The Highwire with Del Bigtree - MONKEYPOX MAYHEM: PC VS PUBLIC HEALTH

Episode Date: August 20, 2022

A simmering outbreak is now racing upwards while a questionable response juggles political correctness, public health, and a vaccine of unknown effectiveness against a population unwilling to ‘fall in line’ for more public health fear tactics.#MonkeyPox #MonkeyPoxVaccine #SenScottWeinerBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-highwire-with-del-bigtree--3620606/support.

Another public health emergency that's been simmering and now is kind of really is popping through the surface is the monkey pox outbreak within really the United States but also the world in general. And, you know, the last time we talked about this, we were talking about Biden and the Biden administration. They were debating whether they were going to declare emergency or not. So that was that was really what was going on. But if people watching the show when they were when they were debating that, they would have already known the truth about what was going to happen because you predicted it, I believe. take a look. All right. The pharmaceutical lobby is the most powerful lobby in Washington.

So they're in everybody's office right now saying you need to declare a state of emergency. And what does that do? It frees us, Pfizer, Sinofi, Moderna, frees all of us up to start making drugs or dreaming about drugs that we can rush out to you and we get to skip all of that expensive and pesky safety trials. We can just rush it out because now it's an emergency. So you know the pharmaceutical industry loves every emergency declaration. Now they get to try all the different drugs. Maybe it's for hiccups, but shoot, let's try it on smallpox,

because we don't have to do a safety study anymore. I mean, the whole thing, this is what that pressure in government is, and I'll kind of be shocked if Biden doesn't declare a state of emergency. Well, yeah, I felt pretty confident about where the direction this is going. I mean, look, it's not like I'm a genius. I think 99% of the people watching this show. would say, I think I'm with Dell. So where are we at? Yeah. So what it started with where the states began even before the federal response. So we had states declaring New York, California, Illinois,

they were declaring public health emergencies. And then shortly after that, there was a small break shortly after that, I believe it was on August 4th or 5th. The U.S. declares monkeypox outbreak, a public health emergency. That was HHS Secretary Javier Bacera. And as you rightly put it, that frees up a lot of funding. It puts a big spotlight on the vaccinations. But now let's look at the CDC's information. They have their weekly MMWR report. That's kind of like their in-house science journal.

And they have epidemiologic and clinical characteristics among Epox cases in the United States. And they're looking from May 17th to July 22, 2022 of this year. And they say this, quote, CDC received case report forms for 1,195 cases by July 27th. Among these 99% of cases were among men, among men with available information, 94% reported male-to-male sexual or close intimate contact during the three weeks before symptom onset. They also report 41% had HIV infection.

So there's a couple of conversations that are running like parallel with this monkeypox outbreaks. This is one of them right here. So there's push from both sides. One side is saying, look, it's in one group. It's obviously in one group here from what the data is showing. So why don't we focus on that group for vaccination, for restrictions, but the group, the gay, homosexual, et cetera, groups are saying this, that we tried that with AIDS. It didn't work.

It's going to spread. And, you know, logic will tell you, just like they were going to do the emergency, logic will tell you this spreads through contact. So it doesn't matter who you are. It will spread through contact. And logical say it probably will spread outside of those communities at some point here. So that's one of the conversations that we're having. right now is, you know, limiting government intrusion into people's intimate lives. And this was the

headline here. I believe this is Wall Street Journal. As Monkey Pock strikes gay men, officials debate, warnings to limit partners. And it says in here, this is California State Senator Scott Wiener. He's a Democrat out of San Francisco. And he says this, if people want to have sex, they're going to have sex, said California State Senator Scott Wiener, who is involved in the city's monkey pox response. He says, quote, I know people who normally go to sex parties who will not. People will make their own decisions about their own risk levels. Now, he actually has been really vocal on Twitter about this very subject. And there is a picture of him right there.

And he's heading up the Monkey Pox committee out of a select committee out of California. But he went to Twitter to say this. Awesome. San Francisco AIDS Foundation guidance on Monkey Pox and fun. We can continue to have fun while reducing risk. He says closing bath houses in 1980s didn't reduce HIV. It was an epic blunder and pushed people into the shadows. Let's not make the same knee-jerk mistake with monkeypox.

So it's interesting. When COVID happened, way back, I believe this was in March of 2020, just as it was starting to really roll, there was a lot of public awareness about how this thing may really take off. It's getting kind of bad. This is what he went to Twitter and had to say. He said, governor knew some statewide stay-at-home order. without specific end date will be rough for the world's fifth largest economy. Yet it's essential. We must slow COVID-19's infection rate.

