The Megyn Kelly Show - COVID Lockdown Reality and MSNBC Banned from Rittenhouse Courtroom, with Dr. Scott Atlas, Robert Barnes, and Dan Abrams | Ep. 206

Episode Date: November 18, 2021

Megyn Kelly is joined by Dr. Scott Atlas, former Trump administration COVID advisor and author of "A Plague Upon Our House," Robert Barnes, Kyle Rittenhouse's former civil attorney, and Dan Abrams, SiriusXM host and founder of the Law&Crime Network, to talk about the reality of the cost of lockdowns, how Atlas tried to undo COVID damage of Fauci and Birx, the need to have "focused protection," the science on masks, the latest on vaccine mandates, whether boosters are necessary, the importance of weighing risk tolerance with COVID, how the media smeared Dr. Atlas, the key video quality question in the Rittenhouse trial, MSNBC getting banned from the Rittenhouse trial courtroom after a producer followed the jury bus, and more.Follow The Megyn Kelly Show on all social platforms: YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/MegynKellyTwitter: http://Twitter.com/MegynKellyShowInstagram: http://Instagram.com/MegynKellyShowFacebook: http://Facebook.com/MegynKellyShow Find out more information at: https://www.devilmaycaremedia.com/megynkellyshow  

Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations. Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show. Big show planned for you today. Very excited to be speaking in just a bit with Dr. Scott Atlas. During the height of the pandemic, I think it's safe to say there was no one more maligned in the media than Dr. Atlas. He is here to set the record straight and will also discuss the fate of President Biden's vaccine mandate. Now that the agency within the government tasked with carrying it out has suspended enforcement of that mandate after losing in court. And I'm going to ask him about this new so-called study being touted by left-wing media saying that masks overwhelmingly work and these are the key to preventing infection with COVID.

It was published, there was a big article in The Guardian. What does he think of that and the actual science behind it? We'll get into all of that first though. Day three of jury deliberations underway right now in the trial of Kyle Rittenhouse, the now 18-year-old young man accused of shooting three men, killing two in August of 2020. In the wake of the Jacob Blake shooting by police a few days earlier, the city of Kenosha, Wisconsin was experiencing significant unrest and citizens like Kyle took to the streets of Kenosha to try to help others and prevent violence. Chaos ensued and Kyle found himself on the wrong end

of three different men attacking him. His defense is not that he didn't shoot them, but that it was in self-defense, something it is the prosecution's burden to disprove. The jury of seven women and five men have now deliberated for roughly 18 hours. Yesterday evening, in the last hour of deliberations, the jury rewatched several videos and evidence, including drone footage of the shooting of Joseph Rosenbaum, the first man shot, and a video involving the second shootings of Anthony

Huber and Gage Grosskreutz. I'm now joined by Robert Barnes, who's founding attorney of Barnes Law, and Kyle Rittenhouse's formal civil attorney who's been following the case very closely. Great to have you back, Robert. So as I gather, I mean, it's still kind of surprising to me that now we're in day three and, you know, several hours in. No one observing the jury said that they seemed tense. No one said they seemed tense, but they did report that they looked fatigued at the end of deliberations yesterday. That's not surprising. Kind of parlays with your own theories about this jury. And you revealed to

us yesterday, you and your jury consultant, when you were representing Kyle, had taken a very hard look at the likely pool of jurors and the challenges Kyle would be facing. And so those reports of the fatigue on the faces of the jurors and also the ongoing deliberations and the willingness and desire to look at videos over and over and over. What does it all tell you? I mean, I think what you have is a split jury. I think it's probably eight to four, nine to three in favor of acquittal, because that was the normal pattern with these kinds of facts that were overwhelmingly in Kyle's favor developed in trial. There were several jurors in the jury pool that would just not listen to any evidence, no matter what. And it seems like they're saying, well, either side will say, well,

let's look at this. Let's look at this to try to persuade the other side of their argument. And it seems that's the way it's going. And people that have been in the courtroom and seen who's there, it looks like there are a couple of people that are the potential holdouts. But one of the holdouts may be the forewoman herself, if the initial information is correct. What do you mean? Why do you think that? Because there was a group of three women that fit a certain personality and psychological profile that that would have been concerning if we had been involved during jury selection, because they were the they fit the overlapping demographic of politics and social standing and general other affiliations and associations, trust and confidence in mainstream media, et cetera, that led them to be likely hostile jurors. And they fit that demographically and stylistically. And from what information we have,

they've been grouped together ever since jury deliberation started. And it appears, it's not certain, but it appears that one of them, an older professor, may actually be the forewoman on the jury. And so the people that we would have been most concerned about may have a leading role in the jury. And that usually protracts a split jury. Because normally if you have nine to three, eight to four, the three or four usually fold after a day or two. But of that three or four, you have some really strong leaders, including one who, because they pick the foreperson before they know what the foreperson's vote is. And so what you may have is the foreperson may have one view of the case and the majority of the jurors a different view of the case. That usually prolongs jury deliberations when you

have a potential conflict like this within the jury. Yeah, everything's on its head because normally this would be great news for the defendant. He normally would love to have a hung jury and this would be wonderful. The longer it goes on, the more likely they're hung, the more likely he gets another try. I think everyone thought that the case went very well. Most people did for Kyle Rittenhouse. And so maybe not this time around. Maybe he doesn't, but I'm sure at this point, they'd rather the defense would, maybe the mistrial is looking better and better to them as the days go by. Yeah, I think that Kyle and some people close to Kyle recognize that things could have been

done better at trial and things could have been done much better in the jury selection stage. And a retrial affords them the opportunity to remedy both of those. So I think that's why I believe Kyle yesterday instructed his defense lawyer to request a mistrial even without prejudice. And I think it's because he recognizes I don't want to gamble on this jury going AWOL. The information he received from me and other people prior to trial has turned out true. And I think that he would rather go with a new trial with a better jury selection team, maybe a new defense team as well, or at least added to it, rather than gamble on whether this jury does something crazy like issue a split verdict or any kind of conviction, which would

seem crazy given the facts of the case. We continue to see unrest outside of the courthouse. More reports that the protesters can be heard quite clearly inside the courthouse. And you pointed out yesterday, it's a small courthouse. This is not some huge federal courthouse like you'd see in New York City. It's small. And indeed, those inside can hear the protesters. No justice, no peace. And you know what that means.

It's the first time I ever really thought about it. So if the protesters don't get their version of justice, the city will not remain peaceful. That's basically what they're saying. And that's exactly what you said the jury pool was worried about. These are, you Manhattan, it's not that unusual, right? But like in Kenosha, maybe so. And even right now, just getting this from the New York Times, they're reporting that the local schools around the county courthouse are holding online classes for the rest of the week in preparation for the verdict. Five public schools have cited the continuing jury deliberations at the courthouse as the reason for the switch. So now if any of these jurors have kids, now they understand their kids are not going to school for the rest of the week because the entire city is bracing itself for protests in the wake of this verdict. Good gracious. Exactly. And you have to wonder a little bit whether some of these public

announcements by the governor, by saying he's going to send in the National Guard, by the mayor and the local Kenosha Democratic politicians, by shutting down the schools near the courthouse, are really trying to send a message to the jury, the same message that the protesters who are within both eyes shot every day and then earshot while they're in the deliberations room of what the jurors are demanding, which is they're demanding convictions of Kyle or they will commit basically more rioting. And so that's the problem is that shouldn't have happened. The court should have excluded your First Amendment rights and at the right through an impartial jury trial. So they should have excluded those any protesters to be at least a block or more away from the courthouse, not to be right on the courthouse steps, not to be at least a block or more away from the courthouse, not to be right on the courthouse steps, not to be within earshot of the jury during deliberations. And I believe some of these Democratic politicians, like the governor and some local politicians in Kenosha, are trying

to coerce a conviction where they know the facts don't support it for their own political objectives. Okay, so adding to that, now Law and Crime, which is both an online property and a cable news network run by our pal Dan Abrams. They are reporting via reporter Kathy Russin that a person was following the jurors claiming to work for NBC slash MSNBC. Don't know whether that's in fact true, but the Kenosha County Sheriff's PIO, public information officer, says, quote, that incident did take place yesterday. He says yesterday in 1118. That's today and was handled by the Kenosha Police Department and is still under investigation. So, Robert, you got somebody following the jurors around. You got somebody who videotaped the jurors. You got the jurors hearing the protesters out on the courtroom steps. You've got them being told their kids can't go to school this week because they're waiting for these guys' verdict. Not to mention, if they know about the National Guard, some 500 of them, which is twice what the governor of Wisconsin called in in the height of the riots.

