Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 2050: Post Pandemic Trauma: The Medicine Was Worse Than the Disease With Kevin Bass

Episode Date: April 10, 2023

In this episode Sal, Adam & Justin speak with scientist Kevin Bass about his controversial Newsweek article. Being objective through experience. His early years and background in the medical space. (1:51) Without health, what do you have? (12:54) Going from the debunker to getting attacked by the mob. (17:08) Breaking the shell around him. (23:30) Causing more harm than good. (32:34) Sharing his health scare with the vaccines. (36:44) The ‘evidence gap’ in science. (41:24) Debating the COVID vaccine efficacy. (46:12) The unintended consequences of the COVID policies on children. (50:59) How to heal the public's trust in government. (55:18) Why has the establishment gone to war with alternative treatments for COVID? (1:10:40) The fallout from his viral article in Newsweek. (1:13:57) Related Links/Products Mentioned For Mind Pump listeners you get 50% off! So, for only $49 + free shipping, you can test your testosterone levels at home with a simple saliva test from Equi.Life. Grab your $49 test today! April Promotion: MAPS Anabolic or MAPS Split 50% off! **Code APRIL50 at checkout** It's Time for the Scientific Community to Admit We Were Wrong About COVID and It Cost Lives | Opinion An 85-year Harvard study found the No. 1 thing that makes us happy in life: It helps us ‘live longer’ Effect of Sunscreen Application Under Maximal Use Conditions on Plasma Concentration of Sunscreen Active Ingredients New study confirms COVID-19 lockdowns did more harm than good Do physical measures such as hand-washing or wearing masks stop or slow down the spread of respiratory viruses? Pericarditis - Symptoms and causes - Mayo Clinic Cardiovascular Manifestation of the BNT162b2 mRNA COVID-19 Vaccine in Adolescents New Reports on Health and Well-being of Children During COVID-19 Pandemic Mind Pump Podcast – YouTube Mind Pump Free Resources Features Guest/People Mentioned Kevin Bass (@kevinnbass) Twitter Elon Musk (@elonmusk) Twitter Jay Bhattacharya (@DrJBhattacharya) Twitter Joe Rogan (@joerogan) Instagram Alan Aragon (@thealanaragon) Instagram  

If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. Mind, hop, mind, hop with your hosts. Salda Stefano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews. You just found the most downloaded fitness health and entertainment podcast. This is Mind Pump, right? Today's episode is a little controversial. We talk about the pandemic, looking back how crazy it was, how crazy the policies were, how ineffective they were, and the psychological trauma that it's caused

a lot of people, and also how the medicine was probably worse than the disease. Now we talked with Kevin Bass on this episode. He's a PhD in medicine, but also wrote a viral article for Newsweek talking about how the scientific community basically needs to apologize so they can regain trust with the American public. I couldn't agree more. Great episode. We think you're going to enjoy this one quite a bit. This episode is brought to you by one of our sponsors, the team over at stevencobraal.com.

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All right, here comes the show. Kevin, thanks for coming on the show, man. Thanks for having me, dude. Yeah, no problem. All right, so you got, I'm going to talk about how you got my attention, but then we'll talk a little bit about your background and all that. But I'm going to read a tweet that you have pinned. Your great Twitter account, by the way.

Thank you. Here's what you said. You said, I was wrong about lockdowns and mandates. I was wrong, and the reasons I was wrong was my tribalism, my emotions, and my distorted understanding of human nature and of the virus. It doesn't matter much, but I wanted to apologize

for being wrong. Now, you really got my attention with this. Now, I had known who you were before because you comments somewhat on nutrition and health, but you really got my attention with this i had known who you were before because you you comment somewhat on nutrition and and health um but this really got my attention and i went down the you know down the the rabbit hole of some of the stuff you wrote and then you wrote this article in these weeks which will get into which was amazing but let's back up a little bit let's talk a little bit about your background let's start there and then we'll move forward yeah um as people know i'm an empty PhD student but it started, I started first becoming interested

in medicine whenever I was in high school. I actually wasn't a great student, but I had medical problems and that first peaked my interest. Thankfully, I was good at standardized tests. I went to a good school, so I did well on standardized tests. I took a year to do a community college, and then I got into UT Austin. I only went there because like some pretty girls I knew went there also from high school. That's like all I was interested in and all I knew. So I applied there, I didn't plan anywhere else, and I got in, I was like, wow, that's great,

I got in. I didn't date any of those girls, but yeah, but I got into UT Austin, so that's a good thing. Yeah, I did well there. Study anthropology and biology partly because I was like into paleo diet, so I like anthropology because I wanted to learn, like what's the truth of the paleo diet? Like maybe we should all live like our ancestors without technology and without shoes and stuff. What's your thought on that now? Uh, I mean, has that shifted? I mean, did you think that way completely

and then it changed your mind? Are you more, you confirmed the bias? Like, where do you feel about it? Uh, well, actually in college, I think they taught us that like, yeah, our ancestors did live like perfect, beautiful lives and with perfect equality between everybody and all sorts of bullshit.

That's not true. We really learned like woke anthropology. But yeah, later on of course I realized like, you know, like we can't do that. Like we can't go back to live like our ancestors. So it's foolish to even consider it. Also, I mean we can go go on to intellectual tangents, but also we've evolved to some degree to live like modern people.

Evolution happens over even relatively short periods of time. So even in terms of dietary metabolic evolution. So in a certain sense, biologically, we can't fully go back and be a doctor. And there's also no going back anyway. Like there's so many different anthropological periods. There's so many different cavemen. There's not one kind of caveman.

We have this idea of a caveman who runs around chases. Man, that's not true. I think there's some truth in how we evolve over history or over time. But I also think that it makes me laugh. Is we tend to look back and we paint the super rosy picture. And we don't really, we're not quite honest about what it was really like. Like if you find bones from humans, you know, 100,000 years ago, it was like spear marks

and broken skulls and we rape Neanderthals. And that's true, right? Yes, yes. So it's like, okay, there was, okay, I think there's some truth there, but there's a lot of truth and also how we have progressed. And I don't think it's like black or white, you know? Right. I think we project our own fantasies onto those people and we ignore everything else.

Like, that's not savory. So we'll pick one anthropological tribe to study in, say, college, and that's the anthropological tribe that matches the ideological biases of the professor, and that's what we got taught. So, do you remember, like that unfolding for you? Because, I mean, I totally believe that and agree with you, but do you remember like that kind of a-ha moment

that you had when you started to realize, wait a second, like, this seems to be a rant. Yeah, this is way too. Well, I think I had, I realized the entire time that while I was being indoctrinated through much of college, I didn't know. So you were aware. Yes, yes, yes.

Before I started college, I was reading other things and yeah, I was aware that doesn't mean I wasn't affected. That doesn't mean I wasn't indoctrinated. Despite the fact I was aware, I was completely like, woke by the end of college. Wow. Because you're just exposed to it all the time. I don't know.

And also, the opportunities, everything else, sort of in the future, the people who are doing great things in the field, etc. They're all the same way. You're like, they're great. And also, there's great things to be said about people who pursue certain ideas along those lines. For example, like, one of the doctors who I really admired for a long time, his name was Paul Farmer.

He went to Haiti, he made hospitals, he saved so many occasions, like maybe hundreds of thousands of Haitians lives. Of course, he was like far left. People who are far left love him. He's kind of like one of the idols among people who are in the academic far left, but yet he did like amazing great things.

So just because somebody's like, well, it doesn't necessarily mean there. So because he was like that, I kind of, I kind of emulated or wanted to be like him, for example. See, this is why I appreciate you, Kevin, because I really appreciate people that can be objective. And I think a hallmark of someone who's not objective is they'll take a position

and then they'll take all the positions that are connected to it or people say they're supposed to be connected to it and they just adopt all of it. So it's like this is true. So I'm gonna believe all this other stuff. And there's no like, wait, let me break this down. Although this person was right here, that doesn't mean they're right about everything. And there's no like, wait, let me break this down. Although this person was right here,

that doesn't mean they're right about everything. And that's really lacking. And what I find, like again, what I like about you is, well, I mean, a couple of different things. One is you're very objective, so you can do that. And then two is your ability, which is rare nowadays, to be like, hey, I was wrong here. Here's now why I think, why I've changed my mind,

even though this is gonna cause potentially a lot of problems for me. Yeah, I try to be objective. You say that I'm objective. Like the reason I'm saying these things now is partly like as a result of struggling to be objective and failing so many times. And I'm still gonna keep like messing up

and having points of view that are wrong, but I'm just constantly trying to learn more and correct the things that I'm getting wrong. Yeah, and about the second part, yeah. I think, look, we're all, I don't know, I'm gonna get morbid here, but we're all gonna die, right? What kind of life do you wanna live? Do you wanna live a life where you lie to live? Like do you want to live a life where you like lie to people and or you lie to yourself? So that people like you and so that you become like

Successful is that the kind of life you want to live and then you die and that's what you left behind basically a bunch of lies You convince people a bunch of things that aren't true Or do you want to like tell people the truth sometimes take your hits and then when you die you left behind something that was true and will help people out later. And so I think that that's, I wanna do the thing that's harder because I know I'm not gonna die. Like I'm trying to do the thing and to leave that thing behind that's good.

