The David Pakman Show - 4/4/23: Trump arrest breaks right wing brains, students march for gun safety

Episode Date: April 4, 2023

-- On the Show: -- Doctor Shira Doron, Chief Infection Control Officer for Tufts Medicine Health System and the hospital epidemiologist at Tufts Medical Center in Boston joins David to discuss the latest data on the question of whether masks work to control the spread of COVID-19 -- Students stage a massive walkout, protest, and march in support of gun safety legislation in Nashville, Tennessee after the recent mass school shooting that took place there -- Donald Trump will be charged with 34 felonies at his arraignment today, there will be no cameras in the courtroom, Trump will not be handcuffed, and there will be no mugshot, per the latest reporting -- Donald Trump is absolutely terrified on the eve of his arrest, calling for the indictments of District Attorney Alvin Bragg and special counsel Jack Smith -- Fox News' coverage of Donald Trump flying in his private plane from Florida to New York to be arrested is absolutely beyond parody -- Fox News host Steve Doocy tries to explain the law, including the crime-fraud exception, to his Fox & Friends co-hosts, and it does not go well -- Michael Cohen, Donald Trump's former lawyer, predicts that Trump will "fill his diaper" -- Republican Congressman Jim Jordan bizarrely vows to defund federal law enforcement over the indictment of Donald Trump -- The simplest habits to improve your life -- On the Bonus Show: Ron DeSantis quietly legalizes permit-less concealed carry in Florida, a new 16-year high in traffic deaths, Paris to ban electric rental scooters, much more... 👍 Use code PAKMAN for 10% off the Füm Journey Pack at https://tryfum.com/PAKMAN 💪 Athletic Greens is offering FREE year-supply of Vitamin D at https://athleticgreens.com/pakman 🩳 SHEATH Underwear: Code PAKMAN for 20% OFF at https://sheathunderwear.com/pakman 🌞 Get 10% off your first month of BetterHelp online therapy: https://betterhelp.com/pakman -- Become a Supporter: http://www.davidpakman.com/membership -- Subscribe on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/thedavidpakmanshow -- Subscribe to Pakman Live: https://www.youtube.com/pakmanlive -- Follow us on Twitter: http://twitter.com/davidpakmanshow -- Like us on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/davidpakmanshow -- Leave us a message at The David Pakman Show Voicemail Line (219)-2DAVIDP

. Students in Nashville, Tennessee, the site of a recent horrifying mass school shooting walked out, rallied and marched yesterday for stricter gun safety laws, for any gun safety laws. And of course, we are yet again of mass shootings that essentially no other country has. And then we immediately say some of us say we have to do something and Republicans block the idea of doing anything. And next thing you know, we've moved on and it's the next mass shooting. A couple of articles to look at. Chalkbeat Tennessee reports Nashville students rally for tougher gun laws as governor seeks

armed guards for every school. Some say arm the teachers, maybe arm the students. Right. I mean, how far are we going to go? More than a thousand Nashville area students walked out of school on Monday, converging outside the Tennessee state capitol to demand stronger gun laws after last week's mass shooting at a small private school in the city. This started at 1013 a.m. It was a week since Nashville police received that first call about the shooter at the Covenant

School. Three children and three adult staff members were killed. We have a little more information about the shooting. The Tennessean reports students demand gun control. Shooter fired one hundred and fifty two rounds in about a 14 minute incident. And of course, that has to have something to do with the guns employed. You're not going to do that with a handgun. And so those who say this has nothing to do with guns by literal definition can't possibly be correct. Now, I think it's important to contextualize all of these events. I mean,

think of it a week ago. Shooting in Nashville, six dead, three kids, three adults, rallies, marches, demands for gun safety, Republicans saying arm the teachers and put armed guards in school. But meanwhile, in this week, how many mass shootings have there been? How many mass shootings have there been just in the last week? Because yesterday there was one in Baltimore. And I'm looking at my list here. And of course, it's very hard to keep up because there are so many yesterday, a mass shooting in Baltimore and then also one in Mesa, Arizona. And there was a mass shooting yesterday in Hampton, Virginia. Another one on Sunday in Petersburg, Virginia. The point is just in the intervening time between the Nashville shooting and today, and we follow all of the lives affected, everything that's taken

place, all of the discourse and discourse may be a bit of a generous term in some of these cases. We follow all of it. There have been so many mass shootings since, most of which you and I haven't heard of unless we went out looking for that information. And so this really is an epidemic. We continue to see one side that says don't do anything about guns. And then we see our side say, hey, listen, there are things we can try. And again, I outlined last week my 10 point plan for things that we could try. But there is an intransigent intransigence and a recalcitrance to this discussion. And among half of those who could be part of the solution here. And so it's a great thing what the students in Nashville did. And I continue to hope that we can do something. We can't give up, as I said last week, although it would be logical to think

maybe maybe we should. What else can we do? We've tried everything to convince these people that it's worth at least trying some gun safety, but we really can't give up because otherwise people will continue to die. So good for the students in Nashville, Tennessee. And of course, we will follow whether any change does take place today. Maybe already has happened. Donald Trump will be arrested and charged with what we have now learned will be 34 felony counts. But an exclusive Yahoo News report by Michael Isikoff, the chief

investigative correspondent doing really good work at Yahoo News, said there will be no handcuffs and there will be no mugshot in special treatment for the failed former President Donald Trump. This is historic stuff. We are living through a remarkable event. Michael Isikoff writes, as the article just disappeared, Donald Trump will be placed under arrest Tuesday and informed he has been charged with 34 felony counts for falsification of business records, according to a source briefed on the procedures.