First, he called in none. Then it was 125. Then he finally realized he should call in some more. It was 250 at the heights. Now he's doubled that, waiting for this jury's verdict. And what I'm starting to wonder is if this goes the wrong way for Kyle Rittenhouse, whether all of this is amounting to a grounds for appeal. No doubt it's grounds for mistrial and grounds for new trial grounds for appeal of any ruling that goes against Kyle because of these circumstances. Well, it's becoming more like a circus. And I think the court was naive. And I think that defense counsel was naive about the ability to actually do a fair and partial jury in Kenosha. What we found when we did the polling was 80% of Kenoshans were worried about participating in the case because of the impact on potential riots. You cannot get a fair jury in this context. And so I think that they

needed to take extraordinary steps, both in the jury selection process and during the jury deliberation process to mitigate the risk of this occurring. They didn't. And now the jury is experiencing it. They're being photographed. They're being threatened with being doxed. They're being threatened with adverse outcomes from the protesters on an hourly basis, right within their earshot while they're in the deliberations room. Now they're being followed by fake press that can intimidate them. They have the governor and the local politicians reinforcing that by shutting down schools and sending in National Guard. This is not the way to conduct a criminal trial in America.

We certainly hope that it was fake, that they didn't in fact work for NBC or MSNBC. They are saying, for the record, that this person does not work for NBC or MSNBC. They are saying for the record that this person does not work for them, that whoever was following the jury does not work for those news organizations. The judge is apparently going to make a statement this morning on it and an arrest has been made, but none of that calms the fears of the jury. The jury probably be relieved to find out it was a reporter as opposed to somebody posing as a reporter, probably taking pictures of them, trying to get information on them. And let's face it, this isn't exactly like going into witness protection. It's not that hard to figure out who the jurors are and where they live. And they need to be worried. The judge's own children have

received death threats now in the wake of this trial by some, I presume those who want to see Kyle convicted, who think this judge is now a white supremacist and so on. So all of this is amping up to a seriously problematic place for Kyle. I mean, what Kyle's entitled to is a fair trial. And as the defense attorney said yesterday, we're talking about a life sentence. They want to take this 18-year-old and put him in jail forever. So we really do need to bend over backward. And I wonder now, you've had two motions for a mistrial with prejudice, one for a mistrial without prejudice by the defense. And I wonder now,

because the judge's rhetoric seems to be amping up about, you're on a thin ice to the prosecution. And I've been telling you that I've got real qualms about the way you're handling the evidence and they're only getting worse. And to me, it almost sounds like he is getting ready to lay the he's laying the foundation for him to enter a verdict, notwithstanding the jury's verdict that if they if they mistrial or if they if they find him guilty, I feel like this judge might be getting ready to overrule it. Yes. And what I hope he does, he steps in now because he's putting the jury in an untenable position and just issue a mistrial with prejudice. The reason why we're here is because the prosecutor

took a lot of steps to inflame the local court of public opinion, then convinced the court to allow a shortened jury selection, then did a lot of things during trial that were completely impermissible, not only commenting on Kyle's Fifth Amendment rights, but also commenting on evidence that had been excluded, also doing things that, in my view, constituted suborning perjury by putting two car source witnesses on there testifying in a completely incredulous manner, and he had to know their testimony wasn't true. And we actually had live testimony from a witness who said the prosecution tried to suborn perjury and influence his testimony prior to trial. So you've got extraordinary levels of misconduct. Now you have the fact that they produced one video. It turned out not to be the highest quality version, which was critical for the defense to be

able to meaningfully prepare. When you aggregate these things together, there's no way this can be a fair verdict at this point if it was anything other than acquittals. And thus, I hope the court steps up and realizes the jury's in an untenable position, dismisses the case. And I think he should dismiss it with prejudice because this is the product of the prosecution's own bad faith conduct. That's the thing. It's like there's never a perfect trial and judges know that. They do the best they can. It needs to be fair, but it doesn't need to be perfect. So some mistakes, even some prosecutorial misconduct or defense lawyer misconduct sometimes happens and it doesn't always result in a mistrial. But if there's too much or if any one incident is too

egregious, you could be in trouble. Now, the thing about the video is at first I was like, I don't know. So what happened was the prosecution gave a video that was much grainier to the defense than the version they had, which was much, much clearer. That's not okay, they're supposed to turn it over. And originally, I was like, well, do we really does it really matter? Because the defense saw what was in the video, they knew it was in the video, they argued what was in the video, they had multiple versions of the video. And here on the screen, if you guys want to check it out on YouTube, we're putting it up, you can see quite a difference between the grainy video that was given to the defense and the much clearer video that the prosecution kept for itself. The grainy is on top

and the clear is on bottom. And boy, oh boy, it really is like looking through a pair of binoculars and focusing them, you know, top versus bottom. So when this came up in court, it was kind of a fascinating moment, Robert. I mean, it appeared to me the prosecution just got caught. They got caught red-handed by a young defense counsel named Wisco, it was a woman, who we hadn't heard from yet in the case, probably a younger associate who was in charge of the exhibits and so on.

And so we're gonna play it for you. This is Binger, the assistant district attorney, Krause, his co-counsel, and the female's voice is Wisco. She's defense. And you'll hear the judge weighing in as well. And the defense counsel, Richards, they're back and forth. And what's happening is Binger's trying to show video and he's not happy that it's not very good quality because they were using the defense version. So we're going to play it and we're going to put the words on the screen for folks on YouTube. And then I'm going to walk our listeners through it. So the folks just listening to this can understand.

Listen. Bacon staff is we're passing out. This is the same quality as our version. Is it? Yeah. Our version is much, our version is much clearer. Yeah. We'll have to do that. I have the enhanced one in play as well, but that is exactly what we got from you.

I downloaded it straight from Dropbox. Yeah. Mr. Stutz, how many times? So what you're showing me now is, it just doesn't show anything. This is the platform that's provided to the defense. Yes. Mr. Stutz is on his way. I downloaded that straight off Dropbox know. So your version is clear.

That means that you didn't give us. It's just playing here. Okay. So just for the audience listening at home, I know it's hard. Binger's complaining that the video they're playing is not, you know, Krause says to him.

Yeah. Our versions are much clearer. Binger. Yeah. Natalie Wisco. I got this from you. I have the enhanced one because they enhanced their video, but that's exactly what we got from you. We got that from the Dropbox. You sent us the judge. So what you're showing me, this doesn't show anything. This is provided to the defense. And, um, Richard says, yes. Binger says, uh, somebody else is on their way. Wisco says, that is what we got from the Dropbox. If your version is clear,

that means you didn't give us your version. Then Krause suddenly goes, oh, it's just plain weird. Meanwhile, Krause already said our versions are much clearer. And Wisco said, that's not how this works. The prosecution is not admitting that they gave them only the crappy version.

