Ask Dr. Drew - Dr. Paul Alexander: Why CDC Pushed Lockdowns vs. Herd Immunity w/ Dr. Kelly Victory – Ask Dr. Drew – Episode 122

Episode Date: September 11, 2022

Epidemiologist Dr. Paul E. Alexander was a scientific advisor to the HHS in the earliest days of the COVID-19 pandemic. He spoke widely against lockdowns and mask mandates, especially for children, and has urged health officials to adopt a strategy for herd immunity over vaccination. Dr. Paul E. Alexander holds a PhD and has graduate-level training and experience in epidemiology, evidence-based medicine, and research methodology. Dr. Alexander is a former Assistant Professor at McMaster University in evidence-based medicine and research methods; former COVID Pandemic evidence-synthesis consultant advisor to WHO Geneva-PAHO Washington, DC (2020), and former senior advisor to COVID Pandemic policy in Health and Human Services. Follow Dr. Alexander at DrPaulAlexander.com 「 ABOUT the SHOW 」 Ask Dr. Drew is produced by Kaleb Nation (https://kalebnation.com) and Susan Pinsky (https://twitter.com/firstladyoflove). This show is for entertainment and/or informational purposes only, and is not a substitute for medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. 「 MEDICAL NOTE 」 The CDC states that COVID-19 vaccines are safe, effective, and reduce your risk of severe illness. You should always consult your personal physician before making any decisions about your health.  「 WITH DR. KELLY VICTORY 」 Dr. Kelly Victory MD is a board-certified trauma and emergency specialist with over 15 years of clinical experience. She served as CMO for Whole Health Management, delivering on-site healthcare services for Fortune 500 companies. She holds a BS from Duke University and her MD from the University of North Carolina. Follow her at https://earlycovidcare.org 「 SPONSORED BY 」 • GENUCEL - Using a proprietary base formulated by a pharmacist, Genucel has created skincare that can dramatically improve the appearance of facial redness and under-eye puffiness. Genucel uses clinical levels of botanical extracts in their cruelty-free, natural, made-in-the-USA line of products. Get 10% off with promo code DREW at https://genucel.com/drew 「 GEAR PROVIDED BY 」 • BLUE MICS - After more than 30 years in broadcasting, Dr. Drew's iconic voice has reached pristine clarity through Blue Microphones. But you don't need a fancy studio to sound great with Blue's lineup: ranging from high-quality USB mics like the Yeti, to studio-grade XLR mics like Dr. Drew's Blueberry. Find your best sound at https://drdrew.com/blue • ELGATO - Every week, Dr. Drew broadcasts live shows from his home studio under soft, clean lighting from Elgato's Key Lights. From the control room, the producers manage Dr. Drew's streams with a Stream Deck XL, and ingest HD video with a Camlink 4K. Add a professional touch to your streams or Zoom calls with Elgato. See how Elgato's lights transformed Dr. Drew's set: https://drdrew.com/sponsors/elgato/ 「 ABOUT DR. DREW 」 For over 30 years, Dr. Drew has answered questions and offered guidance to millions through popular shows like Celebrity Rehab (VH1), Dr. Drew On Call (HLN), Teen Mom OG (MTV), and the iconic radio show Loveline. Now, Dr. Drew is opening his phone lines to the world by streaming LIVE from his home studio. Watch all of Dr. Drew's latest shows at https://drdrew.tv Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Pleased to welcome Dr. Paul Alexander to the show. Just after the intro, he'll be joining me. He, of course, was an HHS advisor in the early days of the pandemic. He opposed lockdown. He had issues about masks. He urged officials to adopt a more conservative strategy. Maybe immunity should serve some function. We will get into detail what he saw, what he thought, what he thinks now. And, of course, Dr. Kelly Victory joins us here.

It is going to be a really interesting and lively discussion. Also, there was an announcement today about something I was involved with called Special Forces. And they announced the group I was in. Oh, there's Jamie Lynn Spears, who was one of the people I was in the Jordanian desert with. But I'll show you some photos and tell you a little bit about that before we bring Dr. Alexander in here, because people have been talking a lot about that on social media. Got a lot to get to, so let's get right to it right now. Our laws as it pertained to substances are draconian and bizarre. A psychopath started this. He was an alcoholic because of social media and pornography, PTSD, love addiction, fentanyl and heroin. Ridiculous. I'm a doctor for f**k's sake.

Where the hell do you think I learned that? I'm just saying, you go to treatment before you kill people. I am a clinician. I observe things about these chemicals. Let's just deal with what's real. We used to get these calls on Loveline all the time. Educate adolescents and to prevent and to treat. If you have trouble, you can't stop and you want help stopping, I can help. I got a lot to say. I got a lot more to say. You're always taken care of with the sportsbook born in Vegas. That's a feeling you can only get with BetMGM.

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to you, please contact Connex Ontario at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. Whether you own a bustling hair salon or a hot new bakery, you need business insurance that can keep up with your evolving needs. With flexible coverage options from TD Insurance, you only pay for what you need. TD, ready for you. Before I digress into this little weird television world I've been a part of at the moment, I will tell you a little bit about Dr. Paul Alexander. He's a PhD, a graduate level training and experience in epidemiology. He teaches clinical epidemiology and evidence-based medicine.

He's a former assistant professor at McMaster University. He obviously has a former pandemic evidence synthesis consultant advisor to the World Health Organization, and he was a former service advisor to COVID pandemic policy at the Health and Human Services Department. You can follow Dr. Alexander at drpaulalexander.com, Dr. Paul Alexander. And let me just remind everyone, these are open conversations. There we are. at drpaulalexander.com, drpaulalexander. And let me just remind everyone, these are open conversations.

There we are. CDC states that COVID-19 vaccine are safe and effective. They reduce risk of severe illness. We are featuring controversial topics. We want you to consult your physician before making any decisions about your health.

Don't make decisions based about what we talk about here. But for me, I'm trying to understand what happens so we don't make these mistakes again. Seems to me there were some major errors made in this pandemic, and there's still things going forward that we need to understand. What are the risk-reward ratios or analyses as it pertains to young males and the Moderna vaccine? Should we be concerned about that relative to the COVID risk? If there is a more serious variant that comes along, is masking something that we should even consider again? And what about lockdowns? How problematic was that policy? Where did that come from? And what might we do in terms of non-pharmacological interventions next time? I was

saying on social media this morning, I think it's going to be about two years before we get close to understanding more of the details about the vaccine and the therapeutics and exactly where they should be used and what the risk reward for each of these things are. If we are stuck in a world of mandates, it's going to be very difficult to sort those things out in a way that is best for patients. So before I bring Dr. Alexander here, let me just mention this thing I'm in. I'm in a television program called Special Forces. It'll be airing in January. I had the great privilege of being out in the middle of the Wadi Rum, Jordanian desert with many people.

Something happens with me and Jamie Lynn out there in the desert. We can't tell you about now, but it happens. Once we get to see some of these episodes, I'll get to talk to you about it. So that's who else was out there. Yeah, there's the group. That's the group. And it's an extraordinary group. It includes Mel B, Anthony Scaramucci,

Danny Amidola from the Patriots. Who's up there with me? I can't tell. Dwight Howard, Montel Jordan, Hannah Brown. There's Mike Piazza. There's Kate Gosling. I think that's Dwight Howard off in the distance there. And there we are at a Mets game trying to debrief Scaramucci from his PTSD, which he was still suffering from at that point.

And we all did the television group visit the Television Critics Association this morning, so-called TCAs. And just watching a little bit of footage of that, we all got a little bit of PTSD again. So if you have questions about what that is and what we're doing and what you should look forward to, I can take those questions here on the Twitter spaces later, but more importantly, watch my social media and watch out here at this streaming show.

