Speaker 1: Hi.
Speaker 2: Today we have a special bonus episode of Fast Politics
Speaker 2: podcast with doctor Peter Hotez live from the Texas Tribune Festival.
Speaker 2: What you don't hear on the podcast is we had
Speaker 2: a quick and actually quite upsetting and terrifying visit from
Speaker 2: RFK Junior, who stared weirdly at us and walked by
Speaker 2: us several times. Anyway, I hope you enjoyed the interview.
Speaker 2: I'm Mollie John Fast and I am oh, thank you,
Speaker 2: thank you very much. I'm not you know, I have
Speaker 2: three teenage children, so I'm not used to saying that
Speaker 2: and have it clapping.
Speaker 1: I've used to it. I'm used to them being like,
Speaker 1: are you going to go out like that?
Speaker 2: And it is my great honor and privilege to get
Speaker 2: to interview doctor Peter Hotez.
Speaker 3: Thank you, thank you. And I have four adult kids
Speaker 3: and I'm not used to getting.
Speaker 2: Yes, and our children are quite mean to us.
Speaker 3: It's good experience right before.
Speaker 1: We turn this into therapy.
Speaker 2: So I'm very excited because I.
Speaker 1: Love doctor Hotez.
Speaker 2: He's my buddy, he's my go to, he's my man,
Speaker 2: and I see him out there on the front lines
Speaker 2: and I just respect the hell out of him.
Speaker 3: The feelings mutual, Molly, because you know, so much, as
Speaker 3: we'll talk about in the book, so much of the
Speaker 3: targeting now against me around vaccines or COVID is politically motivated.
Speaker 3: And who do you talk to about that? So you know,
Speaker 3: you're been my go to person to help me understand
Speaker 3: the underlying politics on so much of this.
Speaker 2: We're like Captain and Taneil. We're going to break into song.
Speaker 2: But so anyway, just dated right exactly. Oh yes, we
Speaker 2: have a copy of the book.
Speaker 1: Oh my god.
Speaker 2: So I come from book World because I had all
Speaker 2: these writers in my family, so I know we are
Speaker 2: here to sell a product number one okay, and this
Speaker 2: is the book.
Speaker 1: So we're first, we're going to talk about this book.
Speaker 2: Okay, the Deadly Rise of Anti Science a scientist warning. Okay,
Speaker 2: I'm gonna Larry King this because I haven't read this book. Okay,
Speaker 2: please forgive me. I didn't get it. Don't be mad.
Speaker 2: So anyway, let's talk about this book first. Why did
Speaker 2: you write this book?
Speaker 3: Yeah? I mean I've been sort of in this dual life,
Speaker 3: you know, for for decades. So I did my MD
Speaker 3: and PhD in New York at Rockefeller University in Cornell
Speaker 3: where the motto of the university is science for the
Speaker 3: benefit of humanity, and I became a vaccine scientist with
Speaker 3: that in mind. The hookworm vaccine I started as an
Speaker 3: mdphd student in New York forty years later, is now
Speaker 3: in phase two clinical trials, which is about the right
Speaker 3: time frame for a lot of instances and so on.
Speaker 3: What I set out to do forty years ago, I'm
Speaker 3: actually doing. I'm actually living out my boyhood dream. I
Speaker 3: believe so that that's wonderful. But twenty plus years ago
Speaker 3: things kind of turned on its side where there were
Speaker 3: false accusations at vaccines cause autism. That was the original
Speaker 3: assertion from anti vaccine groups. That's when I benched mark
Speaker 3: the start of the movement. And as I mentioned, I
Speaker 3: have four adult kids, including Rachel, who has autism and
Speaker 3: intellectual disabilities. And I wrote the book the book, the
Speaker 3: original book called vaccines did not cause Rachel's autism. That
Speaker 3: maybe public enemy number one or two with anti vaccine group.
Speaker 3: So all of a sudden, I had a front row
Speaker 3: seat to watching this anti vaccine movement grow and evolve.
Speaker 3: And the reason I wrote the book this one because
Speaker 3: I saw a pivot and a change, and it became
Speaker 3: more politically motivated and become a political movement. But the
Speaker 3: major reason was it was killing Americans. And in the
Speaker 3: book I benchmarked that two hundred thousand Americans needless they
Speaker 3: lost their lives because they refused the COVID vaccine. They
Speaker 3: were victims from this very predatory, politically motivated enterprise. And
Speaker 3: so for me, now, saving lives has a two pronged approach.
Speaker 3: One making vaccines that no one else will make. And
Speaker 3: we made two COVID vaccines, reached one hundred million people
Speaker 3: in life.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I want to tell you about it.
Speaker 3: Thank you, thank you. But the other side of the
Speaker 3: coin is also Saving lives is countering this anti vaccine
Speaker 3: movement because so many Americans are dying because of including
Speaker 3: forty thousand Texans who needlessly lost their lives in Texas.
Speaker 2: That's so I want to talk about Rachel for a minute.
Speaker 2: You have four kids, they're all adults. You have this
Speaker 2: child who has autism, so you really have like the
Speaker 2: story that these anti vaxxers, I mean, they're really using autism.
Speaker 1: As a way to sell their.
Speaker 3: Line, literally sell. That's how it started. They were monetizing
Speaker 3: the internet, selling phony autism cures or nutritional supplements. I mean,
Speaker 3: if you go to Amazon dot com and type in
Speaker 3: the word vaccinations, you could do it right now on
Speaker 3: your iPhone. It's almost all anti vaccine conspiracy books right there.
Speaker 3: So there, it's an industry, and they're making money. And
Speaker 3: so by my going up against it, I was hurting
Speaker 3: their bottom line. And so what you saw was they
Speaker 3: would continually change what their assertion was. The original assertion was,
Speaker 3: I was sing tabella vaccine. That was the paper that
Speaker 3: was fraudulent paper that was publishing the Lancet in nineteen
Speaker 3: ninety eight. Wait so, and then.
Speaker 1: Ellis the story. It started with a fraudulent paper when.
