The Daily Beast Podcast - Pfizer’s 5-Day COVID Pills Will Turn This Pandemic Around w/Dr. Eric Topol

Episode Date: December 21, 2021

Dr. Eric Topol tells co-host Molly Jong-Fast how big of a game-changer Pfizer’s upcoming COVID pill pack could be, if Omicron will be the dominant strain, and how we’ll know this pandemic is over. Plus! Co-host Andy Levy explains why he thinks Nancy Pelosi needs to go and Daily Beast media reporter Zach Petrizzo shares reporting about Turning Point USA’s Arizona festival, aka the new CPAC. If you haven't heard, every single week The New Abnormal does a special bonus episode for Beast Inside, the Daily Beast’s membership program. where Sometimes we interview Senators like Cory Booker or the folks who explain our world in media like Jim Acosta or Soledad O’Brien. Sometimes we just have fun and talk to our favorite comedians and actors like Busy Phillips or Billy Eichner and sometimes it's just discussing the fuckery. You can get all of our episodes in your favorite podcast app of choice by becoming a Beast Inside member where you’ll support The Beast’s fearless journalism. Plus! You’ll also get full access to podcasts and articles. To become a member head to newabnormal.thedailybeast.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi, I'm Molly Zhang Fast, no relationship to Kim Jong-un. I'm a left-wing pundant and a writer at the Atlantic EnVogue. And I'm Andy Levy, former Fox News and CNN-HLN guy and current cable news conscientious objector. And I'm producer Jesse Cannon, and I'm here to make sure things don't go too far off the rails. We're here to have fun, smart conversations with the wisest and funniest people in science and media and politics that help make what's happening today clearer. Our world has been turned upside down, and on the new abnormal, we'll talk about the people who got us into this mess and how we'll hopefully get ourselves out of it. Today we have a fun festivist celebration podcast, and we're going to let out all of our grievances. Dr. Eric Topol of the Scripps Institute is going to join us to explain what's going on with Omnachron and the Biden administration's response to it. Then we'll talk to Daily Beast reporter, Zach Petrizo, about what's going on at the Turning Point USA conference and all the infighting with the Stop the Steel grifters.

But first, let's have some fun. Welcome to the new abnormal's first ever celebration of Festivus, the holiday for the rest of us. And today, we have a bunch of complaints about you people, though not the listeners, just the politicians. Andy Levy is here. Hello, Molly Jongfest. I got a bunch of complaints. Andy, you've got complaints? I'm Jewish.

Of course I have complaints. You have displeased me. Sarah Palin, you may know her from her incredible vision. She saw Russia from her backyard. Being the fucking stupidest person on the face of the earth, she was at Turning Point USA this weekend. They had a super spreader event because how better to celebrate the arrival of Omicron than to give it to everyone.

She said she will take a vaccine. Andy, can you help me here? Over her dead body, I believe, is what she said. Yeah. Oh dear Not good Did we really think this would go any other way After knowing what we know about her

I don't understand It's so easy not to say something like that Well for you For me But in your head you must be like Over my dead await Paxine Oh yeah

Okay no no I can't do that But I guess not You're assuming that Her mouth is connected To the rest of her head Not clear. I think it's unfair to assume anything. Yeah, that I don't think has been confirmed. I don't think we can do that.

But was that the same event where with drunk Tucker Carlson? Yes. Okay. Was he drunk or was he not drunk? Man, I don't know. I mean, I could go either way because sometimes you're just talking and it sounds, but he, there were definitely a couple of times there where I was like, yeah, Tucker. Yeah. Having some fun backstage. I mean, it's interesting because we know that Tucker was absent for a long time. He's been pretty above board about that. He stopped drinking.

So, not, I mean, as someone who myself has stopped drinking, I don't like people to think that I'm drunk. That really upsets me. Look, it could also be, I mean, look, I remember there were definitely people on air who would, you know, pop a Xanax before they went on air. And I don't even mean that in a bad way. that they were, you know, they were a little nervous or whatever, so they would, they would pop a zanny. And, like, sometimes it would be like, oh, yeah, you shouldn't have done that, because it's really obvious that you're kind of floating right now. It might not have been booze. It might have been something else. And it might have just been nothing. Like you said,

he might have just been tired or whatever. But it's funny either way. It's not great either way, right? Because, like, you're talking to a bunch of kids. I thought the substance of some of what he said was much less destructive than he used. usually is on television. Yeah. I mean, he is, look, I knew him well, and I used to like him, and he is not, I can't say he's not the person he is on TV, because that, that's, that doesn't matter. You are, you are who you are. But, you know, in person, he can be very, very, he's very charming. I hate even talking about it, because he pisses me off so much now, and I just think he's become completely evil. But I agree. No, the little bit of the speech that I listened to was like, you know,

some of it was like actually, all right, yeah, I see where you're coming from. But I never, you know, any clip I've seen of him on TV, I certainly don't feel that way. In order to avoid catastrophe, if we could get people like Tucker Carlson just to take the volume down, even a few levels, that might actually really change things. So, I mean, I don't think it's going to happen, but I think we should always be a little bit hopeful. I mean, should we be thankful and not air grievance that Dr. Sebastian, Gorka said that it's not quite time for Civil War yet. Not quite.