We will bring some of these folks in as months go on and we'll talk to them about, you know, what this experience was like and we can really talk about it. You will see them right here. So Dr. Paul Alexander, again, you can follow him at drpaulalexander.com. His sub stack is palexander.substack.com. Let us welcome Dr. Paul

Alexander. Welcome, Dr. Alexander. Oh, we've lost his sound. Now, is that just me? Caleb, let's try that again. there you are you're there now so uh yes we're going to bring dr victorine here in mere moments i i have some just broad sweeping sorts of questions i i i spent the the better part of a year particularly in the summer of 2020 just just literally shaking my head like what what is is going on? What is happening here? Nothing was making sense to me. Everything was anathema to what I understood to be good medical practices, my understanding of public health practice. Everything was just upside down. Having spoken to some of the guests we've had on this particular stream, I've come to understand,

here's what I understand. You correct me if any of this is wrong, and I'm very anxious to hear your experience on the inside of all this. It seemed like people in the leadership, the bureaucracy of public health, bought into the idea that zero COVID and lockdown was not just a desirable policy, was the one and only policy as followed by the Chinese Communist Party. Somehow these Chinese colleagues convinced them of that fact and that lie. Once committed to that, anything that was suggesting that perhaps not the best policy was anathema and needed to be destroyed while we did everything possible to get to vaccine. So it was get to vaccine with as little damage as possible, maybe zero COVID we can attain in the meantime. And once that vaccine, it became vaccine uber alice.

Vaccine is the one and only policy. It's everybody and anyone that sort of in any way brings up issues around vaccine therapies at any age group, again, has to be destroyed. Yes, uber alice, Caleb has to throw up there, means above everything else. So what was your experience? And help me refine my understanding of what happened to us through all that. Well, once again, Dr. Drew,

what a pleasure and an honor to you and for Dr. Victory for inviting me here. Look, the reality about it is, let's say February, March, when I was still doing some work for WHO, and I got communication around April, early May, to come to Washington as a senior pandemic advisor to the Trump administration. I'm speaking today as an independent, not Republican, not Democrat, as an academic scientist, because we have to come to the table to discuss the evidence

to find out what went wrong so it does not happen again, because a lot of things went wrong. CDC has told us this, Dr. Walensky, and the reality is that very early, maybe about by around the middle of April 2020, we were beginning to get data telling us, showing us from across the world even, that COVID was amenable to risk stratification

in the sense that your baseline risk was prognostic on the severity of outcome, your death, et cetera. So we could have seen that it was a very steep age risk curve that basically even CDC's initial data was showing that 70 to 75 years old and below, if you were infected, the risk of survival was almost 100%. So we were questioning why the carte blanche lockdown. And when people like Bhattacharya and Kuldof and Gupta

came out with their Great Barrington. I was part of pushing for it also with Dr. Scott Atlas on the inside because our argument was very simple. As long as you strongly and properly double down and triple down and protect the vulnerable and the high risk in a society, that is the elderly in the nursing homes, the assisted living, your private home. And you use public service announcements, decent public service announcements, you know, about vitamin D3, getting your body weight under control, things like that. You allow the rest of society, the low risk healthiness society to live largely normal lives

with as unfettered disruption as possible. And we were standing on the shoulders of people like Dr. Donald Henderson from Johns Hopkins, who eradicated smallpox. His seminal paper in 2006 said that. WHO itself had a guidance document in 2019 that indicated that all of those COVID policies, those lockdown policies, border restrictions, quarantines, et cetera, those were low-quality evidence and not as the go-to. The only thing that really emerged as something that should be considered in an epidemic or pandemic is you isolate or quarantine. Consider strongly symptomatic unwell people,

not asymptomatic people. So we had all of this information. We even had WHO guidance that the whole world, first world countries contributed to develop. Yet we did the complete opposite. We failed to protect the vulnerable in the old age homes, in nursing homes, and we lock down the health in society. And our argument has been always that you allow the well in society to live normal lives and naturally and harmlessly confront pathogen as they go about their lives. And they will develop the natural immunity and get us the herd immunity. And that remains what I said in the beginning, what I was attacked on in the beginning. Scott Atlas was pilloried over. Yet today, if you sit back, that is exactly where the CDC has come to today after two years. So it's almost like we've indicated, but this is not a victory. This has been devastating,

Dr. Drew, because I can tell you something. We had indications from inside of the government, inside the Trump administration, we had parents who were presenting to the emergency room doctors with their child in their arms, telling the doctors, doctor, I've been locked down for about a year. I've been beating my wife, physically abusing her. The wife is telling the doctor, I've been beating down for about a year I've been beating my wife physically abusing her the wife is telling the doctor I've been beating my husband today this morning we beat the child

we think we broke their bone we think the child is dead can you help us we had multiple reports so it was devastating what the school closures was doing devastating what the lockdowns did we had multiple reports of business owners people who were laid off and children who committed suicide across america and the news

media was doing a very good job to not table that on the nightly news because at that point the administration was fighting to open schools and fighting to open the economy. So the dictum in D.C., I was there, was that if we table all these catastrophic suicides, et cetera, the administration would get some credit. So they just covered it up. I can tell you, many American children committed suicide, many. Many. And so you're advocating an incredibly aggressive and extraordinary policy of quarantining sick people? Where did that come from? Oh, wait a minute. That's what we've always done through human history, save one episode in Venice in the 12th century, which was a freaking disaster.

And has never been contemplated that we would do otherwise with quarantine. That's never been contemplated. It's always been you quarantine sick people. One quick question and we'll bring Dr. Victor in here. I have sort of three questions. I have sort of a global question of what happened given that we knew all that, but that's sort of a side. Let me ask a specific question. Why wasn't a risk reward analysis really considered in this decision it feels as though it looked as though they forged on without risk reward contemplation at all particularly what seemed to have been ignored to me were impertinent details like years of life lost let me just point out that the average duration of life

after a male is admitted to a nursing home is six months on average. That's the average life expectancy of a male sufficiently deteriorated to need institutional support, six months. So something was going to take that man six months or a year down the road in any event. These children we have lost, these are decades and decades of years of life lost and impacted years of life through this mental health consequences of all this. Why weren't any of these risk reward notions seemingly even contemplated? Dr. Ju, you ask a very important question, and I'll answer it this way, and the response is staggering. Up to today, we are near 2.5 years in. You cannot find across the CDC, the NIH, the NIAID, FDA, WHO in Geneva, SAGE in Britain, no one has conducted a risk-benefit, cost-benefit analysis of any of their policies. It's the most staggering thing. We have written about it. We've called for these cost-benefit analyses. Exactly how you just said it, no one has done it. Because that, you would have thought,

would have been the basic. Because you could then consider alternative courses of action and you would choose among the alternative that incurs the least harm and the most benefit. They just went on and on. They responded to persons like myself by hardening lockdowns. Their pillories caught at last by extending the lockdowns and then they turned around and smeared us. All we said was, look, the evidence is quickly accumulating within America, within Canada, within UK, across the world, that lockdowns. Dr. Drew, I know you want to bring Dr. Victory in, but let me say it to your listeners this way, so that they understand where we are today. Because I really, really applaud you. This is a very important topic. I have looked at all of the evidence across the world, all of the science,

and I've published this with Dr. Harvey Wish, Dr. Peter McCullough, et cetera, Dr. Howard Tannenbaum. We looked at all of the evidence and we put it in brownstone. We looked at all of the evidence and we put it in brownstone we looked at all of the science on lockdowns we could find not one instance across the entire world from the beginning of this pandemic to today in the united states in any state in any location across the world where any lockdown worked to curb transmission or reduce risk of death we find not one indication where any school closure anywhere in the world for the last 2.5 years worked to curb transmission or reduce death. No mass mandate worked. We showed that in all our graphs, wherever you implemented a mass mandate, infections actually went up. No business closure worked to curb infection death. Every

single COVID policy, Dr. Drew, everyone enacted by the CDC, NIH, et cetera, have failed. Failed. None have worked. That's where we are today. And the question becomes, if that has happened, if this is the fact and this is the data, I challenge anyone listening to your show, any clinician, any scientist in any agency in America, across the world, bring me, bring us science, bring us any data to show us that any lockdown, school closure, mask mandate, business closure. All we did was we shifted the burden of morbidity and mortality from the affluent persons in society, the laptop Zoom class, we call them. We shifted it to the poor in society, the marginalized people, the women. Women suffered with the lockdowns.