This short-term plan is far preferable to the much greater long-term damage of uncontrolled infections. And then just a couple months later, he went to Twitter and said this. We need a national mask mandate, period. That's how we beat this virus. Now again... I mean, it's really the hypocrisy here is what I think really we need to be focused on. and, you know, not to disparage anybody or their preferences, but Scott Wiener is openly, you know, he talks a lot about his gay pride and marches, and that's fine.

I mean, all of that's fine, but what's shocking here is his entire perspective is leave us alone, none of your measures, you know, trying to slow down the spread of this is ever going to work. We need to be allowed to live our lives the way we want to live our lives, yet he had no problem destroying all of our lives. lives over the last two years, I was in support, you know, when they were shutting people's power off for having 10 people at a Thanksgiving dinner inside their house. But God forbid, we don't let people, you know, march in the streets and go into bathhouses or all these things. Now, look, I think the only story is here is I don't think we should be dictating how you live

your life. I've been consistent on that all the way across the board. But Scott Weiner has not been consistent. He's not being consistent. In one hand, he locked down all of our children. He locked us out of our jobs. He was totally supportive of masking and covering our kids, so we destroyed their social interactions, all essentially to protect the group, a singular group that in the case of COVID was very specific, the elderly, and those who were, you know, too sick really to be able to handle this essentially bad cold virus. So you really afflicted a totally different group, the children, in order to protect the elderly. That doesn't make sense. And in this situation, he's saying lay off this very specific community that finds themselves in the middle of this.

You know, where is the consistency? And, you know, this is a guy right now that is drooling to pass a COVID mandatory COVID vaccine for children in schools in California. I mean, he's in many ways. This is the guy that seems to be taking over for Senator Richard Pan. So I think the hypocrisy is really important here. If they were just shooting, you know, playing it straight and across the board, then I don't know that you have a news story, but I think this is one. Right. And it'll be interesting to see if he can merge the hypocrisy of his briefing to something a little more concise because he is chairing the new Senate Select Committee on Monkeypox. Here's from the website right here.

So he will be in charge of several of the aspects and the responses, including messaging, for some of this outreach. for his districts and his state. So, but you know, the CDC like the WHO before them has weighed into this topic despite some of the pushback that has been has been out there. And this was what the CDC had to say. This was their website. Safer sex should consider temporary changing, temporarily changing some behaviors that may increase your risk of being exposed. For example, limit your number of sex partners to reduce your likelihood of exposure. And then there's kind of just like a public PSA like, hey, by the way, you might want to. It says spaces like backrooms, sauna, sex clubs, or private and public sex parties where intimate,

often anonymous sexual contact with multiple partners occurs, are more likely to spread monkeypox. So that is kind of where the CDC stands right now is maybe limit the partners for now temporarily. But the other story here, really the bigger story and the more important story for our audience and for our research is the vaccine. So let's go back to CDC. And this has to say about the vaccine. Now, this is the Genios vaccine. This is from Bavarian Nordic.

This was in the strategic stockpile. The United States has spent over a billion dollars stockpiling this over almost a decade plus like this, because you never know when these outbreaks are going to happen. So you go to the CDC and they talk about the efficacy of this vaccine for this current monkeypox outbreak. And it says here, this is the CDC's interim guidance for prevention and treatment of monkeypox in persons with HIV infection. This is a genios vaccine, and it basically, it says clinical efficacy or vaccine effectiveness of genios against monkeypox is unknown. They do not know. It says, including among persons with HIV infection. Now, that's a big deal.

As they point out, like, why are they singling out HIV? Why would that matter? And when I look at that, you know, like it's, it just sort of puts it in there. But then you think there's obviously a concern they have and they don't like to get into details about it. But when we think about it, this is a live virus vaccine, correct? This is a live orthopox vaccine, much like a live polio vaccine that's being used, that it has the risk of spreading polio and is one of the issues we have. Here it is, Genio Smallpox and Monkeypox vaccine, live non-replicating suspension for subcontaneous injection.