You don't have to grab your guns quite yet, people. Just stand by, stand by. I mean, you know, he's really not going the full clothorn. I mean, he's such a fucking idiot. I didn't know that he said that because he has to be blocked on Twitter. Me too. I'll happily be the Gorka correspondence. He's about the only one that I could take is that at least I laugh along.

And, you know, I did give him all that money on cameo back in the day. Oh, did you do a Gorka cameo? You don't remember the first cameo? Like on the fourth episode of the show, I bought you and Rick a cameo of him giving you guys advice on how to podcast. Oh, that's pretty great. That is great. Can't believe you're forgetting the cameos I buy you, Molly. I know.

Very ungrateful. Speaking of like snippets of conversation that could change the world, or at least America, there was a snippet of this conversation between Bill, sexual harasser, O'Reilly, and Donald's sexual harasser Trump, and they both said they had gotten vexed, and they both said they had gotten the booster. I mean, it's interesting. Like, the anti-vax stuff is just he has no control over it anymore.

Well, the thing is we always, you know, and this is what we've been, you know, we and everyone else who's, you know, half conscious knows that, like, all the hosts on Fox News have been vaccinated and boosted, I'm sure. Right. They have to be to get in, right? There's a mandate. Yeah, no, absolutely.

Donald Trump absolutely was getting vaccinated and boosted. And, like, they play these little games. But, you know, Ron DeSantis has absolutely been double vaccinated and boosted, even though he's too cowardly to come out and say it. I refuse to say I give Trump credit for saying it. Right, because it's too late. It's too late. By the same token, I mean, it's good that he said it.

But like you said, he has completely lost. Like, the anti-vax stuff is way beyond him. As you said, I mean, that's. That's just those people will not care that he's beyond booing him, they'll be mad at him for saying he got vaxed, but it's not going to change their minds. Yeah, no, I mean, it's pretty spectacular. Like, he has let the dog out of the barn. It's not the dog that lives in the barn, is it? The horse out of the barn?

He's let the horse out of the barn. There we go. Yeah, he's let the horse out of the barn. And it's running free, and it won't get vaccinated. I was going to say, I'm really enjoying that today since we're all battling. the non-COVID bug that's going around in New York that we're also with it today. My grievance is definitely with the novel coronavirus, particularly the Omicron or Omicron strain that is decimating New York City right now.

And it's just like, come on, man. Just go away. Just nobody likes you. Everyone who I know has Omicron. Like in New York, everyone you talk to is like, oop, oop, you caught me outside. whoops. I'm like, why are you? You know, and they're like, oh, I have Omicrot.

It definitely feels like at least half the city has it. I mean, that's, you know, obviously probably not true. But it absolutely feels that way. And the other half can't get tested. Right. So who knows? So I think we have a grievance with one man since, let's be honest here, everybody except for corporate donors that is a Democrat right now

are unhappy with Joe Manchin. What are you guys seeing here? I am not in any way, shape, or form claiming that I am a genius for this, but I do want to say that back on, I believe it was December 10th, when Mansion, that was, we were talking about Mansion holding up his little card with the Democratic accomplishments. Right. I said, I think his point is not we did all these good things. It's, you know, look peons, be happy with what we've given you because you're not getting any more. In other words, BBB is DOA. Yeah. And, you know, as almost always, I was right.

But the thing is, it was obvious from the start that, at least to me, that he was never voting for this. And all these negotiations were a sham, as far as I'm concerned. He played it out for whatever bullshit reasons he wanted to play it out. And I think Biden got played. I think Schumer got played. I think they all got played, which is sort of par for the course for Democratic leadership, It's interesting because I had the thought, remember like 10 days ago when the White House was like, we're going to pivot to voting rights. All that matters is voting rights. Forget about BBB. We're going to pause BPP. We're going to pivot to voting rights. and people were like, well, that's odd.

And I was like, yeah, it's because they can't pass BBB, right? They must know they can't pass B, you know. And that was like a couple of days before he said it. So the idea that he then went, I mean, it doesn't necessarily matter how it happened. But I think it's, I think that there's a lot of people like covering their asses everywhere, like the, you know, that press secretary's statement. Like there are so many kind of ass covering, you know, we're very. very mad, where this or that. But ultimately, they know, you know, they're not idiots. Like, they wouldn't have pivoted unless they knew. Right. And by the way, they're not going to pass

voting rights either. That's the sad point. Right. Well, maybe. Who knows? I mean, look, if they cut it out, I mean, here are some things they can do. You can fire the parliamentarian and get someone who will put stuff in, you know, the Republicans had someone who would put Arctic drilling in reconciliation. I mean, there are no rules here. This is just this person. It's just making it up as they go along. Right. And that's, you know, there's a couple of things. One, you know, I've seen some people are saying, you know, like, well, don't be mad at Mansion. Be mad at the Republicans. And it's like, well, it doesn't take any extra effort to be mad at both. So I'm just going to go ahead and I'm going to go ahead and do that. Like, it sucks up literally no more of my time to hate them both. But also, the problem is the Senate. I honestly can't believe. I used to be like Mr. like, you know, strict constitutionalist. And, you know, well, the Senate was set up for a reason. and it was a check on, you know, the mob and, you know, pure democracy. And now I'm just like, well, okay, it doesn't work anymore. Like, if it ever did, it doesn't work anymore.