The poor, the minority children suffered. People didn't know that when you close schools, most children in America get their only meal in that school lunch program in schools. And when we close schools, the middle managers in CDC and NIH and FDA and in the government didn't know that thousands, millions of American children starved, especially the poor children, because they had no food. When you close schools, children don't get their eyes tested, their hearing tested, and they get no food. There were catastrophic consequences from those COVID lockdowns. I call them lunatic policies. In the Trump administration, and I work for the Trump administration, so your listeners must understand, I am hammer in the Trump administration. And I work for the Trump administration. So you all just must understand, I am hammering the Trump administration here and the Biden administration. So thank you very much. And over to Dr. Victory.

Will, I'll bring her in just a second. And I appreciate you because there's plenty of blame to go around, right? And we're not playing politics here. We're trying to evaluate what happened. Let me say there was one good thing that the LA Unified did do, which is they did address that lunch issue. And they actually brought meals in for the kids that weren't able to get lunches. But now here they were socializing and congregating in tents. So why did they close schools in the first place? Because now they were gathering for their lunches as though that was not going to school you know they so they were already proving the fact that the school the closure itself had no real purpose but yeah so what we've learned is the virus does a respiratory virus this is not

polio this is not you know this is this is more like measles. A respiratory virus does what it does. It just does what it does. It's more like, yeah, of these respiratory viruses, there's no locking down a respiratory virus. Maybe there would be something to do, you know, some other, I can't even think of one, mosquito-borne or something. You know, we've got to stay inside away from the mosquitoes or some such thing. But as it stands, respiratory viruses

just do what they do. You might change the immediate time course, but eventually the virus just does what it does. All right, let's take a little break and we'll bring Dr. Kelly Victor in to continue this conversation with Dr. Paul Alexander. I think we have found the holy grail of skincare. GenuCell has absolutely changed certainly my skincare regimen. I like that vitamin C serum, the under eye creams, skin nourishing primer. Susan loves the eyelash enhancers, uses it on her eyebrows as well. GenuCell has everything to make us both feel and look amazing. Best part, the quality of the products. Using pure ingredients like antioxidants, copper peptides, and a proprietary calendula flower base. GenuCell knows how to formulate products to perfection without irritation. For Susan, she hates that annoying dry area under her nose during allergy season, like right here.

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Right now, you can try GenuCell's most popular collection of products and see what I'm talking about for yourself. Go to GenuCell.com and enter code DREW for 10% off. That is G-E-N-U-C-E-L.com, and the code is D-R-E-W. Some platforms have banned the discussion of controversial topics. This episode ends here. The rest of the show is available at drdrew.tv. There's nothing in medicine that doesn't boil down to a risk-benefit calculation. It is the mandate of public health to consider the impact of any particular mitigation scheme on the entire population. This is uncharted territory, Drew.

Yes, indeed, uncharted territory. We welcome my Wednesday co-host, Dr. Kelly Victory. And Kelly, you heard the opening little conversation here. You take it from here. Terrific. And thanks so much for agreeing to join us here. I love that you have not feared for getting involved in these polemical discussions. And you've written prolifically during this pandemic on these topics. Dr. Alexander, you've been a real warrior. And I appreciate that more than you know.

You did a great job of laying out the issues with regard to the lockdown. I will push back a little bit on Drew's notion that this was, quote, something we learned during this pandemic. From my perspective, I've been talking about this from the very beginning. We've known for decades that lockdowns do far more harm than good. The data was out there long before COVID. There's a reason we haven't used lockdowns in previous pandemics, because they have devastating impact as you laid out, not only on people's physical health,

the fact that people didn't get cardiac workups and diabetic workups and workups for new skin cancers and on and on, and people missed their routine colonosc and on and on. And people missed their routine colonoscopies and mammograms. The impact on children was overwhelming. But we left a, on top of it all, we left a smoldering crater where our economy used to be. So this isn't something that we just learned. Let's talk about some of the other, before I talk about vaccines, my favorite current topic, I want to talk a little talk about some of the other, before I talk about vaccines, my favorite current

topic, I want to talk a little bit about some of the other failed mitigation schemes. You touched a little bit on masking. Again, we've known for decades that masks don't stop the spread of respiratory viruses. It's not why we use them in medicine. It's not what they're for. And if you doubt that, I tell people who say, well, if they don't work, why do surgeons wear them? I say, surgeons wear them. I wear them to keep me from inadvertently spitting into an open wound or somehow being sprayed in the face with blood. That's why I take the mask off when I see you after the procedure because I'm not protecting you from anything respiratory. One of my favorite idiotic maneuvers during this, and it happened while you were, I think,

still in the White House, was this concept that they rolled out to the public of social distancing, a completely made up construct that I was vilified for calling out. How in the world did they sell that at the White House level that we should put stickers on the floor and one-way stickers in the Walmart aisle, you know, telling people where to stand? Where in the world did that come from? Well, I mean, look, and you know, Dr. Drew and you, Dr. Kelly, you would understand that for as long as possible, there are things that I can speak about and things that I can't speak about. I mean, out of confidentiality and sensitivity. But I could talk about something like this. When I got there, the task force was already about two and a half to three months on deck because it started around march i got there around middle to end of me and uh so fauci books the whole group were already there

dr redfield dr han etc now so i had interactions with all of these people in the nature of what i was doing and the bosses that i reported to um i can tell you that uh on one day um i actually in a conversation i had the option to talk to Dr. Redfield. And I would have to tell you that my technical relationships with him have always been very good. I exchanged a lot of technical scientific information, himself too, to me in our discussion. So, you know know people have the debate about their workings with Dr. Redfield and stuff I will not get into that I can only talk about my scientific work with him so I asked him I said so Dr. Redfield can you tell me can I can I get an example of the science and the studies that the CDC used to make that social distancing six feet, et cetera. And he had come to our office to have a discussion with a couple of my bosses.

And I was there in part of the meetings. So I was walking with him after the meeting. And he looked at me and we got along well. And he chuckled and he said, Paul, science. This is para, what he said he said science there was no science we made it up and I was stunned I stood there and I looked and said doctor what do you mean made it up and like I was laughing and he said well you know some people talk 12 feet some said 9 some said 1 some countries talked about 3

feet it looked like 6 feet would have worked, and so we went with six feet. And when I started to share this information, I was so stunned, and I couldn't understand how the United States, we made a six-feet policy that businesses closed forever because of the six-feet policy. People couldn't hold on in their businesses to have six feet between the 12 chairs that they had in their restaurant. They had to close.

And some of those business owners self-harmed. We knew because the data was coming from the states up to our office at the HHS first before we wound it up to the White House. And I can tell you, they have business owners that committed suicide because of that six feet rule. It eventually destroyed their lives and their livelihood. And the reality about it, even Scott Gottlieb, I believe, not I believe, I heard him say that once in a press release recently, more recently, that the six feet rule was arbitrary

and just made up. So I was vindicated because that was the fact. And it's really shocking that CDC, et cetera, made policy like that that affected the lives. It was not based on science. When Dr. Walensky came on the news last week, week before, and stated that, you know, CDC, we've made, at some point she said really dramatic mistakes. Some points, she tried to talk it down a bit. And then Fauci came out to try and button it up by saying, well, you can't blame Dr. Walensky fully because the problems at CDC predated her. Are we looking at a serious problem? These are discussions that this nation is going to have to have because the CDC is, should be the premier marquee health agency of the United States, the world. And they are serious issues. They made catastrophic mistakes. I know you know that at the beginning of this pandemic, CDC took the leadership role to manufacture the initial test for COVID. And

Redfield was interviewed by Sanjay Gupta at CNN about maybe six months ago. And he said something that I knew because I was involved in trying to assess the damage to the United States population. The United States was flying blind for the first five to six weeks of this pandemic because of that CDC test. That CDC test was contaminated and a failure. And when they put it out to the labs, et cetera, everyone was ordered to stop

until the CDC and the FDA sorted it out. We did no testing. When all of the other countries in the world were testing out of the wazoo and knew how to handle where the virus was within their country, in America, the virus was seeding across the eastern and western flank. We didn't know where it was and we were doing no testing. That initial, I argue with people, that initial test that failed hobbled the response to the United States. I even think today we are still in a hole in terms of what has happened

because of that initial failure. That was a catastrophic failure. So there must be an examination of what is happening at the CDC, and there must be an examination of what is happening in the CDC, and there must be fixes in it. I applaud Walensky for stepping up, but it's not just a matter of me or Culper. We need serious examinations. Well, I'll tell you, I sure agree with that as well.