A New York City police arrest report summarizing the charges against Trump will be prepared and entered into the court system. Trump will be led into the courtroom and formerly formally arraigned on the charges, none of which are misdemeanors. Remember, the right wingers were saying these are all misdemeanors, all misdemeanors. Well, maybe there's one felony. These are reportedly all felonies. But Trump will be given special treatment. He will not be put in handcuffs. He will not be placed in a jail cell. What a dream that would be. And he will not be subjected to a mugshot. Even most white collar defendants are subject to those three elements. The Manhattan

District Attorney's Office has been consulting with Secret Service and New York City court officials said there's no reason to give him a mugshot. There's no reason to put him in handcuffs. The stated reason for handcuffing is defendants might be a flight risk or a threat to the D.A. or court personnel. Neither are judged to be relevant for former President Trump, given that he will be protected by Secret Service agents at all times, at all times. This is going to be an incredible event, an incredible event. We will be live.

We were live again. The timing of recording today is a little bit complicated for what is taking place. There will be still photos in the courtroom. There will not be video cameras in the courtroom. And this was another subject of much controversy. As I said, I can't think of any trial proceedings, any court proceedings, rather more relevant to the public interest than the arraignment of a former president for which there should be cameras, live video cameras. But there will not be sort of jokingly. Do you think that this proceeding will finally give us

Trump's real height and weight, which he's been lying about for a long time, claiming to be six, three and two thirty nine? Probably not. And that's sort of a joke. That's not really important. We are going to now see over the next 24 hours, and I hope everybody is prepared for it. We are going to see the worst of the worst of MAGA Trumpism. I'm going to make a small adjustment here to my audio. We are going to see the absolute worst faith takes. This isn't justice. No, no, no, no, no. It is justice to learn and realize that even a former president is not above the law. These are politically motivated charges. You haven't even seen the charges and you're not aware of the evidence. How could you possibly make that claim at this time?

This is never done where you use testimony from a lawyer because it's protected. Well, what about the crime fraud exception, which we're going to talk about later? And by the way, we don't yet know how it worked out. But Marjorie Taylor Greene leading a protest in New York City, quite literally, as we are recording by tomorrow, I'm sure I will have more information for you about how that turns Marjorie Taylor Greene leading a protest in New York City, quite literally as we are recording by tomorrow. I'm sure I will have more information for you about how that turns out. So we will follow all of it. We will report on it. I hope you will join me live. And in the meantime, Donald Trump's final 24 hours before his arrest, indicating that he is absolutely terrified.

All right. Let's not spend a lot of time on this. And much of what we're talking about today is developing live. And so I'm going to do the best I can to tell you what's happened over the last 24 hours. And then we have to move relatively quickly to the next steps in this indictment of Donald Trump. But Donald Trump last night exploding on truth social, making it clear he's terrified and making it clear he doesn't actually care about law and order, demanding the indictment of Alvin Bragg. With what evidence on what charges? Wait a second. I thought your whole problem was that this indictment of you isn't law and order. But now you're just calling for the on a whim indictment of the guy investigating you.

Trump trothing to troth central quote. Wow. District attorney Bragg just illegally leaked the various points and complete information on the pathetic indictment against me. I know the reporter and so unfortunately does he. This means he must be immediately indicted. What? Now if he wants to really clean up his reputation, he will do the honorable thing.

And as district attorney indict himself, there you go. He will go down in judicial history and his Trump hating wife will be, I am sure, very proud of him. Trump not stopping there with random demands for people to be indicted, continuing to talk about special prosecutor Jack Smith trothing, quote, Speaking of leaks, special prosecutor Jack Smith, what did his name used to be? Leaked massive amounts of information to the Washington compost. This is illegal. And I assume this radical left lunatic, much to the chagrin of his Trump hating wife and family, will be prosecuted. He is a totally biased capital T thug who should be let loose on the Biden documents hidden in Chinatown and the eighteen

hundred fifty boxes secretly stored in Delaware, which Biden refuses to give up. Biden is guilty of obstruction. I am not. So think of it claiming that the problem here is that the law and order isn't being followed in the investigation and indictment that he is now subject to, but on a whim within just a couple of hours on truth, social truth, sensual. I don't even know what it's called at this point. Trump demands the self indictment of Alvin Bragg, demands the indictment of special prosecutor

Jack Smith and declares Joe Biden guilty of crimes absent any evidence nor any criminal proceedings of that sort. And this is just another reminder, my friends, they say they are for law and order, but they are not. They say they are for due process, but they are not. They are for whatever is convenient at the time as applied to them and then whatever is convenient at the time as applied to them and then whatever is convenient at the time as applied to their political opponents. And if those two things require a complete cognitive dissonance and a divorce from any stated principle of consistency, then they don't care. And you know what?

They get away with it because as many of you have written to me and said, David. The right doesn't care about hypocrisy anymore. The right doesn't care about hypocrisy anymore. The right doesn't care about double standards, so it's not even worth pointing them out to them because they aren't phased. It's whatever is convenient for me and not for the. And that is it. Well, we are going to learn very quickly, indeed, what the repercussions are of the crimes with which Trump is accused. This is only the first indictment today. It is now being circulated that another indictment in Georgia could be coming at the end of April, which we will talk about tomorrow.