Speaker 3: In nineteen ninety eight was when it was published, and
Speaker 3: it claimed that the measles mumpsterbella vaccine, a live virus vaccine,
Speaker 3: had the ability to replicate in the colon of kids,
Speaker 3: and somehow that led to what they then called pervasive
Speaker 3: developmental disorder. Now we call it autism. And it never
Speaker 3: sounded right to me, how because clearly autism was something
Speaker 3: that was beginning in pregnancy, right, I mean, that's why
Speaker 3: the pervasive part comes in. And sure enough, you know
Speaker 3: Rachel was diagnosed at the l Child Study Center when
Speaker 3: I was on the faculty at Yale, and sure enough,
Speaker 3: large cohort studies showed that kids who got the MMR
Speaker 3: vaccine were no more likely to acquire auten than the
Speaker 3: kids who didn't. The paper that was publishing the Lancet
Speaker 3: was a twelve person study that had numerous errors and
Speaker 3: there was conflicts of interest I weren't disclosed, and it
Speaker 3: showed it to be not to be not true. And
Speaker 3: and so the scientific community, though, responded in a very
Speaker 3: robust way doing large coords. So he's sewing kids who
Speaker 3: got the MMR no more likely to acquire autism than
Speaker 3: kids who didn't get the MMR. And similarly, kids on
Speaker 3: the autism spectrum were no more likely to have gotten
Speaker 3: MMR the kids not on the autism spectrum. And that
Speaker 3: should have been the end of it, But what you
Speaker 3: started to see is they weren't taking no for an answer,
Speaker 3: so they started all Propert F. Kennedy Junior got involved
Speaker 3: in two thousand and five. He wrote an article claiming
Speaker 3: it was the thimerosol preservative that it used to be,
Speaker 3: and that got debunks some kind of thing, and then
Speaker 3: it was spacing vaccines too close together an element. So
Speaker 3: became this exhausting exercise.
Speaker 1: So it started with the mercury. The mercury was MMR,
Speaker 1: then MMR.
Speaker 2: I then moved to mercury which wasn't even is now
Speaker 2: not even used in vaccines.
Speaker 1: And then it went to.
Speaker 3: Spacing vaccines too close. Now that's when Jenny McCarthy got
Speaker 3: so we had to talk about greening our vaccines. And
Speaker 3: then it was ali in vaccine. Then they pivoted to
Speaker 3: the HPV vaccine for cervical cancer and other cancers, has
Speaker 3: said it was causing infertility or autoimmunity. How many people
Speaker 3: here have heard that COVID vaccines caused infertility or autoimmunity. Yeah,
Speaker 3: that's what they got it from. They copy pasted the
Speaker 3: false assertion from FPV vaccine onto covid and then it
Speaker 3: was then they pivoted something called chronic illness. You know,
Speaker 3: how do you you know, how do you even start that?
Speaker 3: And and I, you know, I think we did a
Speaker 3: pretty good job taking the wind out of the sales.
Speaker 3: I wrote the book about Rachel, which does it talks
Speaker 3: about her life and also the evidence showing there's no
Speaker 3: linking vaccines and autism but also providing an alternative narrative
Speaker 3: that we did whole exum genomic sequencing on Rachel and
Speaker 3: my wife Anne and I and found Rachel's autism gene
Speaker 3: which was similar but different from the one hundred others
Speaker 3: identified by the Broad Institute.
Speaker 1: So it was it was genetic, right.
Speaker 3: So it's genetics and epigenetic. So the point is there's
Speaker 3: an alternative narrative right out, and that's important for parents
Speaker 3: and I, and and that they loved me at that point.
Speaker 3: So that's you know this, So I that's when I
Speaker 3: started to get heavily targeted, but I get this front
Speaker 3: row seat to the movement to see what it was
Speaker 3: all about.
Speaker 2: One of the things I think is so interesting about
Speaker 2: the anti vax movement is it's not so different than
Speaker 2: some of the other far right conservative movements, right that
Speaker 2: they sort of come up with an idea, it gets debunked.
Speaker 2: I mean, if you think of like the twenty twenty election,
Speaker 2: right they were like Hugo Chavez voting machines, you know,
Speaker 2: or you're like, no, Hugo, the ghost of Hugo Shaves.
Speaker 2: I mean, right, Like we've debunked and debunked and debunked
Speaker 2: and it just keeps what going.
Speaker 3: But this is when it became so pernicious. I mean,
Speaker 3: it was always problematic and kids weren't getting their full
Speaker 3: complement of vaccines. But then it took this very dark
Speaker 3: turn when it got adopted by the Republican d Party
Speaker 3: in Texas and started getting PAC money, political action committee
Speaker 3: money for anti vaccine activities. And that's what came off
Speaker 3: the rails during COVID nineteen, because what you started to
Speaker 3: see was Texas was one of the worst affected states
Speaker 3: from COVID nineteen. One hundred thousand Texans perished in this pandemic,
Speaker 3: but tragically, almost as many Texans died after vaccines became
Speaker 3: widely available as before. Forty thousand Texans needlessly died because
Speaker 3: they refused to COVID vaccine. And this was happening because
Speaker 3: of a predatory movement coming from the far right. It
Speaker 3: started at the SEAPAC conference in Dallas in twenty twenty one,
Speaker 3: right as the Delta Wave was starting to take off
Speaker 3: in the summer of twenty twenty one. You know, the
Speaker 3: language was first they're going to vaccination, and then they're
Speaker 3: going to take away your guns and your bibles, and
Speaker 3: as ridiculous as that sounds to us people, especially in
Speaker 3: the conservative parts of Texas, East Texas, Central Texas to Panhandle.
Speaker 3: Except that, and then you saw the pilon. The pylon
Speaker 3: came from members of Congress, Senator Groan Johnson, members of
Speaker 3: the House Freedom Caucus, and then amplified on Fox News.
Speaker 3: So it became this whole far right ecosystem right and
Speaker 3: that was doing this, And it was very hard to
Speaker 3: talk about, especially because you know, as a physician and scientist,
Speaker 3: you're not supposed to talk about Republicans and Democrats. You're
Speaker 3: not so conservative. But what do you do when this
Speaker 3: aggressions coming from It's not that I care about someone's
Speaker 3: extreme views, but somehow, I mean, that's your right as
Speaker 3: an American. But my point was, somehow we have to
Speaker 3: uncouple the anti science from it because it's killing too
Speaker 3: many mess too many America. Two hundred thousand Americans needlessly
Speaker 3: perished because they refused to COVID and there and they
Speaker 3: were victims of this predatory movement.