So you're talking about the lockdowns were a massive failure. Masking was a massive failure. Social distancing, made up construct. I said it from the beginning. I didn't have the exposure that you had. I said it from the beginning because I have a library full of books on epidemiology, virology, pandemic management, public health. And I said, I defy you to find a textbook on the shelf where social distancing appears in the index. It's a totally made up construct. Yeah. And then Brown University and the University of Rochester ended up doing studies that showed there was no difference between six feet and 60 feet in terms of the transmission of the virus. So all those massive, massive failures.

And they all lead to, as you were just sort of intimating, at this overwhelming loss of confidence that people have now in public health. And God help us when we need people in this country and around the globe to listen to us and heed our warnings or advice when the next thing happens because you and i both know there will be a next thing there will be a next pandemic or a next emergency and we have undermined totally undermined people's confidence in the cdc the fda the nih and on on, and public health officials in general. I think Walensky's quote mea culpa is pretty shallow because it was not followed by any action items. What are we going to do? Sitting from your vantage point, what would you have wanted Walensky to say is here are the top three or top five things or whatever it

is that we are going to do to fix this disaster that we have become? Well, that's a very interesting question. Thanks for it. I think the key and the core issue is from the very beginning, the CDC decided that it will not really follow the science. It was almost as though the CDC has been one year behind the science. And it hurts me. As somebody, I'm a United States resident exception. I want the CDC to work. But everything that we have said, that you said, Dr. Ju said, I say, over these last two years, the reality is if you just waited a few months, as much as a year sometimes,

then the CDC comes out with guidance on what you had said. So it's almost as though there are 365 days behind the science. And what we were asking them is broaden the scientific table. Whoever it is you have advising the directors, whether it was Redfield and now Walensky, they are not advising you the optimal evidence-based medicine that's trustworthy and of highest quality, that's accurate even. So they are doing a disservice. And look, I understand how Redfield worked and even Walensky worked.

We can't accuse her because she's not sitting down there with some of these peer-reviewed papers, reading them at night, preparing. She has thousands of people below her. It is their job all the way up to their managers and supervisors and scientific leads to summarize the evidence and give her a summary guidance. And she articulates it as a CEO of the CDC.

So when she makes gross errors, it's not really her error, it's those below her. So she needs to examine the agency and those who are dead weight and those who are providing her wrong guidance because they have given her wrong guidance. Repeatedly, she needs to probably consider getting them out of the CDC. That's number one. Get them out. Put them somewhere else in the government. They have no place there

because they have misguided the director. Gross misguided guidance. Number two, broaden the table. They have people like you. They have people like Dr. Drew, myself. I'd work for I'd work for free. To help the CDC, they have people like McCullough, Harvey Reich, all of these scientists across the world, Dr.

Ladapo, we would help them broaden the table and get contrarian, skeptic voices. Because as an evidence based medicine person. I'm looking at the science, I'm looking at the methods, I'm looking at your research approach, and if the research and the methodology is wrong and flawed, then then the study is fundamentally failed and it's a fatal flaw. And the estimates of effect are going to be biased they're going to be wrong and you can't make policy on and sub-optimal research so bring

people like us to the table let us help you i i as i said i would volunteer for free i have written dr woodcock at the fda before she moved i've written dr peter marx i've written Dr. Woodcock at the FDA before she moved. I've written Dr. Peter Marks. I've written them all. And I've told them after Han left, I am prepared to work for you for free. I want to help you. I bring all my skills. I will bring other people too. We look at all of the science daily.

In that C-19 group, the United States, you are part of it. You know what we do. We examine all of the evidence. So the problem with the CDC is they don't want to broaden the table, yet they're being served by people. Look, it's either that they don't understand the science, Dr. Kelly, they don't get the science, or they just can't understand or read the data because their guidance and policy is wrong, often wrong. And it's a terrible thing because the United States, the population looked at the CDC as the penultimate agency, and it should be.

But it needs a good soul-searching, and it needs to clean house. And if Dr. Walensky was wise, sorry. I'd like to ask a couple questions um so kelly is it interesting how everybody we talk to there's at least some point where we all nod our heads go more and better science more and better science that that is just missing throughout this pandemic everybody no matter whom you speak to we always get get there. Number two, so I'm hearing you say more and better science, massive failure on their initial testing rollout, which I agree with, and then this poor executive infrastructure, and I'm just calling it executive kind of as a placeholder for the

underlings of Walensky. So I get that construct, and and i'm interested in that but it still begs an issue what what happened to these people in the first six months why did they completely abandon their discipline and make things up i mean something else was going on here that caused people to be uncharacteristically hysterical and to do things that had no evidence. People who are evidence-based scientists suddenly to impulsively and then become extremely guarded and defensive. So let me just say, one thing I worry about is the public health officials' training is such that they don't have clinical judgment. That occurs to me as one possible element in all this. The second thing that occurs to me is there's something about the bureaucratic structure, which you're pointing at,

there's something about the bureaucratic structure that is sick and unwell or is there something else i mean what caused you know yes i'm with you all the way but then i still think what what what still what what happened people who i used to look up to well well i mean dr dr dr victor you want to go at it first well i would i would i would say truly i mean i it, and Drew knows this, I find it hard to really, implausible that these scientists are that stupid. I simply, I don't believe it. Were they in a panic? But this looks like not smart. This looks like just an emotional storm of some type, some weird panic or Trump derangement. I don't know what it was. Or what? Or a power grab.

Or a power grab. You know, fear is an incredibly powerful intoxicant. It is a very good way to manipulate and control people. And I think what happened was they started down a particular road and it became politically expedient for them. They're like, oh, this is kind of good. It's amazing how quickly they were watching people turn over their civil liberties. People willingly closed their businesses, put stickers on the floor, did things that were absolutely unheard of, unprecedented things, agreed to have their children

home for, you know, schooling and put masks on two-year-olds and on and on. So I think there was an element of it that was just lack of critical thinking. And I think that's prevalent, unfortunately, in people coming out of our universities today. Critical thinking is AWOL. I think there was an unwillingness to listen to alternative views, which never leads you to a good place, whether it's in business. Why though? Yeah, why? I think there's an element of hubris there, of just, sir, we're the CDC, we are the top dogs, and you will listen to us. And then I think, as I said, there was an intoxicating component to the power and

people, little people in positions that had no voice previously, the public health directors of various cities and towns around the globe and the teachers union started going, wow, we can really work this to our advantage. Teachers unions were all of a sudden weighing in heavily and getting all kinds of things from pay races, you know, to hazard pay to, you know, whatever it was. So I think it was multifaceted. But I think Dr. Alexander's really insightful comment is about that the need ultimately needs to be in clearing house and bringing in multiple voices with really different backgrounds. Many of these people, including your buddy, Anthony Fauci, has been ensconced there or in some role as a public health official, not practicing clinical medicine for more than half a century, 54 years, that doesn't ever go well. Well, you know, look, you know, I, you know, as I said, there are things, and I agree with everything, I'll say it this way. I'll give you an example. I think that the public health schools in the United States,