Have you always been that way? Like yeah, that's developed over time. And college I was exposed to some ideas about death and stuff. And then it's taken me over the last 15 years or so to really, but have I always been on, yeah, I think also, yeah, I think I'm also maybe congenitally tend to be honest, like my mom is that way, she can't lie, she has a hard time lying.

My daughter is that way, my younger daughters that way, she'll say the worst things in the world to me, like talk about my appearance all sorts of other things. She's not trying to do me. Daddy, she'll take a shower. They too stubborn. So hopefully, hopefully I don't get that beaten out of them. I know they will to some degree, but I'm going to also teach them to keep carrying that on because, you know, I think, but it is part of maybe my makeup, my disposition as well.

Now, what got you to then go to medical school and what type of medicine are you pursuing? Yeah, so I was very like woke after medical school. I thought like medicine oppressed people and heard everybody like it's hard to really, so there's these two authors, some people might be familiar with them. One is Ivan Illich and one is like,

people have heard of Foucault and Michelle Foucault. Basically like medicine is this oppressive structure that takes advantage of people, or in the case of Ivan Illich, it takes the health of people who are in well-developed or affluent societies, and then uses that health to give drugs, to profit, et cetera. It actually takes away the health through medicine.

It's like this, it's insane. We're just gonna do. Yeah, yeah. I had, these are like exaggerations, but I had something kind of like these kinds of ideas and I just didn't want to participate in the system of healthcare because I thought I was like an oppressor

or something are part of an oppressive system. But then I realized that even if there are problems with medicine and healthcare, you can still help one person at a time. I can still make one small difference, even though I can't overthrow all the bad things that are the case in the world. There's so many oppressive structures, etc. I can still help one person at a time and have a meaningful life that way. Otherwise, I was maybe 26 or 27 at that point. I just didn't know what I was going to do with my life. I was so negative about the world. I was pretty depressed at this point because I was so negative about the world partly because

of what I learned in college for real. Then I just said, some points say, okay, do I want to live or not want to live? Do I want to live in this world or do I not? And then I decided, okay, fine, I can find some meaning through day-to-day interactions with patients. And over time, my views have become like less, like tremendously less like negative about the world.

But I had a very radicalized view about, like it was just all terrible about the world. So then, yeah, that's when I decided to try to pursue medicine. I did well on the MCAT. I got a 99th percentile score. Interviewed at a bunch of different places. I was still kind of like radical at this point. I still kind of like didn't know if medicine

was like a good thing for people or whatever. And this isn't something to talk about a lot actually. But yeah, but then I still got into med school because I got along with some of the interviewers or whatever. So. And what type of medicine are you pursuing? I was thinking about doing, so there's a dual residency called med psych,

medicine and psychiatry is basically two residences at the same time. It's five years and it's five years and it's four years. Psych could be just four years. I just want to do like, I like, I wanted to do psych, but I also love medicine. I don't know if I can leave behind medicine itself. So, yeah. Oh, very interesting. Okay, so, so let's get back now to your tweet. Let's talk a little bit about how you felt and what your ideas were or your opinions were about the pandemic and our approach

with the pandemic and some of the policies that we passed. Let's take me back to that time and how you felt about what was going on and then we'll get to like what got you to write that tweet and then that Newsweek article that way I think was so well written. At that, well, it is important to like bring together, okay, so we can talk about that particular tweet. Yeah, I just realized that, well, like, one of the things that I thought we should have done during COVID, and this is, I literally believe this stupid stuff, like I thought we should have done during COVID, and this is, I literally believe this stupid stuff, like I thought we should like, I really loved what China was doing.

Yeah. Hey, it's hard to say. I mean, it's really, I think now there's a lot of people, by the way, there were a lot of people who agreed with you, who now will not admit that they said that. So what you're saying right now is, it's like again, let's try to appreciate you. Cause there's people now, public people. Oh, I never said that. We got it on camera, buddy.

You thought we should do this exact thing. Yeah, yeah, like, I mean, you know, they're ruthless. I mean, basically they did whatever they needed to do to get rid of the pandemic. So if you were gonna leave your apartment and you could potentially spread the disease, we're gonna weld you into your apartment. I that that was like I thought that was cool because They would do whatever they needed to do to stop and I thought the most important thing was human health

There's nothing that's more important than life and health like what's more important than life and health There are some other things that are happen to be important and that I started to recognize later on but like If those are the most important things then yeah, you need to do what's the most important thing, you need to do whatever you need to do to stop people from dying. So I thought China was great. And, but then at some point I realized, like, look, we're not gonna be like China.

And even, and I was actually talking to people from China, and the situation in China was terrible. Like nobody, nobody loved like living and under lockdown all the time. They kept getting locked down over, I know people who are in China, the virus did start spreading in their neighborhood after they hit a certain threshold of cases or whatever they, the whole district we get locked down completely. I don't know if you guys saw the videos, people literally running to try to get out before the lockdowns happened. I just started realizing, first off, we're

not going to become like China. If we became like China, that would be terrible. Like it's terrible in China. And then and then it's even worse like over the last like a couple of months, they unlocked down. Like they're in the lockdowns and like millions of people died apparently. Like the real figures aren't released, but I know people again in China, apparently like millions of people die like hundreds of thousands of days, stuff like that. It's great. You know, Kevin, let me, let me pause you for a second, because you said something that I 100% agree with, but I also think our view of this particular thing is, is, can tend to be extremely narrow. So I agree with the statement that health is one, is one of the most important things.

Without health, I mean, what do you have? Okay. But here's where I think it's narrow. Is we viewed health as a very narrow infection illness death. We did not consider how complex human health is, which includes psychological health, mental health, spiritual health, your relationships, all of which, if our poor will cause a decline in your physical health,

which now we have all the evidence that that's exactly what ended up happening. But I mean, I knew this because I'm working in the fitness industry. There was this famous study that I think Stanford might have been staffer at Harvard that did where they showed that having poor relationships was bad for health, that's smoking. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Ten cigarettes a day. And so what happened is, and this is hindsight for a lot of people, but for us it was quite clear. We took

Infectious disease specialists and we said, hey you guys create the policy. Yep. We're not gonna ask psychologists Econonomists. We're not gonna ask people who understand human behavior or children child behavior. We're just like it What reduces infection? Let's just do that and then nothing else happens. And that is the science. That perspective is the science. Right, right, right. So that was all happening, you're like, let's do it. We need to do this. At what point during that time, we're like,

oh, wait a minute, this is not the right approach. Yeah, I mean, whenever I started, so it's important to explain the history. So whenever I got into medical school, I saw that like doctors are good people. Like everybody's trying to do a good thing. So I became much more moderate. So I went from being like a left-wing extremist

to like very much a centrist thinking, yeah, there's problems with the system, but you iteratively improve them. And then my perspective came once I got into the social media that there are people who are saying things that were wrong about health, wrong about fitness, wrong about diet nutrition, on Instagram, on Twitter, etc. And we need to correct these people to make sure that people had the right information.

And then I took a very like pro-establishment perspective, like the established basically right, everybody's trying to basically do the right information. And then I took a very like pro establishment perspective, like the establishment is basically right. Everybody's trying to basically do the right thing. And then it's other people who are criticizing the establishment of who are the bad guys. And I got so like involved in this perspective that I couldn't I stopped being able to see to a certain extent many times, like how we were actually doing things that were wrong sometimes. So during the COVID pandemic, I was unable to see that, but then when I started creating some of my own content, like telling people, okay, here's what the science says about X, Y, and Z, here's what you should do

as a result of that, I started getting debunked. So I used to be like this big debunker, I had like this thing called the Quack list, I would like have lists of names, it's crazy what I used to do, but I used to debunk like huge amount of people, then I started getting debunked by the people who were supposed to be my friends. And then I started really hoping for the first example of that.