They're saying, you know, you must've downloaded it wrong. But this young Wisco is saying, uh-uh, because what you gave to the state crime lab has a different label and different sort of megabytes on it, I think, than what you gave me. So you clearly, it's not my computer. I literally just took exactly what you sent me. And you tell me whether this is a bigger issue than it first appears. It is a substantial issue because the difference in quality was meaningful for evidentiary presentation and preparation.

And the defense did not have the opportunity prior to the close of evidence because they only found out this after the close of evidence that there was a higher quality version that could have provided helpful information to them and help provide expert witness testimony that they could have used in some form of rebuttal or surrebuttal in this context because this evidence only came in at the very latest stage by the prosecution. In fact, the video itself wasn't even discovered until middle of trial. My view is that was grounds for a mistrial right out of the gate. You can't have new evidence of this kind that was so relied upon. This was the primary evidence the prosecution relied upon for their provocation instruction, and the provocation instruction was the primary theory of the government's case by the time of closing. And the defense did not even have any aspect of this evidence until mid-trial, and the key aspects, the high-quality version, they didn't have until after close of evidence. It also kind of came out today. It hasn't yet been presented in court, but it's been discussed elsewhere that it appears this is a cropped video. And on top of that, it appears the prosecution lied about what was broadcast on

Tucker Carlson. They said what was broadcast on Tucker Carlson did not disclose the source of this video, but actually Tucker did have the name of the company and the name of the individual that this drone video footage originally came from. The defense had gone to that person, and he claimed he didn't have it, and that the defense was mistaken. It turns out that was actually accurate all along. The prosecution knew it. When they got it, we really don't fully know. They claim they didn't get it until mid-trial, but they didn't even turn over what was necessary because the digital tracking and tracing of this video evidence and labeling of this video evidence, the metadata, as Defense Counsel Wisco

noted, showed that what they were given was a different version, not the same version of what the government had. This stuff matters. It may sound very technical, but again, as the defense lawyer said, we're talking about a man's life on the line. We're talking about life in prison he's facing. And so you need to be really careful. And as a prosecutor, this is a stomach drop moment when you realize you haven't given, if it really was inadvertent, that you haven't given the best evidence to the defense, which they have a constitutional right to get their hands on. I want to talk to you about what the jury asked to review. They got 45 minutes or so. They had unlimited time. They only took 45 last night. The judge, by the way, said to all the reporters, you will clear this courtroom. The jury's coming in here to watch it on the big screen. Anybody who leaves an electronic device behind can say goodbye to it forever because you know there'll be some sort of person who leaves their iPhone on tape trying to hear the jurors. So the bailiffs checked out the courtroom thoroughly and made sure no nothing was in there. And the jury went in and watched several videos. The videos were of the drone videos

showing the attacks, a video FBI footage of the Rosenbaum shooting before and after a slow motion video of again, some of the incidents. But interesting to me was a soundbite of Gage Grosskreutz running along Rittenhouse. It's eight seconds long. You can barely understand what they're saying, but there was testimony about it at trial. I want to play it here. Listen. So they wanted to see that. And I'm fascinated by that. Who shot? Who shot? So they wanted to see that. And I'm fascinated by that. Why? Do you have any any guess? My guess is that somebody in the jury bought Binger's misrepresentation about what that showed, because the Binger misrepresented that and Grosskreutz misrepresented that at trial as Kyle saying that he was police. And in fact, that's not it. He says, I'm going to the police. And so it may have been a dispute about what was said. And so you may have had somebody that's pro-conviction saying,

well, he misrepresented the fact that he was police, that this shows a sort of pattern of reckless behavior, et cetera, criminal intent. And somebody else said, no, that's not what he said on that. What he said was he was going to the police, which also makes Grosskreutz's actions even more irrational and more reasonable for Kyle to interpret Grosskreutz as a threat because he had told Grosskreutz, I'm going to the police, yet Grosskreutz pulls down a gun and tries to attack him when he's on the ground. So my guess is that- Yeah, guess is videotaping this is so-called victim number three, the guy who got his bicep shot. So that's him talking to Kyle Rittenhouse as Kyle's running away from him,

running away. Exactly. And it's significant for Kyle's state of mind because he knows he's told this person he's running to the police. Everybody can see he's running to the police. And then later that same individual, so-called victim number three, I consider him attacker number four or five, depending on what order you put them in, is the one that, of course, famously at trial, admitted that Kyle didn't shoot when he had his hands up in the air, that Kyle only shot when he pulled his gun and pointed it at Kyle's head. And probably one of the most dramatic moments throughout the entire trial. So my guess is that's the dispute is they're disputing what was said on that audio and between the jury. And that's why they wanted it replayed. Let's just play it one more time so we can listen

for ourselves. It's very short. Listen. Hey, what are you doing? You shot somebody? Who shot? Who shot? To me, it sounds it sounds like he's saying, I want the police. And just on the note of Binger and Grove Gage Grosskreutz, just watch again, because people, you know, the prosecutor misrepresented his own star witness testimony when he spoke to the jury. And the jury seems pretty focused on Gage Grosskreutz. There was a question about him yesterday. Now they want to see the Grosskreutz video. And I really wonder how that one's going.

To me, that one was sort of done. It was done when Grosskreutz took the stand. I'm kind of surprised they're still debating him. And so here's just to remind the audience, here's how the prosecutor represented what Grosskreutz said happened and then gauge Grosskreutz on the stand with his own firsthand account. Listen. The gun goes off at no point in this process is Mr. Grosskreutz pointing his gun at the defendant. It wasn't until you pointed your gun at him, advanced on him with your gun, now your hands down, pointed at him that he fired.

Right. Correct. I mean, it's so clear. It's so clear, Robert. But there are politics inside that jury deliberation room, same as there are outside of it. Exactly. And because I think what probably happened is somebody actually bought Binger's lie and somebody else in the jury said, no, Binger's wrong. What the witness admitted to is what actually took place. And that part of that story was that Grosskreutz had heard Kyle misrepresent himself as police. That was made up by Grosskreutz.

That was not what happened. He didn't say, hey, I'm police. I didn't shoot anybody. That's partially what Binger implied in opening as well. That was all false. And it just shows a broader pattern of false statements by the prosecution. But it's sad that you're to the point where you have jurors who don't recognize that after a two-week trial. And that's because the strength of bias and prejudice some jurors carried into this case was so strong that they would not even hear or listen to or process evidence that contradicted their beliefs. This is one of the problems of politicizing these cases, you know, from the now president and his vice president who were candidates when they weighed in on this, you know, and calling Kyle a white supremacist to the governor of Wisconsin and so on. It's been politicized from the get go. And once you slap politics on a case and telegraph to the nation, if you wear a blue shirt, you should be on this side. If you wear a red shirt, you should be on that side. You're really endangering the entire judicial system. Politics have no place inside of a courtroom.

And historically, with some exceptions, but historically, they haven't played a massive role. It's only now. I'll give you the last word. No doubt. I mean, the problem with this case was that if jury selection wasn't done in a certain way, there was real risk for Kyle. But that's not Kyle's fault.