the medical schools that are churning out these public health officials, these epidemiological people, so-called experts, they are not competent. And even the ones coming out of the CDC, field epi programs, et cetera. And I can tell you why. I'll use Canada as an example, and maybe what I share here, if people at the CDC are listening, they can know where they should begin. When we had SARS-1 in 2002, 2003 globally, if you remember, I think there were about 8,000 infections globally with about 800 deaths for a mortality rate of about 9% to 10%. So that was a heavy mortality rate,

and that was a more lethal, far more lethal coronavirus than this one, akin to like MERS, which had a lethality of about 39 percent. But anyway, SARS-1, what happened? Well, in Canada, I mean, I live in America now, but I lived in Canada then. I had come out of graduate school at University of Toronto with a graduate degree in epidemiology. And what I was posted overseas. So when SARS was going on, I was overseas in Asia on a TB program, a TB control project in India and Pakistan. But I was looking on and what was happening in Canada and Toronto in Ontario is probably the only first world city that include massive debts from SARS-1. Third world cities with underdeveloped public health systems, there were infections but there were no deaths and they

fared much better. I think we had about 40 deaths in Toronto in the public health system, the medical, across the hospitals in Ontario. So the question was how? So immediately the government of Canada launched an inquiry and set up this commission and hired the Dean of University of Toronto Medical School, Dr. Naylor, to produce a report for him to investigate what really happened. How could Canada, how could Toronto have all of these deaths and the rest of the world have none? Basically, other countries like Canada. What he found was that one of the issues that he raised was that the public health schools were not up to snuff and that they were not training all the proper people properly trained

in in investigational epidemiology or break epidemiology etc in proper responding so what did they decide though that was a tremendous finding and i think if you looked across america you might find that and um that is where i think we have to begin. Because you see, we have a lot of people running around, especially in CDC, with a lot of graduate degrees and big letters behind their names, but they cannot conduct a basic outbreak investigation. Their practical skills and practicums were suboptimal. And that's a very important thing. So you can't have these people sitting down on top of these agencies, making decisions, and they really don't understand the epidemiology. I mean, when you listen to Harvey, we speak, you understand what an epidemiologist is, that kind of epidemiology.

We don't have that in government. And we need that. No, I can tell you. No, as you say, I agree with you 100%. I was actually at the helm running the healthcare for Continental Airlines during SARS-CoV-1 in 2003 and was responsible for helping them keep their business coming out of Asia going during that pandemic. I got a lot of experience and you're exactly right. People who don't have any real life experience running and managing a pandemic all of a sudden find themselves in these positions of power at the CDC with very little training and experience. Furthermore, I don't have an MPH, but I did my postgraduate training in public health at Harvard, and I can tell you that I'm persona non grata at Harvard School of Public Health. Their goal, from what I can tell, is to crank out social justice warriors.

They crank out people who are far more concerned about equity in public health than actually understanding the science behind it. Things aren't always equitable in the middle of a pandemic. This is what I was afraid of. This is what I thought. This is what it seems like. Because the rhetoric I kept hearing from public health officials were only about the equity piece, not the clinical and the epidemiology. I was like, what about the clinical part? And it's interesting. I happen to have been in Toronto for three weeks during SARS-1. And what I remember about it is that because, and I'm going to frame it with the equity frame and the priorities of the present day when there was a failure of public health what happened was people revert to their primitive um mindsets you know our more lower uh reptilian impulses have you been to

chinatown in in toronto it's not within in 1990 whatever it was not a pretty place and they immediately blamed the chinese community and the the people and the people and the hygiene and everything. It became a racist issue because of the failure of doing the clinical epidemiology. I was actually shocked. I went running one day, twice, I think, and I ran through Chinatown just to see. I just sort of was flying in the face of all this and thought I'd boldly go through it. It was kind of a mess. It was a mess.

I'm sure no failure of Chinese nationals, but the way that town was sort of put together, it looked like there was a lot of distress and a lot of issues that needed to be addressed by the public health community, but instead blame the citizens, which is governments. When do we get into this thing of governments blaming the citizens? Whenever your government is blaming the citizens, it's because

the government has failed. That's when you blame the citizens. We can't get water in California? That's a government failure. Flat out. And same thing would happen in Canada during the SARS-1. So let's move for, I'm sorry, go ahead

Dr. Allen. Kelly wants to go to vaccine. I'm sorry. Go ahead. Go ahead, Dr. Allen. Kelly wants to go to vaccine. I was agreeing with Dr. Drew. What he just said, I'm glad that he said it because it did. The SARS one did reveal the underbelly, very poor underbelly of societies where we are quick to stigmatize and ostracize and dehumanize people when we are actually, there are technical failures on our part, yet we refuse to look at it because we know where the failures are, but we will blame the weakest

and the most marginalized in society for it. That's a very poor form. And I agree with him. I saw it. I knew that happened. It was terrible. Yeah. I just happened to have witnessed it. But Kelly, let's go to the vaccine. Yeah, I do want to go to the vaccines, you know, for for a couple of reasons.

Number one, it's certainly something that's very much on the mind still of people in America and around the world. People have not put the lockdowns behind them, but the vaccines are front and center. And certainly the COVID-19 work groups that you and I are intimately involved in, Dr. Alexander, we talk about this all the time. It's an area that Dr. Drew and I disagree about quite a bit with regard to these vaccines. I had huge concerns about the vaccines before them ever being launched because of the nature of the mRNA technology, the way that they were based on a singular spike protein, and frankly, the paucity of safety data behind them and the fact that they were using the emergency use authorization as a way, frankly, to suppress actual therapeutics, safe and very effective, readily available therapeutics.

At the time, I didn't feel that for many people the risk-benefit analysis made sense even at the beginning. Now, with the tremendous data rolling in about adverse events, serious adverse events from these vaccines, and the studies showing that for every one hospitalization that was prevented, you had 4.3 or more serious adverse events and on and on. I guess, let me start with, do you ever think that the risk-benefit analysis on these vaccines made sense? Go back to the very beginning. Did it make sense for you from the beginning? To me, no, absolutely not. And the reality about it is very early on, again, because of our approach with a more focused protection where you protect the vulnerable and you allow the rest of society to develop natural immunity, etc.

Now, harmlessly, that's a key word, harmlessly and naturally. The issue is by around June, July or so, we were getting studies. There was a criminal study out of Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam by, I think the author was Chau Et al. And what they looked at is they had some nurses who were locked down in a hospital in Vietnam. They were in the Delta outbreak and they were double vaccinated. That particular study opened the world's eyes because it came on the heels of the barn stable outbreak in Massachusetts where Dr. Walensky ran to the podium to say that vaccinated people, double vaccinated, needed to put on masks.

It was that barn stable outbreak that showed about 75% of double vaccinated people became infected. But in Horsham and City published, that study published in Lancet, that study showed us that vaccinated nurses in that facility spread from the index nurse to all of the nurses in the facility. That's number one. So it showed, and they were double vaccinated. So it showed us that the vaccine, that was the first real clinical study that showed that the vaccine did not stop transmission. It also showed us that those nurses, similar to a study out of Israel by Chitrit et al. and one in Finland by Hatimaki, that these nurses were fully PPE'd and gowned and masked, etc., shields, yet they spread infection to each other and told their patients. So it began to show us that the PPE in the hospital setting was failing amongst these healthcare professionals. But key was it showed us

that there was no difference between the vaccinated nurse and the unvaccinated nurse. In fact, the vaccinated nurse had about 251 times more viral load in the nasopharyngeal passage. So that study woke everybody up. And it was quickly followed by one by Rahim Mousma et al. that showed that the vaccinated and the unvaccinated, same viral load, transmission, et cetera. Quickly, we started to get study after study after study. So the evidence was there from around June, July of 2021. So I knew right away, quickly after the vaccine rollout that there was a problem. And I work very closely with people like Dr. Good, Van den Bosch, who's a global immunologist, virologist, vaccinologist. And if you listen to what he's saying, and as Troy said, you keep on how the virus is behaving relative to the vaccine.