Speaker 2: So one of the things I wanted to ask you
Speaker 2: about was doctor Fauci was kind of a villain for
Speaker 2: the anti ivax crowd, and they were furious with him
Speaker 2: for being a scientist and devoting his life to public service.
Speaker 1: And then he resigned and they set their sights on you.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it became sort of faucy light. They'd always had
Speaker 3: their sights on me, but now with Tony out of
Speaker 3: public office, he just wasn't as visible. So I became
Speaker 3: the next rung down. And then the weirdness really unfolded. Well,
Speaker 3: it was always weird, right I was, you know. I
Speaker 3: this first happened on the far Rights on twenty twenty one,
Speaker 3: Laura Ingram and Fox News and Governor desanct Us of
Speaker 3: Florida started mocking me for predicting the Delta Way was
Speaker 3: going to slam Florida in a couple of weeks, which
Speaker 3: it absolutely did. It hammered Florida. But you know, that's
Speaker 3: you know, when it first started, and then I became
Speaker 3: a regular topic of targeting. Tucker Carlson went after me
Speaker 3: actually on the on the same day I was co
Speaker 3: nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize for our COVID vaccine. Tucker,
Speaker 3: maybe because of it, he went on this horrible rant saying,
Speaker 3: you know, I was totally unqualified. I'm with Charlotte and
Speaker 3: I'd made a covid vaccine. What else?
Speaker 2: And it's not just a will you talk about this
Speaker 2: COVID vaccine, because it's not just a covid vaccine. It's
Speaker 2: a covid vaccine that is for places where you can't
Speaker 2: have the fancy Fizer vaccine, right talker.
Speaker 3: So we, in addition to making vaccines for parasitic infections
Speaker 3: for decades, about twelve years ago, we started making coronavirus
Speaker 3: vaccines for SARS. Remember the original Severque respiratory syndrome came
Speaker 3: out of southern China in two thousand and two, and mayors,
Speaker 3: because they were orphaned as well, nobody cared about coronavirus vaccine.
Speaker 3: So we became really good at making a low cost
Speaker 3: COVID vaccine that could be done through microbial fermentation in yeast.
Speaker 3: And so when the COVID nineteen sequence hit, we were
Speaker 3: able to pivot and change our program to make the
Speaker 3: COVID nineteen vaccine, which we then licensed no no patent,
Speaker 3: no strings attached to India, Indonesia, Bangladesh, and they were
Speaker 3: able to scale it up and make it so that
Speaker 3: one hundred million people got either korby Vax, which was
Speaker 3: the name of the vaccine in India or Indovac, which
Speaker 3: is in Indonesia. Indovak became the first halal covid vaccine
Speaker 3: because they came in and inspected our labs and realized
Speaker 3: that all of our ingredients in the vaccine came from
Speaker 3: a non animal, non human source. So in a sense,
Speaker 3: it was a vegan vaccine. Although somebody pointed out, no,
Speaker 3: it's not reductor, it's not a vegan vaccineuse you did
Speaker 3: animal testing, so okay, so I don't know it's a
Speaker 3: vegetarian vaccine se.
Speaker 2: So one of the things about the original Fizer and
Speaker 2: Maderna vaccines is that they need to be at least
Speaker 2: in the earliest stages, they needed to be stored in
Speaker 2: very cold storage. They were expensive to store, and there
Speaker 2: were parts.
Speaker 3: I mean, we told they have been that companies were
Speaker 3: charging a lot and ours we were doing for two
Speaker 3: to three dollars a dose. Yeah, was about the cheapest
Speaker 3: you could get, and they were at the time charging
Speaker 3: thirty dollars a dose. Of course, now after taking twenty
Speaker 3: five billion dollars in taxpayer money for advanced purchase and
Speaker 3: development costs, they jet what do they do for these
Speaker 3: boot this new booster they jack up the price to
Speaker 3: one hundred and thirty dollars a dose. Yeah, I say,
Speaker 3: guys say that you're trying to get the American people
Speaker 3: to hate you. I mean, you know, so they are.
Speaker 3: Lack of situational awareness is something, but you know, we
Speaker 3: continue to do this at very low But the other
Speaker 3: interesting thing, of course is you know, when you know
Speaker 3: people like RFK Junior, Joe Rogan go after me or
Speaker 3: Elon Musk, you know, they they say the term the
Speaker 3: uses a shill for the pharma companies, and I'm secretly
Speaker 3: being paid by Fizer. Wait a minute, we made two
Speaker 3: vaccines that kept Fighter indeed with five. Yeah, but you know,
Speaker 3: the reality means nothing is fire. Pfizer is not.
Speaker 2: Really they're not really fans, right, since your make a
Speaker 2: low cost vaccine that's available for Fred.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm in a funny position because we have our vaccine,
Speaker 3: and yet the only vaccine really available in the US
Speaker 3: pretty much is the mRNA vaccines from Pfizer Maderna, and
Speaker 3: I want the American people to take that vaccine, so
Speaker 3: I wind up having to also you know, promote those
Speaker 3: as well, and so that's also problematic. So yeah, but
Speaker 3: you know, our vaccine now has reached one hundred million people.
Speaker 3: No patent. Those strings attached low cost to three dollars
Speaker 3: a day.
Speaker 1: So there are parts of India where you can't.
Speaker 2: Refrigerate, parts of Africa where there is we're freeze or freeze.
Speaker 2: What do you really need a vaccine that is more
Speaker 2: durable And that was one of the things that your
Speaker 2: vaccine was able to accomplish.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's low cost, no limited the amount you can
Speaker 3: make super cheap, you know, and we did that technology deliberately.
Speaker 3: So our whole approach is we make the prototype, then
Speaker 3: we partner with vaccine producers in low and middle income
Speaker 3: countries of scale up, kind of create this alternative model
Speaker 3: to the big pharma company.