And, and again, this is the least original thought on the planet. But the idea that this one guy from this one small state has, you know, small in terms of population, has this much power is fucking insane. It is absolutely insane that he can hold, basically hold the country hostage. and something has to be done. And, you know, I don't know what the hell we can do about it, because you can't just, you know, you can't just wave a magic wand and abolish the Senate.

But I do agree with you, Molly, like, you can't take steps. Like, get a different parliamentarian and, you know, stop this 60 vote bullshit and whatever. But ultimately, the problem is the Senate, because it's just, it's built, it's sort of built for this kind of thing, which when it's, you know, when you need something that's actually good and will help people passed and you can't do it. it because one guy who's, you know, basically bought and paid for by the coal industry and

the houseboat industry, you know, he's in the pockets of big houseboat. We all know that. Who among us is not in that pockets of big houseboat? I mean, at least aspirational. Yes, exactly. Yeah. I want to live in a houseboat. No, I think that's right. And I mean, I also think like Democrats, again, are like, well, we've tried. Like, fuck you. No, you have the majority. You don't need, you don't get to try. You have to do. Like, What would Mitch McConnell do? What would those Republicans do? I mean, none of this, like, we try it. With the voting bill, I just want to say, and like, I know this is an unpopular thing to say, but I don't care. The voting bill is very, very fatty. And there's a lot of shit in there that they don't need to pass in order to maintain democracy, like federalized elections. Like, you know, I mean, they can pass a slim-down version of that that you could get a Mitt Romney and as Susan Collins on board for. You could. I mean, you know, you may feel like you're giving up your power that way,

but at least you're passing something that says the states can't change the votes. Yeah, I just, I'm just at this point, I am, I, I have absolutely no faith in the Democratic leadership. I just don't. And, you know, and I think I'm sorry, Nancy Pelosi, it's time to go and let someone else take over. And, you know, I don't think Chuck Schumer's been, you know, particularly effective. and I just don't think they're good at this. I really don't.

Pelosi is a lot better at this than Schumer. Yes, that is true. That is 100%. I will agree with that. But ultimately, I think, you know, we talked about this a little, I think it was the last pod when we talked about Gavin Newsom's little trolling thing with the ghost guns thing. You know, we were talking about how at least he recognizes the rulebook is out the window. And I wish the Democratic leadership would get it in their head that this is not the time to be standing on ceremony. And like you said, Molly and I hadn't even thought of that. Like, fire the fucking parliamentarian. Get someone else in there.

Rig the system. The system's already rigged. And so at least rig it in your favor. My God. I keep thinking about Bernie Sanders critique of mansion, which is that he's, if there's any senator who's usually not on board with specific details of what legislation is going through, it's probably him on the Democratic side. And yet he plays along with the team.

and the Republicans all play on the team. Like you could kind of see like a Mitt Romney or a Lisa Murkowski or Susan Collins seeing parts of this is good. But you know what? They're standing by their team because their leadership makes them. And I think that's the perfect case for that. I actually think Schumer has been pretty much the worst leader of the Democrats said it in my lifetime.

Yeah. But look, now his big thing is, you know, well, we're going to have a vote. We're going to force Manchin to vote on it. Mention doesn't give a shit. He's already publicly said. He said he's not voting for it. He doesn't care if his vote is recorded. Yeah.

I mean, this is your big, like, this is your big plan. Like, this is, oh, we're going to stick it to Manchin and make him actually vote no. Oh, he's already said he's voting no. That is not a stick. Like, if you're going to have it, if you're going to do a carrot and a stick, you need an actual stick. He's got, he's got a soggy twig. Well, I also think with Manchin, the piece played this for him very well. He is in an R plus 20,000.

So like him going on Fox News and saying, like, I have put my foot down, you know, to Republicans, he's a hero. And to Democrats, they can't get rid of him. So he'll end up, you know, he's in a good place. So why he would then be upset about voting against it when he's been so rewarded for shit talking it. I know. It's just, it's so frustrating to listen to Schumer and people like that, you know, and it's like, I'm sitting on my couch. And I know that what you're doing is worthless. Like, you're supposed to be good at this.

This is your job. But the other thing is, like, Democrats are obsessed with their leadership. People will be like, well, he's so nice. I'm like, who cares? Right. I don't care. You know, who wasn't nice and really effective? Harry Reid, he beat the shit out of people for Christ's sake.

Well, Mitch McConnell's a fucking asshole. He's got three Supreme Court justices. I'll take an asshole who get me three Supreme Court justices. I was going to say, no one has ever spoken about Mitch McConnell's sparkling person Hey folks, if you haven't heard every single week we do a special bonus episode for Beast Inside, the Daily Beast membership program. Sometimes we interview senators like Corey Booker or the folks who explain what's happening behind the scenes in media like Jim Acosta or Soladad O'Brien. Sometimes we just have fun and talk to our favorite comedians and actors like Busy Phillips or Billy Eichner.

And sometimes we just have friends around to analyze what's happening in the news. You can get all of our episodes in your favorite podcast app of choice. by becoming a beast inside member where you'll support the beast's fearless journalism, as well as getting full access to podcasts and articles. To become a member, head to new abnormal. Dot thedailybeast.com. That's new abnormal.

todiedebeast.com. Dr. Eric Topol is a cardiologist and the founder of the Scripps Research Transitional Institute. Welcome back to the new abnormal Dr. Eric Topal. Great to be with you again, Molly. I am so excited to talk to you, and we haven't talked in a long time. And we were sort of on a clip where we were talking all the time.