I think the messages that we were beginning to see quickly that the vaccine appears to give the virus a property that it did not have before, in the sense that at this point, the vaccine is non-neutralizing. So the virus is largely resistant to the vaccinal antibodies. And what is happening is it is driving the vaccinated person to become much more infected than the unvaccinated. And that's a problem because now we're getting data out of New South Wales and Australia and different countries showing us that those vaccinated people who are actually getting infected and reinfected are developing severe symptoms and some are dying. So this is a serious conversation that we have to have. We can't just put our heads in the sand and say, well, we're going to keep using all of the vaccines that the Pfizer and their has produced until it's done. No, we need to examine, you know, as you said, a risk benefit calculation to find out at this point, should we be, especially our

children with statistical zero risk of severe outcome of death if they're infected. So they have a very, very, and I applaud Dr. Drew for bringing this topic on the show because it is a very, very important discussion for us to have. And thank you very much for bringing it out. So let me, if you don't mind, let me, I know you're going to agree, Kelly, but let me just quickly just say, you know, let's look at the 75 and older the the when you look at the data the 75 and older there does seem to be consistent benefit in terms of reduction of more serious consequences now whether that's cellular immunity or or what i mean that seems

to be in the data in the elderly population. And I've seen it clinically. That has been my clinical experience for sure. And they seem to tolerate the vaccine very, very well too. I've seen really nasty, horrible things in middle age and younger people. I've not seen anything like that, interestingly, in the elderly population. And let's say there is some long-term something from this mRNA technology. It's not going to mean that much to somebody with an average life expectancy of 10, 12 years. But in terms of keeping them going...

Go ahead. I was going to say, I think you're right. I think the issue is the reason you perceive that an elderly person in a nursing home, for example, tolerates, quote-unquote, the vaccine betters. Number one, you aren't worried about fertility issues and you won't see them. Those people generally aren't exercising vigorously. So the exercise-induced issues that we see, the myocarditis, pericarditis, shortness of breath.

I've got a pretty active, certainly my 65-year-old plus, but even my 75-year-old plus patients are a very robust group. But let me just say, the impregnated myocarditis is in the males under 40. I mean, it's not in this population. We just aren't seeing it. And so that's where I defend the vaccine, is in this population where,

in terms of focused protection of the elderly, this does seem to have some utility. And I think to attack it too vigorously for them is concerning. Go ahead. I think, you know, and I've said this many times, that early on, and I mean very early, when the original Wuhan strain was still active, you might have convinced me that it made sense to give a 92-year-old debilitated nursing home patient a vaccine because there was some modicum of protection against that original strain. But the efficacy has long been below zero.

It is now, as Dr. Alexander points out, it is negative efficacy. In all ages? In all ages? In all ages. In all ages. It is negative efficacy. Your risk of contracting COVID is higher the more vaccinated you are. And frankly, what the jury's out, what we don't know yet, we know that it increases your risk of contracting COVID and having severe symptoms.

What we don't know is what it's doing to your overall immunity, your risk of contracting influenza and having a bad outcome, your risk certainly of developing a new cancer because you have suppressed your normal immune response. We certainly know that people are having repeated outbreaks of shingles and other things because their immune systems have taken a real ding from these. Dr. Reich, I was gonna say, Dr. Alexander, Dr. Reich just shared

with us a couple of days ago a new study that looked, for the first time that I'm aware, at the risk-benefit calculation specifically for the 18 to 29-year-olds with regard to the boosters, because it's addressing this ethical issue of ongoing mandates for kids to get boosters before they go back to school or, say, young military recruits. And that study showed that for every one hospitalization that is avoided in an 18 to 29-year-old, they're anticipating, you could anticipate based on CDC data, anywhere from 18 to 98 serious adverse events. For every one hospitalization that's avoided, you could have as many as nearly a hundred. And a serious adverse event in this study was defined as something that resulted in death,

near death, hospitalization, or permanent disability. How in, even if you wanted to argue that that study was off drew by an order of magnitude, so it's not actually 18, it's only half that nine. How eight, five, how in the world can you justify mandating a vaccine for somebody under the age of 30 at this point? I mean, truly, Dr. Alexander, I'd love your weigh-in on this. I will get him in a second, but you know I'm anti-mandate. Mandate is not my jam. Any of these mandates, mask mandates, vaccine mandates, any mandates, I'm very, very concerned about that at all. But yeah, I am really concerned about the under 40

particularly males. I'm very, very, very concerned about it. There's a signal. We see a signal, and it's being ignored. Now, people, the reason it gets ignored, I've seen two pushbacks, and I'll just throw them out there so they're represented. One is the myocarditis. Paracarditis is the main signal. It's largely, in quotes, reversible and mild and no big deal.

But let's remind ourselves, myocarditis is a big deal in adolescents. But okay. It's not reversible. The other pushback, yeah. I just recently talked to a cardiologist who was all in on vaccine, and I was surprised. And it was a quaternary and tertiary facility he worked at where he was seeing lots of kids referred with really serious myocardial and pulmonary complications of COVID itself. So it does happen. It does need to be compared against COVID, but all the signal I see under 40 looks like you're making well kids sick for an extremely remote risk from the illness itself. Dr. Alexander, you go ahead. Yeah. Well, you know, Dr. June,

what Dr. Kelly said is correct. And what you just said, you know, the under 40, we find that the signals for myocarditis and paraglideritis are so stark, particularly the reality is that I think that what was done wrong here is that the studies were never conducted for the proper duration such that we could exclude harms. That's a very important tool. So we have been giving these out carte blanche across all age groups when we've not studied the short, medium, and long-term implications. And we are seeing that. We are seeing the ratio is about nine to one. I think of every 10, nine are male, one are female. So females, girls do get impacted too by the myocarditis, periodontitis, but predominantly male. And look,

I'll share a story. I can't name names, but somebody got in contact with me and I put him in contact with a top global cardiologist you would probably know these people but I can't name anyway and what happened was their son it's about 25 a prime of his life in Texas took he went and he took the booster without even sharing with the parents, et cetera. Athlete. And all of a sudden he just, he just fell apart on a devastating diagnosis of myocarditis. So much so that when the parents called me, they wanted me to get them in touch with another cardiologist to see if what was being done in the hospital was the correct protocol. So which I did. But here's the key.

He was placed on a heart transplant list. When the father told me this, I had to explain explain to him I don't think you really understand if he's on a heart transplant list he's in bad shape plus he was number two and one day after that the father called me and told me that his his kidneys failed and he's on ECMO. And now they've put him to number one. So this person made a decision and it's a catastrophic failure. And we have to hope, I think, he's day by day, but he's in a very, very critical situation and he may not make it.

And this is the consequence. You see, the problem, Dr. Drew, is there is a portion of the population that apparently do well with the vaccine, but there's a portion of the population that does not do well with the vaccine. And the problem is that number

is so high. It should not be so high. That's the argument. It should be a real thing. Here's how I see it. I don't think anybody denies this vaccine has, I've seen long COVID, I've seen autoimmune syndromes, I've seen lots of horrible stuff from the vaccine. What I can't, A, the powers that be

don't seem to allow it to be discussed. There just simply can't be denies that there are some nasty reactions. They're not discussing it, but that's in and of itself bad. But what the real tragedy, as you said, some people do badly with this. We can't get the real numbers. So it's hard to know what the, again, the risk assessment, how many people are going to have a severe reactions versus how many people are going to be saved from severe COVID?

We just need that number. It's all we need. And we can't seem to get an official number. It appears also, Drew, that the data is actually being withheld, that it's being suppressed. Let's face it. We know only because of these vigorous FOIA requests. Now, we have the data from Pfizer, from Moderna, showing that they knew much of this before the vaccines were ever launched to the public. We now have evidence that the Israeli government is suppressing significant evidence of severe adverse reactions in their studies. Why all this suppression?

If you go back to 1976. Yeah, where's the data? More science. Back to that. More science. Yeah, well, and I'm suggesting that the science actually exists. It's being withheld. What I'm saying is I think there's an element of fraud.

