speaker 1: five years sometimes trying to figure out the most minute
Speaker 1: of something, and you know you're trained as a scholar
Speaker 1: to have that sort of patience, but you know, now,
Speaker 1: you know, we're we're living through times for such personal
Speaker 1: decisions we have to make and we want to know
Speaker 1: what do we do? What do we do? So it's
Speaker 1: it's difficult. It's difficult for scientists to watch the scientific
Speaker 1: method and the institute scientific constitutions be under such strong attack,
Speaker 1: and I'm sure it's very hard for you to see
Speaker 1: it too. Absolutely, So, okay, was the pandemic planned? Doctor
Speaker 1: Peter McCulloch says, early treatments were suppressed, quote, in order
Speaker 1: to promote fear, suffering, isolation, hospitalization, and death. What's the
Speaker 1: latest data evidence you've seen on that for against that? Well,
Speaker 1: I couldn't disagree more fervently from that statement. As far
Speaker 1: as the plan, I mean, it's pretty obvious that we
Speaker 1: need to achieve containment. We've never gotten there, and that
Speaker 1: hopefully we're starting to decline with the current surge that's
Speaker 1: kind of a combined second delta and omicron serge. And
Speaker 1: and you know, we still have over one hundred and
Speaker 1: twenty thousand people in the hospital with COVID and we
Speaker 1: have currently twenty six hundred plus deaths a day, and
Speaker 1: we're over eighty percent of the desks that we had
Speaker 1: before vaccination in January of twenty twenty one. So our
Speaker 1: country isn't doing well. And in order for us to
Speaker 1: get our house in order, we need to get all
Speaker 1: of you know, all things going. That is, we need
Speaker 1: to have rapid tests widely available, we need to use
Speaker 1: when we have indoor gatherings, use the appropriate mass. A
Speaker 1: new CDC a Morbidity and Mortality report was out today
Speaker 1: about the efficacy of high grade mass like CAN ninety
Speaker 1: fives and ninety fives with some eighty percent reduction of infections,
Speaker 1: so for indoor gatherings with air filtration, ventilation, those sorts
Speaker 1: of things, until we get this containment level, which hopefully
Speaker 1: we also will see high quantities of packs of it
Speaker 1: available so that people who do get COVID will be
Speaker 1: able to get pills a five day pack that they
Speaker 1: can basically suppress the chance of progression and get ninety
Speaker 1: percent reduction of their viral load very quickly through pills
Speaker 1: that are much easier to take than infusions. And you know,
Speaker 1: eventually we're going to be in really good shape. But
Speaker 1: we are going to have COVID around for years to come.
Speaker 1: But it's really been our amunmate response. We've done very
Speaker 1: poor with vaccinations in this country. There's been a fears
Speaker 1: in I vaccine, ANI science, ANI mask and growing momentum
Speaker 1: movement against the progress that we could have made. And
Speaker 1: that's why we're so far behind many other countries around
Speaker 1: the world that have basically gotten omicron under wraps, and
Speaker 1: they're going to be in much better shape. We're at
Speaker 1: sixty three percent vaccination. There are countries that are eighty
Speaker 1: five ninety percent of their population vaccinate. We're at twenty
Speaker 1: five percent boosters. There are countries that are sixty five
Speaker 1: percent plus boosted. And we've left a lot of our
Speaker 1: elderly unprotected. So our future depends on our ability to execute.
Speaker 1: And you know, we are missing on many different fronts.
Speaker 1: And we also have lack of data capture and processing
Speaker 1: by our CDC, poor communication. You know, that's where I
Speaker 1: would describe that improvement has to be made so that
Speaker 1: we can get as quickly as possible to get the
Speaker 1: containment that all of us want. Yeah, for sure, it
Speaker 1: just seems like so much of it is actually psychological.
Speaker 1: I mean, I wonder if are there more conspiracy theories
Speaker 1: or less trust of the scientific findings in America than
Speaker 1: there are in the countries that have higher rates a vaccination,
Speaker 1: How much of it is psychological? How much can I,
Speaker 1: as a psychologist help out here? Well? I wrote an
Speaker 1: editorial in Science magazine a couple of weeks ago about
Speaker 1: that we need unity and message that we've had infighting
Speaker 1: among our public health agencies. That's the last thing you
Speaker 1: want in a pandemic, right, So, on the one hand,
Speaker 1: you don't want conspiracy conspiracy theories. On the other hand,
Speaker 1: you don't want the public health agencies with different takes
Speaker 1: on everything. And the other thing we need is we
Speaker 1: are missing leadership at the at the HHS, which oversees
Speaker 1: f DA, NIH and CDC, and that Secretary Javier Besserra
Speaker 1: needs to show up and show leadership, make the data
Speaker 1: become available widely quickly, and also get rid of the infighting.
Speaker 1: So these are, you know, these are It's not I
Speaker 1: don't know if you want to call it psychology, but
Speaker 1: these are you know, the absence of leadership human yes,
Speaker 1: human issues, human issues exactly, human issues and human behavior
Speaker 1: have been holding us back. And I hope eventually we can,
Speaker 1: you know, get on a much better try. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: sounds like we're on our own worst enemy in a
Speaker 1: lot of ways. Look, I appreciate your time today. I
Speaker 1: want to put this out and kind of set the
Speaker 1: record straight and somewhere of the data is on that.
Speaker 1: Do you have any sort of last words of dare
Speaker 1: I say hope for this pandemic? Well, I'm very optimistic,
Speaker 1: and I do think we are going to be in
Speaker 1: good shape and hopefully a stable position eventually. I hope
Speaker 1: that over the course of the weeks and months ahead,
Speaker 1: you know, things are going to look much better than
Speaker 1: they have in recent times. I do think, and I've
Speaker 1: written about and worked on with others, the idea, the
Speaker 1: concept of pushing towards a pan coronavirus vaccine which would
Speaker 1: protect us from all variants in the future, that I
Speaker 1: think is something that's really worthy and hopefully that's going
Speaker 1: to get traction. But otherwise, you know, we need to
Speaker 1: do much better preparations so that when someday there's another
Speaker 1: pandemic we don't have such poor response that we're ahead
Speaker 1: of it, and in fact, we need to invest in
Speaker 1: that preparation. Is a really good review paper today in
Speaker 1: Science Advances that takes us through how the cost of
Speaker 1: doing that is around one twentieth of the cost of
Speaker 1: a pandemic. And so we need to put in resources
Speaker 1: so that we're prepared for the long haul because we
Speaker 1: haven't yet in recent decades gotten behind the public health
Speaker 1: importance in this country to prevent what's happened with COVID nineteen. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and there's a lot of people who just have a
Speaker 1: lot of misconceptions about what exactly this vaccine mRNA vaccine
Speaker 1: actually does. Some people think it's gene therapy, you know,
Speaker 1: can you quen make it very clear it does not
Speaker 1: actually change the genetic structure, you know, that's not how
Speaker 1: this vaccine works. Yeah, I mean, this is preposterous. This
Speaker 1: has been put out by Robert Malone and others. It's
Speaker 1: completely fraudulent. There is no change of the genetic of
Speaker 1: a human being from an mr and a nanoparticle package
Speaker 1: that goes in as a vaccine. So this is this
Speaker 1: is the kind of stuff that's really helped us back
Speaker 1: and we can't can't tolerate. Well. I really appreciate your
Speaker 1: time today and keep keep it up, keep up the
Speaker 1: good public science communication and the research. Thank you thanks
Speaker 1: for listening to this episode of The Psychology Podcast. If
Speaker 1: you'd like to react in some way to something you heard,
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