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Speaker 1: Cool Media.

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Speaker 2: Hey everybody, Robert Evans here and I wanted to let

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Speaker 2: you know this is a compilation episode. So every episode

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Speaker 2: of the week that just happened is here in one

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Speaker 2: convenient and with somewhat less ads package for you to

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Speaker 2: listen to in a long stretch if you want. If

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Speaker 2: you've been listening to the episodes every day this week,

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Speaker 2: there's going to be nothing new here for you, but

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Speaker 2: you can make your own decisions.

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Speaker 3: I'm Stephen Monchelli.

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Speaker 4: I'm a journalist in Dallas and an occasional Cool Zone

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Speaker 4: Media contributor. You may have seen in the news lately

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Speaker 4: that there's a major measles outbreak centered in Texas. It

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Speaker 4: started back in January of this year in the West

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Speaker 4: Texas County of Gaines, and it has since spread to

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Speaker 4: at least two other states. As of this recording, Texas

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Speaker 4: has reported over seven hundred cases associated with the measles outbreak.

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Speaker 4: New Mexico has reported over sixty, Oklahoma has reported over fifteen,

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Speaker 4: and there are other states that have also reported measles

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Speaker 4: cases that may or may not be linked to this outbreak.

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Speaker 4: It's the first major measles outbreak in a decade, and

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Speaker 4: it's already taken three lives, two unvaccinated children, the first

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Speaker 4: of such deaths in more than twenty years, and one adult.

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Speaker 3: All were unvaccinated.

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Speaker 4: At the root of the outbreak are low vaccination rates,

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Speaker 4: which took a sharp downturn after the twenty twenty COVID

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Speaker 4: nineteen pandemic as dubious vaccine skepticism and opposition to vaccines,

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Speaker 4: both mandatory and in general, became a.

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Speaker 3: Partisan political issue.

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Speaker 4: It is no coincidence that the low vaccination rate in

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Speaker 4: Gaines County, where the outbreak first began, corresponds with deep

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Speaker 4: red Republican politics. Measles is a sort of canary in

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Speaker 4: the coal mine. It's one of the most highly communicable

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Speaker 4: diseases and consequently is among the first to appear in

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Speaker 4: communities with low vaccination rates. An outbreak in Wiffornio about

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Speaker 4: a decade ago was eventually stemmed when the state legislature

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Speaker 4: banned vaccine exemptions for school aged children. This action spurred

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Speaker 4: response and gave a shot in the arm to a

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Speaker 4: nascent coalition of vaccine skeptics and outright anti vaccination groups

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Speaker 4: that had previously struggled to get political traction. By twenty twenty,

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Speaker 4: such groups had gained meaningful amounts of influence in red

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Speaker 4: states like Texas and Oklahoma. Then came COVID nineteen, and

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Speaker 4: suddenly a disparate set of groups big pharma skeptics, wellness influencers,

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Speaker 4: health freedom libertarians, and conservative religious groups, to name a few,

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Speaker 4: coalesced in a formidable political force under the banner of

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Speaker 4: the Republican Party, whose politicization of the COVID nineteen pandemics

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Speaker 4: served as a sort of ideological cement to unite them.

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Speaker 4: The logical conclusion of this development is represented in the

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Speaker 4: avatar of RFK Junior, a long time vaccine misinformation peddler

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Speaker 4: who now sits atop the highest federal government health bureaucracy,

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Speaker 4: a perch from which he continues to spread debunked anti

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Speaker 4: vaccination tropes like a proverbial fox.

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Speaker 3: In the henhouse.

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Speaker 4: RFK Junior has repeatedly downplayed the importance of vaccines in

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Speaker 4: the battle against measles, and has refused to distance himself

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Speaker 4: from long debunked anti vaccination arguments such as that vaccines

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Speaker 4: cause autism. His influence and the influence of the vaccine

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Speaker 4: skeptic movement, of which he is a central figure, can

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Speaker 4: be seen in responses from local West Texans who have

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Speaker 4: opted for junk palliatives like vitamin A or measles exposure

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Speaker 4: parties over vaccination. The viral spread of anti vax ideology

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Speaker 4: threatens to pitch us back one hundred years in time,

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Speaker 4: when thousands of children and adults either died or disabled

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Speaker 4: every year from diseases like measles, polio, and smallpox. Research

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Speaker 4: into the side effects of vaccines has repeatedly shown that

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Speaker 4: the risks associated with vaccination are far lower than the

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Speaker 4: risks of an infection, particularly for vulnerable populations like young children,

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Speaker 4: the elderly, and people with suppressed immune systems. Some people

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Speaker 4: genuinely cannot get vaccines, such as certain new board babies,

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Speaker 4: and thus are at higher risk should an outbreak of

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Speaker 4: a deadly disease occur. When ninety five percent of a

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Speaker 4: population is vaccinated in an area, diseases can be entirely

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Speaker 4: removed from circulation, and that's indeed what happened to smallpox

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Speaker 4: and for a time measles. But the downward trend in

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Speaker 4: vaccination rates, supercharged by the marriage of right wing politics

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Speaker 4: with anti vaccination beliefs of all stripes, means that our

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Speaker 4: collective immunity is at risk. This week, I will be

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Speaker 4: your host on It Could Happen Here, as I take

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Speaker 4: you through a five episode mini series called Anti vax America,

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Speaker 4: three interviews with public health officials, vaccine scientists, medical professionals,

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Speaker 4: and historians. I will explore the ongoing measles outbreak and

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Speaker 4: how it serves as a microcosm for where we are,

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Speaker 4: how we got here, and where we could go if

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Speaker 4: anti vaxx beliefs continue to become mainstream in the United States.

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Speaker 4: In the first episode, I will cover the origin of

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Speaker 4: the measles outbreak in Texas, its deadly consequences, the varying

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Speaker 4: responses from public health officials at different levels of government,

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Speaker 4: and the consequence of misinformation being spread at the national

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Speaker 4: and local level. In the second episode, I will unearth

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Speaker 4: the deep roots of anti vaccination belief in the United States,

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Speaker 4: how it's changed over time, and why it's basically become

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Speaker 4: synonymous with right wing politics in our current day. In

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Speaker 4: the third episode, I will explore the overlap between anti

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Speaker 4: vaxx beliefs and the belief in supernatural healing and miracles

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Speaker 4: that is common among a particular movement of conservative Christianity

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Speaker 4: that has tied itself closely to President Donald Trump. In

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Speaker 4: the fourth episode, I will untangle the twisted history of

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Speaker 4: eugenics and how it's influenced public health and vaccination attitudes,

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Speaker 4: as well as the historical echo of eugenics that can

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Speaker 4: be found in RFK Junior Make America Healthy Again agenda.

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Speaker 4: And in the last episode, I'll consider what could happen

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Speaker 4: in the United States What could happen here if vaccination

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Speaker 4: rates continue to plummet and vaccine skeptics like RFK Junior

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Speaker 4: continue to dictate public health policy. But before we get there,

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Speaker 4: a quick ad break. Gaines County, the epicenter of the

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Speaker 4: West Texas outbreak, is a largely rural place home to

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Speaker 4: oil field workers, farmers, ranchers, and several Mennonite communities. Politically,

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Speaker 4: it's very conservative. It sits on the Texas New Mexico border,

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Speaker 4: about three hundred and sixty miles west of Dallas, where

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Speaker 4: I live. The largest city in the region, Lubbock, is

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Speaker 4: two counties over. Lubbock is home to two hundred and

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Speaker 4: sixty thousand plus people and has the largest hospitals in

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Speaker 4: the area.

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Speaker 3: It was at one of those hospitals.

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Speaker 4: That the first child died of measles in over two decades.

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Speaker 4: As the number of cases in the region began to increase,

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Speaker 4: Lubbock became a central hub for both treatment and the

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Speaker 4: dissemination of public health information. Weeks before RFK Junior or

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Speaker 4: Texas Governor Abbott spoke on the issue, local public health

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Speaker 4: officials and medical institutions were on the front lines in Lubbock.

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Speaker 5: So my name is Catherine Wells, and I am the

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Speaker 5: director for Lubbock Public Health and Lubbock Public Health is

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Speaker 5: the city and county health department in both the city

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Speaker 5: and County of Lubbock, Texas. I've been in this role

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Speaker 5: for about ten years now. We're about seventy five miles

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Speaker 5: from Gaines County, which is where kind of the epicenter

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Speaker 5: of this measles outbreak is.

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Speaker 4: Let's maybe go back all the way to the day

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Speaker 4: that you know it sort of began. The first case

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Speaker 4: came out in January. So can you take us a

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Speaker 4: little back to that day and what was going on

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Speaker 4: in your world and you know, what were you doing,

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Speaker 4: and how did you hear about this first case and

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Speaker 4: what your reaction was.

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Speaker 5: And we'll actually need to take a couple of days

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Speaker 5: kind of before the announcement. I first found out about

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Speaker 5: the possibility of measles that Friday, the twenty eighth. I

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Speaker 5: have all my dates messed up, but it's that Friday,

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Speaker 5: before the first case was announced, one of my staff

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Speaker 5: came and told me that we had two children that

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Speaker 5: had been admitted to our local hospital. So we have

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Speaker 5: the children's hospital for this whole region. People come, you know,

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Speaker 5: over two hundred miles to come to the children's hospital

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Speaker 5: in Luppock. And she mentioned that there was two children.

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Speaker 5: The physician thought it might be measles that they were

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Speaker 5: going to send for test. So in public health, measles

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Speaker 5: is so rare that even sending somebody for testing is

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Speaker 5: required to be reported to public health. That physician thought

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Speaker 5: it was measles. We kind of waited over the weekend,

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Speaker 5: and then that Monday and Tuesday, I started hearing some

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Speaker 5: rumors that there were multiple measles cases down on the

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Speaker 5: ground in Gaines County, which was interesting. People were calling

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Speaker 5: and saying, you know, I heard this rumor have you

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Speaker 5: heard this? And I'm like nope. And then all of

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Speaker 5: a sudden, those two cases or those two cases both

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Speaker 5: tested positive and then when we went and started talking

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Speaker 5: to the families and learning more, we realized that those

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Speaker 5: rumors about measles circulating and Gaines County was true, and

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Speaker 5: there were reports of you know, multiple individuals that had

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Speaker 5: been sick and measles had probably been there or at

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Speaker 5: least a little bit of time. And then when we

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Speaker 5: got the confirmed cases, that really just put everything into

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Speaker 5: really you know, moving very quickly trying to really figure

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Speaker 5: out what was going on for measles.

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Speaker 4: So at that time, it was it was flu season,

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Speaker 4: and so were you all was your office preparing, you know,

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Speaker 4: or working on anything else at that time when you

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Speaker 4: had first heard about this first testing and you know,

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Speaker 4: started hearing about these rumors.

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Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean, we had increases in flu, we had

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Speaker 5: increases in COVID. We actually had some birds that had

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Speaker 5: died that had tested positive with the new Avian flu.

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Speaker 5: You know, just that's a busy time of the year

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Speaker 5: for public health with lots of different reports coming in,

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Speaker 5: lots of multiple reports of pertussis, and it's not unusual

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Speaker 5: that we have a physician wanting to test for measles

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Speaker 5: ruling out. I mean, it happens a couple of times

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Speaker 5: a year. But in my entire career, every time that happened,

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Speaker 5: it had always been negative.

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Speaker 6: So I was.

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Speaker 5: Kind of thinking that it was one of those cases,

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Speaker 5: especially that Friday afternoon, like, oh, this is just a doctor,

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Speaker 5: you know, you know, just wanting to rule something out.

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Speaker 5: You know, it's probably blue or something else going on

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Speaker 5: with those children.

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Speaker 4: And so when you had gotten that confirmation it was

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Speaker 4: verified that those cases had indeed been measles. I mean,

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Speaker 4: what was going through your mind at that time?

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Speaker 5: I mean that was like, you know, people have always

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Speaker 5: talked about we're kind of on the edge of seeing

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Speaker 5: more measles outbreaks in the United States, and it was

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Speaker 5: really kind of a no, no, a crap moment of Wow,

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Speaker 5: this is in our backyard. Is our department you know,

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Speaker 5: ready to take this on? And then also reaching out

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Speaker 5: to Gaines County, which has a much smaller health department,

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Speaker 5: and being like, what can we help you with? Do

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Speaker 5: you guys know what you need next? You know, they

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Speaker 5: don't have a communications person, so it was like my

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Speaker 5: staff writing the press release for Gaines County to send

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Speaker 5: out to make the notifications about the first measles cases.

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Speaker 5: So it was just really what can we do to

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Speaker 5: help them immediately and figure out what the next steps

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Speaker 5: would be with that.

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Speaker 4: So since January, cases have been on the rise, and

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Speaker 4: so we're in a different place now than just two cases.

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Speaker 3: Can you just tell us a little.

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Speaker 4: Bit about where things are now in Lubbock and how

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Speaker 4: medical authorities have responded to the outbreak.

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Speaker 5: So initially, you know, all of the cases were in

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Speaker 5: Gaines County. The only exposures we were seeing outside of

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Speaker 5: Gaines County was when somebody was seeking medical care and

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Speaker 5: was sitting in like say, a waiting room at a

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Speaker 5: physician's office, and then they were exposing other individuals. But

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Speaker 5: after a couple of weeks, we started seeing spread outside

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Speaker 5: of Gaines County, So we were seeing more and more

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Speaker 5: cases in those surrounding counties, and then we started getting

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Speaker 5: cases in Lubbock, that's seventy five miles away. Over the

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Speaker 5: last three weeks, really seen the cases in the Lubbock increase.

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Speaker 5: You know, we originally just had a handful. Now we're

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Speaker 5: up to forty one or forty two, and that number

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Speaker 5: will be updated again tomorrow. So just seeing more and

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Speaker 5: more spread of measles, and the concern is that public

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Speaker 5: health can't necessarily trace those back to a specific case.

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Speaker 5: So people that have got out to the store or

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Speaker 5: gone to a public place have now contracted measles.

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Speaker 4: So tell me a little bit more about you know,

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Speaker 4: what efforts have taken place and what sort of initiatives

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Speaker 4: have been put into place as measles have spread. You know,

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Speaker 4: what does that look like from love at Public Health

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Speaker 4: or any of your partners.

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Speaker 5: Yeah, so ours is really the first one was getting

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Speaker 5: testing set up. Originally when this started, all of our

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Speaker 5: testing samples had to go to Austin, which is about

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Speaker 5: a five and a half hour drive, So working with

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Speaker 5: the state Health Department to get testing capability up here

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Speaker 5: in Lubbock so we could quickly identify people. The next

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Speaker 5: one is really about education, providing information to the physician's

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Speaker 5: offices the hospitals about measles because we hadn't seen it

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Speaker 5: in twenty one years here. So just think about how

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Speaker 5: many physicians have been trained over the last twenty one

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Speaker 5: years that never saw a measles case in their residency.

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Speaker 5: So getting them to feel comfortable about what the signs

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Speaker 5: and symptoms are and really making sure that we were

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Speaker 5: notifying or that they were notifying Public Health and getting

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Speaker 5: people tested and then doing that contact tracing, and then

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Speaker 5: the other big ones vaccinations. You know, there's two ways

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Speaker 5: to prevent measles. One is the vaccination that's going to

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Speaker 5: protect you, and then the other one is avoiding being

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Speaker 5: exposed to measles. So really getting more and more people

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Speaker 5: vaccinated with pop up clinics and then running a measles

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Speaker 5: vaccination clinic here at our health department.

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Speaker 4: Can you tell me a little bit about what the

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Speaker 4: response in particular too, You know, the vaccination clinics being

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Speaker 4: set up has been. You know, I have a lot

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Speaker 4: of people shown up for that. Has it drawn a

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Speaker 4: lot of you know, new people that are trying to

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Speaker 4: get their children vaccinated.

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Speaker 5: It's a mix. I feel that our vaccination clinic here

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Speaker 5: at our Health department's been pretty successful in that we're

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Speaker 5: getting people every day coming in to get vaccinated, and

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Speaker 5: we're seeing people that were hesitant prior, that had chosen

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Speaker 5: not to vaccinate their children kind of with the idea, well,

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Speaker 5: I've never seen measles or moms or rebella, so why

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Speaker 5: give my child a vaccine if that doesn't exist. Now

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Speaker 5: that measles are circulating in the community, they're changing, you know,

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Speaker 5: that thought process and are coming forward to get vaccinated.

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Speaker 5: Some of the rural clinics have been a lot harder

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Speaker 5: to get people to come in. I mean they've stood

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Speaker 5: up clinics and only a handful of people have come

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Speaker 5: in to that clinic that day. So real mixed response.

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Speaker 5: But I think is public health, it's important for us

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Speaker 5: to be offering the MMR vaccine with as few barriers

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Speaker 5: as possible.

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Speaker 4: So you were in this position during the COVID pandemic

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Speaker 4: and when that began and all throughout it, So can

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Speaker 4: you tell me a little bit what it was like

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Speaker 4: working in your role as a public health official at

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Speaker 4: that time, and then also maybe whether things are any

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Speaker 4: different today, has anything changed?

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Speaker 5: I mean, I think our community did fairly well throughout COVID,

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Speaker 5: given you know, everything that went on. I've always believed

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Speaker 5: in just being honest and talking about what I do know,

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Speaker 5: what I don't know, what the science is showing, and

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Speaker 5: I think that helped our community get vaccinated and take

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Speaker 5: some of the precautions during COVID. And I'm kind of

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Speaker 5: taking that same you know thought process and that same

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Speaker 5: you know leadership style as we're dealing with measles out

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Speaker 5: here with measles. It's a challenge. I think people are

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Speaker 5: paying attention to it because it's really impacting children, whereas

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Speaker 5: we didn't see, you know, that same impact with COVID.

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Speaker 5: It's frustrating because we know what the solution is. When

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Speaker 5: COVID showed up. You know, nobody in public health and

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Speaker 5: the medical community, you know, knew exactly what COVID is.

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Speaker 5: With measles, we know what we're dealing with, and we

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Speaker 5: also have a known solution, which is a vaccine. So

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Speaker 5: it is frustrating that people are choosing not to vaccinate. Still,

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Speaker 5: the other challenges is during COVID, all of our other

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Speaker 5: work for public health got put on hold. Here with measles,

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Speaker 5: our health Department's still expected to do all of our

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Speaker 5: other jobs and respond to a measles outbreak, which is

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Speaker 5: really stressful on staff.

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Speaker 4: I can completely understand that in terms of some stressful things.

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Speaker 4: I understand that just from doing some background research and

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Speaker 4: reading up that your office or maybe even you your self,

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Speaker 4: were subject to some threats or some sort of pretty

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Speaker 4: extreme reactions during COVID. And is that the case? And

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Speaker 4: is that still happening?

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Speaker 5: Thankfully, it's not happening during COVID. We did have some

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Speaker 5: very strong opinions and some threats, mostly around when the

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Speaker 5: children's vaccine was released and why we were promoting that.

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Speaker 5: We have not seen that with measles, which is very good.

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Speaker 5: I don't want any of my staff to be threatened.

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Speaker 5: I mean, you always got these random posters on people

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Speaker 5: that post on social media, but they're not even individuals

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Speaker 5: from our community.

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Speaker 3: Got it, Okay?

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Speaker 4: Well, I'm glad to hear that, genuinely, that that is

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Speaker 4: a positive change. I suppose that is something that's a

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Speaker 4: good difference.

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Speaker 5: And also good support from our pediatricians and the medical

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Speaker 5: community has been very good and outspoken about the importance

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Speaker 5: of getting vaccinated, which has helped us.

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Speaker 4: So where do you see things going from here? I mean,

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Speaker 4: do you think we'll continue to see more cases? I

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Speaker 4: know that they're on the rise, but do you think

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Speaker 4: that will continue? Or do you have other concerns about

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Speaker 4: potentially other outbreaks of diseases that had been kind of

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Speaker 4: pushed out of circulation coming back.

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Speaker 7: Yeah, all of the above.

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Speaker 5: I think in Gaines County in particular, we don't have

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Speaker 5: a good understanding of where we are in the epidemic,

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Speaker 5: like how many vulnerable individuals in that community are still remaining,

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Speaker 5: so we don't know how long that initial epicenter outbreaks

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Speaker 5: going to last. We're also seeing, you know, as measles

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Speaker 5: gets into a community, it is so infectious that it

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Speaker 5: is going to find all of those little pockets of

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Speaker 5: people that are unvaccinated. And that's what we're seeing here

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Speaker 5: in Lubbott County is you know, measles taking hold and

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Speaker 5: fine little pockets, and public health trying to go put

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Speaker 5: out you know, little fires, trying to make sure that

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Speaker 5: we've figured out who's been exposed and who's at risk.

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Speaker 4: You described, you know, how this is an incredibly infectious

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Speaker 4: disease and it is you know, finding all the pockets

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Speaker 4: of people that are vulnerable or not vaccinated. And so

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Speaker 4: I'm wondering if you can, you know, if there are

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Speaker 4: any examples or specifics that you could share about how

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Speaker 4: the outbreak is impacting communities or particular communities. Has it

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Speaker 4: resulted in disruptions in school for children, Has it, you know,

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Speaker 4: caused any other sort of notable breakdowns or sort of

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Speaker 4: pauses in day to day regular activity in Lubbic.

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Speaker 5: You know, those breakdowns have been more minor that a child,

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Speaker 5: say that's unvaccinated's been exposed, and that's requiring that child

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Speaker 5: to sit out from school. So there is that, you know,

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Speaker 5: element that they're missing those important, you know, days of education.

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Speaker 5: Our bigger impacts here have been around daycares. We had

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Speaker 5: a large outbreak or large in the sense that we've

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Speaker 5: had now eight children or eight individuals associated with one

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Speaker 5: daycare all test positive with measles. So that's meant that

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Speaker 5: you know, children have had to be sent home from daycare,

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Speaker 5: which then impacts parents' ability to work and also impacts

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Speaker 5: you know, you know, daycare along with you know, the

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Speaker 5: number of students there children having to go home that

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Speaker 5: have been exposed working a lot to get additional doses

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Speaker 5: of vaccine into a daycare. So it both impacts the

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Speaker 5: public health system, our healthcare system, because kids need health,

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Speaker 5: but then it also impacts parents because if your child's

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Speaker 5: not in daycare, a parent can't go to work. Those

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Speaker 5: have been the bigger disruptions and then disruptions in our

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Speaker 5: healthcare system that we're now having to do a lot

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Speaker 5: of screen Like you call to make an appointment for

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Speaker 5: the doctor, and it's kind of like COVID, have you

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Speaker 5: been exposed to measles? Are you vaccinated? They're asking all

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Speaker 5: those screening questions before people enter our healthcare facilities.

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Speaker 4: In terms of sort of interactions with the state and

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Speaker 4: their response to this, can you tell me a little

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Speaker 4: bit more about how the State of Texas has responded

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Speaker 4: and partnered with local.

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Speaker 5: Authorities, so we have a good working relationship with the

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Speaker 5: State of Texas. Texas has to do everything differently, so

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Speaker 5: we kind of have this decentralized system where the state

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Speaker 5: and locals both kind of have their own authority, very

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Speaker 5: independent at the county level, but the state is offered

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Speaker 5: support to us. They've helped me bring in temp nurses

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Speaker 5: to be able to assist with vaccine clinics. They're paying

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Speaker 5: for some additional staff answer phones, so we're getting that

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Speaker 5: kind of support. And then I meet with the state

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Speaker 5: regularly about what's going on in Lubbock, how Lubbock fits

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Speaker 5: in the context of the rest of this outbreak, and

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Speaker 5: you know, how we're going to work together to move forward.

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Speaker 5: We always thought of measles as an airplane ride away,

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Speaker 5: so we would see, you know, somebody travel to a

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Speaker 5: foreign country, come back to the United States and maybe

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Speaker 5: pass measles. To a couple of people in their household.

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Speaker 5: This outbreak is not that we're seeing transmission within a community,

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Speaker 5: and it's making measles more of a car ride away.

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Speaker 5: And that's concerning because we have individuals that are susceptible

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Speaker 5: to measles, either through too young to be vaccinated, not vaccinated,

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Speaker 5: or some other immune compromised state. So just concerning that

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Speaker 5: we're going to see more outbreaks spreading out into the

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Speaker 5: United States, especially as we're moving into spring and summer,

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Speaker 5: where people are traveling and driving through communities that we

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Speaker 5: could just see kind of explode everywhere, which is my

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Speaker 5: biggest fear.

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Speaker 7: Yeah. Absolutely.

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Speaker 4: I mean, given that vaccinations and to some degree public

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Speaker 4: health in general has kind of become a politicized issue,

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Speaker 4: I can only imagine that it can make it quite

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Speaker 4: difficult for you to convey these messages to people and

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Speaker 4: for them to understand them.

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Speaker 5: Yeah, and I'm talking. I mean I've talked to many

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Speaker 5: health department directors across the country, and you know, one

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Speaker 5: of the values of local public health is that you know,

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Speaker 5: all of us local health department directors and those staff

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Speaker 5: were coming from these individuals, communities, and our goals to

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Speaker 5: keep our community safe, and it really doesn't matter what's

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Speaker 5: happening at the federal level. It's about your community, your connections,

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Speaker 5: watching out for this diseases and then convincing your community

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Speaker 5: to do the right thing. And luckily we have you know,

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Speaker 5: twenty five hundred health departments across the US, and that

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Speaker 5: is their goals, and hopefully people will continue to trust

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Speaker 5: their local directors.

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Speaker 4: That is a great point, and I'm wondering if is

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Speaker 4: there anything else that you can speak to on how

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Speaker 4: the distrust that is there can potentially be bridged, or

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Speaker 4: you know, specific things that y'all have done to try

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Speaker 4: to sort of rebuild that trust or establish that trust.

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Speaker 5: I mean with us locally, it's making sure that we're

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Speaker 5: talking to our local news and our local reporters and

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Speaker 5: answering the phone call when a concerned parent calls, and

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Speaker 5: going through the information we know, and utilizing our local

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Speaker 5: physicians to tell them the story. Because I think if

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Speaker 5: you can still see it at the local level, you know,

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Speaker 5: people can really understand that this is a risk and

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Speaker 5: really make that right choice to get the vaccine or

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Speaker 5: if they've been exposed, to stay home.

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Speaker 3: We'll hear more from Catherine in just a moment.

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Speaker 4: But first, as we are obligated to do, here's some ads.

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Speaker 4: So I do understand there's quite a bit of skepticism

439
00:26:12,520 --> 00:26:16,280
Speaker 4: towards vaccination, and that's certainly going to be a subject

440
00:26:16,320 --> 00:26:20,040
Speaker 4: that we're exploring in this podcast. And at least by

441
00:26:20,080 --> 00:26:23,680
Speaker 4: the numbers, it shows that in places like West Texas

442
00:26:23,680 --> 00:26:27,920
Speaker 4: and particularly more rural areas, even more than a place

443
00:26:27,960 --> 00:26:32,680
Speaker 4: like Lubbock, that there's pretty low vaccination rates. Several counties

444
00:26:32,720 --> 00:26:34,920
Speaker 4: are below the I guess what was it ninety five

445
00:26:34,960 --> 00:26:39,240
Speaker 4: percent threshold that really helps bring diesls out of circulation.

446
00:26:40,000 --> 00:26:42,400
Speaker 4: And so, you know, I'm kind of curious. You've been

447
00:26:42,440 --> 00:26:44,919
Speaker 4: there for over a decade, do you have a sense

448
00:26:45,680 --> 00:26:50,119
Speaker 4: sort of what the key drivers of vaccine hesitancy are

449
00:26:50,440 --> 00:26:53,040
Speaker 4: and why so many West Texans choose not to get

450
00:26:53,040 --> 00:26:55,880
Speaker 4: their children vaccinated. You already mentioned, you know, the fact

451
00:26:55,880 --> 00:26:58,520
Speaker 4: that it hasn't been seen for so long, so sort

452
00:26:58,520 --> 00:27:00,679
Speaker 4: of out of sight, out of mind, be But are

453
00:27:00,680 --> 00:27:03,520
Speaker 4: there are there other drivers that come to mind for you?

454
00:27:04,080 --> 00:27:04,280
Speaker 8: Yeah?

455
00:27:04,320 --> 00:27:06,439
Speaker 5: I mean I don't think. You know, West Texas is

456
00:27:07,560 --> 00:27:12,239
Speaker 5: unique from many other communities in the United States. You know,

457
00:27:12,320 --> 00:27:16,600
Speaker 5: people are very much influenced by social media and some

458
00:27:16,640 --> 00:27:20,119
Speaker 5: of our media outlets, and there's a lot of you know,

459
00:27:20,520 --> 00:27:28,160
Speaker 5: scare tactics or misinformation around vaccines and you know, anything

460
00:27:28,200 --> 00:27:32,560
Speaker 5: from autism that's been debunked so many times about vaccines

461
00:27:32,600 --> 00:27:38,000
Speaker 5: causing autism, other misinformation about what's in vaccines and the

462
00:27:38,080 --> 00:27:43,280
Speaker 5: risks of vaccines. I mean, every medical intervention, every medication

463
00:27:43,480 --> 00:27:46,879
Speaker 5: has some type you know of risk. But vaccines have

464
00:27:47,000 --> 00:27:49,600
Speaker 5: been long studied, and especially when you're looking at the

465
00:27:49,720 --> 00:27:52,080
Speaker 5: MMR vaccine, we've been using this for fifty years and

466
00:27:52,119 --> 00:27:55,399
Speaker 5: that's why we don't have measles cases or hadn't had

467
00:27:55,440 --> 00:27:58,480
Speaker 5: measles cases. But people have really bought into a lot

468
00:27:58,520 --> 00:28:01,320
Speaker 5: of that information out there, and it's really hard to

469
00:28:01,359 --> 00:28:05,080
Speaker 5: combat that. I've gone and read the stories and I

470
00:28:05,119 --> 00:28:07,320
Speaker 5: can see how people feel miss and pick up on this,

471
00:28:07,880 --> 00:28:10,359
Speaker 5: but I just don't know from public health standpoint how

472
00:28:10,400 --> 00:28:11,960
Speaker 5: we combat it right.

473
00:28:12,359 --> 00:28:12,560
Speaker 7: Right.

474
00:28:12,800 --> 00:28:16,720
Speaker 4: It's a very difficult problem, the challenge that has a

475
00:28:16,760 --> 00:28:19,680
Speaker 4: long history and has a lot of different factors.

476
00:28:19,520 --> 00:28:23,080
Speaker 5: And things are so complex. A it's not a one

477
00:28:23,080 --> 00:28:25,800
Speaker 5: for one, it's just it's been a challenge. But I

478
00:28:25,840 --> 00:28:29,280
Speaker 5: think out here I always felt like we hadn't been

479
00:28:30,040 --> 00:28:33,320
Speaker 5: impacted as much from some of these anti vaccine movements.

480
00:28:34,240 --> 00:28:37,679
Speaker 5: I think post COVID people you know, have a mistrust

481
00:28:37,680 --> 00:28:42,280
Speaker 5: in government or wanting to listen to mandates or recommendations

482
00:28:42,360 --> 00:28:44,760
Speaker 5: or whatever we call them. We're just seeing that more

483
00:28:44,760 --> 00:28:47,600
Speaker 5: and more, and that hesitancy, you know, to come through

484
00:28:47,600 --> 00:28:51,480
Speaker 5: and trust both government, trust the medical system, or all concerns,

485
00:28:51,520 --> 00:28:54,680
Speaker 5: and that all contributes to these lower vaccination rates.

486
00:28:58,720 --> 00:29:02,800
Speaker 4: In a media environment rife with misinformation about vaccines and

487
00:29:02,840 --> 00:29:06,800
Speaker 4: public health, Catherine's perspective is refreshing and a bit heartening.

488
00:29:07,400 --> 00:29:10,360
Speaker 4: Local public health officials like her have done great work

489
00:29:10,400 --> 00:29:13,600
Speaker 4: to raise the alarm around viral outbreaks, but they're up

490
00:29:13,600 --> 00:29:15,959
Speaker 4: against a problem that is much bigger than what they

491
00:29:16,000 --> 00:29:19,800
Speaker 4: can address on their own, and that's the widespread belief

492
00:29:20,040 --> 00:29:24,360
Speaker 4: in bogus theories, be they scientific or religious, that undercut

493
00:29:24,520 --> 00:29:30,680
Speaker 4: the proven science around vaccines. Much of this misinformation comes

494
00:29:30,680 --> 00:29:34,760
Speaker 4: from places far from West Texas, like the anti vaccination

495
00:29:34,840 --> 00:29:39,240
Speaker 4: group Children's Health Defense, which RFK Junior previously led. It

496
00:29:39,320 --> 00:29:43,240
Speaker 4: is widely recognized as a major source of online vaccine misinformation,

497
00:29:43,880 --> 00:29:48,520
Speaker 4: including the debunked allegation that vaccines cause autism. After the

498
00:29:48,600 --> 00:29:51,760
Speaker 4: death of a six year old child of measles. In March,

499
00:29:52,320 --> 00:29:55,320
Speaker 4: Children's Health Defense released a video interview with the parents

500
00:29:55,880 --> 00:29:59,560
Speaker 4: who said they still would not take the vaccine and

501
00:29:59,600 --> 00:30:00,920
Speaker 4: wouldn't recommend it.

502
00:30:00,840 --> 00:30:01,840
Speaker 3: To other parents.

503
00:30:02,200 --> 00:30:04,880
Speaker 4: Here's a clip from that interview in which the Mennonite

504
00:30:04,920 --> 00:30:07,480
Speaker 4: parents speak in their Lowland German dialect.

505
00:30:07,800 --> 00:30:10,480
Speaker 9: So, when you see the fairmoon ring in the crest,

506
00:30:10,520 --> 00:30:12,960
Speaker 9: which is what we once stops. We want to get

507
00:30:13,000 --> 00:30:15,480
Speaker 9: the truth out. What do you say to the parents

508
00:30:15,480 --> 00:30:19,520
Speaker 9: that are rushing out panicking to get that and my

509
00:30:19,600 --> 00:30:22,240
Speaker 9: mouth had a six months daily because they think that

510
00:30:22,320 --> 00:30:24,640
Speaker 9: that child is going to die of measles.

511
00:30:24,640 --> 00:30:27,160
Speaker 4: Apartment to your daughter, and.

512
00:30:27,240 --> 00:30:30,520
Speaker 10: A good sign is only would be so trust me,

513
00:30:30,720 --> 00:30:35,080
Speaker 10: so bad like theresign doctors with the whole town, she says,

514
00:30:35,080 --> 00:30:38,160
Speaker 10: they would still say don't do the shots. There's doctors

515
00:30:38,160 --> 00:30:40,719
Speaker 10: that can help with measles. They're not as bad as

516
00:30:40,760 --> 00:30:41,920
Speaker 10: they're making it out to be.

517
00:30:43,680 --> 00:30:49,480
Speaker 11: And also the measles are good for the body for

518
00:30:49,600 --> 00:30:57,040
Speaker 11: the people because the measles are then given the what

519
00:30:57,240 --> 00:31:00,880
Speaker 11: is it what can yea.

520
00:31:02,480 --> 00:31:04,640
Speaker 7: And cinema conduction?

521
00:31:04,840 --> 00:31:05,520
Speaker 9: But infection?

522
00:31:05,680 --> 00:31:07,200
Speaker 7: Yeah, did you get infection out?

523
00:31:07,240 --> 00:31:10,800
Speaker 10: And he's would immune system.

524
00:31:10,840 --> 00:31:11,000
Speaker 7: Yes.