Speaker 2: So I want to ask you another question about this
Speaker 2: deadly rise of anti science. It's not just vaccines that
Speaker 2: these people are against.
Speaker 1: Will you talk about that?
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's now spilling over to other Well, first of all,
Speaker 3: it's I worry it's spilling over to vaccines for low
Speaker 3: and middle income countries as well, and childhood immunizations. That's one.
Speaker 3: And it's globalizing now, this US style anti vaccine movements,
Speaker 3: you know, into Canada now with the Health Freedom convoys
Speaker 3: and Central Europe, and in low and middle income countries
Speaker 3: on the African continent, and now it's other aspects of
Speaker 3: biomedical science. It's targeting the virologists falsely claiming that you
Speaker 3: know that we made the COVID virus, which it's ridiculous.
Speaker 3: And so what you're seeing is this kind of revisionist
Speaker 3: history happened in the Congress. They you know, after I
Speaker 3: pointed out that two hundred thousand Americans died because of
Speaker 3: their predatory behavior. There's this revisionist history going on, and
Speaker 3: no when they want to say, no, it was the
Speaker 3: COVID vaccines that killed Americans, not COVID, total nonsense, and
Speaker 3: the scientists made the virus. And you're seeing this play
Speaker 3: out now in these ridiculous house hearings.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so talk to me.
Speaker 2: I want you to first talk about being targeted by
Speaker 2: the dumbest Senator, Ron Johnson. I do not use the
Speaker 2: phrase dumbest senator lightly because the competition is fierce. But
Speaker 2: Ron Johnson I do think has brain worms, and he
Speaker 2: has taken you as.
Speaker 1: A real He is really into bully.
Speaker 3: Well, they're they're all I mean, Marjorie Taylor Green. You
Speaker 3: know when at Shawn the Senate going now in the House.
Speaker 3: The House says the poenut power the Yeah, you know
Speaker 3: he's going after me Steve Benn's war room a couple
Speaker 3: of times.
Speaker 2: But tell us about Ron Johnson because he has I mean,
Speaker 2: I've seen, you know, Mandela Barnes ran against him and
Speaker 2: really could have won had the polling not been so inaccurate.
Speaker 2: And Mandela Barnes was selling a T shirt because Ron
Speaker 2: Johnson had said on television that the f I was
Speaker 2: after him. So Mandela Barnes has a tea shirt that
Speaker 2: says the FBI is after.
Speaker 1: Me Ron Johnson. So I have that T shirt still,
Speaker 1: I mean, it's the beast.
Speaker 2: But so I want to know how he targeted you,
Speaker 2: and also what the repercussions of being targeted by elected
Speaker 2: officials are, because if you think about that, it's so
Speaker 2: scary to me to think of, like, these people have
Speaker 2: been put in the United States Senate to represent the
Speaker 2: people of Wisconsin and they're you know, I mean, going
Speaker 2: after your doctor.
Speaker 3: I mean I have Ram Paul. I mean, why is
Speaker 3: Ram Paul, a center from Kentucky, you know, targeting me
Speaker 3: on Twitter? Right? I mean, I mean, what is that
Speaker 3: I'm a medical school professor in Texas, right, I mean,
Speaker 3: or you know Marjorie Taylor Green, or you know, all
Speaker 3: of these guys. And and that's the other reason I
Speaker 3: wrote the book. That's scary that it's got this. It's
Speaker 3: adopted by a major political party, It's adopted by a
Speaker 3: section of the United States government targeting science and scientists.
Speaker 3: And I said, look, this is a country that's built
Speaker 3: on the greatness of our research universities and institutions. They
Speaker 3: gave us the Manhattan Project in Silicon Valley and NASA,
Speaker 3: and so you know, when you know, after one of
Speaker 3: these guys goes after me, and or the war room
Speaker 3: podcaster Steve Bannon calls me your criminal. Steve Banner called
Speaker 3: me a criminal, right, And then you know the threats come,
Speaker 3: the online threats, the physical stockings. What do they say?
Speaker 3: They say, the army of patriots is coming to hunt
Speaker 3: me down. And first I say, first of all, you
Speaker 3: don't need an army of patriots, just me and Ann
Speaker 3: and Rachel and Kat. Now, one patriot should do patriots
Speaker 3: should do it. But I said, wait a minute, you
Speaker 3: know who are the patriots here? The scientists are the patriots.
Speaker 3: You know, we're not these chuckleheads. And and how we
Speaker 3: bring that back, Yeah, I think is really critical because
Speaker 3: once you start targeting science scientists, this, this will undermine
Speaker 3: our democracy. It's a it's an attack on the intelligency.
Speaker 3: And one of the things that you helped me to understand, Molly.
Speaker 3: You and another person who's very helpful in this is
Speaker 3: Ruth ben Gap.
Speaker 1: Yeah, who studies extreme as well.
Speaker 3: He studies extreme at NYU and New York University, and
Speaker 3: you know, and she points out, this is what authoritarian
Speaker 3: totalitarian states do. They target the intelligents. This is what
Speaker 3: Stalin did. This is what Hannah Rent wrote about in
Speaker 3: the Origins of Totalitarianism. So I had to take a
Speaker 3: quick crash course in political science to write this book
Speaker 3: because that's what it's about. This is about authoritarian political control.
Speaker 2: One of the things I think is really interesting if
Speaker 2: you look at someone like Elon Musk, my favorite, and
Speaker 2: that's ironic. His business is electric vehicles. He does all
Speaker 2: these rockets, right, these are all made possible by science.
Speaker 2: He's on ozempic, right, or wavy or whatever it's called.
Speaker 1: So he tweeted that he was on ozempic.
Speaker 2: But he's critical of the vaccine, and a lot of
Speaker 2: these people they're on some kind of steroid, they're on
Speaker 2: a diet medicine, but they are worried about the vaccine,
Speaker 2: which literally billions of people have taken. And so I
Speaker 2: just wonder how you thread this anti science needle of
Speaker 2: like I send rockets to Mars, I inject myself with
Speaker 2: this drug that descends my bowels, but I don't trust
Speaker 2: this vaccine that billions of people have taken.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't think it's he could care. I don't
Speaker 3: think he cares less one way or the other about
Speaker 3: the vaccine. I think it's what the vaccine represents, that
Speaker 3: it's targeted by the extremists, by the far right. Therefore
Speaker 3: he's going to adopt that contrarian view to show that
Speaker 3: he's part of the club, that he's part of it.