That's the fault of a corrupt media, corrupt press and a corrupt prosecution that has politicized everything to the point where an innocent kid's life is in the hands of a jury that may be influenced unduly by politics. You know, I just want to give you this update. Reporter for the Kenosha News, for Kenosha News, Deneen Smith, saying the judge is back on the stand. Kyle Rittenhouse and all the attorneys are in the courtroom. No word yet on what exactly is happening. All right, if we get breaking news, we're going to get Robert back on. We're going to call you back and ask you what significance it is. But you've been amazing, Robert. Thank you so much for all of your expertise. Thanks. Glad to be here. Coming up next, we're going to switch over to COVID because there's a lot going on right now. The Biden administration took a major hit thanks to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals Thanks. Glad Atlas is here to talk about all of that, his time in the White House, his new book and more. Don't go away. We are joined now by former White House covid advisor and author of the new book, A Plague Upon Our House.

My fight at the Trump White House to Stop COVID from Destroying America, Dr. Scott Atlas. In the four months that Dr. Atlas served as an advisor to President Trump, he was constantly slammed by the media and even some of his colleagues for having a different scientific perspective on the pandemic than Dr. Fauci and Dr. Birx. In his new book, he gives new insight into what really happened behind the scenes during those COVID task force meetings and how COVID changed our country and the world. Welcome, Dr. Atlas. Great to have you here. How are you? Thank you for having me. Great to be here. My pleasure. All right. So I remember, you know, reading you prior to you being selected to go into the White House and listening to you and thinking, oh, you know, that sounds right. That sounds sane. And it doesn't sound like everybody else out there, which is what makes it even more interesting. Right. And of course, we were quick to learn in COVID. Well, that's not

allowed. That's exactly why you became so controversial and just became the scourge of the mainstream media. And then even your colleagues at Stanford started to turn on you, which was disgusting. I was pleased to see people like Victor Davis Hanson back you and so on. But that's what they do, right? They sort of try to tear you down when you say stuff that they don't like, especially on COVID and masks and restrictions. So let me ask you this, you know, the COVID mania has been bizarre for all of us, you know, March of 2020 to now. When you look back at your, your role, March of 2020, versus the way you are now who you are now, and how people think about you and talk about you? How do you think it's changed? And how do you personally feel about it?

Well, you know, I was a healthcare policy scholar for 17 years at Hoover Institution at Stanford. And before that, 25 years in academic medicine, both doing research, taking care of patients, reviewing papers at some of the best medical centers in the country in medical science. And then I was working on COVID because the country was off the rails. In March of 2020, there was missing common sense, missing even basic immunology. Science was being denied. And I thought, okay, something is seriously wrong. So in the next six months, I worked very hard doing research, speaking with some of the world's best epidemiologists almost every single day, and considering health policy, which means the impact of COVID, but the impact of the policy itself and everything that went along with it on public health. That's the only responsible way to be. In that next six months, I became somewhat visible doing the research and was appalled at the lack of critical thinking

that was going on by the task force and the rest, many people on TV. And then I was asked to help the president. And so the president of the United States calls you up as a public health policy expert and says, will you help in the biggest health policy crisis in a century? And of course, the answer is yes. And for anybody who thinks that wasn't my lane, I mean, that's sort of silly. In fact, there were no health policy scholars on the task force, none until I walked in at the beginning of August. There were people, three or four doctors that were virology trained, focused on stopping COVID-19 at all costs. And I think this is what people understood about things like you. It wasn't just I was saying something different. It was that I was using logic and common sense because

everybody knows that there's nothing appropriate about stopping one infection at all costs, because what was happening in those six months, and this continued, unfortunately, throughout my three and a half months there. And then after I left, was the policy was stopping COVID-19 with lockdowns. And what that meant was business closures and restrictions, school closures, curfews, restrictions on personal movement, restrictions on seeing your own family, and stopping non-COVID medical care. Okay, so what the impact of that was, was the following. The lockdown policies failed to stop the spread of the infection. They failed to stop elderly from dying, the high-risk group,

and they destroyed millions of people. So if people think that the policies cost unnecessary lives, the policies that were implemented were the Birx-Fauci lockdowns that was the official policy of the White House coronavirus before, during, and task force before, during, and after I left. I did my best to do something different, which was called focus protection, which is logically, okay, we knew who was at risk. The high-risk people were a well-defined population of mainly elderly people and people with comorbidities. In fact, two thirds of people that died from COVID in the United States, two thirds had more than six comorbidities. These were not just healthy marathon running 75 year olds. Okay. So you know, this is something the data, you had to be a critical thinker, the difference between me and the people on the task force was, A, I was

a health policy scholar. I understood medicine. The people on the task force were bureaucrats for 40 years in the government. Secondly, I'm a critical thinker. I would come to the meetings, every single meeting, with the scientific papers. I would have a dozen, 20 different scientific papers. I was asked a question. And when I gave my opinion, I would go through the data in the scientific papers. Not a single person other than me brought a scientific paper into a task force meeting, zero. And so you have to be a critical thinker. You're not supposed to, as a scientist or a medical science evaluator, look at the bottom line blurb of a paper as the New York Times reports it. You're supposed to look at the paper, evaluate the way the study's designed.

If the study's not designed correctly, the conclusion is not valid, period. You have to be a critical thinker. I'll put it this way. You don't have to be a scientist to be a critical thinker, but you have to be a critical thinker if you want to be a scientist. And this was really missing from the task force. And so as you sort of alluded to here, what happened was I did my best to increase the protection of the people who were high risk.

That means increased testing in nursing homes, increased testing of the nursing home staff who are bringing in the cases, increased testing in senior centers, more resources, more protective equipment in high risk places, sending more tests to historically black colleges and universities because the faculty were higher risk. But in addition, opening schools safely, opening low risk settings where children, where we're proven to have healthy children have extremely low risk from COVID, period. That was known back in the spring of 2020. That has not changed. Healthy children are not significant spreaders of COVID. That was proven back in the

spring of 2020 from all over the world. But you have to know the data and be able to evaluate it. And so the idea of closing schools was extraordinarily harmful. And I can go through some of that because I could talk all day about the data. But the fact is that when you close schools, and America was unique, the Western European peer nations opened the schools in the fall of the elderly and the high risk. And I wanted to remove the destruction of the lockdowns and the school closures, which were enormous. And the the the problem here is that the lockdowns were a luxury of the rich. Okay. People like, okay, let's face it, you and me and the people that work in government, the people in journalism, what you would call the university elites. Okay. They don't have a problem except for inconvenience to use zoom calls and to do their meetings from home and their children are underfoot. Okay. But the people who are low income people, they are destroyed.

The people that work in the restaurant, in the bus station, that clean the toilets in the hospitals or whatever, when they are told in the restaurants, in stores, when they lose their jobs, they're destroyed. And so not only were they economically devastated, but that translates into life years lost. That was known. I wrote about it with some economists back in May. There was a false dichotomy set up by people who said, if you're against the lockdowns, then you must be you're dangerous and you're sort of letting things go without any, you know, mitigation. And that's absolutely false because what was happening was the lockdowns were killing people. The lockdowns destroyed people and there are enormous harms to children from closing the schools. This was a heinous abuse of, and a social class sort of abuse of taking these lower income families who weren't able to work

from home. And not only that, some of them were the essential workers that were forced to be exposed to COVID. Okay. I mean, if you think about this, this was really an incredible lack of a moral compass in the public health leadership and a complete abrogation of what a public health leader is supposed to do. Because when you use a policy, you don't just sit there and try to stop one disease. What you do is you look at the impact of all health. You look at the impact on everyone. And so what we see, if I can go on, with closing schools, it wasn't just that the school closures were a failure because online education's not adequate and people were failing and they weren't signing up. And this is data documented all over. But I was for opening schools because what happens was just in the spring closures of 2020, 300,000 cases of child abuse went unreported in the United States because schools are the number one agency. Okay. We had one out of four college students thinking of killing themselves in June of 2020 because of the isolation. Children don't just learn book