And I think that if we finally, you're saying, you know, take a couple years. I think ultimately if you are able to really look behind the curtain, I don't think it's that the data doesn't exist. I think it exists and is being suppressed or withheld. Dr. Alexander? Why is my question? Why withheld? Why would they do that?

To protect their reputation? It'll slam their reputation eventually. Yeah, but remember, they have made decisions, policy decisions, that for the last two, two and a half years, that the verdict is out. It has costed lives. Not the virus per se. This virus has been catastrophic to high-risk group elderly people, no doubt. Morbidly obese, et cetera.

We can't pretend that away. But the collateral damage from the consequence of the policies, the closures and et cetera, is so glaringly, it's there. So these people, it's almost like they can't break ranks at this point because for them to step back and say, you know what, this really, this is wrong or this actually is wrong, or this actually is not working, or this vaccine is not, is a little more harmful than we realize, then they're going to have a lot of issues, even with liability protection on the table. You're going to have a complete cratering of public confidence. And I believe they have a lot of lawyers that are going to find a way

to take all of these people into courts. So, know there's serious liability. I mean, look, people ask me, first of all I tell them, I'm not your clinician, so you can't say I told you. Do I give my child, my child is six, the school is pressuring. What do I do? I told him this way. I respond to you like how I would respond to my brother. If my brother came to me and told me that his six year old son, he's thinking about vaccinating him. What do I think? I'd say, well, if the boy is healthy and a normal kid and no underlying medical conditions, et cetera, he's not a candidate for this vaccine.

His risk of severe illness or death, if he ever bumps up again, particularly Omicron, which is a common cold, is zero, almost zero, zero. And the vaccine has proven that it's ineffective against the Omicron. It's not properly safety tested. And we have instances of myocarditis, pergiditis, blood clotting, et cetera. So we have issues.

Well, then your risk benefit analysis to yourself, risk management analysis has to be that you would not give your son that vaccine because he doesn't need it now you have to make that decision yourself but you see that's not what the population is being told now now it's ruled out and you have parents want to line up i am just very happy dr juke i don't know where you come down on it with children but i'm very happy that the recent kaiser survey showed that just 5% of American parents have vaccinated their children after the FDA's decision. Because when we look

at that study, when we look at that June 16 meeting that the FDA approved the six-month to five-year-old vaccine, the Pfizer, et cetera, the data was so thin and so suboptimal and low quality that the confidence intervals stretched from negative, from California all the way to China. It was just bizarre that the FDA and then the CDC would rub a stamp on when the evidence was so poor. Small sample sizes, very small number of events, massive confidence intervals. They use a process called immunobridging as the methodology where they looked at antibody

title levels in the young kids compared to adults or older. I mean, it's just bizarre suboptimal, in my view as a purist evidence-based medicine specialist. It tantamounts to me to be junk science. And I'm being very, I want to be blunt. No, you are 100% correct on that. I actually do. I actually watched, I watched the eight hours of meetings from the and when the fda advisory committee came to the decision to quote approve or recommend those vaccines it was like if it if it wasn't so tragic it would have been funny it was like watching a saturday night live skit they show all of this evidence

that is absolutely horrible uh nothing that that would lead you to a positive risk-benefit analysis, nothing that showed that they were safe, nothing that showed that they had been adequately tested on the impact on the immune system, neurologic development, and on and on and on. And at the end, they say, yep, I vote for it. And you're thinking, what? How in the world could any, you know, self-respecting scientist come to that conclusion? It was absolutely overwhelming. And I, Dr. Alexander, I share your, at least your optimism that such a small percentage of parents have actually, you know, lined their kids up to do this. But just look at, you know, look at after a year and a half

of being told, for example, that these are, quote, safe and effective in pregnancy. Now, just last week, the UK government has come out and said they no longer recommend these vaccines for pregnant and or lactating women and that physicians should only give these vaccines to a woman of childbearing age if they can verify that she is not pregnant or planning to get pregnant all of a sudden now a year and a half plus into this the UK government is saying oops

don't give this to a pregnant woman but still here in the United States, we have the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecologists, as of this morning, saying they double down. No, they're safe and effective, safe and effective. What is going on here in the US that is so, and maybe in Canada too, I mean, given the politics there, I don't know. But the UK government at least is starting to back down on this. They've stopped. The UK government also stopped vaccinating five to 11 year olds, not just little, little kids, but five to 11 year olds. They're saying no more COVID vaccines because the safety data, what they are citing is lack of safety data. No, I agree with you fully. And I think this issue of the vaccine, this COVID vaccine for young children is such a contentious issue,

but the evidence is not there. It's very thin. And even to have emergency use authorizations for this is actually also a serious problem because they are using the emergency use authorizations for this is actually also a serious problem because they are using the emergency use program wrongfully. It doesn't meet the test of emergency use. And my advice, as I said to my brother, is leave your child alone. And it's not a candidate. And parents have to make it. This is a very, very gut-wrenching thing for parents because they're being pulled in all directions. And the school is pressuring them.

The government is pressuring them. And they just don't know what to do. And, you know, I'll tell you something, Dr. Drew. I would go in cafes across different states in America, even when I go back into Canada or wherever. And I would be sitting down with my family or friends. And all of a sudden, people would just walk up and say, are you Dr. Alexander? And I looked at them and I said, well, yes. And well, of course, I'd stand up out of respect, too.

And often it would be women, parents, with husbands too. The mother would just say, can I hug you? And I would say, well, you know, of course. And then they would almost collapse on me and then they would start to weep and cry into my ears

and I wouldn't know what to do. And they would say, you know, I just wanted to touch you. And they would say, you know, I just wanted to touch you. And I'd say, why? And then they'd say, I thought I was insane. The government made me feel like I was crazy for two years. And I felt so hopeless and powerless. Terrible.

And I just wanted, you know, and you know, you have to console people. This Dr. Drew is what parents face today they're overwhelmed you know they have this raging boiling anger because of what they have been through between the lockdowns and now this vaccine and government is not stopping and I think

it's a real real real problem for us because you know the evidence is just not there. Listen, a couple things. I'm going to send you an article, Kelly, from AP that says that the rumor that the UK changed its policy on pregnant women is actually inaccurate. So I will send you that to see what you think of that. Yeah, I actually looked at it.

We have a new enemy. Did you see that? No, what's that? This article, it's from the AP. I'm going to get to it. Oh, no, I actually saw what the U.K. government put out. I saw the statement on official letterhead from the from the the uh yeah the uk government i mean they you know it was it was not i think it wasn't too much question about

it they were very clear dr alexander i assume you saw that as well of course i saw that so i know exactly what you're saying and their statements is clear that the vaccine is contraindicated for pregnant women especially i'm going to send you with a press. It's even more egregious than if this is a fake news article that I just got sent. So we'll see. But as far as we have a new wrinkle in all this, as far as advising the parents of 17-year-old males with the relative risk of vaccine versus non-vaccine, the state of California will encumber your license if you dare to go over with the patient anything that is other than

the dogma of the public health bureaucracy. So if you were to say to your patient, let's discuss the risk-reward. There was a recent circulation article about macroditis. I'm concerned about it. I know some kids can get in trouble with COVID, but risk is extremely low let's share this information you think about it let's talk about whether you want to get the kid vaccinated or not and certainly we're not going to use moderna if we do it because i have graver concerns about that if you say all those things and for any reason the parents gets pissed at you and calls the state and said hey this doctor just

gave me information that's different than what's coming from the CDC, your license is immediately encumbered. And as many of those complaints could be made as people wish, and they can be done anonymously, and they can be done multiple times a day, and each one is handled like a police report of a criminal action. That's what we're into now. So welcome to AB 2098 in California. And because people are so beaten down in this state, no one seems to be really picking up the crucible to speak against it. We are just destroyed as a profession, and people are afraid to say anything. I agree. You know, this is absolutely devastating. And it will mean, frankly, I suspect, Drew, if it actually, you know, is enacted and people start losing their licenses or being sanctioned, physicians are going to leave by the throngs from the state of California. California is going to

face a crisis that they've never even imagined with regard to lack of practitioners. Because I am obligated as a physician, I'm obligated by law, by ethics, by morals, by my conscience to get informed consent from my patients. I am obligated to share with them what the data show and to help them to understand the risk benefit calculation for them which is very different from the next patient who's going to walk in the door that's an individual calculation if i don't give it to them i'm breaching my duty to them so for the state to threaten my license and say oh you can do informed consent as long as it comports with whatever the folks at the cd CDC are saying that particular day is absolutely repugnant. I wouldn't do it. And I hope that no other physicians will agree to do

that. And there will either be a mass exodus of physicians and healthcare practitioners from the state of California, or they're going to have to, you know, overturn this new ruling. We'll see. We'll see. But it's complicated. It's getting, it's getting more and more difficult and more and more. These conversations won't be able to be had. Not unless I switch my license to another state. No, it's a, and Dr. Alexander and I have both been, we we've both been censored up one side and down the other. I know Dr. Alexander has.