Speaker 3: And that's what they did to so many Americans. I
Speaker 3: mean I was. I gave medical grand rounds at University
Speaker 3: of Texas Tyler, which is out in East Texas, very
Speaker 3: conservative part of the state, and almost everyone you talk
Speaker 3: to has lost a loved one because they refuse the
Speaker 3: COVID vaccine. That's where you really start to see it.
Speaker 3: And you know, these are the most extraordinary people. I
Speaker 3: had given a medical grand routes to Stanford University and
Speaker 3: Palo Alto, California, a very wealthy part of all of
Speaker 3: California is expensive, but Palo Alto was uber expensive. And
Speaker 3: I said, look, if you gave me the choice of
Speaker 3: having my car broken down in Tyler, Texas or Palo Alto, California,
Speaker 3: I'd take Tyler, Texas anytime, because they'd all be fighting
Speaker 3: over who's going to help change your tire, right, I mean,
Speaker 3: as you know, palow out the little drive right by.
Speaker 3: But and the point is, these are the kindest, most
Speaker 3: remarkable people you could ever hope to meet. And they
Speaker 3: were victims. They were victimized by this Fox News jugger,
Speaker 3: not together with the House Freedom Caucus, Media Matters and
Speaker 3: Research group out of et Zurich, which is where Einstein studied,
Speaker 3: you know, documented how Tucker Carlson, Laura and Graham Hannity
Speaker 3: every night during that Delta Way filled their nighttime broadcast
Speaker 3: three million viewers each with anti vaccine content, falsely discrediting
Speaker 3: the effectiveness and safety of vaccines. People went down that
Speaker 3: rabbit hole and paid for it with their lives. And
Speaker 3: that's what we have to stop from ever happening again.
Speaker 1: My last question for you, doctor Hotes is why do
Speaker 1: you do it?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, I think part of it is there's
Speaker 3: a vacuum you know, people, you know, because you're starting
Speaker 3: to see the scientific societies and not really speaking out.
Speaker 3: The college presidents aren't really speaking because nobody well when
Speaker 3: they don't, they see how I get beat up and
Speaker 3: they don't want that to happen. Right. But also I
Speaker 3: think because of this commitment to political neutrality, they feel
Speaker 3: they can't talk about it. And I said, look, I
Speaker 3: don't know how to talk about it other than to
Speaker 3: talk about it. So I talked about it, wrote about
Speaker 3: it's again. It's this is what I feel is this
Speaker 3: is part of the deal of being a vaccine scientist
Speaker 3: and saving lives. And believe me, it's not fun, right,
Speaker 3: I mean, it's not fun having the Houston Police Department
Speaker 3: of Harris County Sheriff park down in front of your
Speaker 3: house and dealing with the FBI because they're sending swastikas
Speaker 3: to your home. And yeah, it's it's tough. It's tough,
Speaker 3: it's tough sledding.
Speaker 1: Yeah, doctor Hotes, thank you, thank you.
Speaker 2: I'm very excited for your good saying not anti vax question.
Speaker 1: So, and I'm very cranky and mean. So just remember I.
Speaker 3: Got to bring you along with me everyone. No, no,
Speaker 3: I'm your bodyguard.
Speaker 1: Here we go.
Speaker 4: Scientific research is getting really politicized, not only in terms
Speaker 4: of vaccination, and our legislature here in Texas has been
Speaker 4: very increasingly engaged in trying to regulate universities in different ways.
Speaker 4: How concerned should we be about our research universities potentially
Speaker 4: being subject to political interference in their mission?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I know this.
Speaker 1: That's a great question. More of those, very good, Thank you.
Speaker 3: No, it's great, and it does worry me. And I
Speaker 3: mean just and it's bizarre, right, I mean, you had
Speaker 3: a professor at Texas A and I'm a pharmacy professor,
Speaker 3: works on the fat mental crisis, gives a talk at
Speaker 3: UTMB Galveston. I've been invited there many times, given talks
Speaker 3: and apparently says something about the lieutenant governor that people
Speaker 3: didn't like. Said they censure her for the place she's visiting,
Speaker 3: which is and then she gets put on administrative leave
Speaker 3: by her home institution. And it worked out okay at
Speaker 3: the end. But that's very intimidating. I mean, I mean,
Speaker 3: you have to draw a line in the sand. Otherwise,
Speaker 3: you know, you don't have a university. And and you know,
Speaker 3: I mean, this is part of the greatness of our state. Right,
Speaker 3: I mean I didn't move to Texas because of the weather, right,
Speaker 3: I mean I move I didn't move to Texas with this. Well,
Speaker 3: I mean I moved to Texas because of the Texas
Speaker 3: Medical Center, Baylor College of Medicine, and Texas Children's Hospital.
Speaker 3: Then you know, University of Texas A and these are
Speaker 3: amazing universities. Don't mess with them. They're also economic drivers
Speaker 3: for our states. Yeah, so it's self so self defeating.
Speaker 2: I wanted to just point out that you are in
Speaker 2: a position where you're able to speak a lot of
Speaker 2: younger profefe and people who are less established are.
Speaker 1: Not able to write.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, you know, it's interesting the way offices
Speaker 3: of communications work at universities. And they're pretty good at
Speaker 3: Baylor and Texas Children's. But you know, usually the works
Speaker 3: like this, They say, hey, you're an academic, you could
Speaker 3: speak on whatever you want dot dot dot, but don't
Speaker 3: screw this up and get the institution in trouble. So
Speaker 3: you do this with kind of the sort of damocles
Speaker 3: over your head. And of course if you out there
Speaker 3: enough in the public public sphere, you will screw it up.
Speaker 3: And it's only a matter of time. So we need
Speaker 3: to make our faculty. And you're right, especially the junior people.