These are truly unprecedented times, not because anybody in the investigative community has done anything wrong, but because we are now starting to see accountability for a unique and unprecedented one man crime spree that was the former President Donald Trump. One of our sponsors today is fume. Not everything in a bad habit is wrong. So instead of a drastic, uncomfortable change, why not just remove the bad part from your habit? Fume is an innovative, award winning device that does exactly that. Fume is not electronic. There's no vapor or harmful chemicals. Fume is just

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If that makes you curious about what's happening on this bonus show, you can sign up at join Pakman dot com and you can, of course, use the coupon code indicted. A very clear coupon code, one that requires no explanation. Fox News breathlessly covered Donald Trump flying from Florida to New York City for his arrest, almost like a soap opera, truly stunning, where it is almost beyond parody, making him out to be some kind of martyr. The coverage was led by Harris Faulkner, whose right wing leanings, at least as far as the character she plays on air. Remember, Fox News hosts and anchors really are characters at the end of the day. So she may be

as liberal as they come in her private life. I don't know. But at least the right when right wing character that Harris Faulkner plays has become particularly weaponized over recent months. Look at this. We're going to show you the entire trajectory of this. Here is the coverage of Trump leaving Mar-a-Lago to head to the airport to get on his private plane. They call this news there. And now we've seen the second car. Let's watch this live now. The president, number 45 for the United. By the way, the president, the president is Joe Biden. States is on the move to Palm Beach International Airport. Wow. And as we grab these photos, I just want to remind everybody the types of decisions that have already been made ahead of him arriving.

Please. One of them was the Secret Service, first of all, is in charge of anything having to do with the president. New York Police Department here in the city will secure the streets. You'll have other presence inside the courtroom tomorrow when he is arraigned at 2.15 p.m. Eastern. But for now, the Secret Service is in charge. And so they've already made the kind of decision of whether or not you would see him in handcuffs.

They had said no. They wanted to make sure that wherever he's going to be had been swept. This is a former president. We have never seen anything like this. What we have seen, 1832 and then with Spiro Agnew under Nixon. We have seen former vice presidents and then a sitting vice president with Spiro Agnew face an indictment and charges. But what we have not seen is a former commander-in-chief indicted in a state now that he used to live in, doesn't live there. And look at the people that are lined up against their freeway. Everybody knows the route. And this is a very, very short ride. I mean, yeah, it looks like mostly reporters filming, quite frankly, but really making it almost like a parade like atmosphere. And indeed, as they got further in on the trip, it feels as though this is like the Macy's Day, Thanksgiving Day,

Macy's Parade or something. And Kayleigh, I think it's what you're telling me. I look at all these people on the roadside. And yes, some of them are law enforcement, but a lot of these are citizens. Yes. Some are law enforcement and some are reporters with cameras. But there are some citizens there, dozens potentially of people who know this route and he's going to slow down a bit for this. Yeah. Apparently he sent a box of hats out to some of those who are peacefully gathered over the weekend. Yes, they were very, very I like how now they always mention everybody's being extraordinarily peaceful. And then really a more philosophical question, my friends. What is the destiny

of Donald Trump as he boards his private plane? What is coming in his future? His plane is getting ready to take off now. They are on the move on the tarmac. And this is what we have been watching for. And we don't know what destiny looks like on the other side of this trip when he gets here in New York City. Folks, this is a guy accused of crimes. That's what this is. And they are turning him into this martyr. Now I know many of you have already said, David, that's why it's going to help him. The fact that they are turning him into the victim and into this martyr.

And it is expected that Donald Trump tonight at his press conference at Mar-a-Lago is going to say they didn't really indict me. They indicted all of you. He's going to frame this as a collective punishment of MAGA, that they are punishing all of his supporters for supporting him and for the greatest political movement in history or whatever. This is what has led to many of you writing to me saying this is going to help him. David, this is going to help him look at his fundraising numbers. I concede readily that this in this indictment. Let's let's wait before we say future indictments. This indictment helps Trump in the Republican primary. I agree with that. I don't think that if there is another indictment in Georgia and potentially a federal indictment, that it will be good for Trump

at all because it really will hinder his ability to run his campaign. And secondly, I don't understand how this indictment gets Trump a single new vote in a general election. This indictment and potentially future indictments make Trump seem even more chaotic than we've already known him to be and the chaos that surrounds him. And so while this may help Trump secure the Republican nomination, if it doesn't end up interfering, if the indictments keep coming, I think this is bad for Trump in a general election. That's my view as of today. If the facts change, I will revise that view. Check this out.

Steve Doocy on Fox News tried to add a little bit of common sense to the discussion this morning on about why lawyer lawyers in general are able to give testimony that is being used in the prosecution of Donald Trump. And really, they're talking about Michael Cohen, because one of the things that the right has started to harp on is how do you force lawyers to break attorney client privilege? How is it Michael Cohen is somehow being used to provide evidence against Trump when he was Trump's lawyer? There's a very simple explanation. It's called the crime fraud exception. Steve Doocy tries to explain it to his co-hosts. They don't want to hear it. When you try to insert fact on Fox and friends, you aren't rewarded. So I think there's a lot to fight here.