What are your, like, top-line thoughts about Omicron? Well, it has a mixed picture. It's clearly more mild. And the main reason for that, of course, in part is our immunity wall with the vaccinations and the boosters and some prior infections thrown in there. But also it may have some intrinsic activity of the virus that lessens its severity, too, which would be very welcome. But on the other hand, it's spreading.

like wildfire around the world, you know, and certainly starting to really get legs in the U.S. So that's what's really the dichotomy here. Less severe, but much more of it. Yeah, I mean, I know in New York, where I am, every single person you see on the street is like, I have it or had it. But they all seem, I mean, again, anecdotally, everyone I have run into so far has, you know, had what sounds more like a cold and less like what we were seeing in March 2020. Yeah, I'm really intrigued, Molly, or two things there.

One, that all the people I know that have Amercron confirmed, that the chance of losing smell or taste is remarkably lower, which is really, that's great. And that goes along with what's been shown in the lab in two studies, one in Cambridge in the UK, the other in Hong Kong, just last week, which showed that this virus, Amacron, has a harder time to infect lung cells, which is really good, right? So less pneumonia, if that pans out. So there's some features of the virus that are certainly to our benefit.

But it doesn't mean it's benign because we've seen deaths. We've seen hospitalizations in South Africa, in the UK, in Denmark that are amacron confirmed, you know, root cause amacron. So it doesn't mean that, you know, everyone's going to skate by amacron, but the chance of it resulting in severe disease is certainly lower. It's interesting to me because, and I want to know, am I right about this? It feels to me, and again, I am not a doctor, just a hypochondriac, but it feels to me that we're sort of entering an endemic phase. Well, it's hard to know yet. That could be true. If this virus turns out to have such remarkably lower severity, you know, that it really behaves much more like a mild flu illness type of thing, that would be great because it spreads everywhere.

and that means that we have a much better immunity wall, a defense. And that would help get us to this endemic state where we wouldn't see seeing these big surges and spikes. But the dependency is there could be a worse variant out there that evolves, right? And the other thing is we don't know about the longer term. That is, when you get a massive number of infections, which we're now destined to see, how many of those people are going to have long COVID? Or are our vaccines, you know, going to protect us from that type of lingering, enduring disability in some people? So these are the unknowns that in the next, you know, several weeks will have a much better handle.

You know, most of the people listen to this podcast are vaccinated. I'm going to guess that a large percentage of them are also boosted. We don't know what Omicron, we don't know if an unvaccinated people, Omicron is mild too, right? That's exactly right. because if you never had COVID and you're not vaccinated, you could respond to Amherron, you know, in a very severe way. Or if you're immunocompromise, right? So because even with vaccines, immunocompromise don't have an ideal response. So these are the things that are going to play out.

We're going to get much more of a read on that very soon. Do you think that New York will be, are we sort of the harpinger of the rest of America? Well, it's certainly one of the sites where the Amercron number of percent cases is one of the highest now. It's, you know, 25, 30 percent, at least. It doubles every two to three days. But it's actually the highest documented so far in Houston, Texas. Oh, weird. Here in San Diego, it's also over 25 percent.

So New York isn't as high as it is already in some other places, but obviously with the density of people there that's going to play out to be manifest. it has been. Omicron is going to be the dominant strain, right? I don't think there's any question the way it spreads and displaces Delta. I mean, we're going to be in this transition state for, you know, several weeks or even a couple of months. The issue about whether, you know, there's potentially co-dominance with both of the variants circulating at the same time, I think that's just a short-lived thing. This has just spread so incredibly fast like we've never seen before, And it's going to outcompete Delta and make Delta, I think, a historic footnote. Which is ultimately good, because if you're going to have to choose between Omicron and Delta, you'd rather get Omicron.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, Delta was much better. Our vaccines really knocked out Delta. Right, that's true. So that on that score, you're right. But Delta clearly caused more severe disease overall. There isn't any question about that. It caused more severe disease than the prior variance. Comercron, clearly, it's a different scenario. There's clearly, I think, now unquestionably, a lower level of severity. But unfortunately, our vaccines, even with a booster. Yeah. You know, we're talking about 75% protection against symptomatic infection instead of 95%. And that's why we're seeing all these darn breakthroughs, because that's five-fold increase right there. It's interesting because people are talking about how we look at quarantining after this. This is what I've read. And again, this is a question. not a statement. Is it true that the Omicron variant for vaccinated and boosted people has a shorter

contagion period? Well, that's what we saw with Delta, where it's markedly reduced. And I expect we'll see the same for Omicron. It just hasn't been documented yet. We should nail that down. It's really important because if you only have to stay isolated for a couple few days, that would make a big difference because our health care systems are going to get hit very hard and without the adequate staffing, because they're home waiting 10 days, that's not going to work at all. You and I both see, I'm sure, huge improvement since Biden took office, but the testing is still a disaster in this country. It's been a disaster, you know, Molly, from day zero of the pandemic. And it, unfortunately, in this country, has never gotten on track.