Speaker 3: I mean, I have I have resources, right, I have
Speaker 3: people I can go to. I'm established, I have you,
Speaker 3: I have I do a weekly call with Mike Osterholme
Speaker 3: and Peggy Hamburg and Bruce Gllen and Nark Topel that
Speaker 3: can sort of guide me through this stuff. But young
Speaker 3: people don't.
Speaker 5: Have that right, and so it's you know, dogor again,
Speaker 5: thank you for all your work. My question, it's a
Speaker 5: sad question, is how many millions of kids are going
Speaker 5: to have to die of measles, mumps, rebella or any
Speaker 5: of the other diseases that were gone from this country.
Speaker 3: Yeah, no, it's a century. It's a great question. You know,
Speaker 3: in the past, before this new political phase, I would
Speaker 3: have said, there's always this sort of inherent autocorrection mechanism.
Speaker 3: Right if you stop vaccinating, the first breakthrough infection you
Speaker 3: see is measles. Measles because it's so highly transmissible. Once
Speaker 3: you go below in ninety percent. You see measles kids
Speaker 3: go into the hospital, the intensive carrion. It word gets
Speaker 3: around the community and the parents say, oh my god,
Speaker 3: measles is really bad, and they start vaccinating agains. So
Speaker 3: there was always this self correcting mechanism, but not two
Speaker 3: hundred thousand Americans have just died for nothing right because
Speaker 3: of this, And now you're just seeing this doubling down.
Speaker 3: So I'm not seeing the self correcting mechanism, not seeing
Speaker 3: the auto correction, and that worries me along because people's
Speaker 3: political leanings now, people's political identity is time to this stuff,
Speaker 3: and that that's new. Thank you, doctor Hotez.
Speaker 6: You're are a hero to so many of us and
Speaker 6: we appreciate it.
Speaker 3: Thank you, Thank you well two thirds of the country. Anyway,
Speaker 3: I'm hoping that's not watching fires.
Speaker 7: I'm hoping you can help me understand the dynamic that
Speaker 7: makes no sense to me, and that is why some
Speaker 7: doctors are not necessarily anti vaxed, but anti precautionary measures.
Speaker 7: The doctors that are saying no masks needed in the
Speaker 7: in their offices, or the ones that don't wear it.
Speaker 7: My own brother is a doctor who is on the
Speaker 7: front lines of COVID in New York, and he mocks
Speaker 7: me for wearing a mask in public.
Speaker 3: I'm trying to understand that.
Speaker 7: I don't think it's limited to a few people. I
Speaker 7: think it's actually fairly widespread.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean it runs the full spectrum. It's especially
Speaker 3: demoralizing when you see physicians, even physicians scientists take these
Speaker 3: contrarian in views and and and some of them are
Speaker 3: medical school professors at places like Stanford and UCSF and
Speaker 3: Johns Hopkins and and that, and not typically working on
Speaker 3: vaccines or infectious disease. They're experts in other areas that
Speaker 3: decide their way and what's their motivation and doing that.
Speaker 3: And it causes so much damage because the average layperson
Speaker 3: doesn't know the difference, you know, between someone like me
Speaker 3: has worked on COVID vaccines for one hundred years and
Speaker 3: and and and that and so this is a very
Speaker 3: long I don't know the answer to your question, but
Speaker 3: but I can tell you that it does and then
Speaker 3: and then it and then everything from that to just
Speaker 3: not you know, following the literature that closely and not understanding.
Speaker 3: But it's it's that deliberate contrarian stuff from people who
Speaker 3: should know better that I find it very alarming. Got
Speaker 3: Gandhi towards the end of his life, did an interview
Speaker 3: with an episco I think he's episcopalian. Minute disturb and
Speaker 3: you know, is asked what disturbed him most during his
Speaker 3: life and his answer was the hardness of heart of
Speaker 3: the educated. And we've seen a lot of that in COVID.
Speaker 8: So I'm an epidemiologist by training. I worked through COVID
Speaker 8: doing social media campaigns and one of the things that
Speaker 8: I noticed is not everyone who is refusing the COVID
Speaker 8: vaccine is an anti vaxer.
Speaker 3: A lot of the.
Speaker 8: People who are literally just don't know better, Like they
Speaker 8: want to know more.
Speaker 1: There's an interest to know more.
Speaker 8: And I have to admit, even as a scientist that
Speaker 8: our communication throughout the pandemic was not the best. So
Speaker 8: what can scientists and the science community do to one
Speaker 8: rebuild that trust? Because it's a good question when when
Speaker 8: like messaging is changing so much, I can understand that
Speaker 8: fear and to how can we also improve like science
Speaker 8: literacy or health literacy for the public so they can
Speaker 8: make informed decisions because that seems to be a problem
Speaker 8: as well.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a really good question about ten different questions
Speaker 2: and that.
Speaker 1: What about rebuilding public trust?
Speaker 3: Well, first of all, you know, I had a different
Speaker 3: way of you know, when I was started in talking
Speaker 3: to the public, some of the professional communications people said
Speaker 3: to me, you've got to talk to the American people
Speaker 3: like they're in the fourth grade or sixth grade. And
Speaker 3: I found that what didn't work for my style? And
Speaker 3: I found that wasn't the case. I mean, either you
Speaker 3: were really worried about your family and wanted whatever it
Speaker 3: took to protect your family or not and or why,
Speaker 3: or you were watching Fox News and and if you
Speaker 3: were in the former, I found that the American people
Speaker 3: were willing to tolerate quite a level of complexity and
Speaker 3: and went into that, and I think it was appreciated.
Speaker 3: I think there was sort of this still old fashioned
Speaker 3: way of communicating that often came out sounding like baby
Speaker 3: talk and it didn't really ring true. So there was
Speaker 3: those mistakes in communication. But of course you had the
Speaker 3: anti vaccine and you know, anti science people weaponizing every
Speaker 3: little slip up also, so that didn't help. So, yes,
Speaker 3: there's a lot of room to improve communication, but it
Speaker 3: was also every effort made to weaponize it as well.