And in the back of my mind and watching all this is we could be doing this three more times. Yeah, we could be doing it with the January six. Let's hope we could be doing it with the Georgia situation and we could do with Mar-a-Lago. Mayor's heating up like you wouldn't believe they are now making secret service testify. They make his own attorney, Corcoran, he has to testify as his own client. Who is it? Jack Smith is somehow rocket-fueled to get Trump in a way that I can't believe people aren't challenging this and saying, even if I don't like Donald Trump, what's going on here? Because of the crime. We've talked about this, the crime fraud exemption. If if you get legal advice during the execution of a crime, but it almost never happens. It happens more than you would believe. Talk to Mark Levin about that.

Your attorney client privilege goes out the window regarding the secret service. How many times has it happened? It's not. So two arguments. First, they're ignoring the crime fraud exception. Then Brian Kilmeade moves to, well, how often has it actually happened? We're going to address all of these points in a moment. Secret Service, can you flip them? I am just talking about what is the law. That is the law. Rarely used. That is well, it was used in this case. No, the other thing is if the I feel like it's open to Mike Knight, I'm getting heckled over here. No, I'm not heckling you. I'm just saying it's so ludicrous. You can tell your attorney you're OK. So Ainsley Earhart is saying

it's ludicrous. Brian Kilmeade is saying it's ridiculous. And Steve Doocy is absolutely correct about lawyers testifying and the crime fraud exception. It's not controversial and it actually has been used many times. So the crime fraud exception is a legal principle which allows certain confidential communications, like, for example, those between an attorney and their client to be disclosed in court if they were made to further the commission of a crime or a fraud. So if you use your attorney client relationship to plan or carry out a crime or fraud, then it's not protected by attorney client privilege. It's actually a really simple legal principle. So if you have a lawyer and you consult with your lawyer to commit a fraud, to cover up

a crime or whatever, those conversations, those communications could be subject to the crime fraud exception. They aren't protected by attorney client privilege. That is what Trump and Michael Cohen were doing. Then when Steve Doocy explains it to Brian Kilmeade, Kilmeade moves on to, well, it's never used. Well, hold on a second. It's that's it.

Now that is a different argument. How does Brian Kilmeade know that? Does he cover trials enough to know whether or not it's actually used? And the answer is, of course, he doesn't. And the truth is that the frequency of the crime fraud exceptions, it's difficult to determine because it does depend on the circumstances. And it's not like there is public journalism around every use of the crime fraud exception. Most court cases aren't reported on in the way that we would be able to say here's the frequency of the use of the crime fraud exception. But there are some pretty prominent examples of it being used. The Enron scandal, if you haven't read what's the name of the book, I think it's the smartest guys

in the room or something like that. If you haven't read the's the name of the book, I think it's the smartest guys in the room or something like that. If you haven't read the book about the Enron scandal, I recommend it. In the early 2000s, Enron was engaging in all sorts of accounting fraud and it led to its bankruptcy. And during the investigation, that crime fraud exception was indeed used with regard to communications between Enron executives and their lawyers because it helped to establish those fraudulent activities. So that's a very prominent case in which it was used. The Bernie Madoff Ponzi scheme, when Bernie Madoff was arrested for running that huge Ponzi scheme and defrauded investors to the tune of billions, the crime fraud exception was also used to obtain privileged communications between Madoff and his lawyer.

And it revealed Madoff lied to his investors and his lawyer about the existence of the fraudulent scheme. So it is the law and it is used, including in prominent cases. Kilmeade is wrong. Ainsley Earhart is breathlessly out of control. Steve Doocy is the guy that's correct. And on Fox and Friends, you aren't exactly rewarded for introducing sanity and fact. One other little funny element. Michael Cohen, whatever you want to say about him, I find him to be a pretty funny guy.

And in my interactions with him, including privately, he's been on the show a couple times. I've been on his show. He's an all around good guy and he's genuinely very funny. He appeared yesterday on MSNBC with Ari Melber. He said when asked what's going to happen with Trump here, he said Trump Trump's going to fill his diaper and he says it completely seriously. This is nothing other than a comedic interlude. Listen to people. We build knowledge. I can't speak to his mental personal process, but he is going to learn in a different way through the primary experience. And he entertains the prospect that he could be convicted and he could lose his appeals and he could at the end of that line, potentially he's legally presumed innocent.

He could end up in prison based on your long years of service with him, how will he process that? Yeah, very poorly. Um, you know, as I like to call him sometimes in my tweets, diaper Donald will be filling up that diaper because he, this is not something that Donald is capable of either understanding or contending with. He, as you stated accurately, he believes he could control every situation. This is not a situation that he has any control over. Right. And that's making him sick to his stomach. Yeah. And I do think that that's a really interesting thing more generally with narcissists.

And we've talked about this before. Narcissists believe, among other things, that they can convince anyone that they're the smartest and slickest and most clever in the room and that they can lie and nobody notices. And this is why with the Mueller probe, Trump wanted to testify or to be to sit down for questioning to be deposed. And his lawyers didn't let him because Trump thinks I'll just sit down with them. I'll be able to convince them that I'm telling the truth that they won't know. I'll be lying. That is a really common trait of narcissists.

Michael Cohen knows it. It's going to be a wild 48 hours, and I'm glad you're with us for it. The weather is about to start warming up, and that often means sweating and chafing and sticking. Sheath is the men's underwear that once and for all puts an end to all of that nonsense. Our sponsor, Sheath Underwear, has designed unique boxer briefs with an ergonomic compartment built to keep everything separate and dry and cool and comfortable by allowing air to circulate everywhere it needs to be. No more readjusting all day. Sheath offers a huge variety of designs

and patterns. Over half a million pairs have already been sold. Also, check out their super comfortable bamboo T-shirts. Sheath has amazing customer service, super fast shipping, along with over 20,000 five star reviews. Sheath is also actively working with multiple nonprofits that deal with mental health and homelessness, which you support when you get Sheath underwear. I've had a great experience with Sheath underwear. I know you will to head on over to Sheath underwear dot com slash with the It's great to be joined today by Dr. Shira Doron, who's the chief infection control officer for Tufts Medicine Health System and also the hospital epidemiologist at Tufts Medical Center in Boston. Really great having you on today.