It's just incredible to me. Why we don't have rapid tests in every home, an ample supply for people. who want to use them, of course, like another countries, why we can't get testing straight is just, there's no excuse. And, you know, that is only one part of our tool chest to combat Amercron and the pandemic. And there's another one that's really exciting that I think is going to be one of the most important things in the entire pandemic story. That's the Paxlovit pill. Yes, that's the Pfizer pill, right? Yeah, that one is going to get approval or EUA in the days ahead, likely before the end of the year. And it's transformative.

This is a five-day pill pack that very quickly knocks down the viral load that's formally studied, you know, with copies of the virus, more than 10-fold, which will reduce transmission, right? So, in fact, you could take it. And ideally, if you're worried about being infectious, we're probably going to learn that you wouldn't be infectious after the first. couple of pills. But the most important thing is it reduced hospitalizations and deaths by 89%. And it works on Omicron? Yeah, it works on Omicron because this is the first intervention in the entire pandemic, which doesn't rely on our immune system. It knocks out the main protease called M-Pro of the virus itself. It has no reduction of variance. That's not the issue here. And so we can take on Amicron. We can really reduce the hospitalizations and deaths, reduce the transmission, but we only have a limited

supply the day against the EUA, where there's 200,000 total treatment packs. Well, that's not going to get us very far. We could be up a million cases a day, right? So this is the problem. If the administration here was bold, and they now would get the testing right, they would get the pill manufacturing at scale, you know, really at scale, really fast. So that means Defense Production Act, right? That's what I would like to enable here. Or some other strategy that's bold. That's what's lacking, Molly.

You know, they've done a good job. They tried to stick to the science, but they haven't done the things that are aggressive and the things that they can control. They can't control getting the other 39% of the people in this country vaccinated, right? because of all the political roadblocks that are just, you know, pathologic that's blocking that, blocking the mandates for health care workers. I mean, can you imagine. But they can control the things we're talking about. And that's what they're not doing.

And the other thing is the booster should be at four months, not six months. And we're losing a lot of people in terms of getting sick, waiting for two months more to get a booster. Yeah. No, I mean, I don't understand. It just seems like we're not pushing it hard enough. And it sounds like this administration is not pushing it hard enough. No, I mean, they keep making talk about the unvaccinated and, you know, how bad they're going to be. No, no, because we do have the majority of people in this country, fortunately, it's not a big majority as it should be.

It should be 90%. But in that 60-some percent, we've got to keep those people protected. Otherwise, every day, we're going in the wrong direction with more people waning, losing their effectiveness against Amacron, compared to the number of new people. getting vaccinated. So we've got to get these people, you know, protected to stay protected. And waiting six months is crazy, not getting these pills at massive scale, not depending on one darn company, right? Getting those rapid tests out there, distributing K-N95 masks everywhere. You know, New York City, I got to give them credit there where you are because at least they have taken initiative to get better quality masks and get a lot of rapid testing going. That's what should be Colorado's mailing

free antigen test to everybody. Why aren't we doing that everywhere? I want to ask you two questions. One is what would a million cases of COVID a day look like in this country? Well, it isn't going to be pretty because there's going to just be such, you know, an amount of sickness. But, you know, most of that will be mild, most likely. The problem is when you have such a big denominator, some fraction, whether it's the unvaccinated or it's the high-risk immunocompromised or all, older people, whatever, you're going to see some people get pretty darn sick. And that's on top of the delta, is break our back in certain places that are already having a rough time keeping up. So I think that's the problem is we're going to outrun, at least in some parts of the country, our medical resources and staff.

One of the problems originally, and I wonder if this has been fixed, and I don't think it has, which is why I'm bringing this up, is we were not doing a good job of tracing the different variants. It's improved quite a bit. That is, there's a lot more sequencing now. And so, you know, the confirmed Amarcon story is playing out in real time much better in the U.S. than the prior variance. So it's been scaled up, but that doesn't fix all the other data issues in this country. But at least the sequencing has improved. It's uneven. So certain places, sequences really good. And then there's places where it's like almost non-existent. So that's another issue. It should be a standard. And it's should be a very high percent to help guide us as to, you know, what is going on in any particular place and picking up new variants. We're kind of the last Mohicans to find the new variant. Right. Well, that South Africa really got punished for their own ability to sequence variants, right? I mean, it was everywhere, but they were the only ones who were picking up. Well, yeah, they are a great group of scientists, and they, to their credit, they were the first to report it promptly, get the WHO to give it the categorization.

of a variant of concern. They had the Gotang province outbreak to go along with it, and they alerted the whole world about what was going on. And had they not, we would have picked it up eventually, but they really accelerated the whole process everywhere. And they were punished for it. Yeah. And then they wind up with travel bans from South Africa. It's ridiculous, yeah. The other thing I wanted to ask you about with the virus is, I don't think, and again, I want You're a real doctor, you're a real doctor as opposed to me who's just a hypochondriac. But it's not like this administration. And again, I'm a big fan of this administration largely.

But, you know, I have higher expectations for them because they understand science versus the Trump administration, which is just like, you know, everybody, you know, viruses don't spread. Everyone just wash your hands. It doesn't strike me that they're doing a lot of preparedness for the next pandemic. Well, that's true, too. I mean, just to frame it, you know, I'm with you on this moment. You know, this idea that there hasn't been the right control of the pandemic during the year, 2021, is somewhat absurd because we had Delta, which was the most hyper-contagious variant, you know, that arrived. And now Amercron. And, you know, what we had in the first year the pandemic was a weak strain compared to what we've been dealing with this year. So, you know, we have to frame that because otherwise you see these assertions that there have been more deaths in 2021 than there were in 2020. Well, yeah. there's a whole lot worse virus to reckon with, right? But, you know, I think this is still concerning about the infighting.