525
00:31:11,600 --> 00:31:14,400
Speaker 10: They're trying to say that the measles actually helped build

526
00:31:14,400 --> 00:31:16,720
Speaker 10: the immune system in the long run. If they get

527
00:31:16,760 --> 00:31:17,640
Speaker 10: the measles, now.

528
00:31:17,640 --> 00:31:17,720
Speaker 12: No.

529
00:31:19,320 --> 00:31:22,360
Speaker 10: Chief in the long run, In the long run, the

530
00:31:22,400 --> 00:31:29,600
Speaker 10: clinic sal like okay, So in the long run, he said,

531
00:31:29,600 --> 00:31:33,840
Speaker 10: they wouldn't get cancer as easily and like it fights

532
00:31:33,880 --> 00:31:36,880
Speaker 10: off a lot of a lot of stuff, the immunity

533
00:31:36,920 --> 00:31:39,600
Speaker 10: that they get from the back from the measles.

534
00:31:42,000 --> 00:31:44,320
Speaker 4: But some of what public officials like Catherine have been

535
00:31:44,320 --> 00:31:48,760
Speaker 4: trying to combat is coming from other medical professionals much

536
00:31:48,960 --> 00:31:53,400
Speaker 4: closer to home, such as doctor Ben Edwards, who appeared

537
00:31:53,440 --> 00:31:57,160
Speaker 4: in the Children's Health Defense video and has promoted anti

538
00:31:57,240 --> 00:32:01,320
Speaker 4: vaccination misinformation on his own podcast, including the recommendation to

539
00:32:01,320 --> 00:32:04,160
Speaker 4: take vitamin A to treat measles, an approach that has

540
00:32:04,200 --> 00:32:08,040
Speaker 4: resulted in several cases of vitamin A toxicity among children

541
00:32:08,080 --> 00:32:11,720
Speaker 4: diagnosed with measles in West Texas. During their interview with

542
00:32:11,920 --> 00:32:15,120
Speaker 4: Children's Health Defense, the Mennonite parents of the first child

543
00:32:15,120 --> 00:32:18,520
Speaker 4: to die of measles actually said they were working with

544
00:32:18,760 --> 00:32:23,560
Speaker 4: doctor Ben Edwards for their treatment. One video that went

545
00:32:23,640 --> 00:32:28,400
Speaker 4: viral online showed Edwards visibly infected with measles at the time,

546
00:32:29,080 --> 00:32:33,760
Speaker 4: treating patients with measles and inhabiting spaces where individuals who

547
00:32:33,800 --> 00:32:37,760
Speaker 4: were not infected with measles were present, and this elicited

548
00:32:37,960 --> 00:32:43,480
Speaker 4: widespread condemnation from the medical community, quite unsurprisingly. Nevertheless, it

549
00:32:43,520 --> 00:32:47,400
Speaker 4: demonstrates the sort of attitude of certain medical professionals in

550
00:32:47,440 --> 00:32:51,320
Speaker 4: the area who have used their platforms and their credentials

551
00:32:51,560 --> 00:32:55,560
Speaker 4: to sow doubt about the importance of the vaccine, making

552
00:32:55,560 --> 00:32:59,720
Speaker 4: matters worse. RFKA Junior praised doctor Edwards as a quote

553
00:32:59,720 --> 00:33:03,800
Speaker 4: extra extraordinary healer just one week after Edwards was seen

554
00:33:03,880 --> 00:33:07,800
Speaker 4: in that video treating patients while himself infected with measles.

555
00:33:08,760 --> 00:33:12,040
Speaker 4: While anti vaccination beliefs have certainly gone viral in the

556
00:33:12,080 --> 00:33:15,000
Speaker 4: aftermath of the COVID pandemic, they are by no means

557
00:33:15,080 --> 00:33:19,280
Speaker 4: new Practitioners like Edwards and advocacy groups like Children's Health

558
00:33:19,280 --> 00:33:22,480
Speaker 4: Defense have been peddling their snake oil for decades. But

559
00:33:22,560 --> 00:33:25,600
Speaker 4: the roots of anti vaccination belief around even deeper than that.

560
00:33:26,520 --> 00:33:29,680
Speaker 4: In the next episode of Anti vaxx America, I'll do

561
00:33:29,720 --> 00:33:32,520
Speaker 4: a deep dive into the history of anti vaccination beliefs

562
00:33:33,080 --> 00:33:36,840
Speaker 4: to understand the origins of them, how they've changed over time,

563
00:33:37,440 --> 00:33:41,920
Speaker 4: and why they've become embraced in mainstream right wing politics,

564
00:33:41,920 --> 00:33:45,880
Speaker 4: which is a change from the sort of bipartisan and

565
00:33:46,040 --> 00:33:51,240
Speaker 4: even sometimes progressive nature of some anti vaccination skepticism. But

566
00:33:51,400 --> 00:33:55,440
Speaker 4: until then, thanks for listening. I'm Stephen Monchelli for Cool

567
00:33:55,520 --> 00:34:21,440
Speaker 4: Zone Media and this is Anti vax America. Welcome back

568
00:34:21,520 --> 00:34:24,400
Speaker 4: to it could happen here and to episode two of

569
00:34:24,440 --> 00:34:28,920
Speaker 4: Anti vax America. I'm Stephen mon and Shelley. Last episode

570
00:34:28,920 --> 00:34:31,680
Speaker 4: I explored the ongoing measles outbreak that started in West

571
00:34:31,719 --> 00:34:34,600
Speaker 4: Texas and has since spread to several states across the nation.

572
00:34:35,200 --> 00:34:37,640
Speaker 4: A big part of that story is the underlying anti

573
00:34:37,719 --> 00:34:40,720
Speaker 4: vax beliefs that are fueling a decline in vaccination rates

574
00:34:41,120 --> 00:34:43,840
Speaker 4: across the country, and how the leader of our federal

575
00:34:43,880 --> 00:34:47,120
Speaker 4: health bureaucracy, a arth K Junior, has helped seed, spread

576
00:34:47,200 --> 00:34:51,239
Speaker 4: and embed those beliefs into policy. But behind all that

577
00:34:51,480 --> 00:34:54,800
Speaker 4: is a deeper history of anti vaccination beliefs in America.

578
00:34:55,640 --> 00:34:58,120
Speaker 4: And while it is undoubtedly the case that the COVID

579
00:34:58,160 --> 00:35:01,520
Speaker 4: nineteen pandemic brought anti vaccination beliefs to the forefront of

580
00:35:01,560 --> 00:35:06,600
Speaker 4: American politics, opposition to vaccines is not new. It's about

581
00:35:06,640 --> 00:35:08,719
Speaker 4: as old as the technology itself.

582
00:35:10,360 --> 00:35:13,279
Speaker 13: It actually goes back to the founding colonies and even

583
00:35:13,320 --> 00:35:17,040
Speaker 13: the early eighteen hundreds when you had people kind of

584
00:35:17,120 --> 00:35:22,839
Speaker 13: peddling various what they called botanicals as substitutes for mainstream medicine.

585
00:35:23,080 --> 00:35:26,480
Speaker 4: That's doctor Peter Hotez. He's a doctor in Houston with

586
00:35:26,600 --> 00:35:28,960
Speaker 4: a long and impressive list of credentials.

587
00:35:29,560 --> 00:35:33,400
Speaker 13: I'm a pediatrician scientist. I have an MD and PhD,

588
00:35:33,520 --> 00:35:37,799
Speaker 13: and I'm a professor of pediatrics and molecular Virology at

589
00:35:37,840 --> 00:35:40,560
Speaker 13: Baylor College of Medicine, where I'm also co director of

590
00:35:40,600 --> 00:35:44,200
Speaker 13: the Texas Children's Hospital Center for Vaccine Development, and also

591
00:35:44,280 --> 00:35:46,760
Speaker 13: dean of our National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor

592
00:35:46,800 --> 00:35:51,440
Speaker 13: College and Medicine. And my interest is a lifelong interest

593
00:35:51,480 --> 00:35:56,120
Speaker 13: in developing new vaccines, particularly vaccines that the big pharma

594
00:35:56,200 --> 00:35:59,200
Speaker 13: companies have no interest in making because they're vaccines for

595
00:35:59,280 --> 00:36:04,040
Speaker 13: diseases of poverty. We've made a low cost COVID vaccine

596
00:36:04,040 --> 00:36:07,719
Speaker 13: that reached technology, reached one hundred million people in India and

597
00:36:07,760 --> 00:36:14,000
Speaker 13: Indonesia during the pandemic, and now vaccines for parasitic diseases

598
00:36:14,080 --> 00:36:18,200
Speaker 13: that occur only among the world's poor. And that's a

599
00:36:18,239 --> 00:36:19,520
Speaker 13: lifelong passion of mine.

600
00:36:22,520 --> 00:36:26,879
Speaker 4: The first vaccination was created in seventeen ninety six by

601
00:36:27,280 --> 00:36:30,640
Speaker 4: Edward Jenner, who was able to build on prior methods

602
00:36:30,719 --> 00:36:34,120
Speaker 4: of inoculation, and he was able to create a vaccine

603
00:36:34,160 --> 00:36:37,520
Speaker 4: for smallpox, one of the deadliest viruses.

604
00:36:37,160 --> 00:36:38,080
Speaker 3: In human history.

605
00:36:38,880 --> 00:36:42,600
Speaker 4: Within a matter of decades, vaccination had become widespread in

606
00:36:42,600 --> 00:36:46,279
Speaker 4: the Western world. The United Kingdom passed the Vaccination Act

607
00:36:46,560 --> 00:36:49,160
Speaker 4: of eighteen forty to provide free vaccinations to the poor,

608
00:36:49,360 --> 00:36:51,680
Speaker 4: and then passed another act in eighteen fifty three that

609
00:36:51,760 --> 00:36:55,560
Speaker 4: made it compulsory for infants, and another in eighteen sixty

610
00:36:55,600 --> 00:36:59,560
Speaker 4: seven that extended the compulsory vaccination requirement to fourteen and

611
00:36:59,640 --> 00:37:03,160
Speaker 4: added penalties for non compliance that could be cumulative over time.

612
00:37:03,719 --> 00:37:07,319
Speaker 4: Resistance to these laws began in eighteen fifty three with

613
00:37:07,360 --> 00:37:10,800
Speaker 4: a few riots in towns across England, and this eventually

614
00:37:10,840 --> 00:37:15,800
Speaker 4: formalized into the Anti Compulsory Vaccination League, which distributed literature

615
00:37:16,000 --> 00:37:19,840
Speaker 4: likening vaccination to a monster and lobbied the British government

616
00:37:19,880 --> 00:37:23,840
Speaker 4: to change the laws. Their efforts actually proved successful, and

617
00:37:23,880 --> 00:37:26,160
Speaker 4: a new law was passed in eighteen ninety eight to

618
00:37:26,239 --> 00:37:30,239
Speaker 4: remove cumulative penalties and create an exemption for what they

619
00:37:30,360 --> 00:37:34,480
Speaker 4: termed conscientious objectors, which is the first time that term

620
00:37:34,520 --> 00:37:38,520
Speaker 4: had ever been used in British law. Parallel anti vaccination

621
00:37:38,600 --> 00:37:41,920
Speaker 4: movement made similar strides in the United States, and one

622
00:37:41,960 --> 00:37:44,759
Speaker 4: of the leaders of the British anti vaccination movement even

623
00:37:44,840 --> 00:37:47,359
Speaker 4: came to the United States to help co found one

624
00:37:47,400 --> 00:37:51,520
Speaker 4: of the anti vaccination leagues in America. Several states also

625
00:37:51,560 --> 00:37:54,840
Speaker 4: passed compulsory vaccination laws in the United States, spurring the

626
00:37:54,880 --> 00:37:58,440
Speaker 4: American anti vaccination leagues to fight in the legal courts,

627
00:37:58,800 --> 00:38:01,400
Speaker 4: in the court of public opinion, and the legislatures across

628
00:38:01,440 --> 00:38:09,600
Speaker 4: the country, and they successfully repealed compulsory vaccination laws in California, Illinois, Indiana, Minnesota, Utah,

629
00:38:09,760 --> 00:38:15,040
Speaker 4: West Virginia, and Wisconsin. But opposing compulsory vaccinations was only

630
00:38:15,160 --> 00:38:19,200
Speaker 4: one part of the strategy of these early anti vaccine organizations.

631
00:38:19,680 --> 00:38:22,840
Speaker 4: Another key plank, which may sound familiar to those of

632
00:38:22,880 --> 00:38:26,080
Speaker 4: you who follow the news, was the promotion of alternative

633
00:38:26,200 --> 00:38:30,120
Speaker 4: remedies such as homeopathy, which were quite popular at the

634
00:38:30,160 --> 00:38:34,240
Speaker 4: time among certain sects of medicine. Now, these movements didn't

635
00:38:34,280 --> 00:38:36,759
Speaker 4: neatly fall across political lines in.

636
00:38:36,719 --> 00:38:38,400
Speaker 3: The way that they largely do today.

637
00:38:38,880 --> 00:38:43,239
Speaker 4: Progressive and conservative anti vaccination activists were tied together by

638
00:38:43,719 --> 00:38:46,800
Speaker 4: strongly held beliefs in things like quote unquote medical freedom,

639
00:38:47,200 --> 00:38:52,520
Speaker 4: sometimes philosophical beliefs around freedom, their spiritual faiths, or in

640
00:38:52,560 --> 00:38:58,520
Speaker 4: some instances, even anti Semitic conspiracy theories. Consider Eugene carl During,

641
00:38:58,960 --> 00:39:02,000
Speaker 4: a philosopher and aomus, considered one of the founding fathers

642
00:39:02,040 --> 00:39:05,359
Speaker 4: of German anti Semitism, who argued that Jewish doctors were

643
00:39:05,400 --> 00:39:08,000
Speaker 4: behind a conspiracy to drum up business for themselves by

644
00:39:08,000 --> 00:39:12,279
Speaker 4: promoting vaccination to healthy people. These are all tropes that

645
00:39:12,360 --> 00:39:15,000
Speaker 4: live on to this day and that someone like doctor

646
00:39:15,040 --> 00:39:16,480
Speaker 4: Hotez knows.

647
00:39:16,120 --> 00:39:17,799
Speaker 3: All too well, and.

648
00:39:17,760 --> 00:39:20,799
Speaker 4: Because of his advocacy of vaccines, he's often been a

649
00:39:20,800 --> 00:39:21,400
Speaker 4: target of it.

650
00:39:21,880 --> 00:39:25,520
Speaker 13: I'm a scientist, the vaccine scientists, the Jewish vaccine scientists.

651
00:39:25,560 --> 00:39:29,160
Speaker 13: So they've got me doing this in secret with George

652
00:39:29,160 --> 00:39:31,640
Speaker 13: Soros or one of the rothschilds that I'm doing it

653
00:39:31,680 --> 00:39:35,239
Speaker 13: at the World Economic Forum in Davos. I haven't even

654
00:39:35,400 --> 00:39:36,520
Speaker 13: invited the Davos.

655
00:39:37,120 --> 00:39:40,040
Speaker 4: While some of the progressive strain of the historic anti

656
00:39:40,120 --> 00:39:44,719
Speaker 4: vaccination movement has lived on in the stereotypical hippie naturalist

657
00:39:44,840 --> 00:39:47,880
Speaker 4: lifestyle culture that is popular in parts of the Northwest,

658
00:39:48,360 --> 00:39:51,920
Speaker 4: that strain is long in fringe and is kind of

659
00:39:51,960 --> 00:39:55,080
Speaker 4: extinct at this point. It had its heyday after the

660
00:39:55,120 --> 00:39:59,279
Speaker 4: sixties and seventies, when a lot of alternative therapies and

661
00:39:59,360 --> 00:40:02,960
Speaker 4: medicines were being promoted and embraced in the West. Most

662
00:40:02,960 --> 00:40:06,160
Speaker 4: of the anti vaxxors of that variety today have largely

663
00:40:06,160 --> 00:40:09,600
Speaker 4: been drawn towards more right winging values and have been

664
00:40:09,640 --> 00:40:12,520
Speaker 4: subsumed by the sort of politics that defines the larger

665
00:40:12,640 --> 00:40:16,560
Speaker 4: Make America Healthy Again agenda. The way doctor Hotess sees it,

666
00:40:16,600 --> 00:40:20,640
Speaker 4: there's a direct line between these old anti vaccine movements

667
00:40:20,920 --> 00:40:24,640
Speaker 4: and the modern day Maha movement, which combines anti vaccine

668
00:40:24,680 --> 00:40:28,480
Speaker 4: beliefs with alternative medicine and libertarian mindsets around health freedom

669
00:40:28,920 --> 00:40:31,080
Speaker 4: into a sort of single bundle of sticks.

670
00:40:32,360 --> 00:40:36,200
Speaker 13: There's an older thread that goes back to colonial times,

671
00:40:37,080 --> 00:40:41,680
Speaker 13: and it has to do with libertarian concepts of what's

672
00:40:41,719 --> 00:40:44,680
Speaker 13: sometimes called health freedom medical freedom. Hey, you can't tell

673
00:40:44,760 --> 00:40:47,239
Speaker 13: us what to do about our kids, and now we

674
00:40:47,280 --> 00:40:49,920
Speaker 13: see that today, right, you know, And this is coming

675
00:40:50,280 --> 00:40:53,360
Speaker 13: partly out of the health and wellness and influencer industry,

676
00:40:54,000 --> 00:40:56,879
Speaker 13: and that's why you get you know, ivermectin, which does

677
00:40:56,920 --> 00:41:01,239
Speaker 13: absolutely nothing for covid or hydroxychloroquin nothing for covid or

678
00:41:01,840 --> 00:41:05,200
Speaker 13: when you heard mister Kennedy talk about vitamin A or

679
00:41:05,320 --> 00:41:08,760
Speaker 13: as a preventative, or budesini as steroid which does nothing,

680
00:41:08,920 --> 00:41:11,520
Speaker 13: or clarithromycin and antibiotic does nothing.

681
00:41:11,560 --> 00:41:11,920
Speaker 3: Whatever.

682
00:41:12,280 --> 00:41:14,400
Speaker 13: You know, they can buy in bulk and then sell

683
00:41:14,920 --> 00:41:17,680
Speaker 13: at a profit. That's you know, that's that's a lot

684
00:41:17,680 --> 00:41:22,120
Speaker 13: of the wellness and influencer industry. And so what you

685
00:41:22,160 --> 00:41:26,879
Speaker 13: have now is that converging thread around that and libertarian politics.

686
00:41:27,160 --> 00:41:29,360
Speaker 13: And that's what you saw. I think, after you know,

687
00:41:29,400 --> 00:41:32,840
Speaker 13: we were started to debunk the false links between vaccines

688
00:41:32,840 --> 00:41:35,799
Speaker 13: and autism, they needed a new thing. And and this

689
00:41:35,880 --> 00:41:39,719
Speaker 13: is when you saw here in Texas, this rise in

690
00:41:39,800 --> 00:41:44,400
Speaker 13: parents requesting vaccine exemptions around the banner of health freedom,

691
00:41:44,480 --> 00:41:47,200
Speaker 13: medical freedom. And here's where it became really tough to

692
00:41:47,239 --> 00:41:52,239
Speaker 13: talk about because it got adopted by the Republican Tea

693
00:41:52,239 --> 00:41:55,800
Speaker 13: Party in Texas. And so anti vaccine groups started getting

694
00:41:55,840 --> 00:42:00,160
Speaker 13: pack money, political action committee money to lobby the or

695
00:42:00,239 --> 00:42:04,719
Speaker 13: educate the state legislature about health freedom, medical freedom, and

696
00:42:04,800 --> 00:42:09,879
Speaker 13: even provide money for candidates to run on anti vaccine platforms.

697
00:42:10,520 --> 00:42:14,160
Speaker 4: But before we explore the contemporary anti vaccination movement further,

698
00:42:14,200 --> 00:42:17,480
Speaker 4: we have to return to history, and before we do that,

699
00:42:17,920 --> 00:42:32,080
Speaker 4: we're obligated to take a quick ad break. Anti vaccine

700
00:42:32,120 --> 00:42:34,839
Speaker 4: movements appeared to be gaining steam in the late eighteen

701
00:42:34,880 --> 00:42:37,760
Speaker 4: hundreds and early nineteen hundreds, but their progress largely halted

702
00:42:38,160 --> 00:42:41,880
Speaker 4: when a nineteen oh five US Supreme Court ruling upheld

703
00:42:41,920 --> 00:42:45,320
Speaker 4: the authority of states to pass and enforce compulsory vaccination laws.

704
00:42:45,880 --> 00:42:46,440
Speaker 14: They continued.

705
00:42:46,440 --> 00:42:50,480
Speaker 4: Spread of viruses like smallpox, the deadly Spanish flu pandemic,

706
00:42:50,719 --> 00:42:53,839
Speaker 4: and the outbreak of World War II all spurred advancements

707
00:42:53,880 --> 00:42:59,520
Speaker 4: in vaccination research and programs to ensure widespread vaccination, and

708
00:42:59,600 --> 00:43:02,120
Speaker 4: as this science continued to advance, more and more states

709
00:43:02,120 --> 00:43:05,680
Speaker 4: began to mandate vaccines for public school attendance, as did

710
00:43:05,680 --> 00:43:09,440
Speaker 4: employers for their workers. By nineteen sixty three, twenty states

711
00:43:09,440 --> 00:43:12,040
Speaker 4: require children to be vaccinated before going to school, and

712
00:43:12,040 --> 00:43:14,640
Speaker 4: by nineteen eighty, every state in the nation had a

713
00:43:14,680 --> 00:43:17,799
Speaker 4: similar law on the books, And as the decades went on,

714
00:43:17,880 --> 00:43:21,799
Speaker 4: the incident's rates of several diseases dramatically plummeted. By nineteen eighty,

715
00:43:22,080 --> 00:43:25,879
Speaker 4: smallpox had been eradicated, but along the way there were

716
00:43:25,960 --> 00:43:29,560
Speaker 4: things done in the name of medical science that would

717
00:43:29,640 --> 00:43:32,560
Speaker 4: undercut the great strides made during that period of time,

718
00:43:33,080 --> 00:43:35,960
Speaker 4: things that ultimately showed the seeds for some of today's

719
00:43:36,120 --> 00:43:37,440
Speaker 4: vaccination skepticism.

720
00:43:39,400 --> 00:43:45,319
Speaker 15: I think it's important to understand that not all suspicion

721
00:43:46,200 --> 00:43:53,839
Speaker 15: regarding medicine and doctors research, that not all of this

722
00:43:54,239 --> 00:43:56,319
Speaker 15: resistance is totally irrational.

723
00:43:56,400 --> 00:43:58,040
Speaker 14: It's based on experience.

724
00:43:58,680 --> 00:44:01,640
Speaker 4: That's doctor Michael Phillips, who you may recognize from prior

725
00:44:01,680 --> 00:44:05,239
Speaker 4: episodes if it could happen here. He's a historian of race, eugenics,

726
00:44:05,280 --> 00:44:07,000
Speaker 4: and right wing politics in Texas.

727
00:44:07,800 --> 00:44:12,000
Speaker 15: Going back to the time of slavery, enslaved men and

728
00:44:12,040 --> 00:44:18,680
Speaker 15: women were often the unwilling, involuntary subjects of medical experiments.

729
00:44:19,000 --> 00:44:23,000
Speaker 15: We have, for instance, a a man named Marion Simms,

730
00:44:23,560 --> 00:44:27,200
Speaker 15: and they actually put a statue up of him in

731
00:44:27,280 --> 00:44:32,080
Speaker 15: Central Park in New York that's been taken down since.

732
00:44:32,640 --> 00:44:35,920
Speaker 15: Who was credited as the father of gynecology.

733
00:44:36,200 --> 00:44:37,680
Speaker 14: There was a.

734
00:44:37,200 --> 00:44:42,600
Speaker 15: Problem in that era before the discovery of germ theory,

735
00:44:43,040 --> 00:44:46,719
Speaker 15: where whenever women would give birth and there would be

736
00:44:46,800 --> 00:44:51,279
Speaker 15: vaginal tears, doctors would often sew up the wounds and

737
00:44:51,360 --> 00:44:54,120
Speaker 15: then there'd be an infection and the woman would die

738
00:44:54,280 --> 00:44:58,520
Speaker 15: or get seriously ill or infertile, and the infertility and

739
00:44:58,640 --> 00:45:03,200
Speaker 15: death of slaves meant a loss of property. So enslavers

740
00:45:03,680 --> 00:45:08,080
Speaker 15: we're very concerned about this issue. Marion Simms at some

741
00:45:08,320 --> 00:45:13,840
Speaker 15: point discovers that if you use silver thread, silver sutures

742
00:45:14,360 --> 00:45:17,760
Speaker 15: when you operate on women who have had these vaginal terrors,

743
00:45:18,680 --> 00:45:23,600
Speaker 15: that the infection doesn't happen. Now, he wanted to prove this,

744
00:45:23,760 --> 00:45:26,799
Speaker 15: He wanted to perfect his technique, so he did it

745
00:45:26,920 --> 00:45:28,240
Speaker 15: on enslaved women.

746
00:45:29,120 --> 00:45:32,480
Speaker 4: During the COVID nineteen pandemic, Black Americans lagged behind whites

747
00:45:32,480 --> 00:45:35,960
Speaker 4: in terms of vaccination rates. According to a systemic literature

748
00:45:36,000 --> 00:45:39,560
Speaker 4: review on the determinants of vaccine hesitancy among Black Americans,

749
00:45:40,160 --> 00:45:43,160
Speaker 4: vaccine hasnency in Black communities is rooted in a troubling

750
00:45:43,239 --> 00:45:47,239
Speaker 4: history of unethical medical experiments, and it persists to this

751
00:45:47,400 --> 00:45:50,200
Speaker 4: day due to how this group of the population still

752
00:45:50,239 --> 00:45:54,560
Speaker 4: experiences discrimination, racism, mistreatment, and overall health iniquity.

753
00:45:55,760 --> 00:46:01,040
Speaker 15: The most famous case of the medical abuse of marginalized people,

754
00:46:01,120 --> 00:46:05,200
Speaker 15: and it's really entered the folk culture to the point

755
00:46:05,239 --> 00:46:08,279
Speaker 15: that when I was teaching American history classes at a

756
00:46:08,280 --> 00:46:12,160
Speaker 15: community college, all the students had heard about this particular

757
00:46:12,480 --> 00:46:16,600
Speaker 15: atrocity and it was called the Tuskegee experiment. What actually

758
00:46:16,640 --> 00:46:20,960
Speaker 15: happened is that African American men who got sexually transmitted

759
00:46:21,000 --> 00:46:25,799
Speaker 15: diseases would go to this medical clinic that had been established,

760
00:46:25,920 --> 00:46:29,120
Speaker 15: and the doctors with this grant wanted to see what

761
00:46:29,400 --> 00:46:32,640
Speaker 15: the trajectory of syphilis would be if it was untreated.

762
00:46:33,320 --> 00:46:37,080
Speaker 15: So these were people who already had STDs and they

763
00:46:37,120 --> 00:46:40,440
Speaker 15: were given a placebo. They were given basically a sugar

764
00:46:40,520 --> 00:46:46,120
Speaker 15: pill rather than penicillin or any other ameliative care. And

765
00:46:47,000 --> 00:46:51,960
Speaker 15: the doctor's mission in their minds was that's find out

766
00:46:52,280 --> 00:46:58,080
Speaker 15: if syphilis progresses in the same way with African American

767
00:46:58,239 --> 00:47:01,200
Speaker 15: men as it does with white men. And so they

768
00:47:01,239 --> 00:47:04,440
Speaker 15: wanted to see because they knew that syphilis will untreated

769
00:47:04,719 --> 00:47:09,840
Speaker 15: eventually attack the central nervous systimuli, seizures, blindness, any number

770
00:47:09,880 --> 00:47:13,640
Speaker 15: of terrible side effects. So they would go to the doctor,

771
00:47:13,680 --> 00:47:18,719
Speaker 15: they would get the placebo, and syphilis will go into remission,

772
00:47:19,680 --> 00:47:24,400
Speaker 15: and so the patient wouldn't have the benefit of medical

773
00:47:24,440 --> 00:47:29,160
Speaker 15: knowledge about how syphilis progresses, would think the pill made

774
00:47:29,160 --> 00:47:32,200
Speaker 15: it better, and then they would ask them to return

775
00:47:32,840 --> 00:47:35,960
Speaker 15: and the doctor would come and then he'd record the

776
00:47:36,120 --> 00:47:41,120
Speaker 15: damage that was happening to the patient's body as the

777
00:47:41,160 --> 00:47:45,040
Speaker 15: disease progressed. And this went on until the nineteen sixties,

778
00:47:45,120 --> 00:47:52,160
Speaker 15: and they published results with no professional repercussions.

779
00:47:52,280 --> 00:47:52,560
Speaker 9: You know.

780
00:47:52,640 --> 00:47:56,600
Speaker 15: And one thing they proved is that syphilis attacks black

781
00:47:56,680 --> 00:47:58,880
Speaker 15: people the same way it does white people. If you

782
00:47:58,960 --> 00:48:03,440
Speaker 15: leave it untreated, the same symptoms developed. The nervous systems

783
00:48:03,440 --> 00:48:06,120
Speaker 15: of black and white people are the same. But they

784
00:48:06,120 --> 00:48:11,560
Speaker 15: publish these results in ACCLAIM Medical Journal, and the backlash

785
00:48:11,719 --> 00:48:12,560
Speaker 15: was not immediate.

786
00:48:12,600 --> 00:48:15,000
Speaker 14: Eventually, you know, it became a scandal.

787
00:48:15,280 --> 00:48:20,280
Speaker 15: So that really did strike a chord in the Black

788
00:48:20,560 --> 00:48:26,880
Speaker 15: community that I think to this day we've seen skepticism

789
00:48:26,920 --> 00:48:30,800
Speaker 15: about white medicine. And again there's valid historical reasons.

790
00:48:31,800 --> 00:48:34,880
Speaker 4: RFK Junior and the anti vaccination movement have seized on

791
00:48:34,960 --> 00:48:40,280
Speaker 4: this particular historical atrocity, so doubt about vaccines among Black Americans.

792
00:48:40,280 --> 00:48:44,360
Speaker 4: More generally, Children's Health Defense, the anti VAXX group previously

793
00:48:44,440 --> 00:48:48,080
Speaker 4: led by RFK Junior, invoked the Tuskegee Syphilist study in

794
00:48:48,120 --> 00:48:52,359
Speaker 4: an anti vaccine film called medical Racism the New Apartheid.

795
00:48:53,000 --> 00:48:55,359
Speaker 4: But before we talk a bit more about Children's Health

796
00:48:55,400 --> 00:48:59,240
Speaker 4: Defense and the more recent history of the anti vaccination movement,

797
00:48:59,440 --> 00:49:13,200
Speaker 4: we've got it to another ad break. Black Americans aren't

798
00:49:13,239 --> 00:49:17,320
Speaker 4: the only population group that organizations like Children's Health Defense

799
00:49:17,600 --> 00:49:21,960
Speaker 4: have targeted in recent years. For decades, the anti vax

800
00:49:22,040 --> 00:49:24,680
Speaker 4: movement has sought to recruit the parents of autistic children

801
00:49:24,719 --> 00:49:27,120
Speaker 4: to their cause by way of the argument that vaccines

802
00:49:27,160 --> 00:49:31,600
Speaker 4: directly cause autism. Incidentally, one such parent of an autistic

803
00:49:31,719 --> 00:49:36,759
Speaker 4: child is doctor Hotes, whose twenty thirteen book Vaccines did

804
00:49:36,760 --> 00:49:41,560
Speaker 4: Not Cause Rachel's Autism directly targets RFK Junior's long held

805
00:49:41,560 --> 00:49:44,319
Speaker 4: belief about the link between autism and vaccines.

806
00:49:46,800 --> 00:49:51,839
Speaker 13: It actually came about after a year of discussions with

807
00:49:51,960 --> 00:49:55,799
Speaker 13: Robert F. Kennedy Junior explaining tim the evidence showing vaccines

808
00:49:56,520 --> 00:49:59,719
Speaker 13: don't cause autism and finally decide to write it all

809
00:49:59,800 --> 00:50:02,600
Speaker 13: up in a book. And it's about my daughter. So

810
00:50:02,800 --> 00:50:05,160
Speaker 13: you know, I wear two hats as a vaccine scientist,

811
00:50:05,200 --> 00:50:08,040
Speaker 13: but also wound up going up against anti vaccine groups

812
00:50:08,080 --> 00:50:12,239
Speaker 13: because I do have a daughter with autism and intellectual

813
00:50:12,280 --> 00:50:17,120
Speaker 13: disabilities and now she's an adult. And essentially there's two

814
00:50:17,239 --> 00:50:21,320
Speaker 13: major threads in the book other than telling the story

815
00:50:21,360 --> 00:50:25,040
Speaker 13: about Rachel and our family, and one is the overwhelming

816
00:50:25,080 --> 00:50:28,320
Speaker 13: evidence showing there's no link between vaccines and autism, and

817
00:50:29,120 --> 00:50:31,960
Speaker 13: even within that, there's a lot of subcategories because what

818
00:50:32,080 --> 00:50:37,200
Speaker 13: happens is anti vaccine groups keeps switching up the concern

819
00:50:37,239 --> 00:50:40,319
Speaker 13: about a specific vaccine, and when it gets debunked and

820
00:50:40,360 --> 00:50:42,839
Speaker 13: they just switch it up to something else. I call

821
00:50:42,880 --> 00:50:45,800
Speaker 13: it biomedical whack a mole or moving the goalposts of

822
00:50:45,840 --> 00:50:49,320
Speaker 13: The original assertion came out of the late nineteen nineties

823
00:50:49,360 --> 00:50:51,600
Speaker 13: of the false claims that it was the MMR vaccine

824
00:50:51,600 --> 00:50:55,200
Speaker 13: the measles, mumps rubella vaccine, and that was actually published

825
00:50:55,600 --> 00:50:58,239
Speaker 13: in a biomedical journal called The Lancet in the UK.

826
00:50:58,400 --> 00:51:01,400
Speaker 13: The paper was retracted eventually because it was known to

827
00:51:01,440 --> 00:51:05,279
Speaker 13: be false, and also the scientific community responded with large

828
00:51:05,280 --> 00:51:09,520
Speaker 13: epidemiologic studies showing that kids who got the MMR vaccine

829
00:51:09,520 --> 00:51:12,240
Speaker 13: were no more likely to acquire autism than kids who didn't,

830
00:51:13,160 --> 00:51:15,520
Speaker 13: and similarly, kids on the autism spectrum were no more

831
00:51:15,600 --> 00:51:17,840
Speaker 13: likely to have gotten MMR the kids not on the

832
00:51:17,880 --> 00:51:19,799
Speaker 13: autism spectrum. That should have been the end of it,

833
00:51:19,880 --> 00:51:23,080
Speaker 13: but then our friend Robert F. Kennedy Junior came on

834
00:51:23,120 --> 00:51:25,560
Speaker 13: the scene in two thousand and five and wrote an

835
00:51:25,640 --> 00:51:29,760
Speaker 13: article in Rolling Stone magazine claiming, okay, if it's not MMR,

836
00:51:29,800 --> 00:51:34,279
Speaker 13: it must be the thimerosol preservative that's in vaccine, and

837
00:51:34,320 --> 00:51:38,400
Speaker 13: that was also retracted and thoroughly debunked through large epidemiologic studies,

838
00:51:38,440 --> 00:51:41,640
Speaker 13: even nonhuman primate studies. And it switched up again to

839
00:51:42,320 --> 00:51:45,319
Speaker 13: spacing vaccines too close together. We have to green our

840
00:51:45,440 --> 00:51:49,960
Speaker 13: vaccine ecosystem. And you saw celebrities like Jenny McCarthy, your husband,

841
00:51:50,040 --> 00:51:52,640
Speaker 13: Jim Carrey walking around in green T shirts. It was

842
00:51:52,680 --> 00:51:56,799
Speaker 13: all phony boloni and that was debunked, and then it

843
00:51:56,880 --> 00:51:59,560
Speaker 13: was alum in vaccine. So it became this kind of

844
00:51:59,560 --> 00:52:03,080
Speaker 13: exhaust exercise and each time we were able to successfully

845
00:52:03,239 --> 00:52:03,799
Speaker 13: refute it.