I appreciate your time. Great to be with you. So I've been reading all of these analyses and meta analyses and meta meta analyses of what might be thought of as a simple question, do masks work to prevent COVID? And it seems as though even the most well-intentioned and sort of science-facing people have had different and sometimes changing perspectives on this question throughout the pandemic. There's also sort of a question of what do we mean by do they work? And that might mean what is the effect for an individual of their decision to

wear a mask versus what is a policy of saying we require masking in these, those or other situations? What does that do on the population level infection rate. So start wherever you want on this question and then we can kind of go from there. Where are you maybe now on this issue? Speaker 4 Yeah, I mean, I think you hit the nail on the head, right? This is not a simple question. Do masks work? And you know where I am now is is in many ways where I started before the pandemic was even a glimmer in our eye, which is that I've quite literally trusted masks with my life. My whole career, I have obviously worn masks in healthcare. I'm not a surgeon, so I've worn masks for my own protection, and I believe in them. I have taken care of patients with deadly bacterial meningitis

in an ear loop surgical mask. I have taken care of patients with H1N1 influenza before there was a vaccine for it in a surgical mask. And I've taken care of patients with multi-drug resistant tuberculosis in an N95 and I have trusted it to protect me and keep me healthy and alive. And I still do to this day. But when the pandemic was bearing down on us, SARS-CoV-2, the COVID-19 pandemic, I started to have to really look at all of that literature because questions started to arise that were really quite contentious. The first question was, should we be using surgical masks or N95s to take care of these suspected COVID-19 patients? That was a really difficult one because we didn't have nearly

enough N95s available in this country to take care of every person with a respiratory infection in the winter in an N95. And so we really needed to start looking at the data, which suggested that it wasn't clear-cut whether you needed an N95 in that situation. And the CDC was really kind of hedging on its language. WHO was being very clear that you did not need an N95. And so you may have seen that there was relatively recently a clinical trial that assessed N95s versus surgical masks. They started back in those days when we really didn't know what to do and didn't have enough N95s and actually found that they couldn't detect a difference in healthcare worker infection rates between those hospitals who used N95s for all COVID

care and those who use surgical masks. That's not to say that the N95s aren't more protective. Many of those health care workers got those infections outside of health care. Right. And that seems to be a lot of the difficulty where if we just say as sensible people, the tighter the barrier that we place between ourselves and a pathogen seems pretty logical that it reduces the chance of that pathogen getting through. Great.

OK, so we can start there. But then you go to all sorts of different studies and you have to contend with questions like just because you have a mandate doesn't mean everyone's doing it. Just because people are doing it part of the day doesn't mean they're doing it all of the day. Just because you are ostensibly wearing an N95 mask doesn't mean you're wearing it correctly or you don't have it pulled down or pulled up or, you know, on your sleeve. So so are those some of the difficulties in getting to what is the the, quote, true answer? That's exactly right. And that's really why the question is, it is more than do masks work, it's do mask mandates work or does masking on a community level

result in a lower level of infection transmission or number of infections than not masking on a community level? And what are you comparing it to? No masks at all, optional masking versus mandated masking. All of those comparisons are different comparisons. And we have data that show that those broader sort of community level interventions are quite a bit less effective than you would want them to be, given that we do believe, although it is really hard to show with science, that masks are protecting us when we wear them. And some of the data evidence for that was also quite early on in healthcare. Looking specifically at SARS-Co, Coby to what we were seeing was that health care workers

did not have higher rates of SARS, Coby to antibody positivity. People who weren't health care workers, even though we were surrounded by COVID-19 patients all day long. And that was telling me that our PPE was working. There's sort of a parallel. Maybe we would call it an issue here that is separate from a mask mandate, which maybe we can also introduce, which is I've read a couple of studies which suggests that when news media is accurately informing people about the prevalence of a virus, meaning people are aware

of when risk is higher versus when when risk is lower, that people choose to behave differently, not only in terms of optional mask wearing in places like grocery stores, but also in terms of how social am I going to be? Am I going to go to sporting events, et cetera? So this would be the idea that it's less about mandating one thing or another, but that if people perceive, oh, there's a new variant, like, for example, after Thanksgiving of whichever year it was when Delta first came or whichever one it was, when people perceive the risk is higher, they will modify their behavior and that this is a way that we actually do flatten the curve over a period of a couple of months.