Because remember when President Biden in August announced we're going to get boosters for all adults? We're going to get that ready. And then he had to walk it back. You know, each day almost, it was a different announcement, eight months, five months, maybe not all adults, maybe only one vaccine. I mean, it was unbelievable, stupid muddled messaging. And why was that? It wasn't because of President Biden.

It was because of the infighting between the CDC and the NIH and the FDA and the White House response team. And you know, what's really sad is the booster should have moved forward in September for all adults. And we have lost people. We have had lots of serious infections and hospitalizations because of their inability to have unity. And, you know, Tony Fauci was spot on on that. And they rebelled against him a couple of... a couple of rogue scientists at FDA, people at CDC. I mean, it's really unfortunate.

That's the kind of stuff that's bad. Why'd they rebel against him? Oh, well, here's a couple of things on that. One is they didn't like the idea that we would have a mixed message. Like, you know, the public is stupid, right? That they want to push the new vaccinations. They don't want to say there's anything bad about the current vaccinese, right? So that was one thing.

The second thing is they say, well, if we support boosters and it's not for key, keeping people from dying or hospitalizations. What about global equity, right? Well, there already was data from Israel showing it was a major benefit, not just deaths and hospitalizations, all the way, you know, 90% reductions in deaths for age 50 plus. And they didn't even approve it for all adults younger than age 65 until the end of November, okay? That is not on Biden. that's on the people infighting. And, you know, they haven't been called out properly, and it's enough of that stuff. You know, it's just, if we should have a czar who makes decisions based on the science and stop the infighting that's holding us back. Can we get that? Well, we should have it. You know,

we had Ron Clayne for the Ebola, and he made the calls. He's not really a scientist, right? But Tony is, and he's made good calls. Yeah, he's made some mistakes along the way, but you need somebody in that position. And we haven't had it. And, you know, the idea that the people at these different agency would fight against each other. Can you imagine? I mean, it's bad enough we have a divided country. Do we have to have divided leadership? No, I agree. The thing that I keep thinking about is, because I read a lot of right-wing press, and they'll be very mad. They'll say, well, they got it wrong on this. They got it wrong on that. And you see Bouchy gets criticized a lot for he got it wrong for this. And then he went to a baseball game and he didn't wear his back.

It's ridiculous. Yeah. But it's also, like, part of it is that this virus, what we know has changed over the last 646 days. Yeah, I mean, that's the point that is not appreciated is the virus has evolved. It's gotten much more challenging and formidable. It was bad enough last year, but it got much worse this year. You know, we may be on the brink of seeing a lesser challenge with Amacron. I mean, if it gets to the point where you don't know whether you're going to get another booster because the, booster side effects are worse than getting the virus. If we get to that point, then we'll know we've really, you know, hit. Then we're at endemic, right? Yeah, yeah, exactly. But we're not there yet. But still, Delta really took its toll. Hundreds of thousands of people died. And, you know, to put it on Biden that we only have 60% of people vaccinated. Right. That's clearly not his

I mean, come on here. I mean, who is responsible for the other 40? And it's actually been a lot more than 40% until, you know, recently. And look how long it's taken to get to this point. That was forecast to be at 60% in July, July. Yeah, but Fox News and OAN and Republican electeds didn't want people to get vaccinated. I mean, that was sort of those people who did not get vaccinated were inundated with disinformation. And so I don't think it's such a surprise that they got there.

I wonder, I mean, I always think about it just feels like there's no culpability for these people who have been, you know, there have been so much anti-vax content from so many people who clearly must know better. It's kind of amazing to me. That's another thing that I'm set about on this administration, because, you know, overall I'm totally supportive. but they know about the miss and disinformation. Remember, Rebecca Murthy, the surgeon general, put out a brochure about it, and he's been talking about it. But they haven't done a counteraggression.

You know my close friend Peter Hottes. I know you've talked to him a lot. And he's the soloist out there, you know. The point here, and he's taking a lot of heat and threats about it, the point is, why isn't the White House doing that? Why don't they have the Hall of Shame? And they call out people, whether it's Tucker, Carlson, or whether it's, you know, this organization or these doctors, these charlatans, or, you know, whatever it is, why don't they do that and call them out to get the public straight on these? Instead, they just put out a brochure. That's not going to help anybody.

Yeah. This should be a hall of shame and they should be putting that out. Remember how when Trump would have that guy, the CNN fact checker every day? Or is Dale, somebody? Yeah, yeah, Daniel Dale. Why don't we have that for, for? the disinformation campaign every day. It's true. Thank you so much. This was so good. You're so interesting.

I'm sorry. I'm a little under the weather, but I have Gen 5 negative COVID tests. I hope you're feeling better, and I'm glad it's, you know, nothing so, you know, substantial. Stay safe. Yeah. Thank you so much. I hope you'll come back soon. Of course.