846
00:52:06,800 --> 00:52:10,160
Speaker 4: Founded in two thousand and seven, Children's Health Defense represented

847
00:52:10,160 --> 00:52:14,759
Speaker 4: a formalization of late twentieth century anti vaccination resistance. Not

848
00:52:14,880 --> 00:52:17,680
Speaker 4: unlike the anti vaccination leagues of the late nineteenth and

849
00:52:17,760 --> 00:52:22,440
Speaker 4: early twentieth century, Children's Health Defense pedals dubious cures like

850
00:52:22,480 --> 00:52:27,239
Speaker 4: homeopathy and promotes conspiratorial narratives like the Great Reset, which

851
00:52:27,280 --> 00:52:29,880
Speaker 4: claims that billionaire Bill Gates and others have used the

852
00:52:29,920 --> 00:52:32,920
Speaker 4: COVID nineteen pandemic as part of a plan to make

853
00:52:32,960 --> 00:52:37,120
Speaker 4: America a Marxist. The idea that vaccines cause autism is

854
00:52:37,160 --> 00:52:40,640
Speaker 4: a part of a larger claim that vaccines can cause

855
00:52:40,680 --> 00:52:44,200
Speaker 4: injuries among those who receive them, and that our understanding

856
00:52:44,480 --> 00:52:48,520
Speaker 4: of these injuries is far less than what the science shows.

857
00:52:49,400 --> 00:52:52,560
Speaker 4: This notion gained traction in the nineteen seventies and nineteen eighties,

858
00:52:52,880 --> 00:52:57,799
Speaker 4: when controversy erupted regarding the DPT vaccine for diphtheria, pertussis,

859
00:52:57,840 --> 00:53:03,719
Speaker 4: and tetanus. A sensational film called DPT Vaccine Roulette drew

860
00:53:03,760 --> 00:53:06,960
Speaker 4: an erroneous link between the vaccine and illnesses of some

861
00:53:07,120 --> 00:53:10,560
Speaker 4: children who received it. Two parents of children who received

862
00:53:10,600 --> 00:53:14,640
Speaker 4: the vaccine formed the National Vaccine Information Center, which exists

863
00:53:14,640 --> 00:53:16,800
Speaker 4: to this day and was a major source of COVID

864
00:53:16,880 --> 00:53:21,279
Speaker 4: nineteen misinformation. The controversy around the DPT vaccine led to

865
00:53:21,360 --> 00:53:25,640
Speaker 4: lawsuits against vaccine manufacturers, leading many of those manufacturers to

866
00:53:25,640 --> 00:53:28,239
Speaker 4: stop producing the vaccine by the end of nineteen eighty five.

867
00:53:28,800 --> 00:53:32,520
Speaker 4: Because of this, Congress passed the National Childhood Vaccine Injury

868
00:53:32,560 --> 00:53:36,760
Speaker 4: Act in nineteen eighty six, establishing a no fault system

869
00:53:36,840 --> 00:53:40,840
Speaker 4: to alleviate pressure on vaccine manufacturers and provide an avenue

870
00:53:40,880 --> 00:53:45,200
Speaker 4: for victims of a vaccine injury to be compensated. As

871
00:53:45,239 --> 00:53:49,000
Speaker 4: doctor Hotez describes it, a lot of this is overblown. Yes,

872
00:53:49,360 --> 00:53:53,520
Speaker 4: there are individuals who can have reactions two vaccines that

873
00:53:53,600 --> 00:53:58,359
Speaker 4: can cause issues, but the studies around DPT and the

874
00:53:58,360 --> 00:54:01,839
Speaker 4: notions that it caused these illnesses that these parents were

875
00:54:01,880 --> 00:54:05,759
Speaker 4: concerned about, it actually showed that there was no connection. Nevertheless,

876
00:54:06,520 --> 00:54:09,000
Speaker 4: it is a reality that some people may face some

877
00:54:09,000 --> 00:54:12,359
Speaker 4: sort of complications, and we can't dismiss that. But when

878
00:54:12,400 --> 00:54:15,480
Speaker 4: we stack it up against the side effects of disease

879
00:54:15,680 --> 00:54:19,239
Speaker 4: and one of those being death, well it's a pretty

880
00:54:19,320 --> 00:54:20,480
Speaker 4: easy comparison to make.

881
00:54:21,239 --> 00:54:24,439
Speaker 13: Yeah, it's going to be so important to keep up,

882
00:54:25,200 --> 00:54:28,239
Speaker 13: you know, the education about vaccines. And one of the

883
00:54:28,239 --> 00:54:33,279
Speaker 13: things that I've done has been preparing these infographics, which

884
00:54:33,360 --> 00:54:35,400
Speaker 13: I initially did with a guy named Bill Marsh at

885
00:54:35,440 --> 00:54:37,600
Speaker 13: the New York Times. Is this brilliant guy who does

886
00:54:37,640 --> 00:54:40,560
Speaker 13: all these cool graphics for the New York Times, and

887
00:54:41,400 --> 00:54:44,640
Speaker 13: he had this really interesting idea that we published in

888
00:54:44,640 --> 00:54:47,680
Speaker 13: The New York Times in twenty twenty where you create

889
00:54:47,719 --> 00:54:52,400
Speaker 13: a box representing ten thousand kids and two boxes aligned

890
00:54:52,440 --> 00:54:55,120
Speaker 13: side to side. One box is what happens if ten

891
00:54:55,160 --> 00:54:59,960
Speaker 13: thousand kids get save, for instance, the MMR vaccine versus

892
00:55:00,160 --> 00:55:04,720
Speaker 13: is the other box. Ten thousand kids getting measles and

893
00:55:04,880 --> 00:55:07,120
Speaker 13: you know, the ones getting the MMR vaccine. You see

894
00:55:07,120 --> 00:55:10,560
Speaker 13: these tiny little pin pricks of very rare side effects

895
00:55:10,640 --> 00:55:15,440
Speaker 13: like allergic reaction or febril seizures, one in three thousand,

896
00:55:16,000 --> 00:55:18,040
Speaker 13: that sort of thing. So maybe there's a tiny little

897
00:55:18,080 --> 00:55:22,160
Speaker 13: pin prick representing you know, three year thirty kids as

898
00:55:22,160 --> 00:55:25,439
Speaker 13: opposed to measles, which you know twenty percent of kids

899
00:55:25,480 --> 00:55:29,120
Speaker 13: hospitalized and measles deaths, and these are large red and

900
00:55:29,200 --> 00:55:32,400
Speaker 13: black boxes. I think those kinds of things are helpful

901
00:55:32,560 --> 00:55:34,560
Speaker 13: because I think one of the problems is the anti

902
00:55:34,640 --> 00:55:39,239
Speaker 13: vaccine guys. What they'll do is they will exaggerate the

903
00:55:39,400 --> 00:55:45,040
Speaker 13: frequency of rare, rare side effects and in simultaneously downplay

904
00:55:45,640 --> 00:55:48,120
Speaker 13: the severity of the illness. And we even heard that

905
00:55:48,160 --> 00:55:50,120
Speaker 13: before the two deaths. You know, you heard all this

906
00:55:50,239 --> 00:55:54,680
Speaker 13: rhetorical measles is just like a benign illness. And now

907
00:55:54,680 --> 00:55:57,960
Speaker 13: we've got two deaths right here in Texas of nice

908
00:55:58,000 --> 00:56:00,960
Speaker 13: school age kids that never had to lose their lives

909
00:56:01,840 --> 00:56:05,880
Speaker 13: because the parents were taken in by the disinformation machine.

910
00:56:06,800 --> 00:56:09,800
Speaker 4: The contemporary rise of anti vaccine rhetoric in the US

911
00:56:10,280 --> 00:56:12,799
Speaker 4: can also be tied to the political climate of the

912
00:56:12,880 --> 00:56:17,160
Speaker 4: early twenty first century. Figures like Congressman Ron Paul, for example,

913
00:56:17,160 --> 00:56:20,640
Speaker 4: have capitalized on the growing sentiment that government should not

914
00:56:20,680 --> 00:56:25,160
Speaker 4: interfere with individual medical decisions. With increasing distrust in government,

915
00:56:25,239 --> 00:56:29,760
Speaker 4: particularly during the Bush administration, vaccine hesitancy began to align

916
00:56:29,840 --> 00:56:33,719
Speaker 4: with broader libertarian and some conservative ideologies. The idea that

917
00:56:33,760 --> 00:56:36,680
Speaker 4: the government should not mandate personal medical choices further gain

918
00:56:36,760 --> 00:56:39,680
Speaker 4: traction with the election of President Barack Obama in two

919
00:56:39,680 --> 00:56:43,440
Speaker 4: thousand and eight, adding fuel to the anti vaccination fire,

920
00:56:44,120 --> 00:56:46,440
Speaker 4: and the anti vact movement began to dovetail with the

921
00:56:46,480 --> 00:56:50,280
Speaker 4: booming alternative health and wellness industry that excused Western medicine

922
00:56:50,280 --> 00:56:54,200
Speaker 4: in favor of natural medicines and holistic approaches, and often

923
00:56:54,200 --> 00:56:57,600
Speaker 4: this includes some sort of spiritual element. This convergence is

924
00:56:57,640 --> 00:57:01,719
Speaker 4: crystallized in modern figures like Vo Hare, also known as

925
00:57:01,800 --> 00:57:06,399
Speaker 4: the food Babe, who is a conservative wellness influencer. She's

926
00:57:06,440 --> 00:57:10,480
Speaker 4: aligned herself with RFK Junior's Maha agenda and promotes the

927
00:57:10,520 --> 00:57:13,920
Speaker 4: standard goop like fair but with a right wing edge.

928
00:57:14,320 --> 00:57:17,600
Speaker 4: The American food industry, for example, or Big Pharma for example,

929
00:57:17,600 --> 00:57:21,440
Speaker 4: are poisoning us, but also you shouldn't get the flu vaccine.

930
00:57:22,040 --> 00:57:24,960
Speaker 4: Despite the best efforts of scientists like doctor Hotes to

931
00:57:24,960 --> 00:57:28,880
Speaker 4: debunk he claims that motivate the modern anti vaccination movement,

932
00:57:29,200 --> 00:57:32,360
Speaker 4: it has only gathered steam in the last few decades.

933
00:57:33,320 --> 00:57:35,640
Speaker 4: In recent years, a number of states have passed new

934
00:57:35,720 --> 00:57:40,240
Speaker 4: laws allowing for personal exemptions from vaccines, and because of

935
00:57:40,320 --> 00:57:43,240
Speaker 4: doctor Hotes's public involvement, he's had a front row seat

936
00:57:43,440 --> 00:57:46,160
Speaker 4: as anti vaccination beliefs have become part and parcel of

937
00:57:46,200 --> 00:57:47,280
Speaker 4: Republican politics.

938
00:57:48,040 --> 00:57:51,080
Speaker 13: And it was a physician scientist. The last thing I

939
00:57:51,120 --> 00:57:53,520
Speaker 13: want to talk about is politics, right. I mean, I

940
00:57:53,560 --> 00:57:56,880
Speaker 13: feel that every American is a right to their political views.

941
00:57:56,400 --> 00:57:59,800
Speaker 13: That's embedded in our history and our constitution. But how

942
00:57:59,800 --> 00:58:04,000
Speaker 13: do you say, don't adopt this stuff because it's going

943
00:58:04,040 --> 00:58:07,840
Speaker 13: to be so detrimental. But that's what happened with the

944
00:58:07,880 --> 00:58:11,920
Speaker 13: formation of anti vaccine groups in the twenty tens. In Texas.

945
00:58:11,920 --> 00:58:15,400
Speaker 13: You started to get these steep rise in parents requesting

946
00:58:15,840 --> 00:58:19,040
Speaker 13: non medical exemptions that their kids could get out of

947
00:58:19,080 --> 00:58:23,360
Speaker 13: being vaccinated for school. And it was particularly strong in

948
00:58:23,480 --> 00:58:27,520
Speaker 13: the same places where people were refusing COVID vaccine years later,

949
00:58:27,760 --> 00:58:32,360
Speaker 13: especially in conservative rural areas. Of West Texas, East Texas.

950
00:58:32,360 --> 00:58:35,440
Speaker 13: The vaccination rates continue to be strong in our cities

951
00:58:35,440 --> 00:58:38,240
Speaker 13: of the Texas Triangle, Dallas, where you are, in Houston

952
00:58:38,280 --> 00:58:42,640
Speaker 13: where I am, and San Antonio and Austin. But you know,

953
00:58:42,720 --> 00:58:46,560
Speaker 13: in the more conservative rural areas of West Texas East Texas,

954
00:58:46,640 --> 00:58:51,360
Speaker 13: that's where you saw big declines in kids getting vaccines.

955
00:58:51,440 --> 00:58:55,480
Speaker 13: And once you go below a certain threshold, roughly below

956
00:58:55,560 --> 00:58:59,040
Speaker 13: ninety percent, and bam that you start to see break

957
00:58:59,040 --> 00:59:02,640
Speaker 13: through childhood infections. And usually the first one you see

958
00:59:02,640 --> 00:59:04,440
Speaker 13: is measles. You can ultimately get all of them, but

959
00:59:04,520 --> 00:59:06,760
Speaker 13: measles is the first one you see because it's so

960
00:59:06,840 --> 00:59:07,960
Speaker 13: highly transmissible.

961
00:59:08,640 --> 00:59:10,080
Speaker 3: But Texas is not alone.

962
00:59:10,640 --> 00:59:14,160
Speaker 4: Well, Immunization rates certainly have limited in Republican states faster

963
00:59:14,240 --> 00:59:17,600
Speaker 4: than they have in Democratic states. Immunization rates have fallen

964
00:59:17,800 --> 00:59:20,920
Speaker 4: in most states since the pandemic. But there was another

965
00:59:20,960 --> 00:59:24,480
Speaker 4: event over half a decade before social distancing and vaccination

966
00:59:24,600 --> 00:59:28,040
Speaker 4: cards became household concepts that also informed the Republican Party's

967
00:59:28,040 --> 00:59:32,960
Speaker 4: embrace of anti vaccine politics. This was a particular viral

968
00:59:33,000 --> 00:59:37,080
Speaker 4: outbreak of measles in California, one that ultimately spurred policy

969
00:59:37,160 --> 00:59:39,920
Speaker 4: changes that reverberated across the country.

970
00:59:40,440 --> 00:59:44,320
Speaker 13: It started happening in the twenty tens and really ramped

971
00:59:44,400 --> 00:59:47,840
Speaker 13: up after there was a large measles epidemic in California

972
00:59:47,880 --> 00:59:51,440
Speaker 13: of all places, on twenty fourteen, twenty fifteen, and the

973
00:59:51,480 --> 00:59:55,480
Speaker 13: California legislatures shut down vaccine exemptions. They said, Okay, from

974
00:59:55,480 --> 00:59:57,000
Speaker 13: now on, you want to send you kids to school,

975
00:59:57,040 --> 01:00:00,080
Speaker 13: the kids have to be vaccinated. And I supported that.

976
01:00:00,080 --> 01:00:03,480
Speaker 13: That solved the measles problem, but then it produced this

977
01:00:03,560 --> 01:00:08,320
Speaker 13: health freedom backlash in states like Texas, also Oklahoma, and

978
01:00:08,440 --> 01:00:12,800
Speaker 13: very much a red state phenomenon read being Republican, blue

979
01:00:12,840 --> 01:00:17,480
Speaker 13: being a Democrat, and that's where you saw these this

980
01:00:17,680 --> 01:00:22,040
Speaker 13: Rizon vaccine exemptions. You started getting anti vaccine groups forming.

981
01:00:22,080 --> 01:00:24,960
Speaker 13: They were getting pack money, political Action committee money, and

982
01:00:25,680 --> 01:00:30,400
Speaker 13: I saw that as really dangerous because now rather than

983
01:00:30,440 --> 01:00:34,400
Speaker 13: being sort of small, underfunded groups, they now had the

984
01:00:34,440 --> 01:00:37,800
Speaker 13: backing of a major political party and everything that goes

985
01:00:37,840 --> 01:00:42,400
Speaker 13: along with it in terms of influence and PAC money,

986
01:00:42,440 --> 01:00:44,560
Speaker 13: and this gives them a lot of bandwidth and a

987
01:00:44,560 --> 01:00:48,280
Speaker 13: lot of political clout, and it's so self defeating, but

988
01:00:48,720 --> 01:00:51,280
Speaker 13: there you are. And so now we're at the point

989
01:00:51,920 --> 01:00:56,919
Speaker 13: in Texas where we have over one hundred thousand non

990
01:00:56,960 --> 01:01:00,720
Speaker 13: medical exemption requests of various sorts. So that's a lot

991
01:01:00,760 --> 01:01:04,000
Speaker 13: of kids. And this doesn't say anything about the homeschooled

992
01:01:04,080 --> 01:01:08,439
Speaker 13: kids in Texas. I'm told that we may have as

993
01:01:08,480 --> 01:01:11,240
Speaker 13: many as seven hundred thousand homeschooled kids, but you might

994
01:01:11,280 --> 01:01:13,440
Speaker 13: want to document that. And I don't think we have

995
01:01:13,480 --> 01:01:15,840
Speaker 13: any idea of the percentage of those kids that are

996
01:01:15,880 --> 01:01:18,240
Speaker 13: not getting their vaccines because they're homeschools.

997
01:01:19,440 --> 01:01:24,040
Speaker 4: Private schools in Texas have significantly lower vaccination rates on average,

998
01:01:24,440 --> 01:01:27,560
Speaker 4: and the numbers among homeschoolers, while not precisely known, are

999
01:01:27,640 --> 01:01:31,480
Speaker 4: likely just as bad, if not worse. Texas just passed

1000
01:01:31,480 --> 01:01:35,000
Speaker 4: the largest school privatization scheme in the nation, through which

1001
01:01:35,200 --> 01:01:37,480
Speaker 4: parents will be subsidized by the state to send their

1002
01:01:37,560 --> 01:01:41,360
Speaker 4: kids to private schools or to homeschool them, meaning vaccination

1003
01:01:41,440 --> 01:01:44,200
Speaker 4: rates among school aged children will likely continue to fall.

1004
01:01:44,800 --> 01:01:47,880
Speaker 4: The prevalence of homeschooling among left leaning, crunchy alternative types

1005
01:01:47,920 --> 01:01:51,920
Speaker 4: has also contributed to the shift towards right wing politics,

1006
01:01:52,040 --> 01:01:55,840
Speaker 4: as the homeschool movement has deliberately tried to recruit those

1007
01:01:55,840 --> 01:01:59,480
Speaker 4: families and pushed them towards right wing politics. The complete

1008
01:01:59,480 --> 01:02:03,920
Speaker 4: partisan politicization of vaccinations has made communicating the risks of

1009
01:02:04,000 --> 01:02:07,960
Speaker 4: low vaccination rates far more difficult for people like doctor Hotez.

1010
01:02:08,560 --> 01:02:12,360
Speaker 13: How do you thread that needle and say, look, everybody

1011
01:02:12,720 --> 01:02:15,040
Speaker 13: has a right to their political views. I'm not going

1012
01:02:15,080 --> 01:02:17,440
Speaker 13: there with you that you're right as an American citizen,

1013
01:02:17,520 --> 01:02:21,200
Speaker 13: but don't adopt the anti vaccine stuff because it's so

1014
01:02:21,360 --> 01:02:24,840
Speaker 13: dangerous for your health and the health of your loved ones,

1015
01:02:24,880 --> 01:02:27,560
Speaker 13: the health of your kids. But it's a tough needle

1016
01:02:27,600 --> 01:02:29,920
Speaker 13: to thread, and as a result, I, you know, will often,

1017
01:02:30,440 --> 01:02:32,840
Speaker 13: even though I try to bend over backwards explaining I

1018
01:02:32,880 --> 01:02:37,720
Speaker 13: don't care about your politics, for their convenient purposes, I'm

1019
01:02:37,760 --> 01:02:42,000
Speaker 13: treated as a political figure and portrayed as a cartoon

1020
01:02:42,120 --> 01:02:45,760
Speaker 13: villain or you know, a scientist and white coat plotting

1021
01:02:45,840 --> 01:02:49,440
Speaker 13: nefarious things. You know, they have this crazy concept out

1022
01:02:49,480 --> 01:02:52,880
Speaker 13: there they call plandemic. Now that it's not a pandemic,

1023
01:02:52,920 --> 01:02:56,240
Speaker 13: it's a plandemic that somehow I've been involved with, or

1024
01:02:56,320 --> 01:03:00,160
Speaker 13: that I'm profiting from vaccines and secretly working for or

1025
01:03:00,160 --> 01:03:02,800
Speaker 13: pharma companies even though it's the opposite right and make

1026
01:03:02,880 --> 01:03:05,880
Speaker 13: load cost vaccines that actually showed me could bypass the

1027
01:03:05,920 --> 01:03:10,560
Speaker 13: big pharma companies and and some of it gets outright absurd.

1028
01:03:10,560 --> 01:03:13,720
Speaker 13: I mean, there's this whole thread on the Internet that

1029
01:03:13,920 --> 01:03:16,400
Speaker 13: says that I'm not even a real person, that I'm

1030
01:03:17,080 --> 01:03:22,160
Speaker 13: I'm actually being played by Jack Black, and that he's

1031
01:03:22,840 --> 01:03:26,680
Speaker 13: paid for by the CIA, and and it's got these amazing,

1032
01:03:26,840 --> 01:03:30,000
Speaker 13: you know, forensic analysis of close ups of my teeth

1033
01:03:30,040 --> 01:03:33,760
Speaker 13: with Jack Black's teeth and all this profiles and things.

1034
01:03:34,320 --> 01:03:37,640
Speaker 13: I mean, the funny thing is the said thing is

1035
01:03:37,680 --> 01:03:41,840
Speaker 13: the crazier the conspiracy the faster it seems to travel.

1036
01:03:44,480 --> 01:03:47,760
Speaker 4: These sorts of conspiracy theories would be laughable if they

1037
01:03:47,760 --> 01:03:51,800
Speaker 4: did not have deadly consequences. And unfortunately, this sort of

1038
01:03:51,840 --> 01:03:56,520
Speaker 4: public health focused conspiracism is not new. In the late

1039
01:03:56,600 --> 01:04:00,720
Speaker 4: eighteen hundred, several Canadian doctors, such as Alexander Milton Ross,

1040
01:04:01,080 --> 01:04:05,440
Speaker 4: insisted that vaccines were the true danger, not smallpox. Others

1041
01:04:05,560 --> 01:04:08,960
Speaker 4: argued that British doctors were promoting vaccinations to poison the

1042
01:04:08,960 --> 01:04:13,919
Speaker 4: French Canadian community due to nationalistic conflicts. If you were

1043
01:04:13,960 --> 01:04:16,640
Speaker 4: not in a coma during the COVID nineteen pandemic, these

1044
01:04:16,680 --> 01:04:20,080
Speaker 4: ideas should sound familiar, and in nineteen twenty, at the

1045
01:04:20,120 --> 01:04:23,040
Speaker 4: tail end of the deadly Spanish flu pandemic that killed

1046
01:04:23,040 --> 01:04:27,640
Speaker 4: somewhere between seventeen and fifty million people worldwide. The Commissioner

1047
01:04:27,720 --> 01:04:30,440
Speaker 4: of Public Health in Seattle, doctor Hiram Reid, was dealing

1048
01:04:30,440 --> 01:04:34,040
Speaker 4: with the nasty outbreak of smallpox the year prior. The

1049
01:04:34,120 --> 01:04:39,280
Speaker 4: Washington state legislature, facing pressure from anti vaccination activists, allowed

1050
01:04:39,280 --> 01:04:42,520
Speaker 4: for students to avoid vaccination requirements if their parents objected,

1051
01:04:42,800 --> 01:04:48,280
Speaker 4: effectively ending mandatory vaccination. Hiram, frustrated with the ongoing resistance

1052
01:04:48,400 --> 01:04:51,720
Speaker 4: to his attempts to vaccinate the public in Seattle, vented

1053
01:04:52,000 --> 01:04:56,320
Speaker 4: in a nineteen twenty annual health report quote, the number

1054
01:04:56,360 --> 01:04:59,880
Speaker 4: of unvaccinated persons in this city is large, the city

1055
01:05:00,080 --> 01:05:04,560
Speaker 4: being a hotbed for anti vaccination, Christian Science and various

1056
01:05:04,640 --> 01:05:09,000
Speaker 4: anti medical cults, and it is difficult to enforce vaccination really,

1057
01:05:09,080 --> 01:05:13,000
Speaker 4: wrote for those who are unfamiliar. Christian Science is an

1058
01:05:13,040 --> 01:05:16,680
Speaker 4: offshoot of Christianity that was formed in eighteen seventy nine

1059
01:05:16,840 --> 01:05:19,520
Speaker 4: in New England and by nineteen thirty six was the

1060
01:05:19,760 --> 01:05:24,000
Speaker 4: fastest growing religion in the nation. Christian scientists typically avoid

1061
01:05:24,000 --> 01:05:26,440
Speaker 4: medical care and rely instead on their belief in the

1062
01:05:26,440 --> 01:05:31,280
Speaker 4: healing power of prayer. On the next episode of Anti

1063
01:05:31,360 --> 01:05:36,439
Speaker 4: Vaxxs America, I'll explore the intersection of conservative Christianity, its

1064
01:05:36,480 --> 01:05:42,320
Speaker 4: belief in spiritual healing miracles, anti vaccination beliefs, and vaccination hesitancy.

1065
01:05:42,760 --> 01:05:46,160
Speaker 4: We'll talk about how a very influential strain of conservative

1066
01:05:46,200 --> 01:05:49,680
Speaker 4: Christianity that is highly political and has tied itself with

1067
01:05:49,760 --> 01:05:55,960
Speaker 4: Donald Trump is also influencing people's attitudes about vaccination. Until then,

1068
01:05:56,520 --> 01:05:59,600
Speaker 4: I'm Stephen Mamicelli and this is Anti vaxx America for

1069
01:05:59,640 --> 01:06:00,480
Speaker 4: COOLS Media.

1070
01:06:01,120 --> 01:06:01,920
Speaker 3: Thanks for listening.

1071
01:06:22,640 --> 01:06:26,080
Speaker 4: I'm Stephen Manicelli. I'm a journalist in Dallas and an

1072
01:06:26,080 --> 01:06:29,320
Speaker 4: occasional contributor to Cool Zone Media. And this is episode

1073
01:06:29,360 --> 01:06:32,840
Speaker 4: three of Anti VAXs America, a special five parts series

1074
01:06:33,120 --> 01:06:36,080
Speaker 4: exploring anti vaccination beliefs in the United States through the

1075
01:06:36,160 --> 01:06:39,000
Speaker 4: lens of the West Texas measles outbreak that has since

1076
01:06:39,000 --> 01:06:42,480
Speaker 4: spread to several other states in the nation and claimed

1077
01:06:42,520 --> 01:06:46,560
Speaker 4: three lives. One of those lives was the daughter of

1078
01:06:46,600 --> 01:06:49,720
Speaker 4: a man named Peter, a member of a Mennonite community

1079
01:06:50,000 --> 01:06:55,400
Speaker 4: in West Texas. For Peter, the death of his child

1080
01:06:55,640 --> 01:06:59,439
Speaker 4: was basically God's will. He did an interview in which

1081
01:06:59,480 --> 01:07:02,480
Speaker 4: he discrib that if it's God's plan, you know, that

1082
01:07:02,640 --> 01:07:06,520
Speaker 4: is basically what he has to accept, but he also

1083
01:07:06,880 --> 01:07:09,800
Speaker 4: continued to oppose vaccines, and his wife said that they

1084
01:07:09,800 --> 01:07:13,760
Speaker 4: wouldn't recommend them to other parents. Now, Mennonites have been

1085
01:07:13,800 --> 01:07:16,200
Speaker 4: singled out in a lot of the coverage about this

1086
01:07:16,400 --> 01:07:20,000
Speaker 4: Measle's outbreak, given that the outbreak has centered in their

1087
01:07:20,040 --> 01:07:23,800
Speaker 4: community in West Texas, and there's been a lot of

1088
01:07:23,840 --> 01:07:28,160
Speaker 4: pushback with regard to the idea that Mennonites broadly speaking

1089
01:07:28,240 --> 01:07:32,760
Speaker 4: are opposed to vaccinations. There's nothing explicit in their theology

1090
01:07:33,120 --> 01:07:38,200
Speaker 4: or worldview that opposes vaccinations on principle. But these are

1091
01:07:38,240 --> 01:07:43,760
Speaker 4: individuals who hold strongly held beliefs regarding their religion, regarding

1092
01:07:43,760 --> 01:07:47,320
Speaker 4: their theology, and what they believe is right for them

1093
01:07:47,360 --> 01:07:50,880
Speaker 4: to do for their families and for their communities. It's

1094
01:07:50,920 --> 01:07:54,520
Speaker 4: not merely a few sectarian Mennonite communities in the United

1095
01:07:54,520 --> 01:07:58,680
Speaker 4: States that are hesitant to vaccinate their children in this way.

1096
01:07:58,920 --> 01:08:01,800
Speaker 4: It's actually a much bigger problem among what we could call,

1097
01:08:02,280 --> 01:08:06,440
Speaker 4: you know, some people might say mainstream evangelical Christians. Others

1098
01:08:06,520 --> 01:08:11,520
Speaker 4: might specifically refer to it as non denominational charismatic Christianity.

1099
01:08:12,080 --> 01:08:14,640
Speaker 4: But no matter which way you cut it, there is

1100
01:08:15,080 --> 01:08:20,240
Speaker 4: a clear and observable relationship between conservative Christianity and anti

1101
01:08:20,360 --> 01:08:24,200
Speaker 4: vaccination beliefs. Now, as a journalist in Texas, I've done

1102
01:08:24,240 --> 01:08:28,280
Speaker 4: my fair share of reporting on conservative Christianity, particularly the

1103
01:08:28,520 --> 01:08:31,760
Speaker 4: highly politicized strains of it that are popular in the

1104
01:08:31,760 --> 01:08:34,599
Speaker 4: Lone Star State and in North Texas where I live.

1105
01:08:35,360 --> 01:08:37,519
Speaker 4: I didn't grow up in one of these communities. I'm

1106
01:08:37,560 --> 01:08:42,560
Speaker 4: an outsider. So to help me unpack how conservative Christianity

1107
01:08:42,560 --> 01:08:46,759
Speaker 4: became so intertwined with this sort of anti vaccination movement,

1108
01:08:47,000 --> 01:08:49,240
Speaker 4: I brought in a special guest with whom you may

1109
01:08:49,240 --> 01:08:49,839
Speaker 4: be familiar.

1110
01:08:51,920 --> 01:08:55,800
Speaker 6: Hi, I'm Garrison Davis. I write about politics, extremism, and

1111
01:08:56,000 --> 01:08:57,880
Speaker 6: how much fun it is to be in the twenty

1112
01:08:57,880 --> 01:08:59,960
Speaker 6: first century for cool zone Media.

1113
01:09:00,520 --> 01:09:02,519
Speaker 4: So, you know, in terms of what I hope to

1114
01:09:02,560 --> 01:09:04,720
Speaker 4: hear from you, I mean, let's let's go back to

1115
01:09:05,240 --> 01:09:08,400
Speaker 4: your upbringing. Tell me a little bit about the community

1116
01:09:08,439 --> 01:09:12,240
Speaker 4: you grew up in and the sort of religious system

1117
01:09:12,280 --> 01:09:13,599
Speaker 4: that you were brought up in.

1118
01:09:14,160 --> 01:09:14,400
Speaker 7: Yeah.

1119
01:09:14,439 --> 01:09:19,280
Speaker 6: So, I grew up in a non denominational evangelical community

1120
01:09:20,200 --> 01:09:23,719
Speaker 6: that was largely at least on like the leadership side

1121
01:09:23,840 --> 01:09:30,120
Speaker 6: was transplanted from Texas to a well, not a small town,

1122
01:09:30,240 --> 01:09:33,120
Speaker 6: because it's actually the biggest town in the province, but

1123
01:09:33,200 --> 01:09:39,360
Speaker 6: a relatively medium sized city, I guess in Saskatchewan. Definitely

1124
01:09:39,439 --> 01:09:44,440
Speaker 6: an interesting mix of like Canadian customs matched with the

1125
01:09:44,479 --> 01:09:48,599
Speaker 6: whole Texas vibe, but definitely the type of like Bible belts,

1126
01:09:49,080 --> 01:09:53,000
Speaker 6: post fire and brimstone Christianity that came out of Texas

1127
01:09:53,439 --> 01:09:55,479
Speaker 6: was like the dominant form of Christianity, which was like

1128
01:09:55,520 --> 01:09:59,800
Speaker 6: preached from the pulpit and like influenced all other life

1129
01:10:00,080 --> 01:10:05,160
Speaker 6: voices beyond just your Sunday morning service or your Saturday

1130
01:10:05,240 --> 01:10:08,040
Speaker 6: night service, or your Wednesday night service or your Tuesday

1131
01:10:08,080 --> 01:10:10,080
Speaker 6: morning service, etc.

1132
01:10:11,000 --> 01:10:15,400
Speaker 4: So let's dig a little bit more into the character

1133
01:10:15,600 --> 01:10:18,479
Speaker 4: of it. So you know, in Texas, we've got you know,

1134
01:10:18,760 --> 01:10:22,679
Speaker 4: a wide variety of congregations and sub sets and non

1135
01:10:22,680 --> 01:10:28,640
Speaker 4: denominational Christianity is absolutely the fastest growing flavor of Christianity,

1136
01:10:28,720 --> 01:10:30,759
Speaker 4: not just in Texas but in the United States.

1137
01:10:31,240 --> 01:10:32,719
Speaker 3: There's some good research about this.

1138
01:10:32,840 --> 01:10:36,400
Speaker 4: And some people describe it as evangelical, some people describe

1139
01:10:36,439 --> 01:10:40,559
Speaker 4: it as charismatic. Sometimes both of those descriptions are accurate.

1140
01:10:41,040 --> 01:10:43,799
Speaker 4: There could be some differences between these types of churches.

1141
01:10:43,920 --> 01:10:46,439
Speaker 4: Some of them are focused a lot on like things

1142
01:10:46,439 --> 01:10:50,639
Speaker 4: like prosperity, gospel. Others hu maybe towards more Southern Baptist

1143
01:10:50,960 --> 01:10:56,479
Speaker 4: esque style of preaching and theology, and some really lean

1144
01:10:56,560 --> 01:11:02,320
Speaker 4: into maybe more like Pentecostal style belief in miracles and

1145
01:11:02,360 --> 01:11:08,080
Speaker 4: supernatural power of God to directly intervene in people's lives

1146
01:11:08,120 --> 01:11:10,840
Speaker 4: and things like that. So, you know, how would you

1147
01:11:10,960 --> 01:11:14,200
Speaker 4: characterize your church and the community that you were part of, Like,

1148
01:11:14,320 --> 01:11:16,519
Speaker 4: you know, was it was it common for people to

1149
01:11:17,080 --> 01:11:21,559
Speaker 4: talk about spiritual healing or sort of those miraculous interventions totally?