And so it's less about mandating, but more about informing and that many people will actually make the choice that is logical anyway. Is that something that needs to be considered when the effectiveness is measured? Yeah, that's exactly right. So you know, this gets to one of the CDC studies that, you know, was really instrumental in the development of their recommendations during the Omicron wave to shift to the highest quality mask you can wear instead of cloth masks, unless that's the highest quality mask you can tolerate. So the recommendation was N95s are the most protective, KN95s are the second most protective surgical masks and then cloth masks. And that was based on this paper that they put out in their MMWR report showing that people who used N95s, so people who tested positive versus negative for SARS-CoV-2 infection, COVID infection, were more likely to be negative if they had used a higher quality mask, essentially,

was the result of that study. And the critique to that is people who wear N95s are more likely to be COVID cautious in general than people who choose, because that was not a randomized controlled clinical trial. And this is the critique for any observational study, any epidemiologic study, any study where you compare two geographical locations, for example. So there's a new study that shows that states and counties with mask mandates had lower infection in the United States, but not lower death rates, for example. Some of those things are exactly what you're saying. If you don't randomize in a randomized controlled

clinical trial, and you just observe the people who choose to wear the higher quality masks. People who choose to wear masks over no masks are also taking COVID more seriously and doing those other things. The states and counties that choose to issue mandates are also issuing mandates related to other things. They may have more business closures. They may have more people in them that take covid seriously. That's why the conference systematic review old and new and really any time they do a systematic review on anything, masks and treatments in medicine will always focus on randomized control clinical trials, because that's the only way to take all those other factors out of the calculation.

If we want to, in sort of one sentence, give what might be the most comprehensive but also accurate assessment. Is it fair to say that a correctly worn high quality mask does a good job of protecting the individual wearing it, but mask mandates are less effective at protecting a population for all of the different reasons that you've cited so far? Is that kind of where we land? That's what I believe to be true. I can't say that we have great data to prove that you wearing an N95 is definitely going

to protect you from COVID-19. But that's what my three plus years of experience in a hospital being bathed in COVID-19 tell me, plus what I refer to as the zero prevalence data for healthcare workers, et cetera, the low rate of transmission that I see on a day-to-day basis. And it's my job to see that between patients and staff. So I believe that a high quality, well-fitting mask will protect me if I wear one. But I agree with the second part of what you said, which is that I have been unable to see convincing evidence that a mask mandate or that if there is a difference there, it's very, very small. The epidemiologic data comparing county to county and state to state and country to country based on mask use suggests that if there's any difference there at all, it's very, very small. And that should really call into question the discussion around future mandates, in

my opinion, even though, as I said, I've been trusting masks with my life. There are all sorts of claims that we've seen over the last few years about the harms of masks. Sometimes these are what people call psychological harms related to kids in schools or being able to communicate or whatever the case may be. You then have the stuff like, well, it forces you to rebreathe your own carbon dioxide and all of these different things. And they've to to my relative satisfaction, mostly been all debunked with the exception of it does seem that for little babies, exposure to an overwhelming number of people where they don't see their

mouth when they are being spoken to may delay language development to some degree. And it seems to be temporary. I mean, I know I'm bringing a lot of new new things in here, but on the criticisms of the masks, what do we actually know at this point? Speaker 4 Yeah, I mean, if we go back to when we first started to think about community level masking, which was in health care. So it's March of 2020. More and more of our health care workers are getting infected generally at home and in the community, not through care of patients with COVID because they're wearing masks with

patients. And we are and they're getting exposed and we're having to furlough them for two weeks. We meet five minutes after we started to do that, we realized we can't run a hospital with the number of people that are home waiting to, you know, usually not contract COVID after an exposure. We start bringing them back and we have them wear, those who are exposed to COVID, we have them wear masks. So, you know, very quickly, half of our healthcare workforce was wearing masks, but we didn't have a mask mandate in healthcare yet because masks had been shown in several meta-analyses not to be effective

for that purpose. And that's why we had avoided doing that. But as I watched people wearing masks because of exposure, I saw a lot of people touching them, you know, touching them, people putting them down on the table to eat on a surface that somebody else was going to eat on. I saw a lot of things that made me really nervous about the, even the, having the conversation around bringing masks in as a long-term strategy, as a mandate for healthcare workers. But we did it. We did it because it got to the point where everyone was exposed and we needed to protect each other. And then, as you know, it became a standard and recommended by the CDC for the whole country. The data on its effectiveness hadn't changed. The data on community masking hadn't changed between the CDC not recommending community

masking and recommending community masking, but the stakes were so high. People were dying, and the hospitals were filling up, and people were going to be dying of non-COVID reasons because they couldn't get a bed in the hospital. And it was worth it. It was worth it to try. And I have to admit, I didn't have the creativity to think how we could possibly implement community masking on a national level, given the supply chain issues. I didn't think that people could make them at home. And I lacked that creativity and I was wrong. We did it and we did it effectively. But then what I started to see over time, especially as the children in schools were wearing masks,

was, but also here in the hospital, working every day throughout the whole pandemic was a loss of connection. When you couldn't see people's expressions and people's faces, you were just much less likely to, you know, have those kind of intimate conversations. We were able to drop masks in the hospital in areas where patients and the public were restricted from entering. So after everyone was vaccinated in the summer of 2021, we stopped wearing masks in offices and conference rooms and break rooms. And it was night and day in terms of morale,

combating burnout and what we had just been through. And then we had to put the mask back on because the Delta variant was immune invasive and people were vaccinated, people were getting infected again. And it was hard. So I think that, sure, there are definite downsides when it comes to people who are hearing impaired, not being able to tell what's going on, people who are trying to learn language, people, you know, with speech impairments, you know, and, you know, children who have developmental delays and that sort of social interaction piece. But I really did see amongst my children and my friends' children and amongst my colleagues, just an impact on connection, mood, morale that has really

improved again when we were able to take masks off about a year ago. And last thing, the rebreathing of your own carbon dioxide does not seem to be a problem. No, no, I wouldn't worry about that at all. You know, we do know that our that our surgeons wear masks for 16-hour cases and there's no issue. So that would not be one of my concerns. Now, N95s, OSHA does require that workers be medically cleared to wear N95 respirators. Those will cause shortness of breath. They can cause cardiovascular issues when you wear them for long periods of time.