Well, do you guys know Spencer Nydolski? Oh, yes, I do. Yeah, he really hated my content. He's like, you're just a student. What are you talking about? But I was right. Oh, a like, you're just a student. Like, what are you talking about? But I was right. Like, oh, a really good first example was sunscreen. So there was this really good FDA study published,

and like 2019 published by like all the people in a particular part of the FDA that were involved in this question, and there were like, MD, PhDs, great scientists, et cetera. Showing that whenever you applied the chemical sunscreen to your skin, it got absorbed into the bloodstream and then you could detect it several days out above the threshold of the level at which it might raise alarms for potential toxicity. That was published by the FDA

and some of these levels were really, really high for chemical sunscreen. Now, it didn't show that it necessarily caused harm and I was like very clear. It's not showing that, but it's above the, what they consider to be harmful. What they consider to be above the threshold for concern for future studies. So they ended up doing a bunch of other studies and they're still doing these studies based on those detection levels,

but they said, hey, you know, there's something potentially risky here. So all I did was report that. I reported exactly that way, and then I was interpreted as saying that chemical sunscreen was risky. A chemical sunscreen is gonna cause you harm. All I said is that we don't know right now

because we have this evidence gap that the FDA itself is recognizing that we have an evidence gap about, and there's these other sunscreen called mineral sunscreens that you can wear, and you don't have to deal with this problem. And other people are talking about this, so I just wanna address this and clarify this for people

so that people understand the issue that's here. It seems very balanced and rational. Totally. And then, and then, like, so some crazy people from, like, I think they love, like, chemicals and they love. From Copper Tone. For real, dude. They're Copper Tone scientists, dude.

Dude, I think they might be, I don't know what they are, but they're volunteers, they might be paid by whatever, but they're zealots, they're like anybody who like says anything negative. What's a good example is, they polarize in the opposite direction. So there's all these crazy people online who are like natural living people

who like all chemicals are bad, et cetera, et cetera. So then there's a whole other group of people who's like dedicated to fighting these natural, you know, and like debunking them. So this whole group of people who's dedicated to fighting the debunking them, like I came into the story and they're like, oh, you're a natural living person,

like they're, they just polarized like a cult and then they tried to debunk me without even like listening to what, they weren't even able to understand. They just put you in that box. Exactly. So that's what they did. really put you in that box. Exactly. So that's what they did. They put me in that box.

They like, it was the weirdest exchange I've ever had. We had like this public confrontation. It's so strange because it was clear like, they weren't listening to what I was saying. And they just wanted to like pretend I was crazy. It was, and it was trauma, it was like, almost traumatizing for me because I'd spent so much time like building identity online

as like a debunker, as somebody who was like pro science, et cetera. And then I was being called like a charlatan, I was being called like all these terrible things. And then like people who I respect were unfriending me and blocking me and stuff, I was like, what the hell is going on? Like what's wrong with these people?

Wow. Like yeah, it was like a cult. So, um. Did that give you a new perspective? Yes. yeah, it was like a cult. So, um, do that give you a new perspective? Yes. Well, that was like the beginning. Well, that and like another thing about like animal products and veganism and like I got mobbed by the vegans who are also, I was, I am like, I have a plant-based oriented perspective.

Uh, I support a lot of things that they do. And then so whenever they did that to me, I was like, what's wrong with you people? And part of it's because I like, there are these boxes, there are these like tribes online, but I like, one of the things you mentioned is you like that I like try to be objective, but being objective also gets you in trouble.

Oh no. Yeah. Oh, it's dangerous. Especially if you tell other people they need to be objective, which I've done a lot of. Yeah. Okay, so this takes us to human behavior Which it is our nature to try to put things into clean

Black and white boxes. It's very hard for humans to understand New wants and grainess. It's either you're good or you're bad. You're good or evil. This is right or wrong It's never it's so challenging for people to be like well or you're bad, you're good or evil, this is right or wrong. It's so challenging for people to be like, well, there's some truth in what this person's saying, not all of it, but I can see some truth. And you know what, this person over here, some of the stuff they're saying is crazy,

but they're also saying some stuff that's true. That is so hard for people to do just across the board. So I think it's human nature. That's why you find it in medicine, fitness, in economics. I don't care, actually. You find it in every single space because this is human nature.

But you were now on the other end of this cancel mob feeling type of thing. Were you like, oh, okay, this is weird. And did you, you obviously didn't back down. Why didn't you back down? Did it embolden you or did it make you scared? Like, what was the deal? Oh, okay. Well, so I wasn't, I was writing out the back down, why didn't you back down? Did it embolden you or did it make you scared? Like what was the deal? Oh, okay.

Well, so I wasn't, I was writing out the back down but like nobody cared too much about it. Like nobody was like interested in hearing my like complex discussions about what the different regulatory agency said. So I just like let it go because nobody was like, I wasn't getting any engagement. I just felt, at the end I was just felt like,

this is bullshit. Like this is terrible what they said. I felt like I couldn't even say anything back. Nobody even cared about what I was saying. It was so weird. And then this happened over the course of several different times, several different cases of this where this sort of thing would happen. And people would like DM me and say, hey, Kevin, you need to like, be careful of what content you post. I'm like, what are you talking about content I post?

I think they are seeing it from their perspective of like, like that's bad. And so other people are also gonna see it's bad, but I think it's their own like cult-like perspective. And so it just turned out that there's a lot of people around me that all have like weird, I think it's just like almost everybody does online or something. They have like cult like these group, group perspectives. So yeah, it's just over time though, I started to become more like disconnected from like

the, those, the evidence based, the online evidence based community. And by being like start detrivalizing from that, I started to see things a little bit different, especially when people would attack me. So one of the things that was posted by Elon was this prosecute Fauci, which I thought was great. I loved when Elon got like Twitter. I thought it was like the greatest thing because it was a, it was a total breath of fresh air. He's a smart guy. He seemed like intelligent. Like he was going a smart guy. He seemed like intelligent. Like he was gonna do things. He seemed like a love Twitter.

He wanted to make it better. So I was like, I loved it. So I like retweet everything he said. I think I retweeted the prosecuting Fauci and then like, I just got like hammered in my comments. Whenever I said, you're encouraging people to like attack and try to murder Fauci, man. Like he's got all these guards.

Now you're putting him in danger by saying these things. I'm like, dude, I just retweeted, persecute Fauci or like said something positive about it. And people just like, these are intelligent people with like New York time bestsellers. And like, these are really intelligent people. I don't understand like how they could be so. I mean, the other thing I would say to them is like, look, dude, you can say all sorts of different things.

Does it mean you can't criticize somebody because they might get attacked by somebody else because you criticize them? Like, it was just so weird, like how irrational. And then I just started really, hey, I've been like this all the time. I've done this to people. I've like said dismissed their perspective, et cetera.

And I started thinking about COVID. I started thinking about like, other people had a different perspective than me whenever they were protesting lockdowns. Other people thought differently than I did. And I started trying to think about, okay, why would they different perspective than me, whenever they were protesting lockdowns, other people thought differently than I did, and I started trying to think about, okay, why would they think differently than me? Is it because they're ignorant?

Because what I used to think, I think, anybody thought different from me about COVID is ignorant or stupid or evil. Literally, I really, really couldn't see anything any other different way than that. And then when people were respond, I would be like, this is crazy person responding to me, you know? Or they're just like lost, I was,

it was so weird thinking about it now. I'd say I dismissed them as a human. They were not a human to me. They were just some weird words coming out. It's hard to even describe how crazy this seems to me. We lived through the, very honest though. Yeah, we lived through the largest in recorded history,

in my opinion, psi-op operation. I'm not saying that there was one central person in charge, but there was a lot of, it's very clear, and I can argue this all day long, it's very clear, that there were special interests and people who either through tribalism or because they could make money or because they're protecting themselves or because of politics were would create a narrative and then the strategies were to silence and there's lots of different ways of science people one is to make them look like idiots ignorant They're stupid the other one is to say if you open your mouth you're gonna hurt someone to scare them or the cancel them outright

And so it was very clear to me, there was actually a turning point for me that I've talked about many times in a show. I wonder if there was one for you. But I remember specifically, there were the, there was a newscast, and in the newscast, they were talking about how you need to stay home, don't be around anybody,

you will kill people if you're around anybody by spraying the virus, you will literally murder a people. And then in the same newscast, and I remember when I saw this, I was like, this is peak propaganda. The same newscast, they pan over to the George Floyd protests where there's thousands of people packed around each other, like yelling, spitting, flying, everybody, nobody's wearing a mask.

And they were saying, this in no way is contributing in any significant way to the spread of the virus. And I said, those two things are not possible in the same universe, and that was a huge turning point for me. Did you have any of those where you're like, this is crazy. No, no, for me, it was all just like slowly breaking up this shell that was locked around me,

that prevented me from seeing it. Anything because I was always demonizing everybody else. Once that got broken down, I progressively started seeing this crazy stuff that you're talking about. And I feel like weird not having seen it. Whenever people would point the stuff out that you're, actually, I will say, I will say,

that was the one time I had one of the first disagreements with sort of the evidence-based community was during the George Floyd thing actually, because I pointed it out, hey, look, people can't go to church, people can't protest lockdowns, but they can go to the George Floyd thing. Also, block life's matter isn't going to change racial inequality in the United States. That's been going on for decades and hundreds of years if you want to point it that way. You're not going to do anything by having these protests.