1150
01:11:21,760 --> 01:11:23,960
Speaker 6: Yeah, yeah, no, it was. It was kind of like

1151
01:11:24,000 --> 01:11:28,400
Speaker 6: a Christian chili. We certainly had some prosperity gospel elements.

1152
01:11:28,439 --> 01:11:31,080
Speaker 6: You had some like Southern Baptist elements certainly when it

1153
01:11:31,120 --> 01:11:34,280
Speaker 6: comes to like social views. But yeah, no, like the

1154
01:11:34,439 --> 01:11:38,720
Speaker 6: spirit healing aspect to huge, huge people will get like

1155
01:11:38,760 --> 01:11:42,439
Speaker 6: healed during services, people would like faint and pass out.

1156
01:11:43,000 --> 01:11:44,960
Speaker 6: They would like bring in preachers from the states who

1157
01:11:44,960 --> 01:11:48,200
Speaker 6: would go go on these big like tours where you're

1158
01:11:48,280 --> 01:11:51,200
Speaker 6: you know, both trying to like recruit people and then

1159
01:11:51,240 --> 01:11:56,920
Speaker 6: also like offer these like miraculous healing services during these

1160
01:11:56,960 --> 01:12:00,280
Speaker 6: like you know, five hour long sermons. So yeah, certainly

1161
01:12:00,280 --> 01:12:04,760
Speaker 6: a Pentecostal element was pretty dominant combined with like you know,

1162
01:12:04,800 --> 01:12:07,719
Speaker 6: focus on the family type stuff, some Southern Baptist stuff.

1163
01:12:08,160 --> 01:12:10,640
Speaker 4: That makes sense. I mean that tracks with what I

1164
01:12:10,720 --> 01:12:13,400
Speaker 4: expected and the sort of things that I see around here.

1165
01:12:13,880 --> 01:12:15,599
Speaker 4: Maybe you're familiar with Kenneth Copeland.

1166
01:12:15,960 --> 01:12:19,880
Speaker 6: Kenneth Copeland is how do I try this? So the

1167
01:12:19,920 --> 01:12:23,439
Speaker 6: main pastor of the church I was from is the

1168
01:12:23,640 --> 01:12:29,360
Speaker 6: uncle of a pastor in Oklahoma who used to run

1169
01:12:29,439 --> 01:12:32,680
Speaker 6: a church called Church on the Move, and he is

1170
01:12:32,920 --> 01:12:36,000
Speaker 6: very close personal friends with Kenneth Copeland. And I think

1171
01:12:36,040 --> 01:12:39,200
Speaker 6: I've seen Copeland a few times in person, like dinners

1172
01:12:39,240 --> 01:12:43,439
Speaker 6: and stuff. He was a pretty regular figure, I believe

1173
01:12:43,560 --> 01:12:46,479
Speaker 6: preached at the church a few times I was younger,

1174
01:12:46,880 --> 01:12:49,800
Speaker 6: but I know my dad's met him through works. My

1175
01:12:49,880 --> 01:12:53,400
Speaker 6: dad worked for the church. And yeah, so no, very

1176
01:12:53,600 --> 01:12:55,400
Speaker 6: very Kenneth Copeland vibes.

1177
01:12:55,360 --> 01:12:58,080
Speaker 4: Well, that makes sense because Kenneth Copeland, you know, he's

1178
01:12:58,200 --> 01:13:01,840
Speaker 4: not only the wealthiest pastor in the United States, but

1179
01:13:01,880 --> 01:13:05,360
Speaker 4: he's one of the most influential as well, and definitely

1180
01:13:05,400 --> 01:13:08,320
Speaker 4: in North Texas where his home base is. He's got

1181
01:13:08,360 --> 01:13:12,240
Speaker 4: a big church in you know, Terran County, and I've

1182
01:13:12,280 --> 01:13:17,559
Speaker 4: been to his annual convention, which is a special time,

1183
01:13:18,320 --> 01:13:20,720
Speaker 4: So you know, I totally understand the vibe that you're

1184
01:13:20,720 --> 01:13:25,040
Speaker 4: talking about. Then it also illustrates the vast reach of

1185
01:13:25,240 --> 01:13:27,240
Speaker 4: someone like Kenneth Copeland for it to be all the

1186
01:13:27,280 --> 01:13:28,920
Speaker 4: way up in Saskatchewan.

1187
01:13:28,680 --> 01:13:33,000
Speaker 6: And like the interconnectedness I mean, because like the pastor

1188
01:13:33,040 --> 01:13:37,000
Speaker 6: of my old church is American, born in Texas, is

1189
01:13:37,040 --> 01:13:40,360
Speaker 6: currently in America because he's in hiding from Canadian authorities

1190
01:13:40,400 --> 01:13:43,839
Speaker 6: related to a series of court cases and criminal complaints

1191
01:13:43,840 --> 01:13:47,120
Speaker 6: about abuse in this church. So he's currently he's currently

1192
01:13:47,120 --> 01:13:51,120
Speaker 6: fled and is in hiding somewhere in the US, hiding

1193
01:13:51,160 --> 01:13:53,080
Speaker 6: from his Majesty's Royal court.

1194
01:13:53,320 --> 01:13:53,960
Speaker 3: Incredible.

1195
01:13:54,360 --> 01:13:56,520
Speaker 6: Yes, he's also my step grandfather.

1196
01:13:57,160 --> 01:13:59,439
Speaker 4: I'll get back to my conversation with Gahre here shortly,

1197
01:14:00,080 --> 01:14:00,880
Speaker 4: but first.

1198
01:14:01,080 --> 01:14:01,719
Speaker 3: An ad break.

1199
01:14:12,640 --> 01:14:14,679
Speaker 4: So before we go any further, we need to talk

1200
01:14:14,760 --> 01:14:20,320
Speaker 4: a little bit more about Kenneth Copeland. So he's the

1201
01:14:20,360 --> 01:14:23,400
Speaker 4: wealthiest and one of the most influential pastors in the

1202
01:14:23,479 --> 01:14:26,639
Speaker 4: United States, perhaps the world, but he's also a highly

1203
01:14:26,680 --> 01:14:32,479
Speaker 4: political one. He's affiliated with the charismatic Christian movement, which

1204
01:14:32,640 --> 01:14:35,519
Speaker 4: is one of the fastest growing, if not the fastest

1205
01:14:35,560 --> 01:14:39,120
Speaker 4: growing Christian movements in the United States, and early on

1206
01:14:39,280 --> 01:14:42,160
Speaker 4: he lent his support to Donald Trump in Donald Trump's

1207
01:14:42,160 --> 01:14:45,920
Speaker 4: first campaign in twenty sixteen. Three years before that, in

1208
01:14:46,080 --> 01:14:50,639
Speaker 4: twenty thirteen, the church led by his daughter Terry, which

1209
01:14:50,720 --> 01:14:54,080
Speaker 4: is called Eagle Mountain International, was at the center of

1210
01:14:54,120 --> 01:14:56,920
Speaker 4: a measles outbreak. At the time, the church and its

1211
01:14:57,000 --> 01:15:01,080
Speaker 4: leaders were criticized for preaching against vaccinations, and even as

1212
01:15:01,080 --> 01:15:03,080
Speaker 4: they set up vaccine clinics at the back of the

1213
01:15:03,160 --> 01:15:06,120
Speaker 4: church when things got really bad, they continued to speak

1214
01:15:06,160 --> 01:15:09,720
Speaker 4: out against vaccinations in this way and implying to their

1215
01:15:09,720 --> 01:15:12,959
Speaker 4: flock that they need to place their faith not in medicine,

1216
01:15:13,000 --> 01:15:16,200
Speaker 4: but in prayer and in God. And when the COVID

1217
01:15:16,280 --> 01:15:19,799
Speaker 4: nineteen pandemic was first kicking off in America, Kenneth Copeland

1218
01:15:19,800 --> 01:15:23,200
Speaker 4: spoke of the disease as a sort of tool of Satan,

1219
01:15:24,040 --> 01:15:26,440
Speaker 4: but he actually called for vaccinations.

1220
01:15:26,560 --> 01:15:31,719
Speaker 3: Interestingly enough, I execute judgment on you, COVID nineteen.

1221
01:15:32,720 --> 01:15:34,560
Speaker 7: I execute judgment.

1222
01:15:34,160 --> 01:15:38,719
Speaker 4: On you, Satan, you destroyer, you killer, you get out,

1223
01:15:39,000 --> 01:15:42,640
Speaker 4: you point break coper, you get confiscations.

1224
01:15:42,880 --> 01:15:44,800
Speaker 3: I demand judgment on you.

1225
01:15:45,200 --> 01:15:52,200
Speaker 7: I didn't mod smen de man a vaccination of common media.

1226
01:15:52,560 --> 01:15:57,200
Speaker 4: Yes, But Copeland's belief in spiritual healing and his ties

1227
01:15:57,240 --> 01:16:00,400
Speaker 4: to the Trump administration seemingly led him to quickly turned

1228
01:16:00,479 --> 01:16:03,519
Speaker 4: to his old antics. He preached that COVID would be

1229
01:16:03,600 --> 01:16:05,880
Speaker 4: over soon because God would destroy it.

1230
01:16:06,720 --> 01:16:09,519
Speaker 7: OVID nineteen.

1231
01:16:15,320 --> 01:16:20,680
Speaker 9: I'm good.

1232
01:16:20,800 --> 01:16:23,559
Speaker 4: On you, on you, you.

1233
01:16:23,439 --> 01:16:29,439
Speaker 2: Are destroying forever and you will never be back.

1234
01:16:32,479 --> 01:16:39,960
Speaker 16: Thank you are God, let it happen.

1235
01:16:42,840 --> 01:16:45,840
Speaker 4: Over the course of many sermons, Copeland compared the virus

1236
01:16:45,880 --> 01:16:48,559
Speaker 4: to the flu. He suggested people who attended his services

1237
01:16:48,600 --> 01:16:51,960
Speaker 4: could be healed in person, and asserted that the president's

1238
01:16:52,000 --> 01:16:55,280
Speaker 4: opponents had quote opened the door for the pandemic with

1239
01:16:55,320 --> 01:17:00,760
Speaker 4: their quote displays of hate against him. Later that with

1240
01:17:00,880 --> 01:17:05,000
Speaker 4: the pandemic fully raging across America, Copeland still held his

1241
01:17:05,080 --> 01:17:09,519
Speaker 4: annual conference in Fort Worth, Texas. In August of twenty twenty,

1242
01:17:09,560 --> 01:17:12,320
Speaker 4: a television news report showed that no one at the

1243
01:17:12,320 --> 01:17:16,040
Speaker 4: conference was wearing a mask, and in September twenty twenty one,

1244
01:17:16,080 --> 01:17:18,759
Speaker 4: Copeland begged his viewers to help him fund the purchase

1245
01:17:19,200 --> 01:17:21,000
Speaker 4: of a new private jet that would allow him to

1246
01:17:21,000 --> 01:17:23,759
Speaker 4: avoid travel restrictions that were still in place around COVID

1247
01:17:23,800 --> 01:17:28,200
Speaker 4: nineteen and requiring vaccinations. He compared those vaccination requirements for

1248
01:17:28,280 --> 01:17:32,080
Speaker 4: flying to the satanic quote mark of the beasts. By

1249
01:17:32,080 --> 01:17:34,320
Speaker 4: the time that I attended Copeland's annual convention in twenty

1250
01:17:34,320 --> 01:17:38,160
Speaker 4: twenty three, he had embraced the likes of Mike Lindell,

1251
01:17:38,760 --> 01:17:42,519
Speaker 4: the election conspiracist who has promoted junkiers for COVID while

1252
01:17:42,680 --> 01:17:47,320
Speaker 4: sewing doubts without vaccines. So you know, I didn't grow

1253
01:17:47,400 --> 01:17:48,960
Speaker 4: up in one of these communities. I had been to

1254
01:17:49,160 --> 01:17:52,880
Speaker 4: some megachurch sermons and services in the past. I knew

1255
01:17:52,880 --> 01:17:55,880
Speaker 4: people who went to places like Gateway Church, which is

1256
01:17:55,880 --> 01:17:59,559
Speaker 4: a huge one here in North Texas, very politically involved

1257
01:17:59,600 --> 01:18:04,240
Speaker 4: in there. Founding pastor was just implicated in you know, child.

1258
01:18:04,080 --> 01:18:06,480
Speaker 6: Sex abuse, many such cases.

1259
01:18:06,360 --> 01:18:10,439
Speaker 4: Many such cases, And as an outsider, in my mind,

1260
01:18:10,520 --> 01:18:15,200
Speaker 4: I directly link sort of belief in spiritual healing with

1261
01:18:16,360 --> 01:18:20,599
Speaker 4: vaccine hesitancy. Yeah, because you know, there's there's this sense

1262
01:18:20,640 --> 01:18:23,280
Speaker 4: that will, if God can heal you, why would you

1263
01:18:23,320 --> 01:18:27,320
Speaker 4: need to rely on something like a vaccine. But also

1264
01:18:27,400 --> 01:18:28,960
Speaker 4: that you know, you need to place your faith in

1265
01:18:29,000 --> 01:18:30,759
Speaker 4: God more than man or the government.

1266
01:18:31,120 --> 01:18:34,240
Speaker 6: It is more that thing. It's that by electing to

1267
01:18:34,320 --> 01:18:37,000
Speaker 6: get a vaccine, that demonstrates that you do not have

1268
01:18:37,280 --> 01:18:40,000
Speaker 6: faith in God like it's it's it's it's more so

1269
01:18:40,200 --> 01:18:43,479
Speaker 6: like a larger theological issue beyond just like you know,

1270
01:18:43,520 --> 01:18:45,479
Speaker 6: we don't we don't trust the science like I trust

1271
01:18:45,560 --> 01:18:48,080
Speaker 6: God more than the science. It's that like even electing

1272
01:18:48,160 --> 01:18:52,839
Speaker 6: to do that demonstrates this deeper, like more core belief

1273
01:18:53,320 --> 01:18:55,960
Speaker 6: that you do not have the faith in God that

1274
01:18:56,080 --> 01:18:58,680
Speaker 6: is adequate in order to like take care of you,

1275
01:18:58,680 --> 01:19:01,200
Speaker 6: your body and whatever He may have planned for you.

1276
01:19:01,840 --> 01:19:06,000
Speaker 6: Perhaps that includes getting measles and you'll you'll work through

1277
01:19:06,040 --> 01:19:09,120
Speaker 6: that maybe or not, you know, as we're seeing now

1278
01:19:09,400 --> 01:19:11,559
Speaker 6: in Texas a lot. But yeah, like it's it's not

1279
01:19:11,920 --> 01:19:17,240
Speaker 6: just about like medical skepticism, science skepticism. It is this

1280
01:19:17,520 --> 01:19:20,480
Speaker 6: deeper aspect that that more relates to someone's like individual

1281
01:19:20,520 --> 01:19:23,000
Speaker 6: relationship and faith in God.

1282
01:19:23,680 --> 01:19:25,760
Speaker 4: So when you were growing up, I mean, did you

1283
01:19:25,840 --> 01:19:29,960
Speaker 4: pick up at all on this sort of skepticism with

1284
01:19:30,000 --> 01:19:33,880
Speaker 4: regard to not, you know, I guess modern science broadly,

1285
01:19:34,040 --> 01:19:37,679
Speaker 4: but also medical interventions totally?

1286
01:19:37,880 --> 01:19:41,040
Speaker 6: Totally? Yeah, No, I mean like literally this the school

1287
01:19:41,120 --> 01:19:43,000
Speaker 6: that I went to, which was which was a part

1288
01:19:43,040 --> 01:19:44,720
Speaker 6: of this church like I was. I was, I was

1289
01:19:44,760 --> 01:19:48,960
Speaker 6: taught from like an American creationist curriculum for like the

1290
01:19:49,000 --> 01:19:54,320
Speaker 6: first I guess like seven grades called ACE. There was

1291
01:19:54,360 --> 01:19:58,120
Speaker 6: big Ace conferences that like the teachers and my dad

1292
01:19:58,160 --> 01:20:01,280
Speaker 6: would travel to the States for every year. But yeah,

1293
01:20:01,280 --> 01:20:02,960
Speaker 6: like this stuff is literally like taught to all the

1294
01:20:03,000 --> 01:20:04,680
Speaker 6: kids because in order to go to this church, you

1295
01:20:04,720 --> 01:20:07,439
Speaker 6: have to also send your kids to the school. You

1296
01:20:07,479 --> 01:20:09,519
Speaker 6: are raised in this and like you have no choice

1297
01:20:09,520 --> 01:20:11,880
Speaker 6: in the matter, and that that just becomes like what

1298
01:20:12,120 --> 01:20:15,200
Speaker 6: is real? Like that just is reality? Like it's it's

1299
01:20:15,200 --> 01:20:17,760
Speaker 6: not it's not that there's like an alternative to that.

1300
01:20:17,800 --> 01:20:19,920
Speaker 6: It's like like a nine year old kid, like that

1301
01:20:20,040 --> 01:20:22,040
Speaker 6: just is what the world is. So like what you're

1302
01:20:22,080 --> 01:20:26,519
Speaker 6: reading those textbooks that just is truth. It's very isolated environments,

1303
01:20:26,520 --> 01:20:28,400
Speaker 6: like you're you you aren't really fully aware that there's

1304
01:20:28,439 --> 01:20:30,760
Speaker 6: like an alternative to that, and if there is, it's

1305
01:20:30,840 --> 01:20:34,360
Speaker 6: like what's the word? We didn't even use words like

1306
01:20:34,360 --> 01:20:37,400
Speaker 6: like like atheist. I think secular was was maybe the word.

1307
01:20:37,439 --> 01:20:39,080
Speaker 6: That was maybe the word that they use. Like you

1308
01:20:39,320 --> 01:20:41,800
Speaker 6: can't you can't like listen to like secular music or

1309
01:20:41,840 --> 01:20:44,040
Speaker 6: like be aware of like you know, likee like secular

1310
01:20:44,080 --> 01:20:47,439
Speaker 6: culture because that's satanic or it can lead you away

1311
01:20:47,479 --> 01:20:49,640
Speaker 6: from God or it's a distraction from God. You know

1312
01:20:49,680 --> 01:20:52,320
Speaker 6: that that sort of thing. But no, like yeah, it's

1313
01:20:52,439 --> 01:20:55,439
Speaker 6: this is built in and like, yeah, you know, very

1314
01:20:55,479 --> 01:20:58,680
Speaker 6: basic creationist stuff like answers in genesis being like the

1315
01:20:58,720 --> 01:21:03,240
Speaker 6: highest basting of science, which is like a fake science

1316
01:21:03,280 --> 01:21:07,880
Speaker 6: website touted by creationists and evangelicals. But this also extends

1317
01:21:07,880 --> 01:21:10,360
Speaker 6: to medical science as well. The same way you believe

1318
01:21:10,360 --> 01:21:12,719
Speaker 6: they are to six thousand years old, you maybe also

1319
01:21:12,760 --> 01:21:16,000
Speaker 6: don't believe in like cancer treatment, right.

1320
01:21:16,240 --> 01:21:18,680
Speaker 4: So to the extent that you can recall if you know,

1321
01:21:19,080 --> 01:21:21,200
Speaker 4: or you know, if you're willing to share, do you

1322
01:21:21,280 --> 01:21:24,320
Speaker 4: recall if you were vaccinated as a child?

1323
01:21:24,680 --> 01:21:27,440
Speaker 6: I was not. No, The first time I got vaccinated

1324
01:21:27,560 --> 01:21:30,880
Speaker 6: was as an older teenager when I gained medical autonomy

1325
01:21:31,320 --> 01:21:33,240
Speaker 6: and I was like, hey, I should probably get vaccinated.

1326
01:21:33,320 --> 01:21:37,719
Speaker 6: Huh okay, Because both like unplugging from these takes time.

1327
01:21:37,800 --> 01:21:40,600
Speaker 6: Like I think my family got away from this community

1328
01:21:41,120 --> 01:21:44,920
Speaker 6: when I was like eleven or twelve, but because I'm

1329
01:21:44,920 --> 01:21:47,640
Speaker 6: like the oldest of all my siblings, this was the

1330
01:21:47,680 --> 01:21:50,720
Speaker 6: most like baked into me more so than my other siblings.

1331
01:21:51,120 --> 01:21:54,280
Speaker 6: So like, even if you like get away from this physically,

1332
01:21:54,640 --> 01:21:57,200
Speaker 6: you still have to like mentally detalked. You have to

1333
01:21:57,240 --> 01:21:58,840
Speaker 6: realize that you were kind of in a cult, and

1334
01:21:58,840 --> 01:22:01,280
Speaker 6: then you have to like deep yourself, and that like

1335
01:22:01,320 --> 01:22:04,679
Speaker 6: takes years. So like I didn't like fully disconnect from

1336
01:22:04,720 --> 01:22:08,040
Speaker 6: this style of Christianity and like, you know, Christianity in

1337
01:22:08,080 --> 01:22:10,400
Speaker 6: general intil like a few years after. So by the

1338
01:22:10,400 --> 01:22:12,439
Speaker 6: time I was like a you know, middle to older

1339
01:22:12,520 --> 01:22:15,880
Speaker 6: teenager is when I started to like sort this type

1340
01:22:15,880 --> 01:22:19,360
Speaker 6: of stuff out, and uh eventually got caught up on

1341
01:22:19,400 --> 01:22:23,599
Speaker 6: those vaccines. Luckily I never got chicken pox, although people

1342
01:22:23,640 --> 01:22:26,479
Speaker 6: did throw chicken pox parties when I was a kid,

1343
01:22:26,640 --> 01:22:29,880
Speaker 6: which I can recall the concept of, especially if like

1344
01:22:29,880 --> 01:22:33,040
Speaker 6: a baby or a toddler or even like you know,

1345
01:22:33,160 --> 01:22:34,840
Speaker 6: like a like like like a ten year old has

1346
01:22:34,920 --> 01:22:37,600
Speaker 6: chicken pox. No one else's of course is vaccinated for

1347
01:22:37,640 --> 01:22:40,439
Speaker 6: this in this whole community. So if someone has chicken pox,

1348
01:22:40,560 --> 01:22:43,559
Speaker 6: you will not just isolate them, You will actually encourage

1349
01:22:43,600 --> 01:22:46,240
Speaker 6: other people to like hang out and play together with

1350
01:22:46,320 --> 01:22:50,080
Speaker 6: the express intent of getting sick yourself as a form

1351
01:22:50,160 --> 01:22:55,120
Speaker 6: of like natural immunization. And I think I was offered

1352
01:22:55,120 --> 01:22:58,200
Speaker 6: to go to one of these chicken pox parties quote unquote,

1353
01:22:58,680 --> 01:23:01,679
Speaker 6: I think as like a ten year old or something declined.

1354
01:23:02,360 --> 01:23:04,719
Speaker 4: Wow, I mean, good on you for at least having

1355
01:23:04,760 --> 01:23:08,640
Speaker 4: that wherewithal so and you know, Saskatchewan and Canada are

1356
01:23:08,640 --> 01:23:12,600
Speaker 4: different than the United States and Texas. And medical exemptions,

1357
01:23:13,160 --> 01:23:17,200
Speaker 4: exemptions of conscience or religious medical exemptions are a big thing.

1358
01:23:17,240 --> 01:23:19,120
Speaker 4: And there's actually a bill in the state House right

1359
01:23:19,160 --> 01:23:23,240
Speaker 4: now to expand that sort of thing with regard to vaccines.

1360
01:23:23,320 --> 01:23:26,040
Speaker 4: I mean, was that something that was going on up there?

1361
01:23:26,160 --> 01:23:28,240
Speaker 4: I mean, was just because were you in a private school,

1362
01:23:28,280 --> 01:23:31,000
Speaker 4: you were kind of outside of any sort of regime

1363
01:23:31,040 --> 01:23:31,920
Speaker 4: of accountability.

1364
01:23:32,240 --> 01:23:33,720
Speaker 6: Yeah, we were in the private school, and I know

1365
01:23:33,760 --> 01:23:35,880
Speaker 6: people who worked in the private school did like lobbying

1366
01:23:36,040 --> 01:23:40,559
Speaker 6: in the province to like keep their medical freedom, you know,

1367
01:23:40,720 --> 01:23:45,000
Speaker 6: intact to make sure the state does not interfere. Though

1368
01:23:45,080 --> 01:23:48,519
Speaker 6: I do remember when my family moved to the States,

1369
01:23:48,920 --> 01:23:51,120
Speaker 6: throughout the immigration process, we had to fill out a

1370
01:23:51,120 --> 01:23:54,439
Speaker 6: lot of those like religious exemption forms because you're supposed

1371
01:23:54,439 --> 01:23:57,040
Speaker 6: to get vaccinated and make sure you're not carrying like

1372
01:23:57,080 --> 01:24:00,920
Speaker 6: tuberculosis when you immigrate to a new country. But even

1373
01:24:01,000 --> 01:24:03,800
Speaker 6: even for those, there is like religious exemptions that if

1374
01:24:03,840 --> 01:24:05,639
Speaker 6: you have enough money you can pay.

1375
01:24:05,439 --> 01:24:08,320
Speaker 4: For When was this like roughly timeline when you know,

1376
01:24:08,320 --> 01:24:09,960
Speaker 4: when you were a child, when you're in private school?

1377
01:24:10,080 --> 01:24:11,120
Speaker 3: Is the broad range?

1378
01:24:11,600 --> 01:24:13,800
Speaker 6: This is, this is like the knots, right, this is

1379
01:24:13,840 --> 01:24:16,519
Speaker 6: the early two thousands. Yeah, I mean, like I'm in

1380
01:24:16,560 --> 01:24:17,479
Speaker 6: my early twenties now.

1381
01:24:18,160 --> 01:24:20,800
Speaker 4: Vaccine has intency has clearly been a part of certain

1382
01:24:20,800 --> 01:24:23,360
Speaker 4: conservative Christian congregations for some time.

1383
01:24:24,400 --> 01:24:27,760
Speaker 6: Something I remember happening kind of because of like what

1384
01:24:27,800 --> 01:24:31,000
Speaker 6: my parents were involved with at the time is you know,

1385
01:24:31,120 --> 01:24:34,360
Speaker 6: there's on one side, this whole like theological side of

1386
01:24:34,760 --> 01:24:38,240
Speaker 6: like not wanting to do vaccines or like unnecessary medical

1387
01:24:38,240 --> 01:24:41,439
Speaker 6: procedures because of your faith in God. But on the

1388
01:24:41,479 --> 01:24:46,120
Speaker 6: other hand, kind of around like twenty ten, and like

1389
01:24:46,120 --> 01:24:48,599
Speaker 6: you know, a few years before and after, we started

1390
01:24:48,640 --> 01:24:51,840
Speaker 6: to really see kind of that aspect along with like

1391
01:24:52,439 --> 01:24:57,240
Speaker 6: the hippie mom Facebook group aspect kind of collide, right,

1392
01:24:57,240 --> 01:25:00,920
Speaker 6: and like this healthy you know, like organic natural like

1393
01:25:01,000 --> 01:25:03,439
Speaker 6: hippie mom thing used to be more associated with like

1394
01:25:03,479 --> 01:25:06,080
Speaker 6: you know, people on the left, especially in the nineties,

1395
01:25:06,360 --> 01:25:08,599
Speaker 6: and you started to see these two kind of poles

1396
01:25:08,760 --> 01:25:12,880
Speaker 6: converge around twenty ten. Because this is like what happened

1397
01:25:12,920 --> 01:25:15,680
Speaker 6: with like my two parents at the time, where like

1398
01:25:15,720 --> 01:25:17,760
Speaker 6: my dad was more in the theological side than my

1399
01:25:17,800 --> 01:25:19,840
Speaker 6: mom was kind of more on like the the kind

1400
01:25:19,840 --> 01:25:22,800
Speaker 6: of like crunchy side of things, and these things like

1401
01:25:22,920 --> 01:25:26,519
Speaker 6: combined this new breed of evangelical Christianity that you see

1402
01:25:26,640 --> 01:25:29,200
Speaker 6: is like very popular right now with like the tradwife

1403
01:25:29,240 --> 01:25:33,879
Speaker 6: angle combined with like you know, crunchy like naturalistic organic

1404
01:25:33,920 --> 01:25:36,280
Speaker 6: stuff that used to be left wing and is now

1405
01:25:36,400 --> 01:25:39,080
Speaker 6: like very very right wing. You had a very very

1406
01:25:39,120 --> 01:25:42,040
Speaker 6: like conservative like family values coded which which did not

1407
01:25:42,120 --> 01:25:44,680
Speaker 6: really used to be the case as much, and that's

1408
01:25:44,760 --> 01:25:49,320
Speaker 6: kind of like strengthened the anti vacs hold on this

1409
01:25:49,439 --> 01:25:51,400
Speaker 6: like section of the population.

1410
01:25:52,080 --> 01:25:54,680
Speaker 4: So, I mean, this is incredible. You were part of

1411
01:25:54,840 --> 01:25:58,960
Speaker 4: a church that basically had connections to Texas by way

1412
01:25:59,000 --> 01:26:01,640
Speaker 4: of Kenneth Copeland, and you had mentioned, you know, kind

1413
01:26:01,680 --> 01:26:05,240
Speaker 4: of having a crunchy, more maybe left leaning mom. How

1414
01:26:05,280 --> 01:26:08,479
Speaker 4: apparent in retrospect was sort of the political nature of

1415
01:26:08,560 --> 01:26:11,040
Speaker 4: your church was it? Was it particularly political? You had

1416
01:26:11,040 --> 01:26:14,680
Speaker 4: mentioned lobbying, but you know, lobbying isn't necessarily partisan.

1417
01:26:15,600 --> 01:26:18,679
Speaker 6: They preached, like Glenn Beck from the pulpit, like very

1418
01:26:18,920 --> 01:26:23,360
Speaker 6: very conservative, openly conservative like that is like the Christian

1419
01:26:23,640 --> 01:26:27,599
Speaker 6: godly correct path. I guess like this is where it's

1420
01:26:27,600 --> 01:26:29,160
Speaker 6: tied in a bit more with some of like the

1421
01:26:29,760 --> 01:26:31,800
Speaker 6: some of like the Southern Baptist these type stuff right

1422
01:26:31,800 --> 01:26:36,360
Speaker 6: where you have like anti gay conversion therapy like camps

1423
01:26:36,400 --> 01:26:39,280
Speaker 6: that they can send people to like you No, like

1424
01:26:39,320 --> 01:26:43,639
Speaker 6: this is very very like Bill O'Reilly, very very Glen

1425
01:26:43,680 --> 01:26:46,519
Speaker 6: Beck like that was that was the moment, right, this

1426
01:26:46,600 --> 01:26:49,320
Speaker 6: is this is two thousand and eight. The Antichrist has

1427
01:26:49,320 --> 01:26:52,879
Speaker 6: just been elected president of the United States, possibly literally

1428
01:26:53,280 --> 01:26:55,519
Speaker 6: and even though they're up in Canada, this is still

1429
01:26:55,560 --> 01:26:59,240
Speaker 6: like concern number one on the like the transnational like

1430
01:26:59,400 --> 01:27:04,519
Speaker 6: Christian Christian world. So no, like extremely openly conservative to

1431
01:27:04,560 --> 01:27:07,160
Speaker 6: the point where it is it is being preached alongside

1432
01:27:07,200 --> 01:27:10,160
Speaker 6: the words of Jesus and Paul.

1433
01:27:09,800 --> 01:27:12,000
Speaker 4: You had a front row seat to sort of a

1434
01:27:12,520 --> 01:27:18,320
Speaker 4: shifting ground because you know, Southern Baptist Christian Christianity is

1435
01:27:18,400 --> 01:27:21,519
Speaker 4: kind of declining and it has I think has been

1436
01:27:21,560 --> 01:27:27,120
Speaker 4: supplanted by this quote unquote non denominational, totally set of networks.

1437
01:27:27,320 --> 01:27:29,360
Speaker 4: You know, there's a there's a term that some scholars

1438
01:27:29,479 --> 01:27:33,519
Speaker 4: use independent network Christianity where the leaders of the churches,

1439
01:27:33,600 --> 01:27:36,480
Speaker 4: they are non denominational, they're not a part of a hierarchy.

1440
01:27:37,000 --> 01:27:40,640
Speaker 4: They answer to no higher power other than God, you know,

1441
01:27:40,720 --> 01:27:45,200
Speaker 4: so their interpretation of God is basically the rule or

1442
01:27:45,439 --> 01:27:46,520
Speaker 4: or it is the authority.

1443
01:27:47,120 --> 01:27:51,439
Speaker 6: It's like a post Billy Graham era. Yeah, like networked churches,

1444
01:27:51,479 --> 01:27:54,840
Speaker 6: but are not part of like a coherent structure. They're

1445
01:27:54,920 --> 01:27:59,400
Speaker 6: kind of like terrorist cells. Essentially, they offer a very

1446
01:27:59,439 --> 01:28:03,360
Speaker 6: similarly to like a cell network of terrorists. I'm trying

1447
01:28:03,360 --> 01:28:05,759
Speaker 6: to remember what the with like the most wild faith

1448
01:28:05,800 --> 01:28:08,760
Speaker 6: healings I've seen are the thing I think people were

1449
01:28:08,880 --> 01:28:11,600
Speaker 6: faith healed the most for is probably back pain. A

1450
01:28:11,680 --> 01:28:16,960
Speaker 6: lot of back pain gets faith yield. Of course, there

1451
01:28:17,040 --> 01:28:19,760
Speaker 6: might be the odd person who's able to claim that,

1452
01:28:19,800 --> 01:28:22,120
Speaker 6: like you know, a faith healing cured their cancer, who

1453
01:28:22,200 --> 01:28:25,439
Speaker 6: then probably died three years later of cancer. But you

1454
01:28:25,479 --> 01:28:28,320
Speaker 6: also get faith held for a bunch of like smaller ailments,

1455
01:28:28,439 --> 01:28:30,040
Speaker 6: right and so. And someone will walk up to you,

1456
01:28:30,080 --> 01:28:32,439
Speaker 6: put hands on you. You might start convulsing like this

1457
01:28:32,479 --> 01:28:35,840
Speaker 6: like psychosomatic thing. Sometimes you'll pass out. A lot of

1458
01:28:35,880 --> 01:28:40,000
Speaker 6: people pass out. It becomes like this performative thing, like subconsciously.