learning. That's where we pick up visual problems, hearing problems. They learn socialization. Every parent knows this. And so when you're doing this, you're not only losing the education and losing those things, you're creating, and we know the data now, created a massive psychological harm on our children. We had tripling, three times the visits of teenagers to doctors for self-harm because of the isolation. That means putting cigarettes out on their skin, cutting their wrists. We have an explosion of mental illness in teenagers in the United States, drug abuse, overdoses, a skyrocketing of suicide in teenage girls specifically. And this is all from the isolation. We have 52. Any sane policy when it comes to public health looks at all of public

health and not just whether we've gotten a particular virus. I'm going to squeeze in a quick ad here, but I do want to echo your point about the children, because to me, it seems like the children have had the lowest risk of being hospitalized or dying from covid, the lowest risk of transmitting covid to another and have paid the highest price in fighting this virus and continue to continue to. on with leaving all these kids masked all day long. And all we really want from them as a matter of public health is for them to give over their arm so we can stick an experimental vaccine in there. And really, it's in the name of sort of public health as well. It's not really to protect them, which we'll get to in a minute. Dr. Al is so happy that you're here. Stand by. Remember, folks, I want you to know you can catch The Megyn Kelly show live on Sirius XM Triumph Channel 111 every weekday at noon east and the full video show and clips by subscribing to our YouTube channel, youtube.com slash Megyn Kelly. Would love if you went there today. You could see the comparison of that high resolution video versus the low resolution, which the defense says is all it was provided for.

By the way, getting an update from the Rittenhouse trial right now, which is fascinating about MSNBC. By the way, if you prefer an audio podcast, go ahead and subscribe and download on Apple, Spotify, Pandora, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts. And there you'll find all of our archives, more than 200 shows, including our COVID shows with Josh Rogin, my very lively discussion with Scott Gottlieb, and much, much more. It's funny because you talk about the cost to the lower socioeconomic groups in the country and having these schools closed and being forced to go remote. And that's obviously true. I'll tell you, in our case, we were in New York City in the fall of 2020, and we were in private school. And while the public schools were closed the whole year, except for a couple of days, the private schools were opening, except for ours. And we didn't understand why.

And we got a letter about, you know, adding an abundance of caution, and we got to make sure everybody's safe. And then, you know, the parents were mad and did some digging. And do you know why they weren't going to at least this is what we found out. The parents who'd been in the Hamptons for the whole quarantine and the summer wanted to stay there. These rich sort of hedge fund people didn't have to go into their jobs on Wall Street. And they were loving their time in the Hamptons as opposed to their manhattan apartments so they wanted remote schooling you want to talk about privilege right in the haves and the have-nots and it was to me it was so absurd i don't join in a lot of letter writing campaigns especially as a journalist

it's not my thing but i joined in that one and the school did open and then they understood like this is crazy talk. But, yeah, it's the poor. It's the poor who've really taken the brunt of all these lockdowns, which, you know, now we seem to be moving past. And even in places like D.C., now the mayor down there under political pressure has said she's going to lift the mask mandate, the indoor mask mandate, which is pretty has been very restrictive, except in schools. I mean, the kids are never getting on mass doc. And I wonder what it's going to take. What will make them do it? Yeah. You know, I want to point out something before I answer that, which is that the bizarre part of the whole thing here is that the United States and many, many places have doubled down on things like mass mandates and all these requirements in the lowest risk environments. And now I'm talking about two specific examples. One are the schools, which you have pointed out,

and this has been known all over the world for a year and a half now, that schools are a very low risk environment, that children don't have a healthy children have extremely low risk. And also teachers do not have a high risk in schools. We know this, the studies have been done in Europe that showed that there's not a higher risk. In fact, children have less chance of transmitting to adults. Teachers are a young profession. And if there are high risk teachers, they have the option of either using extreme mitigation themselves, now getting a vaccine or staying home and teaching a distance. But there's no reason to have all these restrictions

inside schools. The second low risk environment are airplanes. Okay. When you look at the data on airplanes, there's never been outbreaks on airplanes. This is before vaccines were available because of they have this incredible air purification system. There's been no outbreaks on airplanes. And in fact, it's uniquely low risk. The studies that the FAA did showed it. Yet we are doubling down. You've probably flown as I have. And, you know, depending on the airline, there's an obsession. Yes. And constant announcements. And, you know, the sort of very oppressive sort of atmosphere when there there is no high risk on airplanes. If they see you chewing your food, you know, it used to be you could have your mask off when you

were eating or drinking on the plane. Now you're allowed to take a bite or a sip. But when swallowing or chewing, the mask is supposed to go back up. And I can attest to having been a target of a flight attendant who's like, pull it up when when she sees chewing as opposed to active biting. And you really, really want to get into a fight, right? It's like, this is absurd. How did I not spread it during the height of the pandemic when I had the mask off while chewing, but now I'm a death threat

while I take two chews of my pudding or whatever it is, my pretzels. But you can't, because you don't want to wind up in YouTube. But yeah, it makes no sense. It's virtue signaling. And Pete Buttigieg is now in charge of our airplane experience.

Well, you know, and I also, so I'll answer the question, what will it take to end things? And I think we're in a time now where I think we've learned people have to take responsibility for being critical thinkers themselves. Trust in experts has rightfully been lost. The expert people, the public health agencies, the faces you see on TV, they've been erratic in what they've said. They've denied science. They've denied decades, even centuries of basic immunology about recovery from infection, et cetera. So now we have to say, okay, who do we trust? Well, first you should trust people who are consistent,

who know the data and cite the data. But also, you have to be a critical thinker. You know, you're an adult. This is a year and a half now, almost two years into this thing. And I think at some point, you have to take charge of your life and figure out what's appropriate for you. I do want to make one point, which is that, you know, one of the differences I said between me and the task force members. First, I had a different background. I'm in health policy. I'm in medical science. They're government bureaucrats. Secondly, my approach was using the data, the worlds of research studies and really going through in a critical way inciting that data. But third, you know, these people really, as opposed to me, their policies were doing these restrictions and lockdowns. My policies were opening schools and considering all

health of people and their policies were implemented. Let me stand you by. We'll squeeze in a quick ad. We'll pick it up there. Mask mandates and this new study and your thoughts on it in just a bit. Wow. We have some breaking news for you on Kyle Rittenhouse. No, there's no verdict. Not yet. But want to bring you up to speed on what's happened. Guess what? It actually was someone working for NBC who followed MSNBC, who followed the jury. This is more from, let's see, the courthouse. The jury. OK, first of all, the jury in this case is transported from a location where they meet in the morning to the courthouse in a bus with the windows blocked. Right. They don't want them to see demonstrators and they don't want anyone to see them. Yesterday, someone claiming to be a producer for MSNBC was following the bus closely, ran a red light. Police pulled him over. He said he was instructed to follow the jury bus and he was ticketed for a traffic violation, saying it is under investigation. Now we learn again, this is from Long Crime's Kathy Roussan. He was instructed. He did indeed work as a freelancer for MSNBC.