You're just doing the same thing people are going to church that are doing. You're just doing it according to a different belief system. Yeah. Not to go down that rabbit hole, but now we know that BLM was a huge money making scheme, but we don't have to go down there. And so I was actually accused of like,

oh, are you racist? You're not going to be able to serve your patients, all this stuff. So I was actually accused of like, oh, are you racist? Like, you're not gonna be able to serve your patients, all this stuff. But even at that point, I just thought, I just thought some people were wrong about some things and overall the whole lockdown thing was, and all the COVID policy was done

with the right intentions. And I didn't see it as a systemic problem until later. And then once I saw that I started seeing it everywhere, I started seeing it everywhere, all of these contradictions that you're alluding to like masks, vaccines, they lied about so many different things. And you called us, I have heard, especially in just, I honestly, I know a lot of people who, I don't know necessarily know the people who are in charge of CDC, but I know people who are their classmates. I know a lot of people who are at great academic institutions.

I think everybody was, I think they were trying to do their best. I honestly do. I thought, I think they just like locked into their own, you know, I think they were like me, most of them. Maybe there were some psychopaths that were manipulating it and pulling some strings here and there, but I think a lot of people had good intentions. I believe that's what makes psi ops. That's what makes a psi ops. I subscribe to that philosophy more.

I think that that's what makes a so an effective side. If you study like the Soviet Union and these you know past oppressive regimes, all you need to do is Plant seeds and then you let people do the rest. So I'm not saying that you had millions of people that were part of this, you know, thing. It's literally you had a few things happening. Then you had the media, which would follow along because they're trying to get clicked or trying to get whatever. Yeah, two distinctively different narratives going on at the same time.

I remember having a conversation with my brother who was like literally didn't see it. To your point, didn't see anything that I was seeing and I wasn't seeing anything he was seeing. And then we started discussing this and getting frustrated because it was just like, where are you getting this information? We've completely had two different biases going on at the same time.

Did you experience that with any of your friends and family? Yeah, especially once I wrote the newsweek and I went on Tucker, I got like, excommunicated from everything. I lost like 90, 95% of my online connections. Yeah, and I would try to get on the phone with them and they wouldn't be able to understand. Like I couldn't like explain to them because they would either say like, their belief was either was a drunk on the clicks, which by the way I wasn't. Of course, I was elated to get the attention, but like the overwhelming part of it was like this miserable

sense of like everybody hates me kind of thing, and I've got to do the right thing anyway. I like had like kind of a mild depression during that period. It was terrible, but they thought I was drunk on the clicks. And then once they realized I was serious, then they thought I was brainwashed. I literally, it was no way for me to get into them

for them to take what I was saying seriously. They had to have some mechanism by which to dismiss it. So I would love to talk to you about, because you are a science-based guy, and again, objective, so you don't tend to have a bias. You're like, okay, where's the data? This is what it says, it contradicts what we thought. So this must be the truth.

I'll give you a couple examples. I'd love your opinion on them. There was one, and this happened either during the pandemic or shortly afterwards when it was unpopular. Okay, when it was unpopular, say. But they showed, they compared places with strict lockdowns to places with much looser lockdown. So like Florida to California, for example,

like those would be two extreme examples, right? California lockdown forever, Florida two weeks and then almost wide open. And they showed, they tracked cell phone data, like the way people traveled. And what they found was in the places where they didn't have strict lockdowns, when the cases of COVID went up, people stayed home,

people stopped moving. And they kind of mirrored what the lockdown places did, except it was voluntary, they didn't feel a, like they were locked down, business didn't feel like I have to shut down and it's being forced. It was rather like, well, this is what I'm choosing to do. And so you had similar behaviors,

even though this play over here, people could do what they want essentially and people over here. I remember seeing that and being like, oh man, like these lockdowns are causing more harm than good because just the way people feel about them, or anything. Remember seeing some of that stuff, that kind of stuff? No, but it makes sense to me because I know Sweden had a similar approach where they, everything was voluntary.

Of course, I think they'd limited large gatherings above like 50, at some point in 2021, above like 50 people and so they got, but the vast majority of the measures were voluntary and yet they have the same thing, the mobility day they saw, just plummet whenever you had peaks and spikes. Yeah, I wonder if we could have just followed more of that sort of model and achieved much the same thing and

But less like without the less to fall out. Yeah, that's right. It's public trust. Here's another one that I would love you I would love you to comment on I when they started doing the mask mandates, so I used the work I used to have a wellness studio and I used to train a lot of doctors and nurses and I remember I don't know what it was this it was this random conversation I had with this doctor and they talked about the protocol for teaching medical students the proper ways to use a mask. And it was ridiculous.

I remember like you have to touch a particular way, use it once, they do this one test where they like, where you wear like a particular mask and you smell anything if you can, you got it on wrong. It was like this whole ordeal. And I was like, oh my God, like there's training around wearing mask. I remember this was years ago, it was like 10 years ago maybe longer.

And then when they came out with mask mandates, I was like, nobody, nobody in there. Nobody knows how to do a mask protocol. I'm like, this is total waste of time. And now we have that cock-and-review that shows, it was, is that, do you think that's why the masks were largely ineffective? Because people just don't understand medical protocol and how to use them or was it more because it just was a waste of time.

There is a million different explanations for it, but in the end, like, yeah, you could say it's people nodded hearing, not wearing them, people not wearing them all the time. They take them off whenever they're eating. You could say it's people don't wear them the right way. It's a, maybe minimum effect of dose of the virus coming out of the mask is too high for the mask to make any difference in transmission. There's all sorts of, but ultimately, whatever the reason is that masks don't work, they don't work.

Like, yeah, I'm just gonna say. So it's like people come up all these things well. In theory, they should work, so you should still use them because in theory, they should work. Like that's not how science works guys, but you know, that's what they were trying to do. And they're still trying to do that in the New York Times and stuff, so I don't know.

Yeah, that's the difference between intended, like passing policy because of intended result and actual result. Yeah. We often do that. We'll pass a law, like this law is good because it's going to do this. It's like, well, what did it do in real life? It didn't do that. Why have this law?

I guess, I mean, I don't know. That's a great point because it's almost like the drug war and all sorts of other things. Yes. But people are like almost more concerned about the intention and the intended effect rather than the actual data, which is a weird thing. Yeah. What about the data now that's coming out? I know that some countries now are no longer allowing young people, maybe just young men to get booster shots or extra doses of these mRNA vaccines. I think there's some European countries here in the US

are still advocating it for everybody all the time. What is the data showing on the potential risks of the vaccines for? I know specifically it's like younger males is what we're saying. Like like it's more like more risk than reward type of deal. Am I? Yeah. Okay. Well, I don't know if it's.

I think the risk to reward ratio is unclear among especially young males. And there's also maybe among females, a whole nother range of potential downsides, like they call this autonomia and pots and all these other weird, I haven't looked at this. You've played this? I don't know much about it. Apparently it can disrupt sort of your autonomic nervous system

in ways that I don't fully understand. This is not something. Interesting. I've been focused on the myocarditis and paracarditis part of the story, but apparently there's other sides of the story as well. But for me, you know, I'll tell my story because it's good to clear this up.

People often have a misunderstanding about this. I had, I got paracarditis probably from the vaccine. Oh, you do. Yes. It was from the, so I had the two Moderna primary series, and then I had a Pfizer booster. I think a couple months later, I had an isolated paricariditis,

so elevated CRP, no-troponin elevation. What were your symptoms? Just tight chest? Like the whole, whenever I would lay down, it would felt like my head was about to pop off, like there was blood in my neck and it felt really weird. And then whenever I would exert myself,

it would feel like, I feel like pain or like anxiety. And then whenever I sat up, things were okay. Drain most of the day was fine. And then I had like several nights in a row. And then it got really bad one night. And I just had to, I was like, if I have COVID mild carditis, so I have to go to the hospital,

I like wrote this on Twitter. And I was like, what the hell dude, you go to the hospital now? Turned out like I didn't have COVID, but I had like, pericarditis. What's the difference with myocarditis and pericarditis? So pericarditis is the sac that covers the heart. Oh. Is inflamed.

Yeah, yeah. There's like fluid that is inside the sac that if the sac becomes too inflamed and too filled with fluid, it actually stops the heart from beating because it's called cardiac tamponod. The heart literally can't beat through the fluid. So it can be life threatening. If it gets bad enough, of course, we have with modern surgery, you can cut the sack and drain the fluid so people's heart is okay.

But paracarditis is inflammation of the heart muscle itself. Or sorry, myocarditis is inflammation of the heart muscle itself, which is in some ways kind of worse because if you have the heart muscle gets damaged, it's permanently damaged like for life. So they can look at MRIs, you can look at the heart of people who've had this kind of myocarditis, you can see permanent scar tissue as a result of it. We don't know the long-term consequences of that.