1459
01:28:40,439 --> 01:28:43,000
Speaker 6: I remember there was there was people they were stationed

1460
01:28:43,160 --> 01:28:45,559
Speaker 6: where people would pass out with with little I think

1461
01:28:45,560 --> 01:28:48,320
Speaker 6: they're called modesty blankets, so that when they pass out,

1462
01:28:48,680 --> 01:28:50,439
Speaker 6: maybe your shirt will come up a little bit and

1463
01:28:50,479 --> 01:28:52,280
Speaker 6: someone will see a little bit of tummy you can

1464
01:28:52,320 --> 01:28:54,960
Speaker 6: walk over and put the blanket over as you're recovering

1465
01:28:55,120 --> 01:28:58,879
Speaker 6: from your from your healing session. All this is happening

1466
01:28:58,960 --> 01:29:04,759
Speaker 6: during like essentially like an acoustic concert. So it creates

1467
01:29:04,760 --> 01:29:07,880
Speaker 6: a very peculiar vibe of people kind of poorly play

1468
01:29:08,000 --> 01:29:11,400
Speaker 6: musical instruments as other people like walk through like an

1469
01:29:11,400 --> 01:29:13,760
Speaker 6: auditorium and just start like passing out, and you just

1470
01:29:13,760 --> 01:29:17,240
Speaker 6: get this pile of bodies, and as as a ten

1471
01:29:17,320 --> 01:29:19,320
Speaker 6: year old, do you think this is totally normal and fine?

1472
01:29:19,360 --> 01:29:21,920
Speaker 6: And then you later realize why you're into so much

1473
01:29:21,960 --> 01:29:23,680
Speaker 6: weird shit. Oops.

1474
01:29:23,680 --> 01:29:25,720
Speaker 4: Something I also covered in a previous episode in this

1475
01:29:25,800 --> 01:29:28,160
Speaker 4: series was a quote from the Seattle Public Health commissioner

1476
01:29:28,240 --> 01:29:31,559
Speaker 4: during a smallpox outbreak in the early nineteen hundreds. He

1477
01:29:31,640 --> 01:29:35,479
Speaker 4: called Seattle hotbed for anti vaccination and Christian science and

1478
01:29:35,680 --> 01:29:38,840
Speaker 4: various anti medical cults. So you know, we are kind

1479
01:29:38,840 --> 01:29:42,599
Speaker 4: of truly like reliving a period of history.

1480
01:29:43,360 --> 01:29:45,960
Speaker 6: I hate it when times of flat circle. This sucks.

1481
01:29:50,560 --> 01:29:52,160
Speaker 3: Why should I live in history?

1482
01:29:52,240 --> 01:29:53,760
Speaker 15: Huh?

1483
01:29:54,479 --> 01:29:56,240
Speaker 8: I don't want to know anything anymore.

1484
01:29:57,160 --> 01:30:00,840
Speaker 4: If this is a world where nothing is solved. If

1485
01:30:00,880 --> 01:30:03,639
Speaker 4: someone once told me time is a flat circle.

1486
01:30:07,240 --> 01:30:10,560
Speaker 14: Everything we've ever done or will do, we're gonna do

1487
01:30:10,720 --> 01:30:12,559
Speaker 14: over and over and over again.

1488
01:30:12,960 --> 01:30:16,840
Speaker 6: Lone Star Man fucking Lone Star Texas. The one thing

1489
01:30:16,880 --> 01:30:21,719
Speaker 6: I remembered through not being vaccinated as a kid, something

1490
01:30:21,760 --> 01:30:25,240
Speaker 6: I did develop, and this was like behaviorally ingrained is

1491
01:30:25,960 --> 01:30:30,120
Speaker 6: a paralyzing fear of rust because you don't have because

1492
01:30:30,120 --> 01:30:32,559
Speaker 6: you don't have the teton is shot. So even though

1493
01:30:32,640 --> 01:30:35,320
Speaker 6: we're told God, will you know, keep us safe and healthy,

1494
01:30:35,560 --> 01:30:37,720
Speaker 6: we are also taught you have to stay like ten

1495
01:30:37,760 --> 01:30:40,479
Speaker 6: feet away from like rust. If you see rust on anything, like,

1496
01:30:40,760 --> 01:30:43,679
Speaker 6: you have to be on high alert because even though

1497
01:30:43,680 --> 01:30:46,080
Speaker 6: God should protect you, he might not if you get

1498
01:30:46,080 --> 01:30:49,920
Speaker 6: a rusty nail, like poking your finger. So rust is

1499
01:30:49,960 --> 01:30:52,720
Speaker 6: still something I'm like really afraid of despite being vaccinated now,

1500
01:30:52,760 --> 01:30:55,760
Speaker 6: just because this was ingrained so young, which just kind

1501
01:30:55,760 --> 01:30:59,960
Speaker 6: of shows the kind of like a paradoxical thought press

1502
01:31:00,320 --> 01:31:02,040
Speaker 6: behind some of this sort of thing where it's okay

1503
01:31:02,080 --> 01:31:04,000
Speaker 6: if your kids aren't vaccinated, but you also have to

1504
01:31:04,000 --> 01:31:06,960
Speaker 6: teach them to like never get close to anything rusty

1505
01:31:07,240 --> 01:31:09,120
Speaker 6: because that could send them to the hospital.

1506
01:31:10,200 --> 01:31:13,280
Speaker 3: We'll return to my conversation with Gehre after a short

1507
01:31:13,320 --> 01:31:13,880
Speaker 3: ad break.

1508
01:31:24,640 --> 01:31:26,880
Speaker 4: So what was it like moving out of this science

1509
01:31:26,920 --> 01:31:28,240
Speaker 4: skeptic religious community.

1510
01:31:28,880 --> 01:31:31,200
Speaker 6: It's funny because when I moved away from this like

1511
01:31:31,280 --> 01:31:35,200
Speaker 6: conservative community in Canada, we moved to Portland, Oregon, which

1512
01:31:35,200 --> 01:31:38,680
Speaker 6: has its own anti vaccination problem, but from like the

1513
01:31:38,760 --> 01:31:42,439
Speaker 6: other side. So I was still around a whole bunch

1514
01:31:42,479 --> 01:31:45,639
Speaker 6: of people and kids who aren't vaccinated, who where there

1515
01:31:45,680 --> 01:31:49,000
Speaker 6: is frequent measles outbreaks. But it's it's it is more

1516
01:31:49,040 --> 01:31:51,400
Speaker 6: for that like crunchy hippie thing that then is kind

1517
01:31:51,439 --> 01:31:55,440
Speaker 6: of you know, converged with this evangelical side. But at

1518
01:31:55,520 --> 01:31:57,960
Speaker 6: that time it's interesting going from you know, one of

1519
01:31:57,960 --> 01:32:01,200
Speaker 6: these worlds to another. And in some ways the medical

1520
01:32:01,240 --> 01:32:04,640
Speaker 6: reality did not change that drastically.

1521
01:32:04,400 --> 01:32:07,280
Speaker 4: Right, But I'm wondering if you agree on this. My

1522
01:32:07,400 --> 01:32:13,040
Speaker 4: sense is that that form of anti vaccination belief, the

1523
01:32:13,080 --> 01:32:17,800
Speaker 4: sort of hippie crunchy stuff, it's dying. It's not only dying, yeah,

1524
01:32:17,800 --> 01:32:20,840
Speaker 4: it has not spread. It has not been turned into

1525
01:32:20,960 --> 01:32:23,200
Speaker 4: like a program that is far reaching.

1526
01:32:23,520 --> 01:32:28,640
Speaker 6: Those types of people have either evolved in their beliefs

1527
01:32:28,840 --> 01:32:33,960
Speaker 6: and have and have caught up with like consensus scientific understandings,

1528
01:32:34,439 --> 01:32:38,479
Speaker 6: or have married, you know, far right Christian husbands and

1529
01:32:38,520 --> 01:32:42,400
Speaker 6: have just gone full conservative like they have split in twine.

1530
01:32:42,840 --> 01:32:44,720
Speaker 6: You are much less likely to now find, you know,

1531
01:32:45,040 --> 01:32:48,080
Speaker 6: someone who would describe themselves as like liberal or like leftist,

1532
01:32:48,160 --> 01:32:50,080
Speaker 6: who would hold these beliefs if they're like, you know,

1533
01:32:50,120 --> 01:32:53,400
Speaker 6: like a forty year old mom with like you know,

1534
01:32:53,840 --> 01:32:56,200
Speaker 6: braids or beads in her hair like that. That's that

1535
01:32:56,320 --> 01:33:01,880
Speaker 6: is definitely less less likely to have that person beholding

1536
01:33:01,960 --> 01:33:04,960
Speaker 6: like anti vax beliefs now than it was twenty ten

1537
01:33:05,040 --> 01:33:05,479
Speaker 6: years ago.

1538
01:33:05,760 --> 01:33:09,599
Speaker 4: You just gave me the beautiful idea of making sure

1539
01:33:09,640 --> 01:33:13,479
Speaker 4: I include an audio clip of the anti vax rasta

1540
01:33:13,640 --> 01:33:15,960
Speaker 4: Christian guy whose videos have been going viral.

1541
01:33:16,000 --> 01:33:17,360
Speaker 3: Have you seen these at all?

1542
01:33:17,640 --> 01:33:17,720
Speaker 10: No?

1543
01:33:18,080 --> 01:33:19,479
Speaker 4: Oh, man, you're gonna love.

1544
01:33:19,360 --> 01:33:32,240
Speaker 12: This dilation objectively.

1545
01:33:34,400 --> 01:33:35,240
Speaker 7: Projectively and.

1546
01:33:38,160 --> 01:33:42,360
Speaker 12: Ojectively jectivity.

1547
01:33:48,920 --> 01:33:49,599
Speaker 6: Oh that's good.

1548
01:33:50,200 --> 01:33:53,160
Speaker 4: It really does encapsulate this sort of you know, the

1549
01:33:53,240 --> 01:33:55,920
Speaker 4: quote unquote conspirituality.

1550
01:33:55,320 --> 01:33:57,880
Speaker 6: Even the way like Russell Brand has moved the past

1551
01:33:57,960 --> 01:34:01,120
Speaker 6: ten years. Right, it's a pretty clear example of this

1552
01:34:01,240 --> 01:34:04,560
Speaker 6: thing we've been talking about. Yes, how he's now this

1553
01:34:04,760 --> 01:34:08,160
Speaker 6: weird Jesus guy who can't stop raping?

1554
01:34:08,840 --> 01:34:09,679
Speaker 14: Not good?

1555
01:34:10,040 --> 01:34:15,000
Speaker 4: Yeah, it is so fascinating that now, yeah, like Maha

1556
01:34:15,720 --> 01:34:19,960
Speaker 4: is appealing to that that sort of like orphaned set

1557
01:34:20,240 --> 01:34:23,200
Speaker 4: of people that you're describing who have less of a

1558
01:34:23,280 --> 01:34:23,880
Speaker 4: political home.

1559
01:34:24,439 --> 01:34:24,679
Speaker 14: Yeah.

1560
01:34:25,720 --> 01:34:28,439
Speaker 6: RFK Junior is similarly to Russell brand as like a

1561
01:34:28,880 --> 01:34:30,439
Speaker 6: prime example of someone who used to be more of

1562
01:34:30,479 --> 01:34:34,360
Speaker 6: like a you know, left wing environmental lawyer who is

1563
01:34:34,520 --> 01:34:41,960
Speaker 6: now Trump's anti autism take away red number forty anti

1564
01:34:42,080 --> 01:34:44,800
Speaker 6: vax dude. And you know, another thing about growing up

1565
01:34:44,800 --> 01:34:47,920
Speaker 6: in these communities is like beyond vaccine hesitancy or anti

1566
01:34:48,040 --> 01:34:51,800
Speaker 6: vax beliefs, is also this like anti psychological beliefs, like

1567
01:34:51,880 --> 01:34:54,840
Speaker 6: like like therapy or like or like psychoanalysis or like

1568
01:34:54,960 --> 01:34:58,000
Speaker 6: mental diagnosis are framed the same way, like you shouldn't

1569
01:34:58,040 --> 01:35:00,679
Speaker 6: need real therapy. You can talk to like a Christian

1570
01:35:00,760 --> 01:35:03,080
Speaker 6: counselor and you can pray and that should be all

1571
01:35:03,120 --> 01:35:04,840
Speaker 6: you really need. You don't need to go to like

1572
01:35:04,960 --> 01:35:08,800
Speaker 6: a therapist or a psychologist. Like that delayed my understanding

1573
01:35:08,880 --> 01:35:12,400
Speaker 6: of like being autistic by like maybe fifteen years, which

1574
01:35:12,439 --> 01:35:16,840
Speaker 6: you know didn't serve younger gear very well in trying

1575
01:35:16,880 --> 01:35:20,000
Speaker 6: to unpack like social interactions as a as like a

1576
01:35:20,080 --> 01:35:23,760
Speaker 6: teenager or even like a preteen, because like I, you know,

1577
01:35:24,040 --> 01:35:26,560
Speaker 6: wasn't even aware of like the concept of like what

1578
01:35:26,720 --> 01:35:28,960
Speaker 6: autism actually is until so much later.

1579
01:35:29,240 --> 01:35:32,919
Speaker 4: So you're saying that childhood vaccinations didn't cause your autism.

1580
01:35:33,320 --> 01:35:35,120
Speaker 6: No, because I was never vaccinated as a kid, and

1581
01:35:35,240 --> 01:35:36,000
Speaker 6: yet here I am.

1582
01:35:37,840 --> 01:35:38,040
Speaker 7: Yeah.

1583
01:35:38,200 --> 01:35:41,080
Speaker 4: I saw a nice little sign recently that it fooled

1584
01:35:41,120 --> 01:35:42,840
Speaker 4: me because I read it too quickly. But it said

1585
01:35:42,960 --> 01:35:44,920
Speaker 4: childhood vaccinations cause adulthood.

1586
01:35:45,880 --> 01:35:47,040
Speaker 6: That's right, they sure to.

1587
01:35:50,600 --> 01:35:54,400
Speaker 4: Gair's experience is not unique. There are countless children who

1588
01:35:54,439 --> 01:35:57,880
Speaker 4: are raised in religious communities that keew medical interventions in

1589
01:35:58,000 --> 01:36:00,800
Speaker 4: favor of their faith and in the power of God

1590
01:36:00,880 --> 01:36:04,599
Speaker 4: to heal them. These communities seek exemptions from vaccination requirements

1591
01:36:04,680 --> 01:36:07,160
Speaker 4: on either religious grounds or on the grounds of what

1592
01:36:07,240 --> 01:36:11,280
Speaker 4: they call medical freedom. Consider the children who attend Mercy

1593
01:36:11,360 --> 01:36:15,840
Speaker 4: Culture Preparatory, a private Christian school in Fort Worth. After

1594
01:36:15,880 --> 01:36:18,560
Speaker 4: the Musles outbreak became national news or a port in

1595
01:36:18,560 --> 01:36:21,160
Speaker 4: the Dallas Morning News highlighted that the school had the

1596
01:36:21,240 --> 01:36:24,240
Speaker 4: lowest vaccination rate out of any private school in the

1597
01:36:24,280 --> 01:36:27,120
Speaker 4: state of Texas. And unlike the Copelands, who at the

1598
01:36:27,200 --> 01:36:30,920
Speaker 4: very least have facilitated vaccinations among their flock even as

1599
01:36:30,920 --> 01:36:34,680
Speaker 4: they've given contradictory messages from the pulpit, the leader of

1600
01:36:34,800 --> 01:36:38,320
Speaker 4: Mercy Culture was unapologetically thrilled at the news.

1601
01:36:38,640 --> 01:36:39,679
Speaker 7: Hey, guys, quick video.

1602
01:36:39,920 --> 01:36:43,160
Speaker 8: I just walked into an empty prep board meeting and

1603
01:36:43,320 --> 01:36:45,400
Speaker 8: there was these balloons in a surprise gift.

1604
01:36:45,479 --> 01:36:47,880
Speaker 7: I'm like, what's this going out? And I just found out.

1605
01:36:47,920 --> 01:36:49,479
Speaker 3: I'm a little behind in the news. I'm a little

1606
01:36:49,479 --> 01:36:51,880
Speaker 3: slow getting old, but I just.

1607
01:36:52,000 --> 01:36:55,200
Speaker 8: Found out we are the number one school in Texas

1608
01:36:55,960 --> 01:36:58,920
Speaker 8: for least vaccinations. And I guess the news got a

1609
01:36:58,960 --> 01:37:01,200
Speaker 8: hold of it and they were trying to spin it

1610
01:37:01,360 --> 01:37:04,080
Speaker 8: like it was some awful thing. But I just want

1611
01:37:04,120 --> 01:37:07,000
Speaker 8: to congratulate all of the family members of MC Prep

1612
01:37:07,360 --> 01:37:12,000
Speaker 8: that embrace freedom of health and they're not allowing government

1613
01:37:12,360 --> 01:37:15,720
Speaker 8: or science projects to affect how you live and lead

1614
01:37:15,800 --> 01:37:18,080
Speaker 8: your life. I know the tire world was shut down

1615
01:37:18,160 --> 01:37:20,360
Speaker 8: with insanity and people were fired from their job for

1616
01:37:20,479 --> 01:37:23,919
Speaker 8: forced vaccinations, and freedom is something that we take seriously,

1617
01:37:24,280 --> 01:37:27,280
Speaker 8: religious freedom, freedom of our health. And so shout out

1618
01:37:27,320 --> 01:37:31,000
Speaker 8: to MC Prep for being the least vaccinated.

1619
01:37:30,479 --> 01:37:32,240
Speaker 4: School in Texas.

1620
01:37:32,439 --> 01:37:34,720
Speaker 8: We'll take it, or as Bercy culture say, we celebrate it,

1621
01:37:34,800 --> 01:37:35,639
Speaker 8: we'll put it on the board.

1622
01:37:36,479 --> 01:37:40,000
Speaker 4: State Representative Nate Shatzlin, who is also a pastor at

1623
01:37:40,000 --> 01:37:42,360
Speaker 4: the church and who has been a featured guest at

1624
01:37:42,400 --> 01:37:45,760
Speaker 4: Kenneth Copland's annual convention spread a similar message in his

1625
01:37:45,840 --> 01:37:49,679
Speaker 4: own video that celebrated the news of low vaccination rates

1626
01:37:49,960 --> 01:37:50,920
Speaker 4: in their private school.

1627
01:37:51,080 --> 01:37:52,799
Speaker 3: Hey, what's going on? This is state revenue?

1628
01:37:52,880 --> 01:37:53,280
Speaker 7: Shats on?

1629
01:37:53,360 --> 01:37:56,200
Speaker 16: I'm standing in front of our Texas state capital and

1630
01:37:56,320 --> 01:38:00,400
Speaker 16: I was alerted on x from a ex post from

1631
01:38:00,520 --> 01:38:03,840
Speaker 16: Bud Kennedy. Now you probably don't know who Bud Kennedy is,

1632
01:38:04,080 --> 01:38:07,479
Speaker 16: but he is a reporter for the Star Telegram in

1633
01:38:07,560 --> 01:38:11,639
Speaker 16: Fort Worth, Texas. Now Star Telegrams losing followers by the thousands.

1634
01:38:11,680 --> 01:38:12,200
Speaker 3: It's crazy.

1635
01:38:12,320 --> 01:38:17,000
Speaker 16: However, he attacks Christians give churches more than almost anyone

1636
01:38:17,120 --> 01:38:22,040
Speaker 16: else I know. And this post said that Russell Culture Preparatory, which.

1637
01:38:21,960 --> 01:38:24,400
Speaker 4: Is a private school in my district.

1638
01:38:24,200 --> 01:38:27,120
Speaker 16: Also happens to be where I send my kids to school.

1639
01:38:27,600 --> 01:38:31,920
Speaker 16: He said they are the least vaccinated school in the

1640
01:38:32,120 --> 01:38:33,479
Speaker 16: States of Texas.

1641
01:38:33,560 --> 01:38:34,240
Speaker 8: Now, I was.

1642
01:38:34,240 --> 01:38:36,920
Speaker 4: Incredibly concerned for a couple of different reasons.

1643
01:38:37,040 --> 01:38:41,840
Speaker 3: I was concerned that number one for just finding out.

1644
01:38:41,680 --> 01:38:45,080
Speaker 16: About this, because the second concern is why haven't we

1645
01:38:45,280 --> 01:38:48,920
Speaker 16: celebrated this sooner? Look, I am so excited to say

1646
01:38:49,200 --> 01:38:52,640
Speaker 16: that Mercy Culture Prep is celebrating medical freedom where we

1647
01:38:52,880 --> 01:38:57,040
Speaker 16: honor the wishes of moms and dads over any type

1648
01:38:57,040 --> 01:39:01,160
Speaker 16: of health official like Rachel Levine or so called public

1649
01:39:01,240 --> 01:39:03,599
Speaker 16: health expert like blood Unity.

1650
01:39:06,080 --> 01:39:08,720
Speaker 4: This brazen lack of concern about the risks of the

1651
01:39:08,760 --> 01:39:12,120
Speaker 4: spread of measles, which has already killed multiple children, is

1652
01:39:12,320 --> 01:39:15,800
Speaker 4: concerning for many reasons. One of them is that it

1653
01:39:15,880 --> 01:39:18,920
Speaker 4: implicitly asserts that it's better for people to be unvaccinated.

1654
01:39:19,560 --> 01:39:23,000
Speaker 4: Another is that it effectively disregards the risks that vulnerable

1655
01:39:23,040 --> 01:39:26,880
Speaker 4: people face when diseases like measles spread unchecked. And when

1656
01:39:26,960 --> 01:39:30,800
Speaker 4: infused with this hardened belief that God can miraculously heal

1657
01:39:30,880 --> 01:39:34,080
Speaker 4: them and also that God makes no mistakes, it can

1658
01:39:34,200 --> 01:39:37,760
Speaker 4: lead some people like Peter, the Mennonite father of the

1659
01:39:37,800 --> 01:39:40,719
Speaker 4: first child to die from measles in over two decades,

1660
01:39:41,280 --> 01:39:44,680
Speaker 4: to believe that getting measles can actually make their communities stronger.

1661
01:39:45,640 --> 01:39:49,200
Speaker 4: This is basically survival of the fittest style quasi eugenic

1662
01:39:49,320 --> 01:39:53,080
Speaker 4: thinking with the veneer of religion. In the next episode,

1663
01:39:53,479 --> 01:39:57,400
Speaker 4: we will explore why anti VAXX beliefs and the policies

1664
01:39:57,800 --> 01:40:00,599
Speaker 4: now being pushed by the leading vaccine denial or RFGA

1665
01:40:00,720 --> 01:40:04,519
Speaker 4: Junior are effectively eugenic in nature and now the twisted

1666
01:40:04,600 --> 01:40:07,439
Speaker 4: history of eugenics and racist public health abuses in the

1667
01:40:07,560 --> 01:40:12,360
Speaker 4: United States has unfortunately buttressed the viral anti vax ideology

1668
01:40:12,640 --> 01:40:16,799
Speaker 4: we are dealing with today. Thanks for listening to episode

1669
01:40:16,840 --> 01:40:19,720
Speaker 4: three of Anti vax America for It Could Happen Here.

1670
01:40:20,320 --> 01:40:22,600
Speaker 4: Until next time, I'm Steven Monicelli.

1671
01:40:22,920 --> 01:40:23,639
Speaker 3: Thanks for listening.

1672
01:40:45,640 --> 01:40:50,040
Speaker 4: I'm Stephen Monicelli, a journalist in Dallas and an occasional

1673
01:40:50,080 --> 01:40:53,720
Speaker 4: contributor to Cool Zone Media. And welcome to episode four

1674
01:40:54,160 --> 01:40:57,679
Speaker 4: of Anti vax America, a special five part mini series

1675
01:40:57,800 --> 01:41:02,160
Speaker 4: for It Could Happen Here exploring the measles outbreak as

1676
01:41:02,160 --> 01:41:06,080
Speaker 4: a microcosm for where we are now, how we got here,

1677
01:41:06,200 --> 01:41:09,639
Speaker 4: and where we could be going. Today's episode we'll focus

1678
01:41:10,240 --> 01:41:14,640
Speaker 4: on the twisted history of eugenics as it relates to

1679
01:41:14,760 --> 01:41:20,320
Speaker 4: vaccinations and how the current MAHA agenda, as pushed by

1680
01:41:20,560 --> 01:41:25,519
Speaker 4: RFK Junior, is a sort of echo of eugenic beliefs

1681
01:41:25,600 --> 01:41:29,400
Speaker 4: of the past. Vaccination hesitancy historically has been framed by

1682
01:41:29,720 --> 01:41:33,160
Speaker 4: opponents to vaccines as a matter of medical freedom, about

1683
01:41:33,200 --> 01:41:35,160
Speaker 4: the ability to decide what one wants to do with

1684
01:41:35,240 --> 01:41:38,519
Speaker 4: their own body. It's an argument that we've discussed can

1685
01:41:38,560 --> 01:41:42,120
Speaker 4: appeal to crunchy granola types and religious zellets.

1686
01:41:42,160 --> 01:41:42,439
Speaker 3: Alike.

1687
01:41:42,840 --> 01:41:44,920
Speaker 4: But there's also a darker side to this rhetoric that

1688
01:41:45,040 --> 01:41:49,360
Speaker 4: reveals an embrace of eugenic ideas among anti vax advocates

1689
01:41:49,439 --> 01:41:54,080
Speaker 4: who prefer quote unquote herd immunity approaches to outbreaks, which

1690
01:41:54,120 --> 01:41:57,680
Speaker 4: subordinate the interests of older people, those with disabilities, and

1691
01:41:57,760 --> 01:42:00,880
Speaker 4: members of minority communities to those who choose not to

1692
01:42:00,920 --> 01:42:03,880
Speaker 4: be vaccinated. On this episode of Anti vax America, we

1693
01:42:03,920 --> 01:42:07,160
Speaker 4: will dive into the overlapping histories of eugenic thinking and

1694
01:42:07,200 --> 01:42:12,040
Speaker 4: anti vaccination beliefs to untangle this mess. As we previously

1695
01:42:12,120 --> 01:42:15,920
Speaker 4: discussed in episode two, vaccinations took off in the eighteen hundred,

1696
01:42:15,960 --> 01:42:18,840
Speaker 4: shortly after the creation of the first smallpox vaccine in

1697
01:42:18,920 --> 01:42:23,479
Speaker 4: seventeen ninety six, and so did anti vaccination rhetoric and movements.

1698
01:42:24,240 --> 01:42:26,880
Speaker 4: In parallel, there were a lot of scientific developments going on.

1699
01:42:27,080 --> 01:42:30,320
Speaker 4: The eighteen hundreds were a heady time in Western science.

1700
01:42:30,840 --> 01:42:34,200
Speaker 4: There was Charles Darwin's theory of natural selection, which was

1701
01:42:34,240 --> 01:42:36,800
Speaker 4: presented in Darwin's eighteen fifty nine book on the Origin

1702
01:42:36,880 --> 01:42:41,759
Speaker 4: of Species. Five years later, sociologist Herbert Spencer mixed concepts

1703
01:42:41,840 --> 01:42:46,080
Speaker 4: from Thomas Malthus, the economists who proposed that population growth

1704
01:42:46,120 --> 01:42:49,920
Speaker 4: withul outpaced food production, with Darwin's theory to coin the

1705
01:42:50,040 --> 01:42:54,520
Speaker 4: term survival of the fittest and apply it to industrial capitalism,

1706
01:42:54,880 --> 01:42:57,400
Speaker 4: with the end conclusion that basically those who were on

1707
01:42:57,520 --> 01:43:00,479
Speaker 4: top were deserving of all of the privileges that they have,

1708
01:43:00,760 --> 01:43:04,000
Speaker 4: and that those at the bottom were also deserving of

1709
01:43:04,080 --> 01:43:08,760
Speaker 4: their position in society. In eighteen eighty three, Darwin's cousin

1710
01:43:08,880 --> 01:43:13,080
Speaker 4: Francis Galton, coined to term eugenics in his book Inquiries

1711
01:43:13,160 --> 01:43:16,880
Speaker 4: into Human Fertility. In its developments, the book proposed to give,

1712
01:43:17,160 --> 01:43:21,519
Speaker 4: to quote, more suitable races a better chance of prevailing

1713
01:43:21,640 --> 01:43:25,280
Speaker 4: speedily over the less suitable. To understand a bit more

1714
01:43:25,280 --> 01:43:28,360
Speaker 4: about Galton's thinking, I spoke with doctor Michael Phillips, who

1715
01:43:28,439 --> 01:43:29,879
Speaker 4: we heard from in a previous episode.

1716
01:43:31,520 --> 01:43:37,599
Speaker 15: Galton was in despair that all those improvements in delivery

1717
01:43:37,600 --> 01:43:43,000
Speaker 15: of healthcare, medical care itself, nutrition, all the humanitarian efforts

1718
01:43:43,479 --> 01:43:48,920
Speaker 15: to improve the workplace, eliminate child labor, improve factories so

1719
01:43:49,080 --> 01:43:52,200
Speaker 15: people don't get blown up, etc. What that was doing

1720
01:43:52,439 --> 01:43:56,280
Speaker 15: was it was allowing the unfit, you know, the people

1721
01:43:56,360 --> 01:44:01,439
Speaker 15: he saw as inferior, to survive past childhood, to survive

1722
01:44:01,520 --> 01:44:06,000
Speaker 15: into adulthood. They have longer healthier lives. And if they

1723
01:44:06,160 --> 01:44:10,679
Speaker 15: live a longer lifespan and they're healthier during that span,

1724
01:44:11,320 --> 01:44:14,920
Speaker 15: they're going to have more children. And he believed that

1725
01:44:15,200 --> 01:44:21,799
Speaker 15: because they are less gifted with intelligence, you know, because

1726
01:44:22,000 --> 01:44:25,080
Speaker 15: you know, he said history is driven by genius. And

1727
01:44:25,160 --> 01:44:29,720
Speaker 15: he actually did the first major study on intelligence where

1728
01:44:29,800 --> 01:44:33,559
Speaker 15: he traced the family histories of what he said were

1729
01:44:33,600 --> 01:44:36,120
Speaker 15: the gifted men. And he claimed all of this was

1730
01:44:36,800 --> 01:44:40,720
Speaker 15: biological inheritance, you know, everything was biology. And not only that,

1731
01:44:41,000 --> 01:44:46,280
Speaker 15: but all traits, all traits, were biological work ethic, honesty,

1732
01:44:47,040 --> 01:44:52,400
Speaker 15: fidelity to your partner, alcoholism, every single trait a human

1733
01:44:52,479 --> 01:44:55,960
Speaker 15: might have he tied to biology. And he said that

1734
01:44:56,240 --> 01:44:59,520
Speaker 15: the people with the worst traits that it's called dysgenic

1735
01:45:00,040 --> 01:45:03,320
Speaker 15: people who were dishenic, people had the worst traits, were

1736
01:45:03,360 --> 01:45:07,080
Speaker 15: now producing large families. And because they were less intelligent,

1737
01:45:07,920 --> 01:45:12,200
Speaker 15: they gave into their sexual urges more often. They didn't

1738
01:45:12,320 --> 01:45:17,440
Speaker 15: plan families based on their economic circumstances. They were impulsive,

1739
01:45:18,760 --> 01:45:21,880
Speaker 15: while we have eight children, let's have sex, and you

1740
01:45:21,960 --> 01:45:23,560
Speaker 15: know if we have a ninth child, well we have

1741
01:45:23,640 --> 01:45:28,559
Speaker 15: a ninth child. And that meant that those families were

1742
01:45:28,640 --> 01:45:34,559
Speaker 15: growing exponentially. But the fit who plan their families more carefully,

1743
01:45:35,040 --> 01:45:39,240
Speaker 15: and you know, the partners are busier. Job creators is

1744
01:45:39,439 --> 01:45:43,000
Speaker 15: innovators and science and education. The women want to have

1745
01:45:43,120 --> 01:45:45,000
Speaker 15: a life outside of the home.

1746
01:45:45,439 --> 01:45:49,000
Speaker 14: That they were less fertile, they were having fewer children.

1747
01:45:49,560 --> 01:45:53,000
Speaker 15: And of course what the result would be is you

1748
01:45:53,160 --> 01:45:57,280
Speaker 15: have the unfit out numbering the fit, and that leads

1749
01:45:57,400 --> 01:45:59,920
Speaker 15: to catastrophe society falls upon.

1750
01:46:00,960 --> 01:46:03,880
Speaker 4: These sorts of ideas are represented in the satirical two

1751
01:46:03,920 --> 01:46:07,439
Speaker 4: thousand and six film Idiocracy, which plays out a future

1752
01:46:07,520 --> 01:46:11,559
Speaker 4: in which stupid people outbreed smart people and society consequently devolves.

1753
01:46:11,960 --> 01:46:16,439
Speaker 1: As the twenty first century began, human evolution was at

1754
01:46:16,479 --> 01:46:21,800
Speaker 1: a turning point. Natural selection, the process by which the strongest,

1755
01:46:22,080 --> 01:46:26,080
Speaker 1: the smartest, the fastest reproduced in greater numbers than the rest,

1756
01:46:26,479 --> 01:46:29,600
Speaker 1: A process which had once favored the noblest traits of

1757
01:46:29,800 --> 01:46:34,960
Speaker 1: man now began to favor different traits. Most science fiction

1758
01:46:35,120 --> 01:46:38,120
Speaker 1: of the day predicted a future that was more civilized

1759
01:46:38,400 --> 01:46:42,320
Speaker 1: and more intelligent, but as time went on, things seemed

1760
01:46:42,360 --> 01:46:45,840
Speaker 1: to be heading in the opposite direction, a dumbing down.

1761
01:46:46,840 --> 01:46:51,440
Speaker 1: How did this happen? Evolution does not necessarily reward intelligence.

1762
01:46:51,720 --> 01:46:54,639
Speaker 1: With no natural predators to thin the herd, it began

1763
01:46:54,760 --> 01:46:58,280
Speaker 1: to simply reward those who reproduced the most and left

1764
01:46:58,320 --> 01:47:01,160
Speaker 1: the intelligent to become an dangered species.

1765
01:47:02,479 --> 01:47:05,919
Speaker 4: Having kids is such an important decision.

1766
01:47:06,960 --> 01:47:08,240
Speaker 8: We're just waiting for the right time.

1767
01:47:08,640 --> 01:47:10,040
Speaker 5: It's not something you want to rush into.

1768
01:47:10,479 --> 01:47:11,519
Speaker 6: Obviously, no way.

1769
01:47:13,640 --> 01:47:15,520
Speaker 7: Shit, I'm putting it again.

1770
01:47:17,000 --> 01:47:19,559
Speaker 16: To mean, damn kids, thought you was on the pills

1771
01:47:19,600 --> 01:47:24,120
Speaker 16: and shit, No, must have been Brittany.

1772
01:47:25,920 --> 01:47:29,200
Speaker 4: Well certainly meant in jest. The fundamental principle of idiocracy

1773
01:47:29,280 --> 01:47:33,080
Speaker 4: demonstrates the staying power of Galton's eugenic ideas, which became

1774
01:47:33,240 --> 01:47:36,479
Speaker 4: highly influential in the twentieth century. Within two decades of

1775
01:47:36,520 --> 01:47:39,639
Speaker 4: the release of his book coining the term eugenics, eugenic

1776
01:47:39,760 --> 01:47:43,240
Speaker 4: thinking was widespread among white Anglo Saxon leaders of the West.

1777
01:47:44,120 --> 01:47:46,839
Speaker 4: But before we hear more about that from doctor Michael Phillips,

1778
01:47:47,479 --> 01:47:48,240
Speaker 4: a quick ad.