And of course, we've all seen the pictures of the skin breakdown that you can have if you have to wear them for a long period of periods of time during a period where everybody has covered or suspected COVID, which was the case in spring of 2020. So those can can have some health implications. All right. We've been speaking with Dr. Shira Doron from Tufts Medical Center in Boston and also chief infection control officer for Tufts Medicine Health System. Really appreciate your time and your insights today. It was such a pleasure.

As many of my viewers and listeners, of course, know, I have many family members who work in the field of mental health. And I think one of the most important things that we can do is to both increase access and reduce stigma when it comes to mental health services. And that's why I am thrilled that one of our sponsors today is BetterHelp. BetterHelp is the world's largest therapy service, and it is 100 percent online. With BetterHelp, you can tap into a network of over twenty five thousand licensed and experienced therapists. An important word, therapists who can help you with a wide range of issues. You answer a few questions about your needs and your preferences and better help will

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affordable price. Get 10% off your first month at better help.com slash Pacman. That's better H E L P.com slash Pacman for 10% off your first month. The link is in the podcast notes for years. Now, one of the false claims that the right has been throwing at the left in the United States is that the left wants to defund the police. Now, we've covered this so extensively. Certainly you can go on Twitter or Reddit and find some people who say defund the police or all cops are bastards or whatever slogan they come up with. But overwhelmingly, no one wants to defund the police, even those in the Democratic Party.

The vast majority say we need to reform the police. I've put out a pretty extensive eight to 10 point plan on how to improve policing. And this includes training and retraining of different kinds. This includes demilitarization. This includes, yes, having a an unarmed force that can respond to certain types of calls. But in some cases, it actually might involve funding the police more in order to get police away from the low hanging fruit policing that actually causes the problems. Anyway, the point is, you know, as well as I do, I'm sure that defund the police exists almost nowhere and has no influence on the mainstream Democratic Party.

And suddenly Republican Congressman Jim Jordan says he's going to defund the police because Trump was indicted. Now he's talking, of course, of federal police, and it's become very popular for Republicans to go after federal police. Let's take a look at this clip. This is from the Maria Bartiromo program over the weekend. Take a listen. Legislation, write laws and pass legislation.

So we'll look at that. And maybe most importantly, Maria, is we control the power of the purse and that's we're going to have to look at the appropriations process and limit funds going to some of these agencies, particularly the ones who are engaged in the most egregious behavior. So the DOJ and the FBI. Yeah. And what I really like, frankly, yeah, the DOJ and the FBI, they want to defund federal police. They say we are for law and order and against defunding the police. But all of a sudden, Donald Trump has to comply with the law and the legal orders, as they love to obsess with of law enforcement and prosecutors and so on and so forth. And all of a sudden they say, get rid of the entire department, defund the FBI, defund

the DOJ. These are the very same people who, while saying we support the police and you're bad for wanting to defund the police, we're on the side of the rioters rather than the police when it came to the January 6th riotous insurrection. And in this particular case with Trump and we still listen, it's going to be a while until we know the full scope of what the repercussions are going to be. We don't know if Trump will be indicted in Georgia.

We don't know if the Mar-a-Lago search warrant is going to lead to an indictment that this first arrest and indictment may only be the tip of the iceberg, for lack of a better term. We don't know. But all of a sudden we have someone being potentially held accountable overwhelmingly for things that are on tapes of different kinds. I mean, Trump called Georgia and said, I need 11000 votes. Give me a break. It's we have a recording and there may be crimes there.

And all of a sudden they don't want accountability. They claim to be the party of personal responsibility. And yet they want to blame everyone other than the alleged criminal himself for what is taking place. And at its core, one of the aspects of this that we have to consider is they really seemed not to believe they might lose back in 2020 when in summer of 2020, Trump started with the Biden has no crowds at his rallies and he's in the basement and whatever else, all of that stuff.

When all of that was going on back in 2020 and Trump started with that, they're going to try to take it. They're going to take this. They're going to steal that. That's the other thing. They never thought they might just lose. They didn't really have a plan for what to do if they lost other than to lie and claim they won. And that devolved into so many other things that separate from the Stormy Daniels indictment that we're dealing with today. And so their principles mean nothing. And they are the ones I mean, listen, have national Democrats called for a defunding of law enforcement the way that Jim Jordan does

in this video? If they have, I certainly haven't seen any of those examples. So they are hypocrites. Hypocrisy knows no bounds. Republicans don't care about hypocrisy anymore, but we still have to deal with it on our end now that they want to do away with the very law enforcement agencies that are trying. They may not succeed, but at least they're trying to hold Trump and some of his cronies accountable. Hey, let's take a break from all of the politics for a moment. Let's do something completely different. OK, I got an email from Chris, Chris with a K, by the way, which we're going to put

up on the screen. And Chris said, hey, David, I know you aren't a self-help guy, but you seem to have some good habits. Can you list the easiest and simplest ways to improve health and well-being that you've come across. Well, listen, Chris is 100 percent right. I am not a self-help guy. I'm not going to be here to tell you about lobsters cleaning their room or whatever it is that Jordan Peterson is going to advise you. I will give you what I think are just some really low hanging fruit that most people can do that in my experience will put you, you know, there's this kind of 80 20 rule, right? There's people out