His name was James J. Morrison. The court announced it. So it's public already working as a freelancer for MSNBC. And he says his supervisor and the person who told him to do this was apparently a woman named Irene Byan in New York. Irene Byan is a booking producer at NBC and she's let's see. Yeah. OK, so the judge had heard this entire report. He understands what law enforcement did. He confirmed that it was the guy did work for MSNBC. And this is what the judge just said. Listen. I have instructed that no one from MSNBC news will be permitted in this building for the duration of this trial. This is a very serious matter, and I don't know what the ultimate truth of it is, but absolutely it would go without

much thinking that someone who is following a jury bus, that is a very, it's extremely serious matter. This is a disgusting, egregious, ethical lapse by this young reporter. I don't know if he's young. I shouldn't presume. And by the booking producer who told him to do this. There are things you do as a booker and there are ethical, you know, have been videotaped to the consternation of the judge who made a big deal out of that, who are already dealing with protesters outside of the courthouse and threats in a city that's already on the edge and a powder keg is disgustingly

irresponsible and someone ought to get fired. I mean, this is a fireable offense. I don't know anything about this freelancer, but whoever gave the order, if it's the booking producer, what have you. And I predict there will be consequences because this is absolutely egregious. One thing I can tell you about NBC is they do have a very strict ethics department that reviews one's reporting before it goes to the air and cable. We didn't have that at NBC. It was pretty strict. And I'm sure once they get wind of this, they're going to be displeased. But this is completely wrong. That judge was 100 percent right to ban MSNBC, all of them from entering the courthouse as a result, though they still get all their reporting from NBC anyway. And it's just yet another ethical lapse by an organization that is riddled with them day after day. We'll continue to follow it as we get more breaking news from the courthouse. I want to get back to our guest, Dr. Scott Atlas, who's got a new book out called A Plague Upon Our House. Man, it really has been my fight at the Trump White House to

stop COVID from destroying America. All right. So, Dr. Atlas, let's before we get to this new mask study, I want to talk about because you're pretty open in your book about your conflicts with, in particular, Dr. Burks, who was on the White House coronavirus task force. And you and she butted heads because she was much more team Fauci. And she didn't really like, I guess, what you were saying and wanted. She wanted more restrictions. She wanted more testing. She wanted all of it. And can you tell us? I mean, I could just read it, but I would love for you to

tell us a story about what happened in the Oval Office when Trump, who didn't want tons of testing of healthy people, put the question directly to you about whether we needed more testing and directly to her about whether we needed more testing of people who didn't have symptoms. Yeah. Well, okay, to set the scene, Dr. Birx was the official head of the medical side of the task force. She was the task force coordinator for six months before I even walked in Washington. For the entire time I was there, she wrote all of the official advice on policy to the governors, she visited dozens of states as the official White House policy. I was an advisor to the president. I sat in on task force meetings from middle of August to middle of October. That's what I did for the task force. But in any event,

we had a meeting briefly in the Oval Office, as I outlined in the book. And there was a policy that was written by the CDC about testing. And that policy was to increase testing and getting doctors or people who are knowledgeable involved in testing decisions. This was a document that was generated by Dr. Giroir, the head of the testing on the task force, and Dr. Redfield, the head of the CDC. And that discussion about testing, my view was we should increase the testing where it really counted because there was a massive testing apparatus that the White House finally generated and they should use that to save lives. That's the point of testing. So I said, the cases are coming into the nursing homes by the staff. We should be

increasing the testing frequency. They were recommending one time a week. I said, well, why not three times a week? Every single day, that's where the cases are coming in, and people are dying. And I wanted more testing in these high risk environments. And so we went through and the president asked if Dr. Birx agreed with the policy. And I had heard the discussions in the task force from her. And she said, well, yes, I do agree. OK, and so then and she sort of nervously looked over toward me. We're sitting in front of the president and the president said, is that true? And he probably asked that because he saw that she was uncomfortable saying, yes,

she agrees. And I said, well, no, it's not true. I said, Dr. Birx, uh, at wants to be testing people who are asymptomatic and confining them if they're, uh, you know, testing positive or confining them waiting for days, which is what was happening at the time, even if they were just potentially exposed. And that would stop healthy people from being out in society who were asymptomatic and even negative on tests because there was a five day wait at that time or something like that. And so I said, so she doesn't agree. And I went through what she didn't, what she was really not telling the truth to the president. Okay. Because if the president of the United States asked me a question, as I did the entire time I was there, and as I am doing right now, I'm telling the truth. And I had no reason to lie about what she was thinking. So,

you know, she, she sort of was very upset. The president didn't really respond. At the end of the meeting, we walked out and she started screaming at me, as I outlined in the book, don't ever do that, especially in the Oval, yelling at me in the periphery of the Oval Office after the president had left. Okay, so, you know, what's the illustration there? Well, the illustration, number one, is that I'm going to tell the truth, period. I wasn't there to make friends. I'm there to stop people from dying. And if the president of the United States asked me a question, I'm telling the truth. I'm not like one of these people, government bureaucrats who are interested or have a secondary motive, their own image to the president, their own standing in their agency.

I don't care about that. I didn't need the job. I didn't go there for a second, uh, secondary reason. I went there because the country was off the rails and these people were doing the wrong policies that were failing to stop people from dying. You know, the second part is, uh, you know, when I went to, to even interview or not interview, they asked me to come and talk to the president before I decided that I would help. And he said, I had a conversation with Jared Kushner, and this is in the book. And I said to Jared when he said, okay, well, we want you to help at the end of this first day. And I said, okay, well, I'd like to help, but I just want to tell you something very clearly.

No matter what anybody tells me to say, if I don't agree with it, I'm not going to say it, no matter who it is. I said, I'm not going to sign on to some group statement or task force statement or any other statement if I don't fully agree with it. And I'm not going to do or change my opinion no matter who tells me to. I said, that's what you're getting with me. And because that's my only reason for going to help. It's amazing because most people, if Dr. Birx lied and said she supported their position, would have just taken the. Yeah, OK. Yeah, I guess I persuaded her. But you knew it wasn't true.

No. Well, because, you know, the point is, listen, Megan, this is a very important thing that was happening here. And I'm not interested in being sort of, I'll use the word political. When I'm talking to the president, he asked me a question. You know, there is no other way to answer other than completely truthfully. I want to point something out. When I said to Jared Kushner, this is what you're getting with me. He, to his credit, turned to me and said that's exactly why we want you and that's actually uh i was shocked actually uh pleasantly so uh and then

if i want to finish that conversation i said okay you know then i'll then i'll help and he then said to me i just want to say something to you. If this becomes public, they're going to destroy you. Which is another thing that shocked me because I never thought that anyone, you know, really cared about that. And so my reaction to that was, well, you know, maybe I'll help from home first. And I actually flew back home to California for a few days because I don't want to be destroyed. But I had the help. I mean, the president asked you to help in the biggest health care crisis in the century. You're a health care policy expert. The answer is yes, period. And that's what I did. But then they did. They didn't destroy you, but they sure tried. And trust me,

I have been there, so I understand what it's like. But we did tee up not to make you relive it, but just so the audience gets a flavor of how the media portrayed you, who you are truly a national health care policy expert. You've been that for years. In addition to all of your other wonderful credentials, I mean, we could go on and on about your your resume. I guess I'll just take off a few just so in case people don't know. Got your Bachelor of Science from University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana. I got your MD from University of Chicago, your chief resident at Northwestern, fellowship at the University of Pennsylvania, expert in neuroradiology, leading clinician and researcher in novel applications of advanced MRI and disorders of the brain and the spine and so on. But even Victor, in his piece talking about you, said this is not only one of the world's world's top neuroradiologists, but you are the national expert on public health policy, especially in the cost-benefit analysis of government programs, which is what's directly relevant, right, in the COVID situation. It's not all about virology or immunology. It's also about

cost-benefit analysis and what's the best decision for overall public health? Keeping in mind some of the things you were mentioning about, you know, teenage suicide and anxiety and depression and abuse and blah, blah, blah. So the media, not not cognizant or not willing to acknowledge all the rest of that, decided to portray you as basically some sort of a destructive nutcase. And here's a here's a little flavor of their best hits. Dr. Atlas, OK, a guy with no pandemic experience. He literally would know more if he stayed at a Holiday Inn Express last night. Scott Atlas, his main covid advisor, his covid Rasputin, if you will. Atlas, of course, is a neuroradiologist with no expertise in epidemiology, but increasingly has the president's ear when it comes to the coronavirus. But now he's got this new advisor, not an expert, not

somebody who is steeped in the science here, according to his own colleagues. OK, first off, Dr. Atlas clearly wouldn't know science if it kicked him in the Atlas. Oh, my Lord. Honestly, what a dope. So many stupid people on television. It's kind of upsetting, but whatever. It is what it is. So how is that for you experiencing that, you know, sitting at home or in the White House? Well, you know, I mean, I have to say I was naive. I'm very naive. I'm not a politician. I've not been in government at all. I actually thought that, you know, truth mattered, that facts mattered. And my role was to provide the best possible advice in a big crisis. Now, you have to realize that what was implemented was what I call the