1779
01:47:48,160 --> 01:48:03,599
Speaker 15: Break two biggest eugenicists in the early twentieth century. They

1780
01:48:03,640 --> 01:48:07,080
Speaker 15: were best selling authors Madison Grant, who was a friend

1781
01:48:07,160 --> 01:48:13,839
Speaker 15: of Theodore Roosevelt's, and Walthorpe Stoddard. Stoddard in particular warned

1782
01:48:14,520 --> 01:48:19,519
Speaker 15: that this was fueling radical politics, that the unfit essentially

1783
01:48:20,160 --> 01:48:25,759
Speaker 15: were demanding the riches created by the geniuses in the world,

1784
01:48:26,320 --> 01:48:28,960
Speaker 15: and they were expropriating the wealth they created, and they

1785
01:48:29,000 --> 01:48:33,360
Speaker 15: were they were just milking the fit for every advance,

1786
01:48:33,760 --> 01:48:37,880
Speaker 15: and that as that became more difficult, that would breed

1787
01:48:38,360 --> 01:48:41,400
Speaker 15: revolution and sodder. In particular thought there was a link

1788
01:48:41,439 --> 01:48:46,400
Speaker 15: to communist revolution. As advancements in sanitation and modern medicine

1789
01:48:46,400 --> 01:48:50,600
Speaker 15: continued in parallel with the spread of leftist thought, eugenicists

1790
01:48:50,600 --> 01:48:54,280
Speaker 15: were consumed with nightmares of a Malthusian crisis and were

1791
01:48:54,320 --> 01:48:57,880
Speaker 15: increasingly worried about their position in society. Something in their

1792
01:48:58,000 --> 01:49:00,880
Speaker 15: minds had to be done to stem the growing tide

1793
01:49:01,000 --> 01:49:05,760
Speaker 15: of unfit masses. Because natural selection in the minds of

1794
01:49:05,800 --> 01:49:10,599
Speaker 15: the genesis had basically been suspended the force sterilizations were

1795
01:49:10,680 --> 01:49:17,680
Speaker 15: the substitute for that. Eugenicists were in despair about vaccines,

1796
01:49:18,560 --> 01:49:21,760
Speaker 15: but there was an organized campaign to ban them on

1797
01:49:21,920 --> 01:49:25,719
Speaker 15: eugenics reasons, because I think they knew politically that would

1798
01:49:25,720 --> 01:49:28,640
Speaker 15: be unpopular, because there were enough people who realize they

1799
01:49:28,680 --> 01:49:31,759
Speaker 15: could see the benefits as vaccinations became more common.

1800
01:49:33,200 --> 01:49:36,760
Speaker 4: In other words, some early genesists were both supportive of

1801
01:49:36,840 --> 01:49:41,080
Speaker 4: things like for sterilization, but were also opposed to vaccinations

1802
01:49:41,360 --> 01:49:44,000
Speaker 4: because they believed that vaccinations would allow the weak and

1803
01:49:44,160 --> 01:49:49,000
Speaker 4: unfit to survive, prosper and multiply. But not all eugenicists

1804
01:49:49,120 --> 01:49:54,440
Speaker 4: were inherently opposed to vaccinations. The Nazi regime, which exterminated

1805
01:49:54,520 --> 01:49:58,799
Speaker 4: millions of Jews and other people deemed undesirable, also embraced

1806
01:49:58,800 --> 01:50:03,080
Speaker 4: widespread vaccination against diseases like typhus, even if they actually

1807
01:50:03,280 --> 01:50:06,680
Speaker 4: rolled back mandatory vaccination laws that had been put in

1808
01:50:06,760 --> 01:50:10,519
Speaker 4: place prior to the rise of the Nazis. Nevertheless, the

1809
01:50:10,600 --> 01:50:14,920
Speaker 4: relationship between eugenic thinking and anti vax beliefs goes deep,

1810
01:50:15,439 --> 01:50:19,360
Speaker 4: and it reveals it helpful heuristic for thinking about eugenics. So,

1811
01:50:19,479 --> 01:50:22,320
Speaker 4: on the one hand, there's a sort of active or

1812
01:50:22,600 --> 01:50:26,599
Speaker 4: hard eugenics, in which medical authorities or the state forcefully

1813
01:50:26,680 --> 01:50:30,280
Speaker 4: sterilize and exterminate people who are deemed unfit. And then

1814
01:50:30,360 --> 01:50:32,840
Speaker 4: on the other hand, there's a sort of passive or

1815
01:50:33,200 --> 01:50:37,040
Speaker 4: soft eugenics, in which potentially preventable deaths are written off

1816
01:50:37,080 --> 01:50:40,320
Speaker 4: as a product of a process in which the fittest

1817
01:50:40,400 --> 01:50:44,040
Speaker 4: survive and go on to improve the overall gene pool. Now,

1818
01:50:44,120 --> 01:50:46,720
Speaker 4: before we go any further, it is important to note

1819
01:50:46,760 --> 01:50:50,920
Speaker 4: that eugenics has been morally and scientifically discredited so thoroughly

1820
01:50:51,080 --> 01:50:55,040
Speaker 4: that it shouldn't even be necessary to mention it. But unfortunately,

1821
01:50:55,479 --> 01:51:00,120
Speaker 4: eugenicis thinking is in resurgence. President Donald Trump himself, I

1822
01:51:00,200 --> 01:51:02,600
Speaker 4: said there are a lot of bad genes in our

1823
01:51:02,640 --> 01:51:05,479
Speaker 4: country right now, and that immigrants are poisoning the blood

1824
01:51:05,520 --> 01:51:06,080
Speaker 4: of our country.

1825
01:51:07,000 --> 01:51:11,880
Speaker 15: That's been an ongoing thing with immigration debates ever since

1826
01:51:12,040 --> 01:51:15,920
Speaker 15: the late nineteenth century, this idea that certain groups of

1827
01:51:16,000 --> 01:51:21,840
Speaker 15: immigrants are disease carriers, and that has particularly been aimed

1828
01:51:21,880 --> 01:51:23,960
Speaker 15: at Mexican immigrants.

1829
01:51:24,120 --> 01:51:25,760
Speaker 14: That's been an ongoing thing.

1830
01:51:26,240 --> 01:51:30,599
Speaker 15: And during COVID, Greg Gabbott, who's the governor of Texas,

1831
01:51:31,280 --> 01:51:35,320
Speaker 15: was saying it was Mexican immigrants, undocumented immigrants, who were

1832
01:51:35,320 --> 01:51:39,000
Speaker 15: bringing COVID to Texas. At one point he made that accusation,

1833
01:51:39,720 --> 01:51:43,120
Speaker 15: and it's exactly like what they were saying. We had

1834
01:51:43,720 --> 01:51:47,800
Speaker 15: in Texas during this period this panic about immigration, late

1835
01:51:47,880 --> 01:51:52,560
Speaker 15: nineteenth early twenties century. Galveston, a medical doctor who was

1836
01:51:53,000 --> 01:51:56,240
Speaker 15: inspecting people coming into the Port of Galveston who were

1837
01:51:56,320 --> 01:52:00,439
Speaker 15: Jewish immigrants, and he was rejecting them because he saying

1838
01:52:00,479 --> 01:52:05,960
Speaker 15: they're carrying infectious eye diseases, tuberculosis, all of that, and

1839
01:52:06,840 --> 01:52:09,760
Speaker 15: Jewish civil Rights scripts had to intervene to stop that.

1840
01:52:10,880 --> 01:52:15,200
Speaker 4: Racism, anti Semitism, and eugenics historically have gone hand in hand,

1841
01:52:15,280 --> 01:52:18,120
Speaker 4: but it hasn't been since the early nineteen hundreds that

1842
01:52:18,200 --> 01:52:22,400
Speaker 4: people who hold such beliefs also hold so much power

1843
01:52:22,479 --> 01:52:27,080
Speaker 4: in the state. RFK Junior, a longtime anti vaccination activist

1844
01:52:27,600 --> 01:52:29,840
Speaker 4: and now head of the United States Department of Health

1845
01:52:29,880 --> 01:52:32,400
Speaker 4: and Human Services, said in twenty twenty three that COVID

1846
01:52:32,600 --> 01:52:38,280
Speaker 4: was quote ethnically targeted to spare Ashkenazi, Jews and Chinese people. Now,

1847
01:52:38,600 --> 01:52:42,240
Speaker 4: his make America Healthy Again agenda is absolutely dripping with

1848
01:52:42,479 --> 01:52:47,160
Speaker 4: soft eugenic thinking. And to unravel all that, I spoke

1849
01:52:47,240 --> 01:52:50,680
Speaker 4: with doctor David Gorski, a doctor who regularly writes in

1850
01:52:50,760 --> 01:52:52,719
Speaker 4: a blog called Science Based Medicine.

1851
01:52:54,880 --> 01:52:58,759
Speaker 7: My name is David Gorsky. I'm a professor of surgery

1852
01:52:58,800 --> 01:53:02,320
Speaker 7: and oncology at Mayne State University in Detroit.

1853
01:53:02,840 --> 01:53:05,519
Speaker 4: So, doctor Gorski, you're also a bit of a writer,

1854
01:53:05,720 --> 01:53:09,320
Speaker 4: and you keep a pretty regular blog in chi Opine

1855
01:53:09,640 --> 01:53:12,840
Speaker 4: on a number of things, and recently you've written a

1856
01:53:12,920 --> 01:53:19,439
Speaker 4: couple blog posts about the measles outbreak, the anti vaccination movement.

1857
01:53:19,880 --> 01:53:25,240
Speaker 4: RFK Juniors Make America Healthy again an agenda, and you

1858
01:53:25,320 --> 01:53:30,760
Speaker 4: know what folks over at the Conspiratuality podcast called soft eugenics,

1859
01:53:31,360 --> 01:53:33,120
Speaker 4: or perhaps what we could also think of as a

1860
01:53:33,200 --> 01:53:38,080
Speaker 4: sort of social Darwinist logic or sort of passive eugenics.

1861
01:53:38,560 --> 01:53:40,320
Speaker 7: You know, a couple of months ago, when I first

1862
01:53:40,360 --> 01:53:45,040
Speaker 7: came across the episode of Conspiratuality, which was called MAHA's

1863
01:53:45,120 --> 01:53:48,240
Speaker 7: soft Eugenics, like a kind of like a light bulb

1864
01:53:48,320 --> 01:53:50,240
Speaker 7: went off in my brain in that it sort of

1865
01:53:50,640 --> 01:53:53,400
Speaker 7: helped me crystallize things that I had been thinking of

1866
01:53:53,560 --> 01:53:57,600
Speaker 7: about the anti vaccine movement, but not so much the

1867
01:53:57,800 --> 01:54:01,600
Speaker 7: rest of Maha, which, you know, let's face it, a

1868
01:54:01,720 --> 01:54:06,919
Speaker 7: mishmash of you know, anti vaccine beliefs, you know, appeals

1869
01:54:06,960 --> 01:54:11,320
Speaker 7: to nature, anti pharma, a lot of quackery mixed in

1870
01:54:11,479 --> 01:54:16,200
Speaker 7: with some you know, semi reasonable stuff like you know, yeah, sure, diet, exercise,

1871
01:54:16,280 --> 01:54:20,160
Speaker 7: it's good for you. I think Measles really epitomizes what

1872
01:54:20,479 --> 01:54:23,479
Speaker 7: they called the quote unquote soft eugenics, which was basically,

1873
01:54:24,120 --> 01:54:27,599
Speaker 7: instead of you know, like actively trying to kill children

1874
01:54:27,720 --> 01:54:29,840
Speaker 7: or people that you know whose genes you don't want

1875
01:54:29,920 --> 01:54:33,720
Speaker 7: passed on, you're basically letting nature do it. And you

1876
01:54:33,840 --> 01:54:36,839
Speaker 7: hear this a lot when they talk about For example,

1877
01:54:36,880 --> 01:54:41,200
Speaker 7: one of the most common arguments you'll hear from anti

1878
01:54:41,280 --> 01:54:44,960
Speaker 7: vaxers about measles is that, you know, if someone gets

1879
01:54:45,000 --> 01:54:48,440
Speaker 7: really sick from measles or dies of measles, they must

1880
01:54:48,480 --> 01:54:51,000
Speaker 7: have had something wrong with them, They must not have

1881
01:54:51,120 --> 01:54:55,160
Speaker 7: been healthy. Like that, Measles is harmless if you are healthy.

1882
01:54:55,840 --> 01:54:58,160
Speaker 7: And of course, you know, there's a whole lot of

1883
01:54:58,960 --> 01:55:01,320
Speaker 7: appeal to virtu you as far as health goes. In

1884
01:55:01,360 --> 01:55:04,640
Speaker 7: other words, there's this this belief system that's kind of

1885
01:55:04,680 --> 01:55:08,440
Speaker 7: embedded in Maha, and it's been around for ages and

1886
01:55:08,560 --> 01:55:12,440
Speaker 7: ages in the alternative medicine crowd, that you know, you

1887
01:55:12,840 --> 01:55:16,760
Speaker 7: have basically total control over your health. In other words,

1888
01:55:16,800 --> 01:55:18,960
Speaker 7: if you do the right things, eat the right diet,

1889
01:55:19,240 --> 01:55:21,200
Speaker 7: you know, take the right supplements, you know, do the

1890
01:55:22,040 --> 01:55:27,280
Speaker 7: exercise appropriately, you know, you can keep yourself healthy. And

1891
01:55:27,760 --> 01:55:31,800
Speaker 7: it's even as good as vaccines or better to prevent

1892
01:55:32,120 --> 01:55:35,280
Speaker 7: vaccine preventable diseases, infectious diseases. Right.

1893
01:55:35,440 --> 01:55:38,680
Speaker 4: So, I think that's a great way to understand the

1894
01:55:38,760 --> 01:55:42,600
Speaker 4: differences here. You know, we're not talking about the hard

1895
01:55:43,080 --> 01:55:47,720
Speaker 4: active eugenics of the past, which was epitomized by the

1896
01:55:48,200 --> 01:55:50,560
Speaker 4: Nazi regime and their quote unquote final solution.

1897
01:55:51,120 --> 01:55:53,720
Speaker 7: And also, you know, you're in the good old us

1898
01:55:53,800 --> 01:55:54,520
Speaker 7: of AGA.

1899
01:55:54,640 --> 01:55:57,640
Speaker 4: Years ago, right you know, or even you know, in

1900
01:55:58,280 --> 01:56:02,800
Speaker 4: the lingering sterilization regimes that continued up until you know,

1901
01:56:02,960 --> 01:56:06,720
Speaker 4: the later twentieth century, which we're you know, sort of

1902
01:56:06,760 --> 01:56:09,760
Speaker 4: originally rooted in this idea that we should be calling

1903
01:56:09,920 --> 01:56:14,400
Speaker 4: people out of the reproductive pool who have these undesirable

1904
01:56:14,480 --> 01:56:17,400
Speaker 4: traits or are you know, considered to be unfit in

1905
01:56:17,560 --> 01:56:18,000
Speaker 4: some way.

1906
01:56:18,400 --> 01:56:20,000
Speaker 3: So that's not what we're talking about.

1907
01:56:20,000 --> 01:56:23,200
Speaker 4: We're talking about this more let nature take its course,

1908
01:56:23,320 --> 01:56:26,280
Speaker 4: survival of the fittest type mindset. I don't know if

1909
01:56:26,280 --> 01:56:30,400
Speaker 4: it's a resurgence or it's just continuing to gain in popularity.

1910
01:56:30,880 --> 01:56:34,840
Speaker 4: There's a recent conference, it's been one of two conferences

1911
01:56:34,880 --> 01:56:37,680
Speaker 4: that have happened in Austin, Texas where a lot of

1912
01:56:37,760 --> 01:56:41,920
Speaker 4: these quote unquote liberal eugenicists also met up with people

1913
01:56:41,960 --> 01:56:44,440
Speaker 4: who are in the pro natalist movement. And then there's

1914
01:56:44,520 --> 01:56:47,360
Speaker 4: this overlap with people who are kind of dabbling in

1915
01:56:47,800 --> 01:56:52,280
Speaker 4: race science or trying to resuscitate old ideas that are

1916
01:56:52,320 --> 01:56:56,440
Speaker 4: basically you know, eugenic in nature with regard to some people,

1917
01:56:56,680 --> 01:56:59,480
Speaker 4: you know, being smarter by genetic basis.

1918
01:57:01,000 --> 01:57:02,960
Speaker 7: I mean there's a lot of that around too, and

1919
01:57:03,080 --> 01:57:07,280
Speaker 7: that's not soft eugenics, that's like straight up eugenic.

1920
01:57:07,080 --> 01:57:09,360
Speaker 4: Right, And so there's a continuum, you could say, there's

1921
01:57:09,440 --> 01:57:12,600
Speaker 4: this spectrum, and you know, these things are not disconnected,

1922
01:57:12,680 --> 01:57:16,840
Speaker 4: but they also can be understood as somewhat discrete phenomenon

1923
01:57:17,200 --> 01:57:20,400
Speaker 4: or ideologies or belief systems. And so you did write

1924
01:57:20,400 --> 01:57:24,560
Speaker 4: a little bit about one specific document that you know,

1925
01:57:24,800 --> 01:57:29,440
Speaker 4: I hadn't been particularly familiar with, called the Great Barrington Declaration.

1926
01:57:29,800 --> 01:57:30,880
Speaker 3: Can you talk about that?

1927
01:57:31,320 --> 01:57:33,720
Speaker 7: Okay, So I can't believe it's like four and a

1928
01:57:33,760 --> 01:57:37,000
Speaker 7: half years ago now, but way back in early October

1929
01:57:37,120 --> 01:57:43,000
Speaker 7: of twenty twenty three, scientists were brought together by a

1930
01:57:43,920 --> 01:57:47,440
Speaker 7: far right wing, you know, activist named Jeffrey Tucker, who

1931
01:57:47,520 --> 01:57:49,560
Speaker 7: was associated with a right wing thing tank at the

1932
01:57:49,600 --> 01:57:54,200
Speaker 7: time called the American Institute for Economic Research. The idea

1933
01:57:54,320 --> 01:57:58,080
Speaker 7: behind the document was, you know, all of these measures

1934
01:57:58,200 --> 01:58:02,520
Speaker 7: to control COVID are like destroying the economy. So what

1935
01:58:02,680 --> 01:58:07,280
Speaker 7: we should really do, supposedly based on science but not really,

1936
01:58:07,400 --> 01:58:11,280
Speaker 7: as I'll get into, is to let the virus spread

1937
01:58:11,720 --> 01:58:15,520
Speaker 7: among quote unquote young and healthy, you know, those who

1938
01:58:15,600 --> 01:58:19,200
Speaker 7: are not at high risk, so not the elderly, not

1939
01:58:19,400 --> 01:58:24,280
Speaker 7: those with pre existing conditions that make them high risk

1940
01:58:24,440 --> 01:58:29,640
Speaker 7: for severe disease complications and death from COVID. Just let

1941
01:58:29,720 --> 01:58:32,360
Speaker 7: it spread to reach what they call, you know, quote

1942
01:58:32,440 --> 01:58:36,760
Speaker 7: unquote natural herd immunity heard immunity for those not familiar

1943
01:58:36,840 --> 01:58:41,360
Speaker 7: with it, is when a pathogen is so prevalent in

1944
01:58:41,440 --> 01:58:45,640
Speaker 7: the population and that so many people have developed what

1945
01:58:45,800 --> 01:58:48,520
Speaker 7: they call natural immunity, but the more appropriate term is

1946
01:58:48,680 --> 01:58:52,200
Speaker 7: post infection immunity. You know, immunity after having been infected

1947
01:58:52,880 --> 01:58:55,800
Speaker 7: to the point where you know a sufficient proportion of

1948
01:58:55,880 --> 01:58:59,600
Speaker 7: the population is immune and the virus doesn't spread much

1949
01:58:59,720 --> 01:59:02,400
Speaker 7: like if you have a sufficient proportion of the population

1950
01:59:02,600 --> 01:59:05,920
Speaker 7: vaccinated the virus, you know, you might get sporadic cases

1951
01:59:06,000 --> 01:59:09,720
Speaker 7: in small outbreaks, but it just can't spread further. If

1952
01:59:09,760 --> 01:59:13,440
Speaker 7: you don't know much about infectious diseases, including COVID, it

1953
01:59:13,640 --> 01:59:16,480
Speaker 7: sounds like not unreasonable given that there wasn't a vaccine

1954
01:59:16,520 --> 01:59:18,920
Speaker 7: back then. The other part of it is what they

1955
01:59:19,000 --> 01:59:23,240
Speaker 7: call quote unquote focus protection. So the idea is supposedly

1956
01:59:23,360 --> 01:59:27,040
Speaker 7: that you could protect those at high risk while letting

1957
01:59:27,040 --> 01:59:32,160
Speaker 7: the virus circulate, which are pretty incompatible because how are

1958
01:59:32,240 --> 01:59:33,480
Speaker 7: you going to you know, how are you going to

1959
01:59:33,600 --> 01:59:36,880
Speaker 7: keep these high risk people from coming into contact with

1960
01:59:37,480 --> 01:59:41,120
Speaker 7: people who could have the virus, unless you like quarantine

1961
01:59:41,200 --> 01:59:43,640
Speaker 7: them all or something like that, which again would be

1962
01:59:43,680 --> 01:59:46,640
Speaker 7: impractical because you know, it's what twenty percent of the

1963
01:59:46,720 --> 01:59:51,040
Speaker 7: population at least. The other problem with this idea is

1964
01:59:51,160 --> 01:59:54,080
Speaker 7: for there to be natural herd immunity. I hate that term,

1965
01:59:54,160 --> 01:59:55,960
Speaker 7: but I'll use it just because it's what they use.

1966
01:59:56,760 --> 02:00:01,800
Speaker 7: A couple of conditions are necessary. First, post infection immunity

1967
02:00:01,920 --> 02:00:05,839
Speaker 7: has to be life long or at least very long lasting.

1968
02:00:06,920 --> 02:00:09,080
Speaker 7: The second is, in other words, that the virus can't

1969
02:00:09,120 --> 02:00:13,800
Speaker 7: be mutating to avoid immunity, which we all know now

1970
02:00:14,000 --> 02:00:17,360
Speaker 7: and even new then that coronaviruses are very good at doing.

1971
02:00:18,280 --> 02:00:21,640
Speaker 7: So that it was expected that you know, new variants

1972
02:00:21,640 --> 02:00:25,120
Speaker 7: would come up and they could evade even post infection

1973
02:00:25,240 --> 02:00:28,360
Speaker 7: immunity in terms of like influenza. That's why the flu

1974
02:00:28,440 --> 02:00:31,880
Speaker 7: vaccine has to be updated, you know, every year, because

1975
02:00:31,920 --> 02:00:36,880
Speaker 7: the strains mutate, and the rise of the delta wave,

1976
02:00:37,000 --> 02:00:40,440
Speaker 7: the omicron wave, et cetera kind of showed that people

1977
02:00:40,520 --> 02:00:44,600
Speaker 7: getting infected again and again that you know, post infection

1978
02:00:44,720 --> 02:00:48,560
Speaker 7: immunity for COVID was not long lasting, so basically maybe

1979
02:00:48,640 --> 02:00:52,360
Speaker 7: Barrington Declaration was, you know, giving up more than anything

1980
02:00:52,480 --> 02:00:56,080
Speaker 7: else in order to let people make money again. And

1981
02:00:56,920 --> 02:01:00,480
Speaker 7: it never would have worked because even back then, we

1982
02:01:00,720 --> 02:01:04,400
Speaker 7: had every reason to expect that post infection immunity after

1983
02:01:04,720 --> 02:01:07,920
Speaker 7: COVID infection would not be long lasting, and that the

1984
02:01:08,040 --> 02:01:12,040
Speaker 7: virus would mutate and you know, come up with new

1985
02:01:12,080 --> 02:01:19,000
Speaker 7: strains that could bypass pre existing immunity from previous infections. However,

1986
02:01:19,120 --> 02:01:23,400
Speaker 7: this idea was very influential, and in fact, the Great

1987
02:01:23,440 --> 02:01:27,160
Speaker 7: Barrington Declaration was kind of late in the game because

1988
02:01:27,520 --> 02:01:30,640
Speaker 7: the idea of just letting the virus spread to achieve

1989
02:01:30,960 --> 02:01:34,200
Speaker 7: natural herd immunity was being pushed as early as March

1990
02:01:34,280 --> 02:01:38,640
Speaker 7: and April in twenty twenty. And one of the writers

1991
02:01:38,680 --> 02:01:42,760
Speaker 7: are the scientists who wrote the Great Barrington Declaration is

1992
02:01:42,880 --> 02:01:47,680
Speaker 7: now our director of the NIH, doctor J. Bodichario. The

1993
02:01:47,760 --> 02:01:51,360
Speaker 7: other was doctor Senatragupta in England. And then there was

1994
02:01:51,520 --> 02:01:54,760
Speaker 7: of course Martin Cauldorf, who I now hear is involved

1995
02:01:54,800 --> 02:01:59,280
Speaker 7: in the autism you know vaccine study that RFK Junior

1996
02:01:59,600 --> 02:02:05,160
Speaker 7: is supposedly organizing. So basically, you know, these these the

1997
02:02:05,240 --> 02:02:11,000
Speaker 7: idea behind the Great Barrington Declaration, far from being censored

1998
02:02:11,080 --> 02:02:15,320
Speaker 7: and canceled, et cetera, actually found purchase at the highest

1999
02:02:15,400 --> 02:02:18,280
Speaker 7: levels of government in the US and the UK, the

2000
02:02:18,680 --> 02:02:23,600
Speaker 7: Boris Johnson government and Donald Trump administration both. You know,

2001
02:02:23,840 --> 02:02:28,560
Speaker 7: listen to these scientists and I mean Great Barrington Declaration

2002
02:02:29,280 --> 02:02:32,280
Speaker 7: writers you know, actually got to meet with Trump at

2003
02:02:32,320 --> 02:02:36,720
Speaker 7: one point, I believe in July, and it was unfortunately

2004
02:02:36,880 --> 02:02:42,720
Speaker 7: very influential and discouraged stronger public health measures. I did

2005
02:02:42,840 --> 02:02:46,520
Speaker 7: call this idea eugenicist at the time, although maybe you

2006
02:02:46,600 --> 02:02:49,760
Speaker 7: can argue if it's soft eugenics or social Darwinist. I mean,

2007
02:02:50,480 --> 02:02:53,680
Speaker 7: maybe more social Darwinists, given that, oh well, it's kind

2008
02:02:53,720 --> 02:02:55,720
Speaker 7: of like screw the old people who will die of this,

2009
02:02:56,480 --> 02:02:58,920
Speaker 7: you know, seem to be part of the attitude behind it.

2010
02:02:59,160 --> 02:03:02,200
Speaker 7: You know, we throw up this focused protection kind of

2011
02:03:02,240 --> 02:03:05,400
Speaker 7: as an afterthought, you know, where the main idea is

2012
02:03:05,560 --> 02:03:08,240
Speaker 7: just to you know, let the virus spread and most

2013
02:03:08,280 --> 02:03:12,080
Speaker 7: people will be okay. And this is the same sort

2014
02:03:12,120 --> 02:03:14,600
Speaker 7: of idea that we that I heard again and again

2015
02:03:15,320 --> 02:03:18,080
Speaker 7: years and years before with the measles, you know, and

2016
02:03:18,200 --> 02:03:20,880
Speaker 7: in fact, if you go back to twenty fifteen, which

2017
02:03:21,120 --> 02:03:24,640
Speaker 7: was you know, after the Disneyland measles outbreak, and during

2018
02:03:24,640 --> 02:03:27,360
Speaker 7: the holidays of twenty fourteen that you know took part.

2019
02:03:27,400 --> 02:03:30,320
Speaker 7: In the early part of twenty fifteen, you would see

2020
02:03:30,360 --> 02:03:34,680
Speaker 7: a lot of anti vaccine activists going on and on

2021
02:03:34,800 --> 02:03:37,640
Speaker 7: about how if you just keep yourself healthy, measles is

2022
02:03:37,760 --> 02:03:42,240
Speaker 7: not a danger, that natural immunity to measles is far

2023
02:03:42,440 --> 02:03:47,960
Speaker 7: greater than vaccine induced immunity. What they always fail to

2024
02:03:48,240 --> 02:03:52,919
Speaker 7: mention is that the price of getting post infection immunity

2025
02:03:53,160 --> 02:03:57,200
Speaker 7: can be besides just being sick. Could it involve the

2026
02:03:57,320 --> 02:04:00,600
Speaker 7: risk of you know, complications, neurologic damage, or even.

2027
02:04:00,520 --> 02:04:03,880
Speaker 4: Death right And so in a way, there's a sort

2028
02:04:03,920 --> 02:04:08,240
Speaker 4: of moralization around health in that, you know, it's something

2029
02:04:08,280 --> 02:04:12,680
Speaker 4: that individuals have to be personally responsible for, and as

2030
02:04:12,720 --> 02:04:16,720
Speaker 4: you said, if they succumbed to an illness like measles,

2031
02:04:16,760 --> 02:04:19,280
Speaker 4: it is sort of an indication that maybe they were

2032
02:04:19,400 --> 02:04:24,520
Speaker 4: unfit in some way or unhealthy, And his dovetails with

2033
02:04:24,920 --> 02:04:29,120
Speaker 4: something you also wrote about RFK Junior's recent speech in

2034
02:04:29,200 --> 02:04:32,440
Speaker 4: which he talked about autism and described it as a

2035
02:04:33,080 --> 02:04:37,400
Speaker 4: tsunami and likened it to an epidemic. He claimed that

2036
02:04:37,880 --> 02:04:41,960
Speaker 4: the increasing statistical prevalence of autism is due to environmental

2037
02:04:42,520 --> 02:04:46,280
Speaker 4: risk factors and is something that is sort of induced

2038
02:04:46,800 --> 02:04:52,800
Speaker 4: by human behavior, as opposed to that statistical prevalence being

2039
02:04:52,840 --> 02:04:56,040
Speaker 4: a result of improvements and diagnostic tools that more accurately

2040
02:04:56,080 --> 02:04:58,960
Speaker 4: measure a phenomenon. And he also portrayed autistic people as

2041
02:04:59,000 --> 02:05:03,720
Speaker 4: a sort of burden on society in you know, or

2042
02:05:03,800 --> 02:05:06,560
Speaker 4: people who will never be able to do things like

2043
02:05:06,680 --> 02:05:09,120
Speaker 4: fall in love or get a job, despite the fact

2044
02:05:09,120 --> 02:05:13,320
Speaker 4: that there are countless examples of people with autism or

2045
02:05:13,720 --> 02:05:16,480
Speaker 4: under the umbrella of what we call autism, doing exactly

2046
02:05:16,520 --> 02:05:21,040
Speaker 4: those things. And there's this undercurrent of rhetoric that you

2047
02:05:21,760 --> 02:05:23,920
Speaker 4: sort of describe it as an echo of something. I

2048
02:05:24,040 --> 02:05:27,400
Speaker 4: hadn't heard this term before, but I'm familiar with the

2049
02:05:28,080 --> 02:05:30,800
Speaker 4: idea of it, or rather the way in which it

2050
02:05:30,920 --> 02:05:35,720
Speaker 4: was deployed, the idea of quote unquote useless eaters. And so,

2051
02:05:35,840 --> 02:05:37,440
Speaker 4: can you just walk us through sort of what your

2052
02:05:37,480 --> 02:05:42,160
Speaker 4: reaction to RFK Junior's speech was in you know, how

2053
02:05:42,240 --> 02:05:43,160
Speaker 4: you made that connection.

2054
02:05:44,640 --> 02:05:47,720
Speaker 7: Well, look at what the very first thing he said

2055
02:05:47,800 --> 02:05:52,720
Speaker 7: about people with severe autism. Okay, what did he say?

2056
02:05:53,440 --> 02:05:57,920
Speaker 7: He said, they'll never pay taxes, they'll never have a job.

2057
02:05:58,840 --> 02:06:00,680
Speaker 7: And then oh, they'll never go on a date, they'll

2058
02:06:00,720 --> 02:06:03,640
Speaker 7: never play baseball. You know, it's what are the first

2059
02:06:03,720 --> 02:06:06,960
Speaker 7: two things he mentions paying taxes and having a job.

2060
02:06:07,640 --> 02:06:11,120
Speaker 7: This is straight up useless eaters rhetoric and useless eaters

2061
02:06:11,200 --> 02:06:13,840
Speaker 7: was basically a term that the Nazis used, you know,

2062
02:06:14,080 --> 02:06:19,320
Speaker 7: for people with you know, severe you know, neurologic conditions

2063
02:06:19,440 --> 02:06:22,040
Speaker 7: or diseases that made it such that they would require

2064
02:06:22,120 --> 02:06:26,720
Speaker 7: lifetime care and would never contribute to society. So that

2065
02:06:26,960 --> 02:06:29,280
Speaker 7: was the echo. I think that echo was pretty clear

2066
02:06:29,640 --> 02:06:33,720
Speaker 7: describing them that way. Now, the other interesting thing about

2067
02:06:34,560 --> 02:06:40,120
Speaker 7: the eugenics angle, there's a very strong denial of what

2068
02:06:40,280 --> 02:06:42,440
Speaker 7: we know thus far about autism, which is that it's

2069
02:06:42,560 --> 02:06:47,360
Speaker 7: like roughly eighty percent genetic. You know, you can argue

2070
02:06:47,400 --> 02:06:50,680
Speaker 7: over the exact figures, but it's predominantly genetic. I think

2071
02:06:50,720 --> 02:06:54,560
Speaker 7: there's little doubt about that. So parents who have an

2072
02:06:54,560 --> 02:06:59,440
Speaker 7: autistic child, they often blame themselves or they think, way,

2073
02:06:59,520 --> 02:07:03,520
Speaker 7: if it's genetic, that means it must be me and

2074
02:07:03,800 --> 02:07:06,880
Speaker 7: or my partner, you know, which if you're thinking in

2075
02:07:07,000 --> 02:07:10,960
Speaker 7: terms of the whole health is virtue thing, you know,

2076
02:07:11,000 --> 02:07:14,360
Speaker 7: if there is something about you that is not changeable,

2077
02:07:14,640 --> 02:07:18,480
Speaker 7: mainly your genetics, and that you know, no amount of

2078
02:07:19,240 --> 02:07:22,839
Speaker 7: exercise or you know, living right is going to change.

2079
02:07:23,520 --> 02:07:28,240
Speaker 7: It's easy to fall into denial of that and seek

2080
02:07:28,360 --> 02:07:33,760
Speaker 7: to blame something else. So there's that, And you know,

2081
02:07:34,040 --> 02:07:36,000
Speaker 7: one of the things I'm kind of afraid of is

2082
02:07:36,040 --> 02:07:39,680
Speaker 7: that if it becomes undeniable, you know, if they keep

2083
02:07:39,920 --> 02:07:42,760
Speaker 7: doing all this stuff and failing to find, you know,

2084
02:07:43,160 --> 02:07:48,120
Speaker 7: any real evidence that an external exposure is causing autism,

2085
02:07:48,280 --> 02:07:52,000
Speaker 7: and they're forced to reckon with autism being primarily but

2086
02:07:52,120 --> 02:07:55,920
Speaker 7: not exclusively, but primarily genetic, where does that lead you

2087
02:07:56,080 --> 02:08:00,320
Speaker 7: in terms of what do you do about autism? And

2088
02:08:01,040 --> 02:08:04,240
Speaker 7: my mind has gone in some fairly dark directions thinking

2089
02:08:04,320 --> 02:08:05,680
Speaker 7: about that, right.

2090
02:08:06,000 --> 02:08:12,000
Speaker 4: Right, And there's little discussion of what autistic people think

2091
02:08:12,440 --> 02:08:13,320
Speaker 4: or want.