So there it is. They say non-replicating. They say the same thing about the polio vaccine that was being used in Indian, Africa, in the Middle East. And now we're seeing vaccine strain polio running. rampant around the world. It's a serious problem. And then you think we're giving this to 41% in that original data, you said, right? 41% of those getting monkeypox are HIV positive. So imagine giving a live virus vaccine to someone that is HIV positive, meaning they are already immune deficient. Their immune systems aren't working correctly. Now you're going to put a live virus inside

of their body with an immune system that may not react correctly. And then what kind of variance is all of this going to create? Do we want variants being spread everywhere? Do we? Do we want variants being spread everywhere? We're pressure upon a live virus vaccine for a pox-like situation. All of this, very concerning, right? And it's what I was saying two weeks ago. We covered this. They want to just try experiments on all of us without really. They just don't tend to look at the long-term circumstances, which is what we're dealing with COVID now.

Right. And so what are the talking points we always hear with vaccines safe and effective? So we just looked at efficacy. That's unknown from the CDC's own words. Now, what about safety of this vaccine? Well, just a couple months back in May, you had a conversation right when this monkey pock, right when the first cases were coming out, you had a conversation with Dr. Peter McCullough, and this is what he had to say exactly about the safety of this very vaccine.

Take a listen. Okay. Shockingly, when the monkeypox story started to evolve, we heard a report that the U.S. government had actually purchased 13 million doses of the genios vaccine, the genios vaccine. So wait a minute, the Ginios vaccine was coming along in 2018, 2019. And in fact, this is a live attenuated vaccine. And with it in a study of over 3,003 people in the package insert, you know what the trouble is? Myocarditis or heart inflammation.

And now there's already reports of heart inflammation with this vaccine. Kinneth and colleagues reported in 2018 heart damage. with the product in a young man age 36. Now, the interesting thing is clinically, though, the people who are at risk for dying are young individuals with HIV. We can't use live attenuated viruses in people with HIV because they're immunocompromised. We have 13 million of these vaccines and you're saying the known side effects and the numbers are fairly high, right, in the trials of this vaccine, they had pretty high issues of myocarditis and then, I believe, a troponin level.

Is that correct? Right. So up to 18% had elevations in cardiac tropon, and this is worrisome for subclinical myocarditis. We know that the smallpox virus itself has some tropism for the heart. And so the last thing we want to introduce is a live attenuated virus that in fact would cause heart damage in ostensibly well people. There have already been case reports proving this with MRI and other clinical sources of data.

Wow. Wow. Yeah, that's right. I mean, it's really, here we are again, known side effects, right? We're outside of a world where, oh, it's perfectly safe, perfectly effective. That said serious adverse events and that won 2.3% during these small trials that they did. But that means, you know, somewhere around two to three people per 100 could experience severe reactions to this. So it's scary. As it was tested and what you believed would happen has now indeed happened. So let's take a look at the FDA's own press release. They have authorized this genios vaccine. FDA authorizes emergency use to genios vaccine to increase vaccine supply. So they have authorized this as an EUA vaccine now. And what that does is it's going to give them the authority to try all different types.

There's the, yeah, there's the headline right there for immediate release. release August 9th, so just a couple days ago. And on the same day, we see this headline, FDA clears way for single monkeypox vaccine doses to be divided into five to protect more people. So now in this article, you read into it. It says health care providers can now administer this vaccine under the top layer of skin. They can change the dosage per patient. Patients only need one dose. They're going all over the board. So I mean, you're a doctor, you divide it by five, carry the one. You can do kind of whatever you want now. I mean, it just shows you what is. We are just guinea pigs in the modern world of medicine now.

This is the pharmaceutical industry in full control of your FDA, your regulatory agencies. We are all now test subjects. They are saying themselves, we don't know if this vaccine works at all for monkeypox. No idea. But we'll go ahead and try dividing it into five, not using a syringe, but doing that sort of just right into the layer of your skin with one-fifth the dose. And then I imagine when you are delivering, when you're not really deeply penetrates, trading. Now you have a live virus vaccine that I'm going to assume is so close to the front of your skin that maybe some drips out. It's on your arm. What does that do? I mean, what happens when we

have live virus vaccine rubbing off on people out there? We don't know. People say, oh, it's a conspiracy theory. There's no theory at all. I'm just saying, what do we know about this? I mean, again, a massive, multi-million-person experiment that's about to take place on innocent people that don't really know this is just an experiment. Right. And so let's look at the trajectory here. So we have a graph. We kind of made a mock up graph of just an estimated trajectory of where these cases are going. So we have about a little over 33,000 cases worldwide right now. And that's in countries, whereas monkeypox is not endemic already. So everywhere already. And we look at the graph and we see at around October 7th or so, this is estimated to approach about,

100,000 cases worldwide. So this is cumulative cases, obviously. So, you know, this is just giving an idea where we're going with this. And the next question that I always get is, are people dying from this? Right. And so this is, you know, this is somewhat a recent headline. This is insider. And the headline is, can you die from onkypox? Infectious disease experts discuss mortality rates. Says in here, there have been 10 confirmed deaths in Spain, Brazil, India, Ghana, and Nigeria. There are 7, 102 monkeypox cases in the U.S. and so far no one has died on American soil from it. So that's really what we're looking at here.