Speaker 2: One of the things I thought was really interesting about
Speaker 2: you know, I wrote about all of this throughout, and
Speaker 2: you know, they they were going with the information they had, right,
Speaker 2: so they so when it started, the information they had
Speaker 2: was they you know, remember the tape of Trump talking
Speaker 2: to a journalist. I think it was the Watergate guy,
Speaker 2: not Carl, but the other guy, Woodward, Right, the tapes
Speaker 2: with Woodward were he's saying, it's airborne.
Speaker 1: You know, we didn't know what it was. We didn't know.
Speaker 2: I mean I remember, like we kept our Amazon boxes
Speaker 2: outside because we were worried that we're going to get
Speaker 2: something from it, you know, and like.
Speaker 3: Remember those scrubbing down door dash.
Speaker 2: Right and could you order food? I mean, we just were.
Speaker 2: We just were sort of getting the information in real time,
Speaker 2: which I think caused a lot of you know, just
Speaker 2: information was changing because we were it was happening in
Speaker 2: real time. And I think that the anti vax world
Speaker 2: really weaponized that.
Speaker 3: And for instance, when the when the two doses came
Speaker 3: out of Pfizer, it was it was designed to prevent
Speaker 3: symptomatic illness. And I was out there saying, well, you know,
Speaker 3: it's two doses, but you know, if it's anything like
Speaker 3: any pediatric vaccine. The way it works as you give
Speaker 3: a series of immunizations, you wait six months to a year,
Speaker 3: and then you boost. So it's don't be surprised if
Speaker 3: it's not going to be one and done and two
Speaker 3: and done, but it could be three and done. And
Speaker 3: by the time the delta way fit, I was looking
Speaker 3: really good. And then you know, the disappointment was the
Speaker 3: mRNA just weren't holding up as boosters as well as
Speaker 3: we thought, right, And that was a big disappointment for everyone.
Speaker 3: So there was that need to, you know, say, there's news.
Speaker 2: I want to ask you one more question about m
Speaker 2: RNA because m RNA, with all of this anti vax nonsense,
Speaker 2: we haven't talked about how mRNA vaccines could the future
Speaker 2: of curing cancer and amazing stuff.
Speaker 1: I mean, can you just.
Speaker 2: Talk a little bit about what mRNA can do maybe
Speaker 2: or eventually.
Speaker 3: Well, most people know I've taken the mRNA vaccines. It
Speaker 3: induces a pretty reactive inflammatory response, and the hope is
Speaker 3: that this will work against not only infectious disease, but
Speaker 3: noncommunicable diseases. I think I'm pretty sure that's why Pfizer
Speaker 3: and Maderna and biotech are in this. They didn't because
Speaker 3: the money to be made for infectious disease ordinarily is
Speaker 3: not so high. The biggest, the big ticketized cancer autoimmune disease.
Speaker 3: So the hope is that there will be some benefit
Speaker 3: for that.
Speaker 2: I mean, it'll be so ironic if that, if that
Speaker 2: ushers in a whole new world of cancer treatment.
Speaker 1: Oh sorry, Hi, let.
Speaker 9: Me just say add my thank yous to everybody else's.
Speaker 9: I really appreciate everything you've done. I love your books.
Speaker 9: I'm learning a lot. So I'm a retired science teacher
Speaker 9: and once a teacher, always a teacher. So I'm having
Speaker 9: trouble educating people about vaccines and explaining what they are
Speaker 9: and words like peer reviewed and all that. So how
Speaker 9: do you suggest we educate others about common sense, factual science.
Speaker 3: Well, the first thing is all K through twelve STEM
Speaker 3: teachers need to be paid one hundred thousand dollars a
Speaker 3: year started starting actually, and I shouldn't qualify the STEM
Speaker 3: because we need to teach we a low to read,
Speaker 3: write right and everything and write a sentence. So that's
Speaker 3: the first thing we do. The second is we need
Speaker 3: to get the American people to better understand what a
Speaker 3: scientist actually does on a day basis, you know, and
Speaker 3: what it means to go to a lab meeting or
Speaker 3: do a major revision of a paper, or to get
Speaker 3: a grant not discussed because it didn't make the first cut.
Speaker 3: A great organization out in rest in Virginia or McLean
Speaker 3: Virginia called Research America did a study. It said over
Speaker 3: ninety percent of Americans cannot name a living scientist, and
Speaker 3: of those who attempted to, they name people like Jonah
Speaker 3: Salker Einstein, and then the others named you know, Fauci
Speaker 3: or Bill Ny the science guy. So you know, the
Speaker 3: point is the American people have no idea what we do.
Speaker 3: And that's that's partly our fault as a scientific profession
Speaker 3: because we're so inward looking and so focused on our
Speaker 3: grants and our papers and writing and speaking for each
Speaker 3: other that we've not done that public outreach. And so
Speaker 3: there's got to be a sea change I think in
Speaker 3: that as well, working hand in glove with the K
Speaker 3: through twelve teachers to do so. The point is there's
Speaker 3: a whole ecosystem or that has to be created that's
Speaker 3: not there right now, Doctor Hotest minds, I see.
Speaker 6: But the resident here in Austin speaking of trust, like
Speaker 6: even the Biden administration regarding the actual origins of the
Speaker 6: COVID has some of their intelligence has said with low
Speaker 6: confidence it may have came from a lab in China.
Speaker 6: As an evolutionary biologist like yourself, what evidence would you
Speaker 6: have to have? I think you're still saying it's natural,
Speaker 6: isn't it? And because this is a government that genocide
Speaker 6: its own citizens, so if they have something to lose,
Speaker 6: they're not going to you know, divulge it. So what
Speaker 6: evidence would you need to say, Okay, yeah, this is
Speaker 6: something that came from the last well.
Speaker 1: So this question is what market versus.
Speaker 3: Lab leak right or gain a function? I mean the
Speaker 3: point is, you know, we've gotten now six or seven
Speaker 3: published papers and some of the top journals like Science
Speaker 3: magazine clearly showing the natural origins and zoanotic spillover of
Speaker 3: the COVID nineteen virus.
Speaker 1: So it's a crossover species like you.
Speaker 3: Know, these viruses circulating bats, and then through a combination
Speaker 3: of climate change and human migrations and deforestation, people are
Speaker 3: coming into closer contact with bats. This is true not
Speaker 3: only for the coronaviruses. It's true for NIPPA, which is
Speaker 3: in India. It's true for Ebola. That's why we're seeing
Speaker 3: the Ebola.