2092
02:08:13,840 --> 02:08:16,360
Speaker 7: No, it doesn't matter to them at all. Really, In fact,

2093
02:08:16,360 --> 02:08:21,160
Speaker 7: they're almost entirely dismissive of what autistic people themselves think exactly.

2094
02:08:21,200 --> 02:08:25,760
Speaker 4: And there's also a total disregard for the value of

2095
02:08:25,880 --> 02:08:32,040
Speaker 4: difference and the contributions that people who are autistic have

2096
02:08:32,240 --> 02:08:36,680
Speaker 4: made to society that perhaps they might even correlate with

2097
02:08:37,000 --> 02:08:41,000
Speaker 4: the fact that they're autistic. So there's this total erasure

2098
02:08:41,240 --> 02:08:44,280
Speaker 4: of not only what an entire group of people actually

2099
02:08:44,280 --> 02:08:48,120
Speaker 4: want for themselves as advocates for themselves, but also their value,

2100
02:08:48,480 --> 02:08:50,600
Speaker 4: you know, not just as a group of people, but

2101
02:08:50,760 --> 02:08:52,000
Speaker 4: as individuals as well.

2102
02:08:52,560 --> 02:08:55,920
Speaker 7: To add to that, let's go back to around two

2103
02:08:55,920 --> 02:08:59,200
Speaker 7: thousand and seven, two thousand and eight, when Jenny McCarthy

2104
02:08:59,320 --> 02:09:03,000
Speaker 7: was the face of the anti vaccine movement. So like

2105
02:09:03,160 --> 02:09:07,160
Speaker 7: one of the things she said after, you know, supposedly

2106
02:09:07,240 --> 02:09:10,520
Speaker 7: after her son Evan got vaccinated, was that quote unquote,

2107
02:09:11,120 --> 02:09:15,000
Speaker 7: the light went out of his eyes. And then you

2108
02:09:15,160 --> 02:09:19,240
Speaker 7: hear this a lot when parents realize their children are

2109
02:09:19,320 --> 02:09:21,879
Speaker 7: showing the signs of you know, the early signs of autism.

2110
02:09:22,840 --> 02:09:27,160
Speaker 7: Is it like they there's language about how their child

2111
02:09:27,400 --> 02:09:30,480
Speaker 7: was stolen from them? In other words, is if this

2112
02:09:30,640 --> 02:09:35,040
Speaker 7: autistic child is not their child, rather their idealized version

2113
02:09:35,080 --> 02:09:37,800
Speaker 7: of what their child should be is their real child

2114
02:09:38,440 --> 02:09:42,200
Speaker 7: or their quote unquote normal child. This is some really

2115
02:09:42,280 --> 02:09:44,880
Speaker 7: ancient stuff in that, you know, I don't know if

2116
02:09:44,920 --> 02:09:48,280
Speaker 7: you there's the whole idea of the changeling myth, in

2117
02:09:48,360 --> 02:09:51,640
Speaker 7: which you know, the idea being, you know, children with

2118
02:09:52,200 --> 02:09:55,680
Speaker 7: mental illness, you know, have been taken over or their changelings,

2119
02:09:55,720 --> 02:09:59,200
Speaker 7: they are no longer what they were before it's almost

2120
02:09:59,240 --> 02:10:01,200
Speaker 7: as if they are no long longer human. I mean,

2121
02:10:01,280 --> 02:10:04,360
Speaker 7: the dehumanization that you hear from the anti vaccine movement

2122
02:10:04,360 --> 02:10:08,640
Speaker 7: about autism has long been horrific, and it's just that

2123
02:10:09,520 --> 02:10:13,360
Speaker 7: up until now, most people have not heard that rhetoric,

2124
02:10:14,040 --> 02:10:18,520
Speaker 7: and now they're hearing it from a high government official,

2125
02:10:19,120 --> 02:10:21,640
Speaker 7: and it is becoming federal health policy.

2126
02:10:22,200 --> 02:10:26,760
Speaker 3: Yeah, that is certainly a new development. Is something we've.

2127
02:10:26,640 --> 02:10:31,080
Speaker 4: Discussed on previous episodes is the deeper history of anti

2128
02:10:31,200 --> 02:10:36,760
Speaker 4: vaccination belief or hesitancy that goes deep in American history.

2129
02:10:36,840 --> 02:10:40,120
Speaker 4: You know, for almost as long as vaccines have ever existed,

2130
02:10:40,600 --> 02:10:45,840
Speaker 4: it has rarely ever been enshrined in law and policy.

2131
02:10:45,440 --> 02:10:47,720
Speaker 3: In the way that it is now being done.

2132
02:10:48,640 --> 02:10:51,960
Speaker 4: And so we've talked about one of these people, high

2133
02:10:52,040 --> 02:10:56,800
Speaker 4: level government officials, RFK Junior, whose statements have drawn your

2134
02:10:56,840 --> 02:10:58,400
Speaker 4: attention and elicited your concern.

2135
02:10:58,960 --> 02:10:59,960
Speaker 3: But he's not the only one.

2136
02:11:00,120 --> 02:11:04,760
Speaker 4: So you also write about oprah adjacent television personality, doctor

2137
02:11:05,120 --> 02:11:05,680
Speaker 4: men at Oz.

2138
02:11:06,480 --> 02:11:10,240
Speaker 7: Yeah, well, doctor Oz actually sort of surprised me a

2139
02:11:10,280 --> 02:11:14,200
Speaker 7: little bit, but then in retrospect not really. So I'm

2140
02:11:14,280 --> 02:11:18,480
Speaker 7: surprised there wasn't more commentary about this. But when he

2141
02:11:18,640 --> 02:11:23,360
Speaker 7: gave his brief little acceptance speech after having been confirmed

2142
02:11:23,600 --> 02:11:28,000
Speaker 7: as the Administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services,

2143
02:11:28,520 --> 02:11:33,919
Speaker 7: which is the part of HHS that administers you know, Medicare, Medicaid,

2144
02:11:33,960 --> 02:11:39,600
Speaker 7: Affordable Care Act. It's like really important, you know, huge programs.

2145
02:11:40,240 --> 02:11:43,680
Speaker 7: When he said, basically, it is your patriotic duty to

2146
02:11:43,880 --> 02:11:46,200
Speaker 7: take care of yourself, you know it, to be healthy.

2147
02:11:46,280 --> 02:11:48,160
Speaker 7: And then he goes, oh, and it feels better as well.

2148
02:11:48,240 --> 02:11:51,000
Speaker 7: But he said, it's your patriotic duty to take care

2149
02:11:51,040 --> 02:11:53,920
Speaker 7: of yourself and be healthy because then you you know,

2150
02:11:54,080 --> 02:11:57,120
Speaker 7: draw less. I'm paraphrasing because I don't remember exactly what

2151
02:11:57,240 --> 02:12:00,920
Speaker 7: he said, but because you pull less from the pool,

2152
02:12:01,320 --> 02:12:05,680
Speaker 7: you know, which interestingly echoes exactly almost exactly, other than

2153
02:12:05,680 --> 02:12:09,200
Speaker 7: the patriotic duty part what RFK Junior said. When Bernie

2154
02:12:09,320 --> 02:12:14,160
Speaker 7: Sanders asked if healthcare was a human right, as you recall,

2155
02:12:14,880 --> 02:12:18,800
Speaker 7: RFKA Junior did his best not to answer, you know,

2156
02:12:18,920 --> 02:12:21,280
Speaker 7: he dodged and weaved around the question, and then he

2157
02:12:21,360 --> 02:12:25,080
Speaker 7: brought up the example of a someone who smokes cigarettes

2158
02:12:25,240 --> 02:12:29,040
Speaker 7: for decades and then develops lung cancer and is now

2159
02:12:29,160 --> 02:12:31,600
Speaker 7: drawing from the pool. He was like, very you know,

2160
02:12:31,880 --> 02:12:35,920
Speaker 7: emphasized drawing from the pool as if that person does

2161
02:12:36,040 --> 02:12:40,560
Speaker 7: not deserve healthcare basically because an addiction gave you cancer.

2162
02:12:40,720 --> 02:12:43,120
Speaker 7: Because you know, what he neglects to mention is just

2163
02:12:43,200 --> 02:12:46,880
Speaker 7: how addictives, you know, tobacco and nicotine are. And as

2164
02:12:46,880 --> 02:12:50,600
Speaker 7: a former addict himself, you know, I found that striking.

2165
02:12:50,760 --> 02:12:52,920
Speaker 7: But coming back to the whole patriotic duty thing, you know,

2166
02:12:52,960 --> 02:12:57,000
Speaker 7: the whole idea is, again, health is virtue. You control

2167
02:12:57,160 --> 02:13:02,240
Speaker 7: your health, and if you don't do the right things

2168
02:13:02,360 --> 02:13:06,200
Speaker 7: and become ill, that you're somehow less worthy of healthcare.

2169
02:13:06,840 --> 02:13:07,000
Speaker 16: Right.

2170
02:13:07,200 --> 02:13:11,880
Speaker 4: And there's an interesting thread there in that some eugenesis thinkers,

2171
02:13:12,000 --> 02:13:17,000
Speaker 4: at least American ones, were somewhat concerned about, you know,

2172
02:13:17,080 --> 02:13:20,560
Speaker 4: the idea that vaccinations could prevent the weak or the

2173
02:13:20,720 --> 02:13:23,160
Speaker 4: unfit from being called naturally.

2174
02:13:23,680 --> 02:13:27,160
Speaker 7: Oh yes, definitely. Yeah, So there is some.

2175
02:13:27,560 --> 02:13:32,320
Speaker 4: Linkage here, even if these are somewhat discrete ideas. And

2176
02:13:32,520 --> 02:13:36,440
Speaker 4: you know, you also quoted something from a doctor Oz

2177
02:13:36,480 --> 02:13:39,680
Speaker 4: speech back in twenty thirteen. You pulled a video that

2178
02:13:39,800 --> 02:13:44,360
Speaker 4: had been resurfaced in recent years, and Oz said people

2179
02:13:44,440 --> 02:13:48,240
Speaker 4: don't have a right to health if they're uninsured. And

2180
02:13:48,480 --> 02:13:50,800
Speaker 4: so it's not like what he's saying is kind of

2181
02:13:51,120 --> 02:13:54,160
Speaker 4: new for him. He's been saying things like this for

2182
02:13:54,320 --> 02:13:57,320
Speaker 4: a while. And the idea that, you know, there's this

2183
02:13:57,600 --> 02:14:00,640
Speaker 4: national body that we all have a duty to sort

2184
02:14:00,680 --> 02:14:04,320
Speaker 4: of be healthy cells of is something that there's a

2185
02:14:04,440 --> 02:14:07,520
Speaker 4: long history of that sort of thinking and policy.

2186
02:14:07,920 --> 02:14:12,040
Speaker 7: Yeah, yes, the whole I mean, I couldn't help but

2187
02:14:12,200 --> 02:14:13,520
Speaker 7: think of Nazis and.

2188
02:14:13,560 --> 02:14:14,080
Speaker 15: The whole.

2189
02:14:16,000 --> 02:14:16,640
Speaker 7: Crick aside.

2190
02:14:16,720 --> 02:14:19,560
Speaker 4: For those who don't know, the Nazi idea of the

2191
02:14:19,800 --> 02:14:23,440
Speaker 4: vulcan has a few elements to it. Not only does

2192
02:14:23,480 --> 02:14:26,480
Speaker 4: it relate to racial and cultural homogeneity, but it also

2193
02:14:26,600 --> 02:14:29,120
Speaker 4: conceives of the nation as a sort of body composed

2194
02:14:29,120 --> 02:14:33,240
Speaker 4: of cells, one that must be cleansed of unfit or unhealthy.

2195
02:14:32,880 --> 02:14:34,560
Speaker 3: Cells in order to become perfect.

2196
02:14:34,960 --> 02:14:37,920
Speaker 4: In other words, a dutiful number of the Vulcan would

2197
02:14:38,040 --> 02:14:41,800
Speaker 4: prioritize their health as a sort of patriotic or nationalistic duty,

2198
02:14:42,240 --> 02:14:45,839
Speaker 4: and would participate in eugenic programs to eliminate the unfit.

2199
02:14:47,520 --> 02:14:50,880
Speaker 7: You know, I'm not saying this is straight up Nazi

2200
02:14:51,040 --> 02:14:53,280
Speaker 7: or anything like that. It's just that these sorts of

2201
02:14:53,480 --> 02:14:59,280
Speaker 7: themes have echoed through you know, not just eugenicist movements,

2202
02:14:59,560 --> 02:15:04,280
Speaker 7: but nationalist and authoritarian movement.

2203
02:15:04,680 --> 02:15:07,480
Speaker 3: And there's this concerning development.

2204
02:15:07,760 --> 02:15:11,560
Speaker 4: RFK Junior has proposed basically creating like a national database

2205
02:15:11,640 --> 02:15:14,320
Speaker 4: or registry of people with autism and if it's not

2206
02:15:14,480 --> 02:15:18,720
Speaker 4: just autism, maybe other disorders like ADHD. And if you

2207
02:15:18,840 --> 02:15:23,760
Speaker 4: read reports that interview people with autism or similar disorders,

2208
02:15:24,080 --> 02:15:26,920
Speaker 4: they are very concerned by this for the reasons that

2209
02:15:27,000 --> 02:15:30,440
Speaker 4: you just described. So the creation of this database could

2210
02:15:30,440 --> 02:15:34,200
Speaker 4: be framed as a way to improve our ability to

2211
02:15:34,360 --> 02:15:38,600
Speaker 4: understand this hypothetical linkage that they are so doggedly stuck

2212
02:15:38,680 --> 02:15:42,760
Speaker 4: on between autism and vaccines. But I think those who

2213
02:15:42,920 --> 02:15:47,240
Speaker 4: know their history could easily imagine such a tool being

2214
02:15:47,360 --> 02:15:51,840
Speaker 4: used for other more nefarious purposes, because similar policies were

2215
02:15:51,880 --> 02:15:55,680
Speaker 4: passed in Germany in the nineteen thirties to sort of,

2216
02:15:55,840 --> 02:15:59,280
Speaker 4: you know, identify these people and categorize them and then

2217
02:15:59,360 --> 02:16:03,040
Speaker 4: eventually do what they did with them. So, you know,

2218
02:16:03,120 --> 02:16:05,560
Speaker 4: for all those sorts of reasons, and you know also

2219
02:16:05,720 --> 02:16:07,960
Speaker 4: the fact that we're living at a time in which

2220
02:16:07,960 --> 02:16:11,160
Speaker 4: American citizens and legal residents are being sent to a

2221
02:16:11,360 --> 02:16:14,960
Speaker 4: foreign prison colony as is certainly you know something that

2222
02:16:15,000 --> 02:16:17,520
Speaker 4: I think people are picking up on and maybe making

2223
02:16:17,560 --> 02:16:18,240
Speaker 4: connections with.

2224
02:16:19,240 --> 02:16:22,360
Speaker 7: As you mentioned a lot of autistic people don't want

2225
02:16:22,400 --> 02:16:25,280
Speaker 7: to be on this database, and as a result, I've

2226
02:16:25,360 --> 02:16:29,400
Speaker 7: read reports in the news of parents are asking that

2227
02:16:29,520 --> 02:16:33,600
Speaker 7: their child not be given a diagnosis of autism so

2228
02:16:33,720 --> 02:16:36,879
Speaker 7: that they don't end up in the database, which could

2229
02:16:37,160 --> 02:16:42,280
Speaker 7: artificially cause, you know, the prevalence of autism to level

2230
02:16:42,360 --> 02:16:46,840
Speaker 7: off and start to decline, at which point RFK declares victory.

2231
02:16:47,560 --> 02:16:49,840
Speaker 4: We'll hear a bit more from doctor Gorski after a

2232
02:16:49,959 --> 02:17:04,440
Speaker 4: quick ad break. There's a recent proposal out of rfk's

2233
02:17:04,840 --> 02:17:10,360
Speaker 4: HHS that intends to provide placebo vaccines during testing for

2234
02:17:10,560 --> 02:17:12,400
Speaker 4: all quote unquote new vaccines.

2235
02:17:13,080 --> 02:17:17,280
Speaker 7: So the idea is, the vaccines in the childhood schedule

2236
02:17:17,440 --> 02:17:22,160
Speaker 7: have quote unquote never been tested against placebo control. Although

2237
02:17:22,320 --> 02:17:25,040
Speaker 7: ironically it's funny I did. I read an article the

2238
02:17:25,080 --> 02:17:27,600
Speaker 7: other day where they did admit that the COVID vaccine

2239
02:17:27,640 --> 02:17:30,760
Speaker 7: for children was indeed tested against a placebo control. I'm

2240
02:17:30,840 --> 02:17:33,920
Speaker 7: kind of surprised they conceded that, but I guess sometimes

2241
02:17:33,959 --> 02:17:38,240
Speaker 7: they have to concede reality. But here's the idea. So

2242
02:17:38,879 --> 02:17:41,240
Speaker 7: it's true that some of the vaccines have not been

2243
02:17:41,879 --> 02:17:46,440
Speaker 7: tested against the strict saline placebo control that they want,

2244
02:17:47,440 --> 02:17:49,720
Speaker 7: but there are a number of reasons for that. The

2245
02:17:49,840 --> 02:17:54,800
Speaker 7: primary reason is ethics. So let's go back. So, if

2246
02:17:54,840 --> 02:17:58,920
Speaker 7: you have a new vaccine that is for a disease

2247
02:17:59,000 --> 02:18:02,680
Speaker 7: that has never had an approved vaccine before, yes, it's

2248
02:18:02,760 --> 02:18:05,760
Speaker 7: tested against a placebo control. This has been the case

2249
02:18:05,840 --> 02:18:08,520
Speaker 7: for a very long time. However, if you have a

2250
02:18:08,680 --> 02:18:13,240
Speaker 7: new vaccine for a disease that already has a vaccine

2251
02:18:13,280 --> 02:18:15,960
Speaker 7: that's been approved as safe and effective and is the

2252
02:18:16,040 --> 02:18:20,760
Speaker 7: standard of care, it is completely unethical to do a

2253
02:18:20,920 --> 02:18:23,880
Speaker 7: randomized study where you know one third to half of

2254
02:18:23,959 --> 02:18:27,879
Speaker 7: the participants will be randomized to a group that does

2255
02:18:28,040 --> 02:18:31,160
Speaker 7: not get the standard of care treatment as in, you know,

2256
02:18:31,280 --> 02:18:34,560
Speaker 7: the vaccine or the standard of care preventative. In that case,

2257
02:18:34,760 --> 02:18:37,720
Speaker 7: the only ethical way to test the new vaccine against

2258
02:18:38,320 --> 02:18:40,960
Speaker 7: the disease for which there's already a vaccine is to

2259
02:18:41,160 --> 02:18:45,840
Speaker 7: test it against an existing vaccine and then make sure

2260
02:18:45,920 --> 02:18:51,160
Speaker 7: that it is at least not inferior or preferably better. So,

2261
02:18:52,160 --> 02:18:54,880
Speaker 7: if you trace back the lineage of all the vaccines

2262
02:18:55,000 --> 02:18:58,000
Speaker 7: on the childhood vaccine schedule, if you go back to

2263
02:18:58,120 --> 02:19:02,120
Speaker 7: the first vaccine against the disease that was approved, it

2264
02:19:02,360 --> 02:19:05,720
Speaker 7: was tested against you know, placebo when it was a

2265
02:19:05,800 --> 02:19:08,720
Speaker 7: new vaccine against a disease that didn't have a vaccine.

2266
02:19:09,320 --> 02:19:11,920
Speaker 4: I'm wondering if you agree with this, but it does

2267
02:19:12,000 --> 02:19:15,400
Speaker 4: sound like this proposal if it were to be implemented

2268
02:19:15,480 --> 02:19:20,880
Speaker 4: in a way that involves vaccines for existing diseases that

2269
02:19:21,040 --> 02:19:24,080
Speaker 4: have already been treated with vaccines, If there were placebos

2270
02:19:24,560 --> 02:19:27,240
Speaker 4: introduced into this testing, and you know, like you said,

2271
02:19:27,600 --> 02:19:31,560
Speaker 4: there's a random percentage of people that were given a placebo.

2272
02:19:31,720 --> 02:19:35,120
Speaker 4: I mean to me, it recalls like a soft version

2273
02:19:35,200 --> 02:19:36,760
Speaker 4: of a Tuskegee experiment.

2274
02:19:37,040 --> 02:19:40,520
Speaker 7: Yeah. I've been meaning to make that that analogy, but

2275
02:19:40,600 --> 02:19:41,360
Speaker 7: you beat me to it.

2276
02:19:44,080 --> 02:19:46,199
Speaker 4: As we discussed in a prior episode in this series,

2277
02:19:46,280 --> 02:19:49,880
Speaker 4: the Tuskegee Syphlist Study was a horrifically unethical, racist and

2278
02:19:49,959 --> 02:19:53,440
Speaker 4: eugenic experiment that helped seed a long standing distrust of

2279
02:19:53,520 --> 02:19:57,040
Speaker 4: vaccines and medical authorities, particularly among minority communities in the

2280
02:19:57,160 --> 02:20:01,080
Speaker 4: United States, and it straddled the intersection of hard and

2281
02:20:01,160 --> 02:20:05,160
Speaker 4: soft eugenics. While it was not a forced sterilization program,

2282
02:20:05,959 --> 02:20:08,560
Speaker 4: the intent of the experiment was to test the eugenic

2283
02:20:08,680 --> 02:20:13,560
Speaker 4: hypothesis that racial groups were differently susceptible to infectious diseases,

2284
02:20:14,200 --> 02:20:16,560
Speaker 4: and that's because they basically believed that black people had

2285
02:20:16,600 --> 02:20:19,080
Speaker 4: different nervous systems than white people and that they were

2286
02:20:19,320 --> 02:20:22,480
Speaker 4: not the same. And they also allowed black men who

2287
02:20:22,520 --> 02:20:25,080
Speaker 4: could have otherwise been treated for syphilis, which there were

2288
02:20:25,160 --> 02:20:28,040
Speaker 4: treatments for it at the time, to instead suffer and

2289
02:20:28,160 --> 02:20:32,680
Speaker 4: die after being given placebo treatments without their knowledge. Children's

2290
02:20:32,680 --> 02:20:36,480
Speaker 4: health defense while under the leadership of RFK, Junior invoked

2291
02:20:36,520 --> 02:20:39,680
Speaker 4: the Tuskegee syphilist experiment in a recent anti vaccine film

2292
02:20:39,920 --> 02:20:44,360
Speaker 4: that they specifically promoted to Black Americans to encourage vaccine skepticism,

2293
02:20:44,800 --> 02:20:47,360
Speaker 4: and now the former leader of that organization is proposing

2294
02:20:47,360 --> 02:20:50,280
Speaker 4: an approach to vaccines that is eerily reminiscent of the

2295
02:20:50,400 --> 02:20:56,920
Speaker 4: sordid Tuskegee experiment. In the post COVID world, vaccination rates

2296
02:20:56,920 --> 02:20:59,879
Speaker 4: are on the decline, and anti vaccination beliefs are spreading

2297
02:21:00,040 --> 02:21:03,360
Speaker 4: in tandem with eugenesis thinking. The rhetoric of the leaders

2298
02:21:03,720 --> 02:21:08,000
Speaker 4: of our top health bureaucracies recall chilling episodes in recent history,

2299
02:21:08,360 --> 02:21:11,760
Speaker 4: ones that we would rather not repeat. But because we

2300
02:21:11,840 --> 02:21:14,600
Speaker 4: have history as a guide, it is not impossible for

2301
02:21:14,680 --> 02:21:17,240
Speaker 4: us to imagine what could happen if things continue to

2302
02:21:17,320 --> 02:21:20,480
Speaker 4: trend in the direction we are already headed, so on

2303
02:21:20,520 --> 02:21:23,240
Speaker 4: the next episode of Anti vax America, I'll explore some

2304
02:21:23,360 --> 02:21:25,960
Speaker 4: of the worst case scenarios that could unfold if the

2305
02:21:26,040 --> 02:21:30,640
Speaker 4: proponents of the Maha agenda get their way. I'm Stephen Monchelli.

2306
02:21:31,000 --> 02:21:31,720
Speaker 3: Until next time.

2307
02:21:53,480 --> 02:21:57,240
Speaker 4: Welcome to the final episode of Anti vax America, a

2308
02:21:57,320 --> 02:22:00,560
Speaker 4: special mini series from it could happen here. I'm your host,

2309
02:22:00,920 --> 02:22:04,720
Speaker 4: Stephen Monachelli, a journalist in Dallas and sometimes contributor to

2310
02:22:04,760 --> 02:22:10,720
Speaker 4: Cool Zone Media. Over the past episodes, we've explored the

2311
02:22:10,760 --> 02:22:13,960
Speaker 4: origins of the current measles outbreak, the historical roots of

2312
02:22:14,000 --> 02:22:18,480
Speaker 4: the anti vaccination movement, the overlap between vaccine hesitancy and

2313
02:22:19,040 --> 02:22:24,000
Speaker 4: conservative Christianity that upholds a strong belief in spiritual healing,

2314
02:22:24,640 --> 02:22:29,200
Speaker 4: and the eugenic implications of contemporary anti vaxx ideology and

2315
02:22:29,400 --> 02:22:33,280
Speaker 4: the MAHA movement. In this episode, we'll explore the future.

2316
02:22:33,800 --> 02:22:37,160
Speaker 4: Could the United States see a massive return of viral outbreaks,

2317
02:22:37,600 --> 02:22:40,720
Speaker 4: How would a nationwide collapse and vaccination rates impact our

2318
02:22:40,760 --> 02:22:43,640
Speaker 4: public health? And what are we to make of the

2319
02:22:43,800 --> 02:22:47,480
Speaker 4: rise of alt medicine and whether that could continue to

2320
02:22:47,560 --> 02:22:51,680
Speaker 4: spread if people like RFK Junior elevate these hucksters into

2321
02:22:52,120 --> 02:22:57,680
Speaker 4: national figures. These are not just academic questions. If vaccination

2322
02:22:57,840 --> 02:23:00,520
Speaker 4: rates continue to decline, we could see the return of

2323
02:23:00,640 --> 02:23:03,920
Speaker 4: diseases like polio, which had been eradicated in the United

2324
02:23:03,959 --> 02:23:08,199
Speaker 4: States for decades. In recent years, there have been cases

2325
02:23:08,280 --> 02:23:12,760
Speaker 4: of polio found in waste water and one confirmed case

2326
02:23:13,280 --> 02:23:16,360
Speaker 4: of a man with polio in an unvaccinated.

2327
02:23:15,680 --> 02:23:16,680
Speaker 3: Community in New York.

2328
02:23:17,760 --> 02:23:20,960
Speaker 4: An expert warned that these isolated incidents could spread into

2329
02:23:21,040 --> 02:23:25,640
Speaker 4: larger outbreaks, and these concerns are well founded, particularly given

2330
02:23:25,680 --> 02:23:28,720
Speaker 4: that RFK Junior has said as recently as twenty twenty

2331
02:23:28,800 --> 02:23:33,280
Speaker 4: three that early batches of polio vaccines caused cancer, something

2332
02:23:33,360 --> 02:23:38,760
Speaker 4: that has never been demonstrated in the research. Vaccination is

2333
02:23:38,840 --> 02:23:41,120
Speaker 4: the most effective tool we have to prevent the spread

2334
02:23:41,560 --> 02:23:46,600
Speaker 4: of communicable, deadly diseases. Without widespread vaccination, we face the

2335
02:23:46,760 --> 02:23:50,480
Speaker 4: very real possibility of devastating public health crises, and the

2336
02:23:50,520 --> 02:23:54,520
Speaker 4: resurgence of diseases like measles in polio and smallpox and

2337
02:23:54,680 --> 02:23:59,959
Speaker 4: more would put our most vulnerable populations at risk, especially

2338
02:24:00,240 --> 02:24:05,640
Speaker 4: the elderly, the immunal compromised, and others who cannot be vaccinated.

2339
02:24:06,600 --> 02:24:09,200
Speaker 4: We don't have a crystal ball that will allow us

2340
02:24:09,240 --> 02:24:12,160
Speaker 4: to see into the future, but as the anti vaccination

2341
02:24:12,280 --> 02:24:14,840
Speaker 4: movement grows, it is clear that the risk of large

2342
02:24:14,840 --> 02:24:18,600
Speaker 4: scale outbreaks is increasing, and if we don't correct the

2343
02:24:18,680 --> 02:24:21,800
Speaker 4: course soon, we could see a public health disaster unlike

2344
02:24:21,879 --> 02:24:25,120
Speaker 4: any we've seen in recent history, perhaps even worse than COVID,

2345
02:24:25,360 --> 02:24:28,360
Speaker 4: which took more than one point one million American lives.

2346
02:24:29,560 --> 02:24:32,640
Speaker 4: In this episode, we will explore what could happen here

2347
02:24:32,840 --> 02:24:36,400
Speaker 4: in the United States if the anti vaccination movement continues

2348
02:24:36,440 --> 02:24:39,720
Speaker 4: to get their way. As I conducted interviews with medical

2349
02:24:39,760 --> 02:24:43,320
Speaker 4: doctors and public health experts featured in this series, I

2350
02:24:43,400 --> 02:24:46,040
Speaker 4: asked them all the same question, where do you see

2351
02:24:46,080 --> 02:24:50,240
Speaker 4: this going? Each had their own answer, and all of

2352
02:24:50,320 --> 02:24:54,879
Speaker 4: their answers pointed in the same direction. Here's Catherine Wells,

2353
02:24:55,360 --> 02:24:58,160
Speaker 4: the head of public health in Lubbock, the largest county

2354
02:24:58,200 --> 02:25:00,520
Speaker 4: in West Texas where the measles out break began.

2355
02:25:03,200 --> 02:25:05,640
Speaker 5: I do worry that, you know, we are going to

2356
02:25:05,720 --> 02:25:10,280
Speaker 5: see other vaccine preventable diseases. You know, measles is the

2357
02:25:10,440 --> 02:25:14,600
Speaker 5: most highly infectious. But for all of those people that

2358
02:25:14,680 --> 02:25:17,320
Speaker 5: are becoming infected with measles, you know they'll be immune,

2359
02:25:17,400 --> 02:25:20,439
Speaker 5: but that doesn't mean they're immune from mumps and rubella.

2360
02:25:20,600 --> 02:25:25,120
Speaker 5: And other vaccine preventable diseases that could easily enter a

2361
02:25:25,680 --> 02:25:29,520
Speaker 5: community with lower vaccination rates, and those can come next.

2362
02:25:30,720 --> 02:25:32,759
Speaker 5: So I mean that is concerning.

2363
02:25:33,120 --> 02:25:35,600
Speaker 4: Measles is sort of like a canary in the coal

2364
02:25:35,680 --> 02:25:39,040
Speaker 4: mine when it comes to vaccination rates. It's the first

2365
02:25:39,240 --> 02:25:44,200
Speaker 4: sign of a collapsing system. Here's doctor Peter Hotez, the

2366
02:25:44,280 --> 02:25:45,920
Speaker 4: vaccine scientists in Houston.

2367
02:25:46,520 --> 02:25:49,120
Speaker 13: You know, with the formation of anti vaccine groups in

2368
02:25:49,160 --> 02:25:52,200
Speaker 13: the twenty tens in Texas, you started to get these

2369
02:25:52,280 --> 02:25:57,520
Speaker 13: steep rides and parents requesting non medical exemptions that their

2370
02:25:57,600 --> 02:26:00,520
Speaker 13: kids could get out of being vaccinated for school. And

2371
02:26:00,560 --> 02:26:04,360
Speaker 13: it was particularly strong in the same places where people

2372
02:26:04,440 --> 02:26:09,160
Speaker 13: were refusing COVID vaccine. Years later, especially in conservative rural

2373
02:26:09,240 --> 02:26:13,560
Speaker 13: areas of West Texas East Texas, the vaccination rates continue

2374
02:26:13,560 --> 02:26:15,879
Speaker 13: to be strong in our cities of the Texas Triangle,

2375
02:26:16,040 --> 02:26:18,280
Speaker 13: Dallas where you are, in Houston where I am, and

2376
02:26:19,600 --> 02:26:23,440
Speaker 13: San Antonio and Austin. But you know, in the more

2377
02:26:23,520 --> 02:26:26,959
Speaker 13: conservative rural areas of West Texas East Texas, that's where

2378
02:26:27,000 --> 02:26:31,840
Speaker 13: you saw big declines in kids getting vaccines. And once

2379
02:26:31,920 --> 02:26:36,280
Speaker 13: you go below a certain threshold, roughly below ninety percent,

2380
02:26:36,840 --> 02:26:40,560
Speaker 13: and bam, that you start to see break through childhood infections,

2381
02:26:40,640 --> 02:26:43,040
Speaker 13: and usually the first one you see is measles. You

2382
02:26:43,080 --> 02:26:44,960
Speaker 13: can ultimately get all of them, but measles is the

2383
02:26:45,000 --> 02:26:48,800
Speaker 13: first one you see because it's so highly transmissible. It's

2384
02:26:48,840 --> 02:26:51,640
Speaker 13: the most transmissible virus we know about. So measles is

2385
02:26:51,760 --> 02:26:54,040
Speaker 13: kind of the whatever you want to call it, the

2386
02:26:54,240 --> 02:26:59,879
Speaker 13: early biomarker of a problem with your vaccination system. And unfortunately,

2387
02:27:00,240 --> 02:27:05,040
Speaker 13: it's just tearing through West Texas in the Panhandle, and

2388
02:27:05,160 --> 02:27:09,520
Speaker 13: now it's in four states, all more or less in

2389
02:27:09,600 --> 02:27:12,440
Speaker 13: the Great Plains area of the country. Right it's the

2390
02:27:12,560 --> 02:27:16,040
Speaker 13: Panhandle in West Texas at the southern end of the

2391
02:27:16,120 --> 02:27:19,640
Speaker 13: Plain's been into joining areas in Mexico, then going up

2392
02:27:19,680 --> 02:27:23,400
Speaker 13: into Oklahoma and now Kansas. And in my worry is

2393
02:27:23,520 --> 02:27:27,920
Speaker 13: that this is a very large probably much larger than

2394
02:27:28,080 --> 02:27:30,720
Speaker 13: is actually being reported. I mean, I don't see this

2395
02:27:30,879 --> 02:27:34,640
Speaker 13: thing wearing down anytime soon. And I'm worried about really

2396
02:27:34,840 --> 02:27:38,600
Speaker 13: prolonged measles epidemic to the point where we could even

2397
02:27:39,320 --> 02:27:43,160
Speaker 13: lose measles elimination status in the US if it goes

2398
02:27:43,200 --> 02:27:45,959
Speaker 13: on a full year. Between twenty twenty three and twenty

2399
02:27:46,040 --> 02:27:50,840
Speaker 13: twenty four, we've had a fourfold rise in measles epidemics outbreaks.

2400
02:27:50,920 --> 02:27:55,119
Speaker 13: We've had a sixfold rise in whooping cough for Tessa's cases.