You know, is high case counts, self-limiting disease as far as it's progressing into death. I just want to be clear because many of you in the audience have written into our show the last time we covered this. And I want to be clear. It is very hard to deliver this story in a perfectly sensitive manner. We are talking, we are reading you headlines that, 95% of these cases are appearing in, you know, the gay community. This doesn't mean that the highway, we have any attitude about your sexual preference. We are stating the facts.

But let's be clear. And one of the things that's been written in, and I'm going to share this, because when you write in, we read it, we're looking at what you're saying. Let me be perfectly clear. Monkeypox is not a sexually transmitted disease. We know that. This is a close-contact, you know, close human contact illness. And so anyone that comes in close physical touching contact with monkey pox is going to have this issue. We also, at the moment, we're not sure that there is such a thing as asymptomatic spread that they're looking at it.

But in many cases, there should be pox visible, which should be the alarm system, nature telling you, you know what, maybe not today. Maybe I take a rain check on that. Let's do this another time. We have tried to blur videos of where we are really seeing these infections, but there was no way to do that in a way that was not only acceptable to children, I'm telling you you probably don't want to even look in this, but if you're out there and you really are having trouble, you know, thinking about what you may need to do to protect yourself, if you're not in a monogamous relationship, if you tend to go out and sleep with anonymous partners, whether you are gay or straight or

bi or heterosexual, I would say we all should take this into consideration. I don't think this is a moment to panic. This isn't a deadly disease, but it's one that. that could really affect all of our lives. We have watched how they like to take, you know, a specific issue in a specific group and make it all of our problems. I am very nervous about the fact that Senator Weiner is the one in charge of this monkey pox situation in California

where they like to develop the laws that the rest of the country watches and the rest of the world watches. He had no problem locking us down for COVID. He had no problem taking the education away from our kids, even though our kids had literally zero risk from any serious or death issues with COVID. Again, they're not going to have a risk with monkeypox.

Are we so sure that we are going to avoid having monkeypox vaccines in our schools? The government is terrible at handling these problems. They make it all of our problem, even though it's not all of our problem. But let's do this. Can we all just agree as an intelligent species of adults that maybe we should take this upon ourselves? I would really love it if Senator Wiener would say, you know what, you don't need the government taking care of this. Can we all just be careful for the next few weeks so that we can get rid of this?

This is a trajectory that is going like this, folks, that is fully within our control. If we don't take control of this, our government will. And I have a feeling that this won't be good for the entire conversation about gender and gender decisions and sexual orientations and acceptance. in our society. No group should be singled out. So why don't we all do our part? That's all I'm saying. It's on all of us. This will, this will eventually jump over into the heterosexual community if we are not all careful. I hope I've been as broad based on that as I possibly can for all of you that are watching. And Del, when it comes to the government for everybody that just lived through the last two years, we saw a nearly unanimous lockdown restrictions at the beginning of COVID.

all the governors in lockstep doing this, but it's not really the case here in the United States. We saw like California, New York, and Illinois start out. But listen to Governor Ron DeSantis out of Florida. This is what he had to say about the restrictions for monkeypox and declaring a public health emergency in his state. Okay. You see any of these politicians you see out there trying to scare you about this? Do not listen to their nonsense. I am so sick.

I am so sick of politicians. and we saw this with COVID trying to sow fear into the population. We had people calling mothers worried about whether their kids could catch it at school. And we're not going to go back to like Fauci in the 80s where he was trying to tell families they were all going to catch AIDS watching TV together. And so I just want to be sure anything we deal with from a public health perspective, particularly with Joe at the helm, you know, we are not doing fear. They're going to do facts.

And we are not going to go out and try to rile with it. people up and try to act like people can't live their lives as they've been normally doing, you know, because of something. You see some of these states declaring states of emergency. They're going to abuse those emergency powers to restrict your freedom. I guarantee you that's what will happen. I agree with him. That is what's going to happen.