Speaker 1: I'm right.
Speaker 3: One of the most common questions I'm asked is, hey, Doc,
Speaker 3: what the heck is going on? By that, they mean,
Speaker 3: you know, Ebola, Zeka. This is all because of these
Speaker 3: twenty first century forces. So the point is, COVID nineteen
Speaker 3: is the third major corona pandemic of this century. We've
Speaker 3: had SARS Mayor's now COVID nineteen pretty much all the
Speaker 3: rising by the same set of circumstances. And that's why
Speaker 3: we're going to have a fourth major coronavirus pandemic before
Speaker 3: twenty thirty, I predict Wait what, yeah, that's right. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I mean because we're not doing the outbreak investigation that
Speaker 3: we need. On the other hand, there is not a
Speaker 3: single published paper in a scientific journal on gain of
Speaker 3: function or lab leak because nobody's been forthcoming and any
Speaker 3: evidence for it. And I've said, look, if there's any
Speaker 3: I said in the very beginning, if there's any evidence
Speaker 3: for a lab leak, we could say that for any
Speaker 3: epidemic or pandemic, you know, we'll look into it. And
Speaker 3: I said that back in twenty twenty one. But since
Speaker 3: then there's been no evidence forthcoming from lab leak or
Speaker 3: gain of function, and a huge amount of evidence for
Speaker 3: the natural origin, so much so that Michael Warabee looks
Speaker 3: into this. I'm not an evolutionary biologist. I'm a vaccine scientist,
Speaker 3: but Michael Warabe is evolutionary biologists. Has come out and
Speaker 3: said there's probably more evidence for the origins of COVID
Speaker 3: nineteen that we've had than compared to any other pandemic.
Speaker 3: So it's pretty solid. And the evidence for that is
Speaker 3: no one's written a paper on lab leak or gain
Speaker 3: of function because there's no there there, And if there
Speaker 3: is some there there, we'll look into it.
Speaker 2: But right the right is obsessed with this idea that
Speaker 2: it's a lab leak. But I don't think that you
Speaker 2: guys can I mean, you just want to have vaccines
Speaker 2: and solve the problem.
Speaker 3: That's right. But the other reason it's important is because
Speaker 3: we still don't understand at a very granular level how
Speaker 3: these viruses are jumping from bats to people, maybe through
Speaker 3: secondary intermediate animal hosts, maybe livestock. And that's a problem
Speaker 3: because we're going to have the fourth one soon and
Speaker 3: so we've never done that outbreak investigation that needs to
Speaker 3: be done, which means going into Central China, collecting samples
Speaker 3: from bats, some other animal hosts humans, and really detailing
Speaker 3: that at a grandeur level. That's what needs to be done.
Speaker 3: That's why I get so frustrated with the Chinese not
Speaker 3: being transparent, because we're going to be set up to
Speaker 3: have that same There's baths infective with coronavirus all over
Speaker 3: the face to vasa Asia from Central China down the
Speaker 3: unon on the Vietnam, going all the way up into
Speaker 3: Japan and Korea, and we still don't really understand that
Speaker 3: at a detailed level. And I worry that all of
Speaker 3: this labily gainer function is a distraction because it's keeping
Speaker 3: our eyes off the prize of what we really need
Speaker 3: to do, which is to do that detailed outbreak investigation.
Speaker 1: Okay, so one last question.
Speaker 10: Hi, Thanks for your talk. I really appreciate everything you're doing.
Speaker 10: I'm in medicine myself and I work in clinical trials,
Speaker 10: but one of the things I think that go hand
Speaker 10: in hand where you're talking about is medical misinformation basically,
Speaker 10: and I heard that the NIH just solved that project.
Speaker 10: They were going to do medical misinformation, and can you
Speaker 10: tell us a little bit about what medical associations are
Speaker 10: doing for people that are saying things that aren't untruthed
Speaker 10: with like ivermectin or vaccines or any of those things.
Speaker 3: Right, I think, you know, we don't know how to
Speaker 3: manage this. And so the NIH, I think was going
Speaker 3: to allocate funds, I forget what it was, maybe one
Speaker 3: hundred and fifty million dollars to really support groups that
Speaker 3: are looking at misinformation. But that's getting tired. Those groups
Speaker 3: are getting targeted now by Jim Jordan and trying to
Speaker 3: block it. And this is what's going to undermine our
Speaker 3: country and it's a killer. And the evidence of that
Speaker 3: of the two hundred thousand deaths, So we really need
Speaker 3: to understand that. I just I'm reviewing a paper now
Speaker 3: where now people can use AI artificial intelligence to generate blogs,
Speaker 3: to generate all of this disinformation about health at a
Speaker 3: very high level and very quickly. And so when people
Speaker 3: start applying AI to this stuff, forget it. It's just
Speaker 3: going to be this you know, over rush and and
Speaker 3: make matters worse. You've got foreign actors, you know, using
Speaker 3: this to destabilize the country. You have, you know, these
Speaker 3: Russian bots and roles that what they're doing in Russia
Speaker 3: is interesting. Is what Putin's doing is he's flooding our
Speaker 3: internet with both anti vaccine and pro vaccine messages because
Speaker 3: his deal is he looks at, you know, the big
Speaker 3: issues that are destabilizing our countries and you know, the
Speaker 3: elections one of them, but also vaccines, and so he
Speaker 3: does this to so discontent and destabilized democracy. And guess
Speaker 3: what it's working. And that's that's really worries.
Speaker 2: Doctor Hotels is signing books at a different time.
Speaker 1: I don't know anything.
Speaker 3: It's the main place where you signed books, at.
Speaker 1: The main place when you sign books, next.
Speaker 3: To there and next to the Omni hotel in the Omni.
Speaker 2: And he's the best. So thank you the best, thank you,
Speaker 2: thank you very much. That's it for this episode of
Speaker 2: Fast Politics. Tune in every Monday, Wednesday and Friday to
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Speaker 1: And again, thanks for listening.
Speaker 5: Two