2401
02:27:55,920 --> 02:27:58,200
Speaker 13: We've had polio up here in the wastewater in New

2402
02:27:58,280 --> 02:28:04,000
Speaker 13: York State, already trending in the wrong direction even before

2403
02:28:04,280 --> 02:28:07,640
Speaker 13: this current administration because of all the anti vaccine sentiment

2404
02:28:07,720 --> 02:28:10,400
Speaker 13: rhetoric out there. Now you throw on top of it

2405
02:28:11,040 --> 02:28:15,480
Speaker 13: efforts to actively dismantle our vaccine ecosystem, and I can

2406
02:28:15,560 --> 02:28:18,960
Speaker 13: only imagine what's going to happen. I really worry about

2407
02:28:19,000 --> 02:28:22,560
Speaker 13: the widespread return of all these childhood illnesses, just like

2408
02:28:22,640 --> 02:28:24,959
Speaker 13: we're seeing now with measles. I mean, we're looking at

2409
02:28:25,000 --> 02:28:28,360
Speaker 13: the potential of sustained transmission going on for months and

2410
02:28:28,440 --> 02:28:30,720
Speaker 13: months to the point where we could lose our measles

2411
02:28:30,800 --> 02:28:34,119
Speaker 13: elimination status, and then it goes on from there. Because

2412
02:28:34,160 --> 02:28:36,720
Speaker 13: measles is the most highly transmissible I worry about the

2413
02:28:36,800 --> 02:28:40,600
Speaker 13: same with whooping cough ptossis. I worry about even potentially

2414
02:28:40,680 --> 02:28:44,640
Speaker 13: polio returning, and not only in the US, because you know,

2415
02:28:45,120 --> 02:28:47,080
Speaker 13: as we both know, the US is very good at

2416
02:28:47,120 --> 02:28:51,000
Speaker 13: exporting its culture. We export our music, we export our movies.

2417
02:28:51,080 --> 02:28:53,480
Speaker 13: I worry about exporting this stuff, and I worry about

2418
02:28:53,480 --> 02:28:56,879
Speaker 13: the impact on Latin American countries, on low and middle

2419
02:28:56,879 --> 02:29:00,840
Speaker 13: income countries in Asia and Africa, and in Europe as well.

2420
02:29:01,000 --> 02:29:04,840
Speaker 13: So a complete unraveling of our vaccine ecosystem and global

2421
02:29:04,920 --> 02:29:07,680
Speaker 13: goals and that really gives me a lot of pause

2422
02:29:07,720 --> 02:29:08,240
Speaker 13: for concern.

2423
02:29:08,959 --> 02:29:11,520
Speaker 3: And on that note, a quick ad break.

2424
02:29:22,360 --> 02:29:24,840
Speaker 4: It's probably safe to assume that the majority, if not

2425
02:29:24,959 --> 02:29:27,800
Speaker 4: the entirety, of the audience of this show grew up

2426
02:29:27,800 --> 02:29:31,760
Speaker 4: in a time when vaccinations were widely embraced and considered beneficial.

2427
02:29:32,400 --> 02:29:34,480
Speaker 4: That also means that most of us have never lived

2428
02:29:34,560 --> 02:29:38,320
Speaker 4: during a time when children and adults were regularly disabled

2429
02:29:38,400 --> 02:29:43,640
Speaker 4: or killed by diseases like smallpox or polio. In the

2430
02:29:43,720 --> 02:29:47,720
Speaker 4: twentieth century, three hundred million people were killed by smallpox

2431
02:29:48,360 --> 02:29:51,800
Speaker 4: in the nineteen forties and nineteen fifties. Polio killed nearly

2432
02:29:52,000 --> 02:29:56,040
Speaker 4: half a million people world wide annually and paralyzed hundreds

2433
02:29:56,040 --> 02:29:59,879
Speaker 4: of thousands, but both of those diseases were effectively eradicated

2434
02:30:00,080 --> 02:30:03,160
Speaker 4: decades ago. The last person living in an iron lung,

2435
02:30:03,879 --> 02:30:06,480
Speaker 4: the medical device that keeps people who were paralyzed from

2436
02:30:06,560 --> 02:30:09,840
Speaker 4: polio alive, died in March of twenty twenty four, and

2437
02:30:09,959 --> 02:30:13,040
Speaker 4: even measles which is considered a relatively less dangerous illness,

2438
02:30:13,200 --> 02:30:17,760
Speaker 4: was routinely deadly before vaccination was widespread. There was a

2439
02:30:17,840 --> 02:30:20,920
Speaker 4: time when thousands of Americans died from the disease every year.

2440
02:30:21,720 --> 02:30:24,359
Speaker 4: All that was due to the creation of vaccine policy

2441
02:30:24,400 --> 02:30:28,280
Speaker 4: and infrastructure over time. But now RFK Junior and the

2442
02:30:28,400 --> 02:30:31,440
Speaker 4: MAHA movement threatened to tear all that down and send

2443
02:30:31,560 --> 02:30:35,800
Speaker 4: us back in time. Here's doctor David Gorsky.

2444
02:30:38,240 --> 02:30:40,160
Speaker 7: I'll start with vaccines, and then I'll try to move

2445
02:30:40,240 --> 02:30:44,800
Speaker 7: more to MAHA. So the vaccines. What I think we're

2446
02:30:44,879 --> 02:30:52,880
Speaker 7: seeing is the systematic, intentional dismantling of federal vaccine infrastructure

2447
02:30:53,080 --> 02:30:59,160
Speaker 7: and policy, this whole call for placebo controlled trials. If

2448
02:30:59,240 --> 02:31:03,920
Speaker 7: they define new vaccines as any new vaccine, it will

2449
02:31:04,000 --> 02:31:08,120
Speaker 7: mean that there will be no new vaccines approve until

2450
02:31:08,200 --> 02:31:12,199
Speaker 7: it's changed, which would at the earliest be after Trump

2451
02:31:12,360 --> 02:31:15,640
Speaker 7: is out of office. If they define it as just

2452
02:31:15,800 --> 02:31:19,560
Speaker 7: new vaccines for diseases that don't have vaccines, it might

2453
02:31:19,640 --> 02:31:24,720
Speaker 7: be less of an issue either way, though, contrary to

2454
02:31:24,800 --> 02:31:27,320
Speaker 7: what they claim they want to do, which is, you know,

2455
02:31:27,440 --> 02:31:31,400
Speaker 7: increase public confidence in vaccines, it will almost certainly have

2456
02:31:31,560 --> 02:31:35,000
Speaker 7: the opposite effect. I recently wrote I think, yeah, it was.

2457
02:31:35,080 --> 02:31:38,560
Speaker 7: Last week's post, I wrote about a study that modeled

2458
02:31:39,040 --> 02:31:42,920
Speaker 7: what would happen with certain percentage declines in vaccine uptake

2459
02:31:43,000 --> 02:31:46,199
Speaker 7: for four different vaccines, including the measles vaccine, of course,

2460
02:31:47,120 --> 02:31:51,680
Speaker 7: and it estimated, you know, some pretty catastrophic numbers if,

2461
02:31:51,800 --> 02:31:55,800
Speaker 7: for instance, vaccine uptake declined even ten percent or fifty

2462
02:31:55,879 --> 02:31:59,279
Speaker 7: percent over the next twenty five years, you know, millions

2463
02:31:59,360 --> 02:32:02,800
Speaker 7: of cases, thousands of deaths, you know, in other words,

2464
02:32:02,920 --> 02:32:06,720
Speaker 7: going back to basically the way it was before the

2465
02:32:06,800 --> 02:32:10,480
Speaker 7: measles vaccine was licensed in the early nineteen sixties. You know,

2466
02:32:10,680 --> 02:32:13,600
Speaker 7: you sure you can complain that, you know, the model

2467
02:32:14,000 --> 02:32:16,720
Speaker 7: was somewhat simplistic, but if anything, I think it was

2468
02:32:16,800 --> 02:32:19,960
Speaker 7: probably conservative because they used a lot of conservative assumptions.

2469
02:32:20,760 --> 02:32:25,000
Speaker 7: We could well be heading for that sort of future,

2470
02:32:25,600 --> 02:32:29,160
Speaker 7: although it takes a while for things to change, even

2471
02:32:29,280 --> 02:32:34,360
Speaker 7: with this sort of radical action that RFK Junior is taking,

2472
02:32:34,720 --> 02:32:37,960
Speaker 7: and likely we would not see the worst effects really

2473
02:32:38,600 --> 02:32:43,120
Speaker 7: take off until after Trump's out of office, assuming he

2474
02:32:43,280 --> 02:32:46,440
Speaker 7: leaves office in twenty twenty nine, so you know, it'll

2475
02:32:46,480 --> 02:32:49,680
Speaker 7: be left to his successors to deal with the mess.

2476
02:32:50,560 --> 02:32:52,640
Speaker 7: And it's always easier to destroy than it is to

2477
02:32:52,720 --> 02:32:57,600
Speaker 7: rebuild out. Obviously. Now the interesting counterpoint to you know,

2478
02:32:57,800 --> 02:33:02,000
Speaker 7: maha saying, oh, we must increase the gold standard science

2479
02:33:02,040 --> 02:33:04,960
Speaker 7: applied to vaccines and make the standards for approval and

2480
02:33:05,120 --> 02:33:10,400
Speaker 7: licensure you know, much more stringent. The exact opposite is

2481
02:33:10,520 --> 02:33:14,720
Speaker 7: what they're talking about. For things like stem cell therapies,

2482
02:33:14,840 --> 02:33:17,039
Speaker 7: you know, they're on the vast majority of which are

2483
02:33:17,120 --> 02:33:21,640
Speaker 7: unproven and often very expensive. A lot of other you know,

2484
02:33:21,840 --> 02:33:25,920
Speaker 7: wellness treatments and that sort of a thing. So we

2485
02:33:26,080 --> 02:33:31,120
Speaker 7: could be seeing a lot less novel pharmaceuticals and vaccines

2486
02:33:31,280 --> 02:33:37,160
Speaker 7: being approved because the anti pharma you know, suspicion will

2487
02:33:37,200 --> 02:33:41,080
Speaker 7: be such that the bar for approval will be higher,

2488
02:33:41,360 --> 02:33:44,520
Speaker 7: arguably too high. I realized that in the past I

2489
02:33:44,640 --> 02:33:48,040
Speaker 7: once argued that that maybe our bar for approving some

2490
02:33:48,640 --> 02:33:52,040
Speaker 7: drugs was too low, but that was more based on

2491
02:33:52,800 --> 02:33:56,119
Speaker 7: the various accelerated approval programs that had come into being

2492
02:33:56,560 --> 02:33:59,600
Speaker 7: in the years before that, where I thought that perhaps

2493
02:33:59,640 --> 02:34:03,480
Speaker 7: the follow allow up after the initial accelerated approval was

2494
02:34:03,600 --> 02:34:07,320
Speaker 7: not adequate. At the same time, it could become more

2495
02:34:07,360 --> 02:34:09,600
Speaker 7: and more like the Wild West when it comes to

2496
02:34:09,680 --> 02:34:13,880
Speaker 7: everything else. We could very well have the equivalent of

2497
02:34:14,400 --> 02:34:17,560
Speaker 7: you know, the traveling snake oil salesmen going across you know,

2498
02:34:17,760 --> 02:34:21,320
Speaker 7: the planes in their cart, you know, selling There are

2499
02:34:21,400 --> 02:34:25,200
Speaker 7: various lineaments. I'm not exactly sure what that would look like.

2500
02:34:25,320 --> 02:34:28,680
Speaker 7: I do know that, for instance, it's already pretty much

2501
02:34:28,840 --> 02:34:31,200
Speaker 7: like that for a lot of quote unquote stem cell

2502
02:34:31,320 --> 02:34:35,080
Speaker 7: therapies that have never really been demonstrated to be effective

2503
02:34:36,040 --> 02:34:39,120
Speaker 7: and safe, and you know, the same randomized clinical controlled

2504
02:34:39,200 --> 02:34:43,520
Speaker 7: trials that they demand, you know, for vaccines. One thing

2505
02:34:43,560 --> 02:34:46,400
Speaker 7: I have little doubt of is that public health is

2506
02:34:46,480 --> 02:34:50,560
Speaker 7: going to be degraded significantly over the next four years.

2507
02:34:51,000 --> 02:34:54,959
Speaker 7: And how we recover from that, I don't know. I'm

2508
02:34:55,000 --> 02:34:57,920
Speaker 7: struggling with the of what can be done to resist

2509
02:34:57,959 --> 02:35:01,640
Speaker 7: it or slow it down that you know, the entire

2510
02:35:01,959 --> 02:35:05,520
Speaker 7: Republican Party doesn't seem to want to put any sort

2511
02:35:05,520 --> 02:35:07,120
Speaker 7: of checks on this administration.

2512
02:35:08,040 --> 02:35:08,520
Speaker 3: Mm hmmm.

2513
02:35:08,800 --> 02:35:11,959
Speaker 4: And you know, if we were to have some other

2514
02:35:12,120 --> 02:35:17,240
Speaker 4: sort of major pandemic, either a new virus that breaks

2515
02:35:17,320 --> 02:35:22,840
Speaker 4: through or a return of some disease that was once

2516
02:35:22,920 --> 02:35:29,520
Speaker 4: out of circulation, there's no real guarantee that deaths or

2517
02:35:29,600 --> 02:35:35,279
Speaker 4: widespread illness or disability as a result of those possible

2518
02:35:35,360 --> 02:35:39,760
Speaker 4: events will even spur a reaction in a way that

2519
02:35:39,920 --> 02:35:43,440
Speaker 4: would set us on a path back towards confidence in

2520
02:35:43,520 --> 02:35:47,400
Speaker 4: public health and vaccination. You know, the outcome of COVID was,

2521
02:35:48,000 --> 02:35:50,080
Speaker 4: you know, it's it's quite clear that COVID was sort

2522
02:35:50,080 --> 02:35:54,160
Speaker 4: of an accelerant for a lot of the anti vaccination

2523
02:35:54,720 --> 02:35:57,960
Speaker 4: beliefs that had long been incubating. And you know, our

2524
02:35:58,000 --> 02:36:03,800
Speaker 4: public discourse and broad distrust of public health entities in general.

2525
02:36:04,440 --> 02:36:07,080
Speaker 4: And you know, like you said, you know, Trump's successor

2526
02:36:07,120 --> 02:36:10,000
Speaker 4: will be left to clean up whatever mess is made.

2527
02:36:10,080 --> 02:36:14,879
Speaker 4: And it's possible that Trump's successor could be someone like JD. Van's, Yes,

2528
02:36:15,000 --> 02:36:21,800
Speaker 4: it could, or someone who shares this affinity for you know,

2529
02:36:21,920 --> 02:36:27,000
Speaker 4: quasi eugenic statements or beliefs, or this general disregard for

2530
02:36:28,000 --> 02:36:31,320
Speaker 4: the consequences of a sort of social Diarwinist approach to

2531
02:36:31,400 --> 02:36:34,320
Speaker 4: public health. And so, you know, we don't want to

2532
02:36:34,400 --> 02:36:40,000
Speaker 4: overstate the risks and be doomsayers. But on the other hand,

2533
02:36:40,040 --> 02:36:43,840
Speaker 4: there's this real potential for the return of you know,

2534
02:36:44,200 --> 02:36:48,520
Speaker 4: God forbid something like polio or a breakthrough Avian flu.

2535
02:36:48,879 --> 02:36:51,400
Speaker 7: You just reminded me polio was one of the diseases

2536
02:36:51,560 --> 02:36:55,720
Speaker 7: modeled in that study, and the results was coming back

2537
02:36:55,879 --> 02:36:59,560
Speaker 7: and hundreds or even thousands of cases of paralytic polio.

2538
02:36:59,760 --> 02:37:02,840
Speaker 4: Right, and we live now in a time in which

2539
02:37:03,600 --> 02:37:06,160
Speaker 4: it's always been the majority of people who have never

2540
02:37:06,280 --> 02:37:08,959
Speaker 4: had someone in their family who was in an iron lung.

2541
02:37:09,760 --> 02:37:12,640
Speaker 4: But we live in a time now where like the

2542
02:37:12,840 --> 02:37:16,640
Speaker 4: historical memory of that is somewhat lost, because it's not

2543
02:37:16,760 --> 02:37:20,840
Speaker 4: even in the popular consciousness. It's not something that is featured,

2544
02:37:21,440 --> 02:37:24,400
Speaker 4: you know in media. You know, used to read books

2545
02:37:25,240 --> 02:37:28,320
Speaker 4: or watch films or even in television. You know, there

2546
02:37:28,320 --> 02:37:31,560
Speaker 4: would be examples of something like that, someone who had

2547
02:37:31,600 --> 02:37:34,920
Speaker 4: been impacted by polio and whether they were left disabled,

2548
02:37:35,440 --> 02:37:38,280
Speaker 4: you know, and had less use of their limbs, or

2549
02:37:38,480 --> 02:37:40,400
Speaker 4: you know, if they ended up in an iron lung.

2550
02:37:40,560 --> 02:37:42,600
Speaker 4: You know, that was something at least people were aware

2551
02:37:42,720 --> 02:37:45,640
Speaker 4: of the risk. And it's it's kind of parallel to

2552
02:37:45,720 --> 02:37:48,840
Speaker 4: something another public health official I spoke with talked about

2553
02:37:48,879 --> 02:37:51,920
Speaker 4: how there's you know, been like two decades of doctors

2554
02:37:52,520 --> 02:37:55,240
Speaker 4: who went through their residencies never even seeing a case

2555
02:37:55,240 --> 02:37:59,280
Speaker 4: of measles, and so now we're having to sort of

2556
02:37:59,400 --> 02:38:03,000
Speaker 4: re educate not just our doctors, but really the whole population.

2557
02:38:03,680 --> 02:38:06,720
Speaker 4: And that's a massive undertaking. We'll hear a bit more

2558
02:38:06,760 --> 02:38:09,199
Speaker 4: from Doctor Gorsky right after the sad Break.

2559
02:38:19,640 --> 02:38:19,840
Speaker 10: You know.

2560
02:38:19,959 --> 02:38:22,080
Speaker 7: One of the things that anti vaxers like to do

2561
02:38:22,480 --> 02:38:25,120
Speaker 7: is to try to claim that, oh, back before the vaccine,

2562
02:38:25,160 --> 02:38:27,720
Speaker 7: people didn't think measles was a big deal. And they

2563
02:38:27,760 --> 02:38:31,119
Speaker 7: will point to that famous episode of The Brady Bunch

2564
02:38:31,280 --> 02:38:33,160
Speaker 7: that I don't know if you ever heard of, where

2565
02:38:33,280 --> 02:38:35,800
Speaker 7: all the kids got the measles, and it was played

2566
02:38:35,879 --> 02:38:38,720
Speaker 7: mainly for laughs, you know, like they're all happy about

2567
02:38:38,760 --> 02:38:40,800
Speaker 7: being home from school and they're not very sick. They

2568
02:38:40,920 --> 02:38:43,080
Speaker 7: just have little thoughts painted all over them because I

2569
02:38:43,080 --> 02:38:45,119
Speaker 7: guess that's how they showed them having the measles.

2570
02:38:45,480 --> 02:38:48,240
Speaker 6: Boy, this is a life, isn't it. Yeah, if you

2571
02:38:48,360 --> 02:38:51,320
Speaker 6: have to get sick, she can't beat the measles, that's right.

2572
02:38:51,680 --> 02:38:54,879
Speaker 16: No medicine insider out like shots on me don't even

2573
02:38:55,080 --> 02:38:55,959
Speaker 16: mention shots.

2574
02:38:56,400 --> 02:38:59,679
Speaker 7: Yeah, measls.

2575
02:39:01,440 --> 02:39:01,880
Speaker 6: Metals.

2576
02:39:02,520 --> 02:39:04,560
Speaker 15: Well, all the kids have now had the measo so

2577
02:39:04,680 --> 02:39:07,920
Speaker 15: far than years ago. Looks like the Brady's are finished

2578
02:39:07,959 --> 02:39:08,480
Speaker 15: with amazing.

2579
02:39:09,080 --> 02:39:12,320
Speaker 7: There was also an episode of The Flintstones that, believe

2580
02:39:12,360 --> 02:39:14,400
Speaker 7: it or not, they've played the measles for laughs, And

2581
02:39:14,440 --> 02:39:16,680
Speaker 7: there was an episode of The Donna Reid Show from

2582
02:39:16,720 --> 02:39:19,280
Speaker 7: the fifties, they would point like those and go, oh,

2583
02:39:19,400 --> 02:39:22,680
Speaker 7: they didn't consider measles a big deal. Well, if you

2584
02:39:22,920 --> 02:39:26,560
Speaker 7: read the actual medical and public health literature, you know

2585
02:39:26,920 --> 02:39:29,959
Speaker 7: they did. And you know, there were hundreds of thousands

2586
02:39:29,959 --> 02:39:33,320
Speaker 7: of confirmed cases a year, maybe millions of cases a year,

2587
02:39:33,959 --> 02:39:37,440
Speaker 7: and at least averaging about four or five hundred deaths

2588
02:39:37,720 --> 02:39:40,520
Speaker 7: a year, which doesn't sound like a lot, but in

2589
02:39:40,760 --> 02:39:44,160
Speaker 7: anything having to do with children, that's a lot of

2590
02:39:44,320 --> 02:39:47,400
Speaker 7: death because we don't expect children to die. Children should

2591
02:39:47,440 --> 02:39:50,959
Speaker 7: not die. They usually you know, it's not like elderly

2592
02:39:51,120 --> 02:39:55,080
Speaker 7: people where you know, it's expected that that's when you know,

2593
02:39:55,240 --> 02:39:57,520
Speaker 7: the body starts giving out and people are reaching the

2594
02:39:57,640 --> 02:40:00,080
Speaker 7: end of their lives. Children's death rates should be Oh

2595
02:40:00,240 --> 02:40:03,360
Speaker 7: that's why. That's why we look at you know, childhood cancer,

2596
02:40:03,720 --> 02:40:07,080
Speaker 7: and there was such an effort made, you know, over

2597
02:40:07,200 --> 02:40:11,280
Speaker 7: from like the fifties on to try to decrease the

2598
02:40:11,400 --> 02:40:14,160
Speaker 7: rate of death from childhood cancer. And you know the

2599
02:40:14,240 --> 02:40:19,520
Speaker 7: results have been pretty spectacular. About eighty five percent of

2600
02:40:19,800 --> 02:40:24,279
Speaker 7: children with you know, cancer live, which you know before

2601
02:40:24,400 --> 02:40:28,360
Speaker 7: it was you know, a pretty small number. And the

2602
02:40:28,400 --> 02:40:32,160
Speaker 7: funny thing is the number of childhood cancers is very

2603
02:40:32,280 --> 02:40:35,360
Speaker 7: small compared to a lot of other things that cause death.

2604
02:40:35,800 --> 02:40:40,680
Speaker 7: We viewed it as sufficiently important to try to do

2605
02:40:40,879 --> 02:40:44,680
Speaker 7: something about it. At least we did the question of

2606
02:40:44,800 --> 02:40:48,560
Speaker 7: whether we will continue to because you know, anti chemotherapy

2607
02:40:48,680 --> 02:40:52,720
Speaker 7: and various cancer nonsense tends to go right along with

2608
02:40:52,840 --> 02:40:54,440
Speaker 7: MAHA and the other thing.

2609
02:40:54,520 --> 02:40:54,640
Speaker 11: You know.

2610
02:40:54,720 --> 02:40:57,760
Speaker 7: For instance, when RFK Junior made his one of his

2611
02:40:57,959 --> 02:41:01,240
Speaker 7: statements that was was it in early March I believe,

2612
02:41:01,400 --> 02:41:04,520
Speaker 7: or it was in March sometime about you know, where

2613
02:41:04,600 --> 02:41:07,120
Speaker 7: everyone was like, oh, he said, the MMR works and

2614
02:41:07,280 --> 02:41:10,320
Speaker 7: is the best way to stop the spread of measles. Yes,

2615
02:41:11,120 --> 02:41:15,600
Speaker 7: but you know, instead of the traditional messaging that you

2616
02:41:15,640 --> 02:41:17,480
Speaker 7: would come out of the CDC, which would be, you know,

2617
02:41:17,760 --> 02:41:20,160
Speaker 7: get vaccinated. You know, MMR is the best way to

2618
02:41:20,560 --> 02:41:23,520
Speaker 7: put a stop to this. Please please, parents, get your

2619
02:41:23,560 --> 02:41:27,440
Speaker 7: kids vaccinated. Instead, what he sort of said is, yes,

2620
02:41:27,600 --> 02:41:30,760
Speaker 7: the vaccine, you know, vaccination is good, you know, the

2621
02:41:30,959 --> 02:41:34,119
Speaker 7: best way to stop the outbreak. But then he buries

2622
02:41:34,240 --> 02:41:36,920
Speaker 7: it instead of baffling with bullshit, it's more like burying

2623
02:41:37,000 --> 02:41:39,440
Speaker 7: it in bullshit. He talks about, you know, vitamin A

2624
02:41:39,720 --> 02:41:43,840
Speaker 7: supposedly to treat measles. He talks about how children die

2625
02:41:43,920 --> 02:41:48,280
Speaker 7: with measles, rather than of measles, which should sound very

2626
02:41:48,320 --> 02:41:51,120
Speaker 7: familiar because they pulled the same rhetoric out for COVID,

2627
02:41:51,720 --> 02:41:54,560
Speaker 7: and the idea being that only the children who were

2628
02:41:54,680 --> 02:41:58,120
Speaker 7: already sick were harmed by measles, and that you know,

2629
02:41:58,440 --> 02:42:03,240
Speaker 7: your middle class, healthy children are not in any danger.

2630
02:42:03,800 --> 02:42:05,840
Speaker 7: You know. One way to look at the anti vaccine movement,

2631
02:42:05,920 --> 02:42:11,879
Speaker 7: besides the eugenesis undertones, sometimes not even undertones, one way

2632
02:42:11,920 --> 02:42:14,680
Speaker 7: to look at it is as a purity cult. You

2633
02:42:14,760 --> 02:42:17,119
Speaker 7: may remember the whole pure blood thing from a few

2634
02:42:17,200 --> 02:42:20,440
Speaker 7: years ago, like those that were not vaccinated refusing to

2635
02:42:20,920 --> 02:42:23,480
Speaker 7: mingle with those who are. Who are you know whose

2636
02:42:23,600 --> 02:42:26,920
Speaker 7: blood has somehow been contaminated by the vaccine. It's the

2637
02:42:26,959 --> 02:42:30,279
Speaker 7: same as all. And think of how much of alternative

2638
02:42:30,360 --> 02:42:35,160
Speaker 7: medicine involves quote unquote detoxification. I like to call it

2639
02:42:35,280 --> 02:42:38,520
Speaker 7: ritual purification because it's like more of a religious concept

2640
02:42:38,640 --> 02:42:42,160
Speaker 7: than it is actually a medical concept. And look at

2641
02:42:42,200 --> 02:42:45,000
Speaker 7: how treatment of quote unquote vaccine injury involves something like

2642
02:42:45,120 --> 02:42:49,280
Speaker 7: elation therapy to pull the evil heavy metals that are

2643
02:42:49,320 --> 02:42:53,840
Speaker 7: supposedly causing autism out of you. So the idea that

2644
02:42:53,959 --> 02:42:56,160
Speaker 7: you have control of your health if you only make

2645
02:42:56,240 --> 02:43:00,440
Speaker 7: your terrain in your body hostile to microbes through your

2646
02:43:01,040 --> 02:43:05,520
Speaker 7: superior lifestyle. The one example of this that I like

2647
02:43:05,600 --> 02:43:08,000
Speaker 7: to point out, and the best retort to it that

2648
02:43:08,080 --> 02:43:11,000
Speaker 7: I like to point out, comes from about two thousand

2649
02:43:11,000 --> 02:43:13,560
Speaker 7: and nine. If I recall, right, it was Bill Maher

2650
02:43:13,959 --> 02:43:19,119
Speaker 7: on his HBO show and Bob Costas was the guest,

2651
02:43:19,600 --> 02:43:21,800
Speaker 7: and he was going on about how, you know, this

2652
02:43:21,959 --> 02:43:23,440
Speaker 7: was around the time of the EAH one N one

2653
02:43:23,920 --> 02:43:27,320
Speaker 7: flu pandemic, and he was going you knowing, he was

2654
02:43:27,400 --> 02:43:29,800
Speaker 7: going on about how he didn't need the flu vaccine

2655
02:43:29,879 --> 02:43:33,080
Speaker 7: because you know, his terrain was so hostile to the flu,

2656
02:43:33,320 --> 02:43:37,480
Speaker 7: because you know, of his superior lifestyle. Caused me to

2657
02:43:37,640 --> 02:43:40,720
Speaker 7: roll my eyes. But and that if he were on

2658
02:43:40,840 --> 02:43:44,240
Speaker 7: an airplane with people coughing with the flu, he would

2659
02:43:44,280 --> 02:43:47,360
Speaker 7: not get the flu. What did Pastas say to him?

2660
02:43:48,120 --> 02:43:51,760
Speaker 7: I love I love this retort? He said, Oh, come on, superman.

2661
02:43:55,000 --> 02:43:57,760
Speaker 4: Bob Costas could have easily used a different word in

2662
02:43:57,879 --> 02:44:01,760
Speaker 4: his retort given the eugen tendencies of the modern anti

2663
02:44:01,879 --> 02:44:04,840
Speaker 4: vaccination movement, and the word I have in mind is

2664
02:44:05,480 --> 02:44:06,039
Speaker 4: uber mensch.

2665
02:44:07,879 --> 02:44:08,560
Speaker 3: But I digress.

2666
02:44:09,400 --> 02:44:11,760
Speaker 4: If the uber mensch of the anti VAXX movement, like

2667
02:44:11,920 --> 02:44:14,160
Speaker 4: RFK get what they want. We will live in a

2668
02:44:14,200 --> 02:44:18,280
Speaker 4: world where preventable communicable diseases run rampant, the deaths of

2669
02:44:18,440 --> 02:44:21,640
Speaker 4: children are justified as either a part of God's plan

2670
02:44:22,480 --> 02:44:26,680
Speaker 4: or a survival of the fittest. Herd immunity strategy where

2671
02:44:26,760 --> 02:44:30,200
Speaker 4: snake oil and beef tallow salesmen are heralded above doctors

2672
02:44:30,240 --> 02:44:33,880
Speaker 4: and scientists, and where only the strongest will survive at

2673
02:44:33,920 --> 02:44:37,240
Speaker 4: the expense of the week. Diseases long thought defeated could

2674
02:44:37,280 --> 02:44:40,120
Speaker 4: return in Our ability to address new viruses will be

2675
02:44:40,280 --> 02:44:44,360
Speaker 4: diminished if RFK Junior successfully dismantles what remains of our

2676
02:44:44,400 --> 02:44:47,720
Speaker 4: public health bureaucracy, and he's doing it as a steady clip.

2677
02:44:48,800 --> 02:44:51,280
Speaker 4: In other words, the future may end up looking a

2678
02:44:51,360 --> 02:44:54,720
Speaker 4: lot like the past, more than it already does.

2679
02:44:55,080 --> 02:44:56,240
Speaker 3: And that's terrifying.

2680
02:44:56,840 --> 02:45:01,360
Speaker 4: The last time deadly pandemics, religious fervor, and resistance to

2681
02:45:01,400 --> 02:45:06,640
Speaker 4: medical science and eugenic policies all coincided historically with global

2682
02:45:06,920 --> 02:45:10,520
Speaker 4: trade breakdowns, things did not work out so well for

2683
02:45:10,600 --> 02:45:14,920
Speaker 4: anyone involved. And unfortunately, if I've taken one thing away

2684
02:45:15,040 --> 02:45:19,000
Speaker 4: from my exploration of anti VAXs America, it's that things

2685
02:45:19,080 --> 02:45:21,840
Speaker 4: will likely have to get worse before they get better.

2686
02:45:22,680 --> 02:45:25,279
Speaker 4: It's really hard to get people unstuck from their beliefs.

2687
02:45:25,920 --> 02:45:29,280
Speaker 4: Despite more than one million Americans dying of COVID, the

2688
02:45:29,360 --> 02:45:33,760
Speaker 4: reaction to pandemic restrictions, combined with the anti vaccination movements

2689
02:45:33,879 --> 02:45:39,640
Speaker 4: convincing misinformation around vaccines, radicalized many people against vaccines and

2690
02:45:39,760 --> 02:45:46,840
Speaker 4: public health measures in general. Before I recorded this final statement,

2691
02:45:47,400 --> 02:45:50,480
Speaker 4: the Texas State House voted to advance a bill that

2692
02:45:50,640 --> 02:45:54,080
Speaker 4: will expand the ability for parents to seek exemptions for

2693
02:45:54,360 --> 02:45:58,200
Speaker 4: trial vaccination requirements for school. And this is happening as

2694
02:45:58,320 --> 02:46:02,400
Speaker 4: a measles outbreak is ongoing, and things aren't looking good,

2695
02:46:02,480 --> 02:46:04,800
Speaker 4: But there is at least one sliver of hope that

2696
02:46:04,879 --> 02:46:09,920
Speaker 4: I've found. As my conversation with Gear illustrates, it's possible

2697
02:46:10,000 --> 02:46:14,080
Speaker 4: for people who grow up in communities where vaccinations are

2698
02:46:14,160 --> 02:46:17,040
Speaker 4: avoided or where there is no belief in them to

2699
02:46:17,160 --> 02:46:20,720
Speaker 4: get out of those communities and to get themselves vaccinated.

2700
02:46:21,440 --> 02:46:24,840
Speaker 4: And as my conversation with Catherine Wells illustrated, it is

2701
02:46:24,920 --> 02:46:28,000
Speaker 4: also possible for people who have been hesitant to get

2702
02:46:28,040 --> 02:46:31,040
Speaker 4: their children vaccinated for something like measles to be spurred

2703
02:46:31,080 --> 02:46:35,600
Speaker 4: into action given reporting around an outbreak. But the question

2704
02:46:35,720 --> 02:46:39,480
Speaker 4: that ultimately remains is whether enough people will have their

2705
02:46:39,520 --> 02:46:42,840
Speaker 4: minds changed and embrace what the science tells us we

2706
02:46:42,879 --> 02:46:48,160
Speaker 4: should do. Given doctor Gorskey's astute observation that the anti

2707
02:46:48,280 --> 02:46:52,440
Speaker 4: vaccine movement is someone like a purity cult and Gear's

2708
02:46:52,520 --> 02:46:56,800
Speaker 4: comment that escaping their anti VACS upbringing was sort of

2709
02:46:56,879 --> 02:46:59,760
Speaker 4: like escaping a cult, unfortunately, I think we will have

2710
02:46:59,800 --> 02:47:04,040
Speaker 4: to temper our expectations for how quickly we can extricate

2711
02:47:04,560 --> 02:47:08,120
Speaker 4: our nation from this deep dark place that.

2712
02:47:08,200 --> 02:47:13,520
Speaker 3: I call anti vax America. I'm Stephen Monicelli. Thanks for listening.

2713
02:47:15,720 --> 02:47:18,879
Speaker 2: Hey, We'll be back Monday with more episodes every week

2714
02:47:18,959 --> 02:47:20,840
Speaker 2: from now until the heat death of the universe.

2715
02:47:21,600 --> 02:47:24,080
Speaker 6: It Could Happen Here is a production of cool Zone Media.

2716
02:47:24,280 --> 02:47:27,320
Speaker 6: For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website

2717
02:47:27,440 --> 02:47:29,160
Speaker 6: coolzonmedia dot com, or.

2718
02:47:29,240 --> 02:47:32,320
Speaker 2: Check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or

2719
02:47:32,360 --> 02:47:33,920
Speaker 2: wherever you listen to podcasts.

2720
02:47:34,400 --> 02:47:36,280
Speaker 6: You can now find sources for It Could Happen here,

2721
02:47:36,360 --> 02:47:39,279
Speaker 6: listed directly in episode descriptions. Thanks for listening.