What if you're 60 years old, 70 years old, 80 years old, you had this vaccine when you're much younger, you have some compromise of your heart. Does the earlier compromise your heart that you had when you're much younger, you have some compromise of your heart. Does the earlier compromise your heart that you had when you're much younger make it worse and make you more likely to have a negative outcome or more likely to tip over into that range where your heart's not working properly? We don't want to be in the answer to that because, of course, it would say yes, no. Right. It's the concern. So then most people, like the doctors, there's a kind of a controversy in the medical community, or at least there used to be, or maybe there still is, about whether or not. So establishment, we'll call establishment doctors,

they say it's so mild that it's probably not a big issue, but we don't know, and we can detect, literal, we can detect little scar tissue. And in some cases, of course, people's hearts stop working properly. They get permanent heart issues. So the rate, the incidence of these kinds of problems is between, it could be anywhere from like,

it depends on how you define it. If it's subclinical, it is just like some damage to the heart. So some elevated enzymes that indicate heart damage and then maybe some clinical tests. It could be as high as like seven in 300 or like 2.3%. Wow. That's subclinical. So that's not something most people would detect, but if you're following up like, so they

did this in Thailand, they had a bunch of patients, they gave them the, actually, the Tudos series. On the second dose, they followed them all with these lab tests and they found of these 300 people, seven of them showed these heart symptoms, seven adolescents showed these heart symptoms. So, and that included some girls too in that cohort. So, it's very interesting. It could be quite high in terms of detectable changes to the heart muscle that might be adverse,

but most of the estimates focus more on like, okay, am I having like an episode where I have to go to the hospital? Right. So, maybe like one in 2001 and 5,000. You know what I find interesting about this, Kevin? Are you, how familiar are you with traditional? Because these were not traditional trials, right?

We fast-track everything. Understandably, by the way, I think that when there are emergencies, I do support changing regulations if there's emergencies to make things come through. I just don't think we should coerce people, but that's a whole different argument or conversation. But how familiar are you with traditional vaccine trials? Because from my understanding, like if they show like a little bit of problems in a huge group of people, they halt it right away. I don't think these vaccines would have passed based

off of the current accepted data. I don't think they would have passed traditional trials. Are you familiar with what the thresholds are with phase one, two, three? Yeah, I don't know what the thresholds are, but I know that in the past, with the neurovirus vaccine, where they had the intus deception, where the basically the intestine telescopes on itself, one of the original sort of neurovirus vaccines,

they took it off out of, I think, one to 10,000 adverse events for them. And that's the thing is, for young men COVID is not like life threatening for the vast majority of them, right? So the rate at which you get my carditis from COVID is probably much lower than the rate at which you get my carditis from From say the second dose of the Moderna or safe from a booster So then why are we giving people the vaccine if we don't know for sure because there's other

Uh problems you can get from COVID besides my carditis. If we don't know for sure, because there's other problems you can get from COVID besides my caritis, so we don't know exactly, but there's an, sorry, I was about to, there's an evidence gap, there's an evidence gap, and I don't understand why regulators don't care about this. If there's an evidence gap, you're not sure what the relative ratio of the risk and benefit is, you should pull the drug off.

You should pull the drug off the market until you know, for sure, that the risks don't exceed the benefits, that the benefits exceed the risks. You shouldn't be giving it to that population. This is something I believe personally. I don't know why they think they can do this. They use observational studies.

They don't use trial data as a result, but I don't know why we don't do more trials. For the polio vaccine, do you know how many children were enrolled in the polio vaccine trial? And this took like one year, this took one year. How many people? No. 4.5 million children.

Oh wow. We're enrolled in the polio vaccine. This is like 19, what is it? I mean, I had a 50s or something. Yeah. It's forever ago. Like why can't we do that now? Is it 2023?

Don't we have like a model that goes to say? And polio was way scarier. Way scarier. No. Like, why can't we do that now? Is it 2023? Don't we have like a model? We are way scarier. Way scarier. Yeah. I mean, that would hit kids and it was, I mean, that was scary. Yeah, true, true, true. But what, this is still a big issue. We can still have the political cloud to do this. We just FDA is not requiring it. And we don't need to do 4.5 million kids. We can do less and still get the same results. And, you know, if there's a question, we shouldn't release the drug until the question is gone. I don't understand what you're saying. Well, so I'll take a separate, I'll take a little bit of a different opinion with that.

Okay. Is that going to agree somewhat to what you're saying? I'm more of a like, let people choose type of person, just inform them. So I would come out and say, Sure, sure. Here's the deal. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

There's an evidence gap. We don't know. It's up to you, but you're taking this chance. Not, you have to go to school, to go to work. Coors, it's safe and effective. Is the slogan that we kept hearing, which is, I remember when I heard that, not that I thought it wasn't safe and not effective, but I thought, how can you say that?

That's a ridiculous thing to say when we don't know if it's safe and effective. That's a certain idea. It hasn't been around long enough. There's say when we don't know if it's safe and effective. It hasn't been around long enough. There's no way we could possibly know. In fact, I got labeled by other people as anti-vax, which I'm not at all. I'm pro medicine, but I got labeled anti-vax

because my position was, we don't know what the long term effects are. I'm very fit, very healthy. I think I'm gonna take my risks. If you don't wanna be around me, I totally understand. You watch, And I won't walk into your business if you don't want me in there, whatever. It's all up to you. People like your antivax, like, no, no, no, no. I think vaccines are one of the greatest breakthroughs in modern medicine. I'm just, we don't know. Do you know? You don't know. So why are you saying you do? It was crazy to me.

I agree. I think that's another approach that we could take that would make a lot of sense as well. I do want to mention about's another approach that we could take that would make a lot of sense as well. I do want to mention about you walking to people's businesses and stuff like that. Just because you're maybe, have you taken any of the vaccines yet? None. No, I've cooked none of the other vaccines. I was going to wait for FDA approval before seriously. So I have a bit of a hypochondriac streak in me.

The pandemic to me was kind of of, it was a tough time. I was gonna wait for FDA trial, for the actual FDA to say it's approved because I know up until then it wasn't. But by that point, I had seen that it didn't stop transmission. It wasn't super effective. I had known enough people who got in COVID. I'd saw that fit healthy people were low risk.

So at that point, I said, I'm gonna wait, I'm just gonna wait. And then more and more stuff came out and I was like, oh, I'm happy I did. You know, so I haven't gotten any of them now. All you guys say, I know. I know. My opinion early on, even the early data was,

because I told both my parents who will get it, they're north of 60, they're both deconditioned, they're at least 30, 40 pounds overweight. They've had other conditions before. To me, it was like the risk versus reward. I said, go get this. You should go get this. I'm not going to. I think I'd rather take my risk because I'm healthy.

And I've just kind of stayed that way the entire time. I think that it makes sense for somebody who has two, three underlining conditions and their advanced age. You probably want to roll the dice with this vaccine, because hopefully you could save your life if you did get COVID. If you're somebody under the age of 20 years old without any major underlining conditions,

probably should roll the dice. Yeah, so yeah, yeah, yes, I agree with that. Also, I think like, I do think the vaccine isn't that bad. Like, it's not that bad. It's just that there's a question in young great and people are healthy and we need to be open about that question and a lot of people probably can. A lot of people will benefit from the vaccine.

It's just we need to be aware of the risks also and be honest. I love that. Let's be honest. The vaccine sucks. Here's the deal. I'm gonna tell you why it sucks. If you look at the efficacy, how long it lasts,

and it's, what the data is showing, the side effect risk profile. Not death, I'm not going crazy with this, but like people saying I gotta take days off work, I feel like shit, whatever, that's the side effect. If you look at all that and you compare it to other vaccines on the market, it sucks. Like I can't think of another vaccine that sucks is bad.

Here, no, isn't COVID vaccines. Let me try to, let me try to make it sound better. It, it, it's nice, not that bad. So, so it's true that the COVID vaccine wears off between say three to six months for symptomatic disease, but it provides durable protection. I sound like I'm on like a pharmaceutical. That's five years from now.

But it really does provide durable protection as far as I know, many years maybe even almost lifelong protection against severe disease and hospitalization. Okay. So that's what the data is showing now. Yes. Yes. You will, after three to six months, you don't have much additional protection from just getting COVID, you're still going to get COVID. Yeah, so you still get sick. You're not going to go to the hospital, you're not going to die. Got it. And that's something that like they're not communicating. I don't know why they're not communicating. Well, I'm glad you're explaining this to me because they're not. It's so crazy that they're not going to, and they're just saying instead, oh, you got to get boosted

every year. Like they're, I'm just going to die gonna die. So, there's no, I don't understand why they're telling you to get boosted because the boosting doesn't actually add additional protection against severe disease death and hospitalization. They don't tell you that. According to the randomized controlled drug data, including like 6,000 participants, they saw no benefit whatsoever.

In the median age was like 60 years old. And they saw no additional benefits because everybody who received the vaccine, the Tudos series, nobody went to the hospital, nobody got severe disease, nobody died. So why are they giving them these extra boosters? And then you have the side effect profile. So in that sense, I would say,

I would agree with you 100% as far as boosters are concerned, the benefit versus the risk is terrible. Yeah. I would, okay. So yes, that's my, well that's where you are now, because obviously you said two shots plus the booster, right?