I have been not only vilified and suffered the slings and arrows, but I'm permanently banned from pretty much every social media platform for saying things, by the way, that the CDC now comes out and indulges themselves. Right. And of course, you get an apology, right? Ironic. Oh, yeah. I'm waiting by the mailbox daily for my apology letter to show up.

It's been kind of what our doctors have been put through, good doctors who have been trying to practice good bedside clinical medicine, exercising their best clinical judgment. What these technocrats and bureaucrats are doing is abhorrent. And I agree with you. Doctors would leave California in trance and people are not going to be best served and well served. So it's a very tragic situation. That AB 298 bill is, I mean, I've been reading about it and I've written about it too on stack.

And it's just, it's just, it's not even bizarre. It makes no sense because doctors have to provide a patient's information. And now doctors are even being curtailed from having any discussions. And like you, Dr. Drew, we all have been censored in different ways and cancelled and locked off of social media but we can't stop having this discussion in different ways because the public desperately needs to hear as many sides of this as possible so they can make informed decisions that's what the public wants. They want straightforward, honest, trustworthy information for informed decisions. Yeah, it's not that hard. It's not that hard.

It's the way everything, medicine, the way we've always done it is what Kelly and I keep talking about, both the way we discuss things amongst ourselves, the way we talk to our patients, the way we make decisions, just the way we've always done it. The fact that that froze during the summer of 2020 was, you know, again, one of the many mysteries of this whole experience. And there are many. And I'm, you know, thanks to Dr. Alexander and other guests we've had here, it's starting to kind of make sense to me. But I feel like there's still, you know, we still have the vaccine data in question here. Why is that being suppressed? Or is that being suppressed?

Or what's motivating that? Or why? Why aren't we just looking at the data like we always did and moving accordingly? It's very, very strange. I don't think people appreciate it. I don't see how they could appreciate it if they've never practiced medicine, how extraordinary this is. And Dr. Alexander, you use the strongest language in talking about the failures of the CDC. And I feel the intensity in the same way when I see the failure of my own

profession. But you were using words like catastrophic failure. And that's what this was. And I guess people have difficulty admitting when that's the case or cognitive dissonance kicks in or personal desire to protect yourself from liability or something kicks in. There seems to be something preventing us from really honestly just finally looking under the hood here and figuring this out and not never doing it again. And my fear is it may be years down the line before we have some means to do so. That's my fear. That's why I keep saying it's going to take a year or two before the full picture is out because I feel like the, the resistance is so profound and yet the, the trickle is unmistakable of information. So let's give everyone one last chance.

I'll give Kelly, you one chance to wrap up and then Dr. Alexander, each last thoughts. Yeah, truly the last, what I would say is I just can't tell you how much I appreciate you joining us. Dr. Alexander, you are a beacon of light. I get over a thousand emails a day specifically on COVID, both from our group and other COVID work groups I'm in. And the one I read religiously is your sub stack.

Every day I read what you have to say because it's always insightful and spot on and makes me think about something I hadn't considered previously. So again, I appreciate your willingness to come on and to share and to have this dialogue. I think it's critical. And Drew's providing this platform for us has been really a political issue. And really, it was not from the beginning. And, you know, many lives were lost because of the virus. Many lives were lost because of the restrictive policies. And some estimates saw that it will take the balance of the 21st century. That's 80 years for us to get back onto the footing that we were.

That is a disaster that, I mean, I don't know how to begin to fix, but the most important thing is governments and the technocrats and the powers that be must allow

contrarians and skeptics and people who question like myself, Dr. Victory, Dr. Drew, Dr. Rich, Dr. McCullough, Dr. Tenenbaum, and Dr. Oso, all of us, you need to allow us to the table because we can only bring information that will broaden the discussion and at the end of the day help the American population and the world because America leads the world. So the world actually is watching what happens next in America, how we emerge out of this, because so far it has been a bumbling mess. And I offer, Dr. Chu, I'm saying it openly, I am part of many research groups globally, internationally, in America. I offer my services at no cost to have discussions, to share science every day. Anyone wants it, just get in contact with me.

And thank you, Dr. Drew. I'm a huge admirer. I've always found you incredibly smart, very balanced. That's the key. You're not on one side. You're trying to help, and I'm very, very honored. Thank you. That's the key you're not on one side you you're trying to help and i'm very very honored thank you that's the goal the goal is to be helpful and we appreciate you dr alexander susan anything before i wrap up here the audience love dr alexander i'm sure and of course they

already love dr kelly so thank you for your wise, pure words, because we're all listening. We're all listening. Caleb harkens from the world of conspiracy theories, so I always like to hear if he's got anything of concern that he'd like to bring to us. Not this time. This was just a very interesting discussion. Yeah. This didn't even feel like very many conspiracies in this one at all. It seemed very straightforward, and that's why I don't have anything to offer.

These are three medical professionals that are discussing this stuff and looking at the actual numbers and research. I'm not a medical professional. You guys are, so I'm listening. And so we will be, we will be taken off YouTube at some point. And then Caleb will go in and then make his case and we'll be put back up again. And so that tends to be the way this goes.

But we are on other platforms and everybody was very, they were honoring the moment on Rumble today. We didn't have anybody shouting into the wind. Everybody was very happy and people were getting along on all the platforms. So I'm really proud of the audience too for listening today.

Dr. Paul Alexander, let me once again remind people where they can find, do you have his stuff up there. Caleb on the screen. Can you put it up for me? Yes, I do. It's up there. There we go.

DrPaulAlexander.com. Any of the links and the studies that were mentioned during the show are going to be posted onto the website very soon. So it's DrDrew.com slash 972022. All right. And we will just wrap this up. Dr. Kelly, Kelly Victor, Dr. Paul Alexander, we will see everyone tomorrow. 3 o'clock I will be taking questions.

We didn't obviously do any questions today. I've seen you guys all sitting very quietly watching on the Twitter spaces and we appreciate you being there. But tomorrow is your chance to come back and ask questions about all this. We have Dr. Harvey Reich coming in who is an epidemiologist. You heard us brought up a number of times here.

And we're going to try to get into the weeds of the data a little bit from his perspective. That'll be very interesting. And again, tomorrow, me and your questions, and we'll try to debrief on some of the stuff

we've learned today and last week and the week before. It's kind of getting interesting. And we'll see what your folks' thoughts on all that. Again, that is tomorrow at 3 o'clock. We'll see you there. Ask Dr. Drew is produced by Caleb Nation and Susan Pinsky. As a reminder, the discussions

here are not a substitute for medical care, diagnosis, or treatment. This show is intended for educational and informational purposes only. I am a licensed physician, but I am not a replacement for your personal doctor, and I am not practicing medicine here. Always remember that our understanding of medicine and science is constantly evolving. Though my opinion is based on the information that is available to me today, some of the contents of this show could be outdated in the future.

Be sure to check with trusted resources in case any of the information has been updated since this was published. If you or someone you know is in immediate danger, don't call me, call 911. If you're feeling hopeless or suicidal, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 800-273-8255. You can find more of my recommended organizations and helpful resources at drdrew.com slash help.