Zach Petrizo is a reporter at The Daily Beast. Welcome to the new abnormal, Zach Petrizo. Thank you so much for having me. again. It's nice to have someone on who is as hated by Roger Stone as I am. I guess that's a badge of honor, maybe. He doesn't talk to you about me, right? You know, he hasn't yet, but, you know, I wouldn't put it past them. That's what I like to hear. Former Trump official turned right-wing provocateur, Steve Bannon. He said he's going to take over the entire election apparatus, discuss. Yeah, this was kind of a shock where, you know,

Of course, you know, me and always listening into right-wing talk radio and right-wing outlets and everything right-wing. And this morning I was kind of flipping through different things. And I heard Steve Bannon say he's going to take over the entire U.S. election apparatus. I thought this was kind of crazy. So, of course, put it together for The Daily Beast. It struck me as kind of bizarre, but also very Steve Bannon-like, right? Because, of course, he's like this super provocateur type. But it's also kind of like scary to even think about, right?

I mean, this is like our entire election system. He's just going to hijack because he's a sore loser because Trump lost in 2020. Is that kind of where we're left at? Yes, right? Yeah. Turning Point USA is meeting in the state of the Cyber Ninjas, Arizona, discuss. That's perfect. Yes, yes, yes.

They're meeting out in Arizona and they are holding this conference for young people. but from what I've seen, there are more adults there this year than kids, which is kind of this crazy turn of events. You know, I think they see it as becoming the new CPAC almost, right? Well, it's basically playing by all the CPAC rules, right? Exactly, exactly. So, except it's perhaps even more right-wing than CPAC, right? Hard to imagine. They have the entire, you know, January 6th brigade there from Gosar.

You know, Gosar was on stage day speaking and others. So, you know, they've really embraced. January 6th, and, you know, even people like Sebastian. Louis Gohmert. Yes, of course. Louis was up there. And, and of course, people like Sebastian Gorka, who got his phone records, subpoenaed, you know, announced it on stage today. And he's kind of waving around the Spetex envelope.

But one of the things that I think really is the biggest issue right now is that, or the biggest is sort of the big celebrity speaker at Turning Point USA. is a killer of two people, Kyle Rittenhouse. Yeah. Did you hear his speech? So we haven't heard it yet. It should come shortly this evening. Of course, Arizona is a little bit behind us on the East Coast.

But look, you know, it does show this level of acceptance for a guy and this glorification of what he did, which I think is kind of the way he's been embraced by the right wing and everyone else over there, and especially with Turning Point. I know even National Review was a little bit shocked that, you know, they kind of made him into this celebrity of sorts. But I do think it is a good bellwether for the way in which, you know, the right wing, right wing media more generally keeps moving, which is this embrace for, you know, this guy that did at the end of day kill people, even though he was found not not guilty of and enacted in self-defense according to the courts. So, Zach, give us some top lines of some of the bat shit that you've been observing for the past few days. Sure, yeah.

So, of course, the depositions being, you know, out of Washington, D.C., the depositions at the O'Neill Federal Office Building here in Washington has been crazy. We saw Ali Alexander come out of the out of the courthouse, excuse me, out of the office buildings and be served with a civil litigation, which was kind of interesting. He had been in hiding for the large part of the last year. And, you know, of course, had to come out of hiding to appear for his deposition. And of course was served. So we had that.

And then we have a whole host of other people coming to D.C. and the house office building to be, you know, deposed behind closed doors from, you know, soon to be Alex Jones, and then we had Steve Bannon the other day come. We had Ali Alexander and others are also going to be making the trip from what the beast has learned. So a lot more depositions coming, which is interesting. The rhetoric continues to get, you know, increasingly hotter and hotter. I know every time we speak, there's seemingly some new thing, whether it's, you know, taking over the entire U.S. election system,

or it's still believing the big lie, or if it's, you know, you know, all these sorts of things, you know, especially at this turning point event, like Jesse Waters was saying, they need to go on offense. And there really is new. How is that different from what they're doing now? I mean, it really isn't saying that, like,

their whole victim thing. Like, they really do believe their victims when they say things like that. Like, it's not a grift. It's so crazy. Yeah. I mean, they're really doubling down on their kind of, like, vague threats. You know,

we're going to take things over. to rearrange the system and all this type of stuff. And, you know, I do think, you know, this is a big part of just being a sore loser. But also, I wouldn't put it past these people to start making and taking more radical action, especially with the downplaying of the events of January 6, you know, showing that these types of things can happen. And they kind of get away with it in large part if they have the right talking points. So, Zach, I've heard that there's a lot of bubbling about civil war and national divorce. set this thing. Could you tell us what the type of things people are saying there? Yeah. Some of the interesting things, you know, some of the students will come up to these speakers, for example, these right-wing, you know, young college students will come up and be like, oh, when is it time that we, you know, pull out the rifles and start, you know, using it, right? And that type of rhetoric. And I would say a lot of the kids, you know, there's been a lot of talk about,

you know, shooting and stuff like that. And I would say a lot of the kids clearly are pretty pretty radicalized by some of the stuff. Don't know if that's directly from turning point or just from, you know, right-wing ecosystem and other things more generally. But it has been interesting because even like Seb Gorka, who is known to be, you know, just kind of, you know, flying off the deep end has completely lost the plot. He's like, whoa, slow down there, kid. So it is kind of concerning to see these young people really, really radicalized and kind of ready

to take up arms at political opponents. and others alike. It seems like we're heading towards disaster, doesn't that? Yeah. You actually get to like a funny thing that I think is like a sad compliment you have to pay Seb Gorka, which is that over and over again, he's like the adult in the room of the bat shit, which is like the saddest comment on all of our society right now. He tries to keep, you know, QAnon out, but then ultimately, you know, kind of gets caught in the Q&N web,

of course, right? So Lynn Wood is calling Gorka a fraud and other things. So he kind of gets caught up in the mess as well. So it's kind of all the infighting in Maga world. Really a banner year in 2021 for MAGA infighting. Amazing. Zach, one last thing I'd love for you to explain to us. So there's this big civil war with like Ali Alexander versus some of the other January 6 people.