Berks Fauci lockdowns. The Berksauci lockdowns were implemented for the entire year, including during my time there. Nothing was really changed except in a few states. I only actually visited one state. So if you think that the policies failed, you better ask Drs. Berks and Fauci and the people that impose those mandated behaviors and lockdowns, because that's what was implemented, period. Now, what happened to me? Okay, I mean, the problem with what happened to me, okay, I have to say, I thought I thought I was sort of a tough guy. And I'm probably not as tough as I thought. But I have a supportive family. And I knew I was right. I mean, what with the irony of the whole thing is that every single

thing I said was correct. So I knew that. But I also had something much bigger going on, which is I had millions of people, it turned out that were depending on me, I had 1000s of emails a week from all over the country, from mothers and fathers and seniors, and students and priests praying for me to keep going and scientists from all over the country saying, Scott, you're right. Please keep going. We cannot, we're afraid to step forward. So it's very important that good people have the courage to step forward and do what's right. This is service to the country. It has absolutely nothing to do with a political party. And yet, unfortunately, right now, the media is super destructive, as you know.

The American media, particularly 90 plus percent of stories about COVID were negative, yet only half the stories in English speaking media outside the U.S. were negative. 90-plus percent of stories on the schools opening were negative in the U.S., only half in other countries' English-speaking major media. And even when the cases were going down in the U.S., the stories about cases going up outnumbered those stories five to one. This is data from Brown and Dartmouth University. So the English speaking media outside the US was sane. American media was, in my view, very destructive and harmful. And that also happened by the university faculty here, who are extraordinarily politicized and really blind to the facts. And this is very dangerous

for these people teach our youth and these people have a lot of influence. And now we're in the situation where science has become politicized. So it's not really about me, but we need to really get a handle on this. And I and others who have a lot of care about the country without science and trust in science. What do we have? I mean, this is very frightening. I mean, we really need to get a handle on this and get this politics out of this fact finding because if we suppress the, you know, freedom of ideas and exchange of ideas freely, we will never arrive at the truths and solutions we need to solve other crises. Yeah, that's right. We're seeing it. We're living it at this moment. So much more to go over with Dr. Scott Atlas. He's staying with us. I'm going to squeeze in a quick break

here, but we're also going to be joined in just a bit by Dan Abrams, not only a SiriusXM host, but also a guy who used to be in the primetime of MSNBC. In fact, he used to run MSNBC way back in the day. He's going to join us on MSNBC now getting banned from the Rittenhouse trial courtroom after following the jurors. Joined now by Dr. Scott Atlas, and we're talking all things COVID from his time in the White House working for President Trump on the COVID task force to what's happening in the news today. And that brings me to this study, Doc. Apparently, it was done by researchers across the pond at the University of Edinburgh and Monash University, published in the British Medical Journal. And the headline with The Guardian, the very first line of the piece, is that, quote, mask wearing is the single most effective public health measure at tackling COVID, reducing

incidents by 53 percent. The first global study of its kind shows they they love, love, love masks, the single most effective public health measure. What do you make of it? Okay. So, I mean, first of all, I think we have to take a step back here and realize that a year and nine months into this pandemic, after people were insisting that masks work, there's still this desperate attempt to find some study that shows that mass work. I'm going to review, to me, at some point, the earth is round and the burden is not on me or anybody else to convince people who believe the earth is flat, that the earth is round. But I will go through a few things.

I have a study saying that the earth is flat. Yes. In May 2020, the CDC published a review of all the papers, including something like 10 randomized controlled trials, which are the best types of studies on masks in influenza. Influenza is relevant because influenza is the same size roughly as this virus. And there was no significant impact of widespread mask usage on either the transmission or the receiving end of influenza infection. That was May 2020 CDC paper. This was repeated, of course, in analysis by University of Oxford, the World Health Organization, and others. We saw the evidence during this pandemic all over the world with mass mandates and mass usage that there was an explosion of cases through populations wearing

masks, and including in the United States where 80 to 90% of people were wearing masks. We see the evidence on three studies after that. The Denmark randomized control study published in November 2020, 6,000 people, a randomized population of groups that were wearing masks and people that were not wearing masks. There was no statistically significant difference between the people getting infections with masks versus without masks. That's the best study on mask wearing for protecting herself. The University of Louisville published a study finally published in May 2021 that analyzed all the mask mandates in the United States and all the mask usage in the United States. And their conclusions were mask mandates do not reduce the spread of the virus and mask usage does not reduce the spread of the virus for widespread

mask usage. That's the University of Louisville. Then we see a study that was highlighted in the late newspapers on Bangladesh villages. And what they did was they had certain villages were instructed to wear masks and other villages were not. And they didn't test the people who were wearing masks or not, but what they found was that there was an 11% reduction in people and only people over 50 of symptomatic COVID. It has nothing to do with who was wearing the mask. So in villages instructed to wear masks, the older people suppose a minority of older people got a reduction in symptomatic COVID. What that outlines, by the way, cloth masks in that study did not work at all statistically. So what that study showed was that there was possibly a small effect on symptomatic COVID, although only in people of a certain age.

For instance, if you were 40 to 50, there was no reduction. 30 to 40, no reduction. Just people 50 to 60, which to me, any critical thinker should say, hey, maybe those older people did other things too, to avoid getting infected. But be that as it may, there may be a small reduction from that study, but the other studies showed there was none. And so, you know, I don't know why masks are somehow the obsession. Now we've had a lot of obsessions in COVID. We had an obsession with children. That was completely false.

We had an obsession that everyone's at risk, including and that there's massive asymptomatic spread. That is false. Now, we had an obsession with masks. We had an obsession with a six foot rule. The studies came out saying that six feet really wasn't any different from three feet. We know many countries in the world have been using three feet, by the way, the whole time. Yeah, it was made up. They admitted that. Yeah. Well, I mean, there's not good evidence

that six feet works. And so yet we cling to that, even though the studies disproved it. The studies disprove that COVID was transmitted on countertops and tables, yet we go onto an airplane and my God, people are grasping for the alcohol swabs for the train. They handed it to you when you get on the plane. When you get on the plane, they hand you the little swab. It's like, okay. Right. And so, okay, let people wear, I'm not for forbidding masks. I'm for letting people wear masks, just like I'm for letting people wear copper bracelets

for arthritis. I'm not saying you can't do that. But I prefer to use scientific data and critical thinking. And by the way, 97% of people roughly who are over 65 in the United States have been vaccinated. Okay, I want to ask you about that, because the numbers are in. I'll get to that one second. I just want to put a period on the end of this discussion. Dr. Vinay Prasad, he's been on the show. He's brilliant. Very fair on COVID. And he said, first of all, he points out that even the authors of this study that say, you know, the master grade 53% reduction say, and I quote, risk of bias across the six studies that they chose to