I didn't know at the time, I just trusted the experts, I trusted the science, I just took whatever they told me. Well, I got the answer for you, I know why they're still doing it. You have simultaneously, one of, compared to other vaccines on the market, okay? So I said it sucks, but to be clear, compared to other vaccines that have been around for a while,

like polio vaccine, incredible protections, you know, we had smallpox at one point, those vaccines protected us very well, there's diphtheria, there's, you know, pertussis, I mean, okay, compared to other vaccine on the market, we have a very, not very effective, still allows for transmission, yet simultaneously, the most profitable vaccine

in all of history. That's why. That's why they're still telling people to because this was one of the first times in history you had a vaccine that was, first of all, taxpayers paid for millions of doses and then on top of it government advocated for coercion, the forced people to get it. So that's why. That's what I think is. Well, and also I mean, I just remember Johnson

and Johnson getting pulled off, because I was trying to do my research to slow plane it, and I know this was like an experimental vaccine coming in, but I was looking more at Johnson Johnson, something I can understand. And then that got pulled from the shelves, and I'm like, okay, like let's see what happens after this, and I'm trying to see how the let's see what happens after this. And I'm trying to see like how the population

has been affected by all this. And you know, for me, it's all about being educated as much as possible, not just being like pushed into something. And so that was like where I was like kind of waiting this out and like not seeing a lot of progress. Yeah, Kevin, you have two kids you said, right? Two kids. Okay, let's talk about the effect of the policies on our kids.

This is where I feel like this is the clearest, easiest thing that I think everybody should be able to see by now, that we have anxiety, depression, we have just social skills, verbal skills, education in terms of people's test scores, all took massive, massive hits during the pandemic, now directly connected to the lockdowns and isolation, which had a terrible devastating effect on children. This is super, super clear. What, now were your kids, where were you at the time and were the policies keeping your kids at home

for a long time like we were here or were you looking at that going, wait a minute, this is not making too much sense for my little ones, because like for me, I remember they were doing mass mandates in school. I'm like, do you know how hard it is to have a four-year-old keep their socks on? You can tell me they're going to wear a mask all day long. This isn't making any sense. When that was happening with your kids, were you like more, oh, wait a minute, or were you still 100 percent? Yeah. So you got to remember, I started from the point of view of like we should lock people in their house.

They're trying to, yeah, we should like weld their doors shut and get the military in the streets. That was my, so it's, you know, it's a long ways to, yeah. It's true, a long way. To, yeah, so. Have you seen any, have you seen any personal, personally, with your kids, any negative effects of the mass mandate and all this Personally, they've been fine I'm not exactly sure why I Goes taking care of it. That's the my mom's kids or my kids mom

But so their test scores did fine, but I didn't see like on me as like Like she had these standardized test scores where it showed like her class and then it showed her progress and like her class like did like completely plateau for that period of time. Like maybe it went down a little bit in terms of their educational attainment

during that entire time, which is crazy to think about. And this is like a good school. This isn't like, you can think about just disadvantaged kids. It's, it's a, yeah. It's destroyed a generation of children as far as their schooling. It's literally in the United States, I think they've lost like half a year of schooling compared to,

and then Sweden, they didn't lose anything because they refused to close down the school. So yeah, it's tragic, especially people, kids who are disadvantaged. Yeah, did you find that ironic that the side that was like that's like pro Help the disenfranchised help minorities help the working class Their policies actually cause the most damage to those people like small businesses got destroyed Minorities got hammered by the policies worse than other people and then kids in

Like not super affluent schools where parents could afford tutors and mom could be home or dad could be home Like they got crushed. They were at home by themselves Sometimes without internet access. They couldn't even get school for months at a time. Did you find that ironic that that whole? And it might not have helped disease transmission at all or had minimal benefit as far as preventing deaths for those people. So they only got negatives and no positives. And then wealth got more concentrated among the top 1%. They, of course, as you point out, can have tutors

so they're getting even more ahead than they used to be. While the lower class is getting crushed and their dreams of social mobility are now seriously impaired compared to what they would have been. And I don't think they did this on purpose. I don't think we did this on purpose. But it was a disaster. Some countries didn't do this. Sweden knew not to do this.

So we knew at the time we had that option available. We were a villainizing Sweden by the way do this, so we knew at the time, we had that option available. We were a villainizing Sweden, by the way, when this was happening. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We were villainizing them. We had that option available. We chose not to use it.

So at that time, we had the knowledge to make that decision, that right decision, we did not make that right decision. We made the wrong decision for some reason. And we need to, and so this is one thing that Jay Bhattacharya, who's kind of a leader in criticizing a lot of these policies, was one thing Jay says is we have to have a commission to Congress needs to

pull together a commission and we need to have a reckoning, we need to understand exactly what went wrong and why and people who did these things wrong need to be held accountable because they could have made a different decision than they may have. Kevin, let's go there for a second because you mentioned something that nobody's talking about that I think is the greatest danger that has come out of these policies that some people are still advocating for, which is the distrust of the medical and scientific community, which I think is terrible because what happens is when people start distrusting,

you know, these people who actually work hard, many of them good, most of them good people, who are trying to be objective, who use data, they don who actually work hard, many of them good, most of them good people who are trying to be objective, who use data, they don't just like go, they don't just distrust this person, that's it. They distrust them and then they move their trust to all kinds of crazy places. I feel like that's the biggest, I don't know if you've seen polls, have you seen the polls on like people's mistrust of the media and the scientific community? It's like, it's normal.

Yeah, it's terrible. How do we heal that? Because that's screwed now, it's totally screwed. So we have to have that commission, like when we're talking about, I think one thing I was thinking for a while was we should remove those people, but then that would just be a partisan battle

and then like liberals would just be like, oh, like Republicans or anti-science, they're trying to remove it. Like, so this is the only thing I come up with, I don't know if, this is the only thing I come up with. This is the one I'm gonna write in my next article. Like we need to be able to persuade those people who did all this stuff to like step down. I mean, I can

like do the fantasy land like it you're wrong and step down. Sure. Okay. I mean, I mean, okay, lot easier to lie and sweep it on the rug and just let delay for about four more years. Everybody, please, just talking about this. Was it off air? We're off air. We're off air. We have this conversation of like how crazy some of the stuff that I mean, we're talking about MLK and John F Kennedy. We're talking about the things that the

government has done that has come out that is clear that they that just blatantly like insane that if in the moment when it happened, we knew for sure and that proof was there, there would be just an upheaval and distrust. But when enough time goes by, we tend to just not care and just let it, and to me, that is gonna be the strategy with all this. It's just keep kicking the can down the road and denying and lying and manipulating.

And then five years have gone down the road. Everybody forgot about that. That's what I'll probably have. And the reason why I believe that is, look at history. Look at those things that we don't have. We don't have these conversations. That's what's gonna be the real problem. That's why we need to keep dissecting this whole thing.

What actually happened, where did we go wrong? We need to have these out in the open and we need to discuss this because it is something that's going to repeat itself in the future. You mentioned Jay Bhattacharya and at the time, didn't he get like silenced and there's other people too that were like they would come out and say like, hey, and it was objective, they weren't crazy, they weren't saying any crazy. And they were getting hammered from all angles.

When you were seeing this at the time, were you starting to be like, what the, this is weird. Like, why are they, this doesn't feel like a free country? No, I thought they are terrible people who are, who are saying terrible things. So you, yeah, you're so honest. I love it. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely love it. It's, it was wild to me, though, to look back. I remember when Joe Rogan got COVID and he talked about what he was taking and he's like taking chiver mech, which now we have data showing, they didn't really do anything, but they totally talked about every mech

and like it wasn't the drug that it was. Like oh, this is animal horse medicine. It's like, we've been using this on people for 60 years. We've been for veterinarians apparently. Yeah. Okay, so this is actually really interesting, the point that you mentioned is that they're gonna just wait, I don't know if they can now though.

This is two of them, 23, you know, we have social media now. I think that might change the equate, that's why they wanna control social media. That's why they hate Elon, right? That's why they're gonna probably do anything they can to get rid of Elon. And that's why I don't know if this is true. You guys may know more about this than me,

but apparently that may be why they wanna get rid of TikTok because they can't censor TikTok, China controls TikTok. Oh, wow. So they're making a bunch of stories about how to take all this hard, you know what I'm gonna do? But it's not really about that, it's really about, oh God, we can't control this

and therefore. That's not the propaganda we want, we want to own a problem. Wow, that's a good point. So, but with social media, maybe we can just keep talking about this Wow. That's a good point. So, so, so, but with, but with social media, maybe we can just keep talking about this and it's not going to go away. Well, so I don't know what you guys will. And what, what, and unfortunately, the way to look, right, we'll create a bigger problem. Okay. That will distract us from that one. We need to release

the next variant. I mean, that's, I mean, that's the killer warning. I don't want to be fucking Debbie Downer over here, but I mean, that's kind of, that's, to me, that would be the formula. I agree because of social media, it's gonna be harder and there's gonna be more up people, but I think there's so much stuff coming left and right that I think that we'll just get distracted by something else that's crazy.