Can you break down kind of like what's happening in there? Sure, yeah. So Ali Alexander, of course, is to stop the steel rally organizer. And he was seen kind of as a ringleader in many. of the organizing efforts for, you know, his stop-the-steel rallies ahead of January 6th, and then, of course, he was going to have one on January 6th and so on. And since, you know, of course, he's been brought to O'Neill Federal in Washington, D.C., deposed, and he spoke behind closed doors, you know, The Daily Beast was, of course, there monitoring this. And he spoke for

over eight hours, which is a pretty long time to be in a deposition for. But take that and compare it to someone like Roger Stone, who was in there for an hour and a half, and decided to fleet is fifth. Naturally, you know, the right wingers, you know, they start to believe that people like Eli Alexander, who are in there for long periods of time are just narking on other people. So then, of course, you know, you have these people calling other people rats and, I'm accusing other people of narking and a lot of infighting there. And then, of course, you know, people like Roger Stone claiming that Steve Bannon was behind, you know, calling for the breach of the capital. So there's just a ton of infighting among right wingers now about three or six.

Times at Maga High, Zach, thank you so much for coming by and joining us today. Thank you for having me. What's crazier than QAnon, more outlandish than Pizza Gate, and scarier than a Mexican getaway with Ted Cruz? The answer is what the American right wing has planned next. Be one of the first to listen to Fever Dreams, new podcasts from The Daily Beast, tracking the conspiracy slingers, orange acolytes, and straight-up grifters pushing to retake power. Every Wednesday hosts Swin Subisang and Will Summer, checking in on the moon.

movement of the radical right. Head to the DailyBeast.com slash podcasts or your favorite podcast player to catch the first episode and get subscribed. That's fever dreams, which you can subscribe to wherever you get your podcasts. Andy Levy. Molly Chongfest. My fuck that guy is a man you may have heard of.

His name is Donald Trump. He has an implanted wig. He is very mad at the Jews because we don't care enough about Israel. And how he gets there is by enacting every anti-Semitic trope known to man. Is Congress controlled by the Jews? Not anymore. It should be. I mean, like, the man is so impressively racist that he gets there through just anti-Semitism all the way. And so I am really impressed by how still Orthodox Jews have decided that this, he's their guy and he loves them. And that just because he says all Mexicans are rapist doesn't mean he is at all anti-Semitic.

Because, you know, you can hate what. I mean, it's just preposterous. I'm telling you, the racist people never have a carve out for the Jews. And that is why Donald Trump is once again, my fuck that guy. He also said that the New York Times is owned by Jews because he thought the Salzburgers were Jewish because they have the last name, Salzberger. When in fact, they are famously Episcopalian. But because they had a Jewish sounding name, he decided that the New York Times was controlled by the quote unquote Jews. And for that and so many other reasons, I say to you Donald J. Trump, you know, come on, man.

Andy, who is your fuck that guy? Well, my fuck that guy is, unfortunately, it is Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer. Ooh. We should have learned from the Ruth Bader Ginsburg experience that sometimes you need to retire so that you can be replaced with someone who's not a handmade? Right, who better fits your view of the Constitution and of America. and, you know, there were people who thought RBG, you know, strictly because she was getting up in age, for no other reason, not any, not out of any dislike of her or anything, should have retired while Obama was president so that she could be, you know, her replacement could be appointed by President Obama, as opposed to what happened, and her replacement was appointed by the anti-Semitic guy you were just talking about. Except his daughter is Jewish. Yeah, right. That's great.

You know, that's, you know, well, my accountant is Jewish. Jewish. I can't be. That's right. So now we're in a situation with Stephen Breyer, who I believe is 98 years old. Am I right about that, Jesse, or am I overestimating that? Fact check says it's spirit, yes. Now, yes. He's 83. He is 83 years old. You know, and there's been a lot of talk now that, you know, we don't want to repeat this mistake. And maybe it's time for Stephen Breyer to retire so that Joe Biden can appoint the successor rather than what will happen after 2024 when Trump is president again. And, you know, and he'll get to appoint him. Don't even say that. I know. I know. So, but, but, but, but Breyer doesn't want to do this. And, you know, he is apparently rankled by people

even suggesting this. And I am, I'm actually hoping that on this Christmas Eve, that he is visited by the ghost of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who shows him what the future will look like if he does not retire under a Democratic president. And so that is my Christmas wish for Justice Stephen Breyer. Merry, Mary, as our people say. Yes. Merry Christmas. On that note, we'll wrap this episode of the new abnormal from The Daily Beast.

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