there looking for the exact supplements and what's the right number of reps to squeeze into a 14 minute workout for maximum gain. And then what about, uh, uh, you, you know, taking apple cider vinegar with lemon and, and, uh, uh, you know, bathing in blue light or not blue light in order to sleep, right? You can try to get to the 99%, but very often 80, 20 is where you want to be. And there are some really simple things that will get you like 80 percent of the benefit of a lot of this stuff. So this is just my opinion. I'm not a self-help guy, but here's just like a few things that I would say. First of all, walk eight thousand steps a day. If you can make it ten thousand, even better. OK, you don't know how much you're walking. Most phones have a

step tracker in them. I use a Fitbit that goes on my wrist. If you're walking eight thousand steps a day every day, that is already going to put you in terms of mobility and avoiding sort of like a sedentary situation. It's going to put you ahead of 80 percent of people. If I look down, if it's six o'clock or seven o'clock and I look down and I've only walked five or six thousand steps, I will just exit my house if I have to do it after dinner when the baby's sleeping and just walk for 15 minutes to get to my eight thousand steps. I will do it. And I've been doing this for years. That alone is going to give you this 80 percent benefit with something that's super simple. OK, in terms of diet, people will go and they'll say, Oh, I need, what's the right type of oil. Now there's this whole anti seed oil thing that's

going on, but it's already been debunked. And what about, what about keto and all this, all the, okay. For me, the simplest shorthand to eating what is probably a pretty good diet is to focus on getting 30 grams of fiber in your diet per day. How is this possible? How could that do so much? I think here's the reason why. Foods that are high in fiber, number one, tend to be less processed. Number two, they tend to be lower in saturated fat, although some of them have high good fats. If you are prioritizing 30 grams of fiber per day, you're probably eating a relatively healthy diet

just because of the foods that have fiber. OK, so I know that there's a million diets and then people are finding a diet that's completely unsustainable. This, that, the other thing. Oh, you know, now I'm on blueberries. No, now I'm on acai or. OK, if you focus on just trying to get 30 grams of fiber per day, you are already going to be ahead of 80 percent of the American population. Number three, drink enough water. I find sometimes at five o'clock I am not feeling well and I'll think, oh, my goodness, is it the virus? What is happening here? And then I'll realize I went to the gym at two. I then had a

meeting at a cafe where I had a coffee and no water. I haven't had water since lunch and I worked out and it's five thirty. I will have a glass of water and I will feel better very quickly. Drink enough water. I wake up in the morning. You know how you bring that glass of water and I will feel better very quickly. Drink enough water. I wake up in the morning. You know how you bring that glass of water to your nightstand and then you never drink it. The goal for me is I wake up and I have it in the morning. So drinking enough water. Very, very important. Protect your sleep schedule at least five nights a week.

OK, and by that, I mean, if you know how much sleep you need to feel pretty good, make sure that your schedule allows you that sleeping schedule at least five nights a week. I try to go with at least six nights a week. If you need seven hours and forty five minutes, then you got to figure out how to get there. How do you eke out enough time to be in bed and able to sleep that amount of time? And then lastly, read every day. What's the deal with this reading? What what am I talking about? I'm talking about reading physical books, fiction or nonfiction, whatever you want. I read nonfiction during the day, fiction at night. If you are reading some number of pages every single day and it's useful stuff,

good fiction or useful nonfiction, you are going to be learning so much more than the average person who's reading no books, no books at all. I used to have a sort of like a minimum. I wanted to read twenty five nonfiction pages a day and then some fiction at night before going to bed. I've recently upped it to 30 pages a day of nonfiction. If I'm reading 80 books a year or whatever it ends up working out to be and someone else is reading zero, that's an insane leg up, whether I'm interviewing for a job or just for personal enlightenment and knowledge or being an interesting person with things to talk about. If I'm reading 80 books and you aren't reading any, that's going to create a big, big gap

in enjoyment, in knowledge and all of these different things. That's that's my list. And again, I'm not a self-help guy. Is there anything magical about eight thousand steps? I don't know. Is there anything magical about eight thousand steps? I don't know. Is there anything magical about 30 grams of fiber? I think that's what's recommended maybe for men and for women. It's a little bit less.

I don't think any of these things are magic, but they're just the things I've found that are really useful to me. And almost anyone can do them with relatively little struggle. Let me know your thoughts. That's probably the only self-help type segment we're going to get on the show for a while. We have a voicemail number and that number is 2192 David P. Here is a very important and powerful reaction to the arrest of Donald Trump. Take a listen to this. What about Hillary's emails? All right. Thanks. Bye.

I know that this is tongue in cheek in all seriousness. What a backfire. What about Hillary was the criminal and Biden's a criminal and Obama's a criminal and Trump is not a criminal. And yet Trump is the one who is getting arrested and indicted at least once, if not many, many more times, as we might see in the next six to eight weeks. What about Hillary's emails?

That is a really great question. We have a fantastic bonus show for you today. Quietly, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has legalized permit list concealed carry in Florida. What? Yes. Secondly, we are at a 16 year high in traffic deaths. Why we will discuss. And thirdly, Paris is banning those electric rental scooters.

I actually have a lot to say about this and the whole rental scooter thing in general. So we're going to talk about all of that on today's bonus show. Get instant access by signing up at join pacman dot com.