But okay, here, let me make this argument. The aliens are coming soon. I mean, I'm sure that's down the road. Like, we'll soon. Yeah, we're never trying that for a while Okay, let me make another argument though and this I haven't made this argument publicly yet I've been working on it. I want to put this in this and this and I'm gonna write but I just, I've been thinking about it like last week or not more than that like a month. It's not just the last of public trust that that that resulted from this. I also think when you suppress

speech, when you suppress your critics, when you demonize them, when you say, oh, only Fauci's right, only Willinskis right, only like this small number of elite experts are right, and everybody else is wrong, we shouldn't listen to them. Then you're actually preventing yourself from getting feedback, for getting information that can allow you to know how your policies are doing. Yeah. Right? So, if you're... And so science is how science works. Science works by... Is that anti-science? Exactly, exactly, exactly. That's beautiful, perfect. So, let's find in a sub-stack.

It's gonna go in my next article, it really is. So, science works by, put it for hypothesis, try to support by data, and then you have people who criticize it. Well, science stops working when you shut down that process. I think part of the reason we fucked up so much on COVID is because we shut down all the alternatives. Yep.

And so this problem needs to be solved not just to restore public trust, but also to make the institutions work better. And if we have all these problems that are going to come from on the horizon towards us and like screw everything up, we have to solve this problem in order to make us better able to respond to those problems. So I would say that's the argument for why we can't just sweep it on the rug. That's the idealistic. No, actually, that's been a battle for a while now.

Again, if you look at totalitarian regimes, and one of the things that they do is they create the truth. They create the narrative, they demonize anything else, and then they switch it so much, this is the Soviet Union did this quite effective, that people just said, just tell me what to believe, like just tell me what I need to think, and that is a very dangerous,

and makes people very easily Manipulated it makes a manipulatable and it creates a strengthens tribalism quite a bit We need to have the ability to debate and discuss and to have some trust in some of our institutions otherwise What do we left with I think we're gonna be left with? Something much worse. Yes, yeah, you know? Yeah, like when Hitler came along, right? Yeah, that's what he was giving them the order that people craved that they didn't have at the time

and he was elected. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's the terrifying thing. So I think what you did is what needs to happen. I don't necessarily think people need to step down, but maybe they do, but I think if they came out and said, it'd be nice if some did. I know, I think if they came out and said, and just were honest, like even if they're not honest,

this sounds honest to me. We didn't know, we were scared, we acted the way that we thought was best. Here's the mistakes that we made Yes, let's not make those mistakes again because that builds trust I mean, yeah, it's kind of transparency any kind of effort in that direction I think we'll go a long way with the public. Yeah, and here's how we're not gonna make those mistakes again Here's the kind of changes we're gonna make in order to make those mistakes. Yes. Yeah. Yes

Yeah, but I mean is that possible when many of those people, their pockets were getting lined with the profits from some of these pharmaceuticals? Yeah, I mean, isn't there a lot of, and I'm asking, I don't know for sure. Yeah, so I think so because, look, I will forget, actually I have a lot of empathy for people, because I was on the other end,

so I'm a very pro-liberty person. And I look at history and I know some of the for people, because I was on the other end. So I'm a very pro-liberty person. And I look at history and I know some of the biggest risks. And to human life, which a lot of it revolves around, especially in the 20th century, being oppressed, silencing speech, putting 40 people in the gulag or whatever. And I also know the danger of viruses and what that has posed to humanity. And my opinion was tell people the risks and the dangers. If you own a business and you say on your sign, you can't come in here unless you're vaccinated, you can't come in here unless you're whatever, or you can, or if you own your house or your neighborhood and people learn, I'm fine with that.

That's people voluntarily interacting with each other and protecting themselves and just inform us. And then let's take it step by step because if COVID turned out to be Ebola or something like that, I think that it would have changed. That's where I was. So people on the other end of that, I was like, no, that's not cool.

I don't like that, you can't tell me that. Don't tell me what to do with that kind of stuff. But if they came out now and said, hey, this is what we thought. I don't like that. You can't tell me that. Don't tell me what to do with that kind of stuff. But if they came out now and said, Hey, this is what we thought. This is where I was. And you know what? The data showing I was wrong because it didn't help anybody. I'm forgiven.

Done. I understand. It was a scary time. It was weird. It was unprecedented in modern times. I mean, the last time we dealt with something like this was Spanish flu. And we didn't have social media and technology and all that kind of stuff. So I get it.

I think a lot of people would do that. I do. I think a lot of people would be like me who would be like, all right, no problem. Like I get it. So I don't think it's a problem. I think the issue is they're afraid of doing that because it just gives power to political parties and stuff that can use it. So if I say I'm sorry, I'm sorry.

So do you not think there is a financial incentive for a lot of these to continue to push and promote? Of course. So, yeah. I mean, if you're incentive is better than your salary, that's a real tough thing to overcome, right? And it's already moving in that direction for you. It's easier to probably continue the lie

and kick the can down the road than it is to admit you're wrong. And then also potentially cut off a stream of income that is greater than the one that you make for your profession. Yeah, there's that. And then it's all just and said political fodder. If I say that, the political party on their end is going to play that clip over and over again and win. So that might be the problem.

I don't know, man, but I like what you did. And I think if more people in the medical community and scientific community did that, they'd rebuild that trust. Because here's my fear. My fear is that we're entering into a time. We see this with media. We see this with news. We're seeing that with science.

We're entering into a time when nobody's gonna trust anybody. And that's chaos. And people will find somebody to trust, as you point out, they will find somebody, they will find, and it's gonna be whoever's the most charismatic, who can write the best, speak the best, whatever, that person will then get the power. And that person will not be subject

to the system of checks and balances that is the government, they will have their own source of power, which is not good for like, yeah. Yeah, that's my biggest, that's 100% my biggest fear. Because look, we work in the fitness industry and I know what that looks like on our end. There's a lot of shit information out there

and a lot of our space is not, you know, doesn't have to go through lots of checks and balances. And so we're constantly battling that. I'm like, oh, we're gonna do that with everything. You want everything to be like that, or as a trainer, I had to constantly educate people on, yeah, you probably shouldn't just not eat all that food, and you probably shouldn't just go on a liquid diet.

And yeah, the HCG injections you're doing, eating 500 calories a day, that's not a good idea. Like, I had to do that constantly. I mean, I would suck if we had to do that with medicine and science. Yeah, that's what I used to do constantly. That's what I was, I did. And for the same reasons we're talking about is to, I was worried that we would lose

authority in medicine and we would get the same sort of results. So I was trying to short up. That's why I always was a debunker. That's why I was trying to debunk this information. And it was constant. It's never ending. I know you're not in that space necessarily, but like, it's the same as what you're dealing with. I will say this, I actually thought about things

based on what you guys are. I don't necessarily need, think that the leaders need to take responsibility, so to speak. I think if we just have a body, maybe a commission, maybe something like that just says, here's what happened, that's respected enough. And we have the sorts of changes in government that we need to have in order, maybe a commission, maybe something like that just says, here's what happened, that's respected enough. And we have the sorts of changes in government

that we need to have in order, I don't know if we're gonna get that, but at least we started the body that makes that statement that's respected enough. It won't matter what Fauci or Willensky says. Well, isn't that what the CDC is supposed to be for us? Yeah, CDC is not, yeah. But what's with this?

Yeah, yeah, right. We could have a commission though that's appointed by the government that could do this. I could like make this. By partisan. Yes, and, we could have a commission though that's appointed by the government that could do this I could like make this bipartisan. Yes, and then we can maybe reform we need to reform the CDC I think but yes bipartisan hopefully bipartisan. It's hard. Yeah It's crazy I you know, I I here's my here's my optimistic View I remember when the internet. I mean, I'm old enough to remember with internet like, like, became just widely used, and I remember what it was like before. And I remember having

this conversation with people, family members, and saying, the, you know, the cats out of the bag, the toothpaste is out of the tube. This is going to democratize and decentralize information, like the printing press that just much faster. And the printing press, if you know through history, caused a lot of problems. Yeah, those wars as a result. Yeah, it took that a little long time because books take longer to print. Yeah.

But when it result in the enlightenment Renaissance, you know, scientific method, like spreading it, right? So I said, look, they're gonna try to control it, they're gonna try, but ultimately, I feel like the good information will surface. I feel ultimately will progress. So we're still in this massive filtering process. Yeah, we gotta go through this bumps and ups and downs

and like crazy shit, but I think ultimately, it'll lead to something much better. That's my optimistic side. We're not gonna, we're not gonna like say, oh, China's great, we're gonna like suppress Twitter, we're gonna like turn all all we're not gonna do that We're American right like I don't think we're gonna do that Maybe we'll in the short run, but in the long run will you know, we see this as a gift So hopefully it will be a gift and we'll have like a new you know revolution of

An ideas and in science and stuff so Yeah, I do want to point out one thing about vaccines though because it is important vaccines don't reduce transmission They do for like three to six months than they don't at all. So people saying like There's no public health basis for for vaccine mandates. There's no Bay public health basis for vaccine mandates in universities. It's uh, it's just a lot of risk for all vaccines Are you referring to the COVID vaccine? Sorry. What would you uh, okay? So I'd like your opinion on um What what does the data say in regards to somebody say our age healthy individual who got the vaccine versus actually caught COVID and get natural immunity? Who's that who's got the advantage going forward?

Well, it's going to be similar. I would say natural immunity is probably going to be better. That's what the data show tends to be better. probably going to be better. That's what the data show tends to be better. I'm assuming you don't get messed up by COVID. You know, of course, it's probably safer to get the vaccine for for many demographics. It's probably safer to get the vaccine for then to get COVID. But as far as immunity is concerned, it's probably natural is a little bit better. Were you familiar with what happened with the supplement NAC? I've heard about NAC, people were talking about this. So NAC's been around as a supplement for,

I don't know, 20, 30 years. And you take it orally and it raises glutathione levels in the system. And there were some data showing that it was efficacious at preventing severe COVID, because it connected a low glutathione to severe forms of COVID. FDA randomly is like, we're going to make this prescription. And they see it's the lucker available over the counter.

Now, since it hasn't happened, but I found that very strange. It's so weird. This is another thing I don't understand. It's like why the FDA, why the establishment has gone to war with alternative treatments for COVID. Like, Iver Mechtin's not going to hurt you, especially if you have a doctor overseeing the administration of it, you use it in reasonable doses. It's super safe. It's super safe. There are some like top events, there's some case reports of of toxicity.

Usually it's like veterinary grade Ivermectin. Yeah, it's a whole tube of it or something. Yeah, like they don't know what they're doing. Well, and that the reason they're taking veterinary grade of our mechanisms, because a doctor isn't giving it to them. If their doctor gave it to them, they're like, okay, well, we know this says, and it doesn't affect COVID outcomes.

It doesn't affect one way or the other how well you do. So why was there this war against it? It's almost like, it was spiteful. It's like, no, you're not gonna take the vaccine. Like, it's not gonna harm anybody for people to try these alternative things. It's like, no, you're not going to take the vaccine. Like, it's not going to harm anybody for people to try these alternative things. It's only going to alienate them. It's only going to make them upset.

Yeah, I think what they were trying to do, if I'm going with the like, the good intentions route, I think what they were trying to do is say, look, we got to get as many people. Oh, sure, everybody to that one. Like, here's what we think works. Here's what we think works. This is the best option.

We need to prevent anybody from doing anything else because that'll kill more people. But instead what they did is they actually created more conspiracy theorists, more people who are alienated, more people that's the real cure that they don't want us to have. Like if they just said, ad doesn't work and left it alone, I think they would have done way less damage

than what they did. Yeah, like it's not like by preventing somebody who believes in Ivermectin, preventing them from getting it suddenly they're going to believe in vaccines. What kind of magical thing is that? If anything, it made people go... It's the exact same. They're the olden's or other thoughts. Yeah.

Yeah, I know. It's a terrible approach. Okay, so let's talk about the heat that you got for writing your article and some of your position. Like, what was that like for you? You know, what kind of response did you get from just the idea? Do you have any friends still? Not on, not online. Of course, like, yeah, people in real life are cool, especially my Republican friends.

They're awesome. I've actually gotten more Republican friends now. I'm like, ironically, right? It was actually really sad. I mean, I have, I'm actually not political at all. None of my friends are, but the first, I mean, I had really close friendships, just drove a wedge between us because of how,

they got politicized so bad. I stopped talking to my parents for a year about this. Wow, yeah. What were they, were they on, so you were like super pro lockdowns that were on the other side of the aisle. Yeah, they love Trump all that stuff Maybe so angry out yelling the telephone

Man, I'm so many households. I'm sure with through that. Are you guys cool? Yeah, we're super cool now Especially after wrote the article like we love each other again Yeah, so what was the fallout like, what, what you wrote that article? That must have taken some guts, because I mean, you're, you're, you could potentially get like kicked out, like, you know, or they could,

they could ostracize you or whatever. Yeah, I mean, as far as med school is concerned, I was worried about getting like consequences from med school, like getting kicked out or something, but like, my editor was like, you know, if that happens, you'll just go in a Barry Weiss podcast and you'll have a different direction of your career, but it'll be fine. You'll still be rich.

You'll be off your student though, really easily. So I was like, okay, we'll try it. Yeah, like whenever I put the article out, I had like a full hour where I wasn't able to respond to my editor. She's like, it's out. I was like, oh God, and I read the title, and it was like a very provocative title. I didn't come up with the title idea.

She did. What was the title again? We were wrong about, the scientific community was wrong about COVID-19 and it cost lives. That's it. Ooh, that's right. Ooh, that's pretty good. So I was like, I was like, I'll be staying home

for a week or two. I wanted to send a message back to her being like, I was like, I'll be staying home for a week or two. I was, I wanted to like send a message back to her, being like, please remove the article. But then he just like stayed there for, and it took me like 30 minutes or an hour to like feel normal again, like not. So I was like literally like paralyzed sitting there. And then it took like a few more hours. And I was like, okay, everything's going to be fine.

Yeah, but like basically all the people I talk to online, especially my scientists friends, yeah, they think they stopped talking to me. They like unfollowed me. Have you not seen anybody? Yeah, they're coming around. They come around at all. I mean, that's kind of sad. I also have, but I do have a minority, like 5% of people, like,

do you guys know who Alan Ergon is? Yeah. He's a really cool guy. Yeah. He's been so cool. I have a minority like 5% of people. Like, do you guys know who Alan Ergon is? He's a really cool guy. He's been so cool. And I've always tried to be very cool whenever he's struggling with stuff and he's been super cool. And then there's a few other people like, yeah, there's definitely supporters and there's

definitely like probably people in my administration at my school who are supporting stuff. But it's like sort of behind the scenes and it's definitely the minority for sure. Even the people who don't necessarily disagree with me strongly, like they see what I'm doing, they're like, ooh, like gotta stay away from that. You know? It's pretty cool. Don't let anybody know what I'm trying.

That's how to feel. So it was pretty bad. Mainly the thing is, I thought I could persuade people. I thought I could talk to people who disagreed with me who were my friends and I couldn't and that was just I Don't understand I still don't fully understand but Have you inspired anybody to to come out and say the same thing like hey man, I Looks like it. Okay. It looks like it on Twitter right like for a come on after there's a bunch of people who apologize have these like tweets and stuff

I thought it was like great. I think I think maybe it has impacted things It's like enabled people to think like just because I did it was great. I think maybe it has impacted things. It's like enabled people to think. Like just because I did it, like now other people, it's okay, it was a news week, I did it. Like now it's a news week, now it's okay to do it. And maybe that helped people. So. It does feel like the tide is turning a little bit.

But they think I'm a grifter, I'm a cloud chaser, I'm making all this money, I don't like making any money, I almost walked here because I didn't want to pay for the Uber ride. Yeah, I'm weird. But it was raining too hard, I didn't want to come in a puddle so I didn't, but yeah, it's all right. Whenever you do things you believe in,

that's the cool life, that's like where the life is cool. Life, do things you believe in, that's the cool life, you know? That's like where the life is cool. Yeah. Like, do things that are meaningful. I couldn't like live a life where I'm not doing like the authentic things. Like, how can people live like that? Yeah, I'm not agree. Yeah, you're preaching the choir, 100%.

Well, I mean, I really appreciate you and how you communicate, whether I agree with you or not, although I tend to largely agree with you, I appreciate it. I hope more people say or do this in every space, because it's a scary precedent right now. Lots of people are not arguing ideas. We're now just arguing people's character. It's no longer your idea is wrong, it's your evil.

And that's scary. And if we shut down debate and conversation speech, we shut down progress. And that's a dangerous precedent. I think that's really the first thing that needs to change is the attitudes on the ground. People on the ground need to understand that empathy, compassion, understanding,

that other people have a different perspective that's different than there's tolerating that perspective and understanding that they're coming from a place that's just different and trying to understand what that place is. That's like the first step. Like all this other stuff about people admitting the wrong, that's also important, but like it really kind of depends on us and hopefully we can become more like that

and more people can become like that. I don't know how to get people to become more like that. I think by making it not so scary to do so. Like you came out, other people saw it. Okay, he didn't get, you know, cruise five. I can do the same thing. So we need, yeah, so we need to be kinder to each other. Totally. 100% be civil. Well, thanks for coming on the show. Okay. That was, this was awesome. Appreciate you coming down. Thanks for having me. Thank you for listening to Mind Pump. If your goal is to build and shape your body, dramatically improve your health and energy,

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