look at ranged from moderate to serious or critical. He said, I never thought I'd be wishing for just mild bias again. So basically, they took studies in which they admit those who were self-reporting may have considered themselves seriously biased in favor of masks and they conclude masks work. And he went on to say, I think it's fairly clear that cloth masking has at best weak inconclusive data and no clear evidence of efficacy. That's what mostly everybody wears. At the same time, he says, given the massive number of mask devotees, I have no doubt that non-randomized studies will find 53, 80 or even 90 percent efficacy. With enough analyses, we may even get to 95 percent%. But that won't make any of them true. Yet, I will point out that Guardian article touting this, guess what, Dr. Atlas, it doesn't have a

little Twitter warning on it. It doesn't have the little thing saying, go to the CDC's website for the best information. Oh, no. As long as you're touting masks or vaccines or mandates, you're good with everyone in big tech. It's only when you push back against that that you get banned. All right, let's talk vaccines, because I did look at the latest numbers. It's now 80 percent of Americans age 12 and older have received at least one dose. Ninety eight point five percent of adults 65 and older have gotten at least one dose and 85.8 percent are fully vaccinated. Even as you go a little younger, you've got 85.9 percent of people between the ages of 50 and 64 who have gotten at least one shot. 78 percent ages 40 to 49. And even the young, young folks, 12 to 16 or 12 to 15, I think it is 57 percent were vaccinated. They're never going to. And now

they're moving the goalposts saying you're not considered fully vaccinated anymore unless you get the booster shots. You've got to get the Boris Johnson over in the UK just came out and said that's what fully vaccinated means. Now you've got to have a booster. It's never going to end. The goal, the goalposts are never going to be in front of us or achievable. Yeah. And so here's the several points that I think are important. Number one, if you're high risk for dying from COVID, the vaccines, to my reading of the data, prevent people from dying. And that's very good and very important. Vaccines after three to six months do not stop you from getting infection. In fact, people that, okay, so that's, that's the second point. And the third point is therefore, after three to six

months, vaccines do not stop you from preventing, I mean, from, from spreading the infection. And so it's a personal protection, particularly for people who have high risk, because you're not going to die, almost certainly, if you get the vaccine. And it's not a public health really effective thing because you're not prevented from spreading the infection after a few months. This is proven. This is proven in the Qatar study where 98% of the population is vaccinated. This is proven in the UK. This is proven in the Qatar study where 98% of the population is vaccinated. This is proven in the UK. This is proven in the Israel data. And frankly, by the way, I like to look at the other countries' data because I'm at the point now where I'm a little bit worried about even looking at our own data, which is very frightening. So that's the other

thing about the immunity that has been really ignored with these vaccine mandates in the United States in particular, and not in the other countries, is natural immunity of people who have had the infection. Okay, we know that almost half the country has had the infection. That means half the country has not only protection immunologically, but better protection than those who've been vaccinated, but not infected. That's proven. People who have been vaccinated but not infected have 27-fold increased cases of symptomatic COVID than people who've been infected and recovered. Okay, this is proven. This is the Israel day. You have to look at the studies. And this is not just Israel. It's other countries also show the durable and long-term impact of

protection from getting the infection. So to say to somebody who has better protection because they've recovered from COVID that you must get vaccinated, you know, that doesn't make sense. The second part, I want to mention something about the boosters. There's no significant safety data on a third dose, okay? This is an experimental vaccine to begin with. We've never had an mRNA vaccine. We don't have long-term safety data on the vaccine. I'm not against the vaccine for people who need it. You know, it's a cost benefit, you know, benefit risk kind of calculation, but we don't have long-term safety data because after the emergency use was granted,

they broke the blinding. In other words, all the placebo people, almost all of them got the vaccine. So we don't have a placebo control. We don't have a long-term, what's called a phase three trial. But more than that, the boosters, there's no safety data to speak of on a third dose. There's a few thousand people in Israel after one month who, you know, there's a safety evaluation. It takes normally five to 10 years for a vaccine to have enough safety data to be formally approved historically. So this is, you know, to say that it's safe to get a booster, I'm not sure. I mean, I'm not saying don't get it. What I'm saying is that use your brain. You're an adult, it's your decision

with your doctor, if you have a doctor who is also a critical thinker, which is in short supply, even among doctors. But you know, you sort of have to figure this out. What is your risk from COVID? What is your risk tolerance? What is your benefit from getting the vaccine? It's not the same for everybody. This is a disease that is exceptionally risky for high risk, older people, particularly with a lot of comorbidities, or kids with serious underlying diseases like leukemia. Okay, but you know, typical people that are healthy, you do not have a high risk for COVID, period. That's not even arguable. Can I just add that Austria now is putting its unvaccinated into lockdowns, into mandatory

lockdowns that are being enforced by the police. And the one exception that they'll make is if you had COVID. Austria, which is doing something crazy that we've never done. Mandatory lockdowns of the unvaccinated enforced with police recognizes natural immunity. But we don't. And I mean, it's not the reason that President Biden's vaccine mandate got shot down by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. And now OSHA has admitted it's got it. It's got a hold. It has to put a hold on its on its mandate. It's not going to be upheld in the courts. It's not have tons of natural immunity and you have these kinds of vaccine numbers, then why do we still see cases rising? The New York Times puts that on the front cover every day. I don't know why we're still looking at the cases, but the case is rising.

And the deaths numbers are down 14 percent over the last two weeks. Cases are up 14% over the two weeks, but deaths are down. So why do we keep seeing those numbers rise at all? Okay. So your question sort of has multiple parts, I think. Number one, cases, again, the vaccines do not protect in a durable way, a long-term way, more than three to six months against getting infected. I mean, in Qatar, after five months, only 20% effective in preventing an infection. Okay, 20%. That's not much protection.

So just because you're vaccinated does not mean you will not get the infection after a few months. That's point number one. Point number two, we don't know who got the vaccine versus who actually had immunity. Many, many people who took the vaccine also already had immunity. So it's not true that you add up 50% of people who had the infection, and then you add the people who were vaccinated. There's an overlap there, obviously. And then third is that we've never done such testing for a virus.

If you look at the influenza data, by the way, most people that die from influenza, at least half the people who die already were vaccinated. Okay, so people don't don't realize that they didn't look at the data. 75% of people with influenza were asymptomatic. If we tested everybody for all of these viruses, we would see a lot of them. And that's why, you know, the focus on number of cases, you have to realize the focus should be on number of serious illnesses, number of people. If you have a fever for a day, or if you're asymptomatic and positive for SARS-2 testing, that doesn't mean you're really sick. And this is actually very important when you quantify things like hospitalizations and deaths from COVID, which we didn't talk about. Hospitalizations from COVID, there's a couple

studies in the literature that show, and one's from Stanford and the Children's Hospital, half of people who were called COVID hospitalizations had zero symptoms of COVID. They had a positive virus test, but they ended up being hospitalized because they were sick with something else. Yet in the final telling, they were called COVID. Okay. The same thing is happening with deaths. The CDC itself said a third of people under 18 who supposedly died from COVID, these are children, a third of them were not even feasible, were not even plausible was their word to have had COVID on chart review. So people that were categorized as COVID, whether for hospitalizations or deaths, a lot of them,

we don't know how many, but a lot of them were only SARS-2 positive. It doesn't mean they were sick. COVID is an illness. Testing a person and having a positive virus test is not an illness. Okay. That's an infection. There's something very important about this, which is in my book. I talked about this. I distributed the data on PCR testing because PCR testing, the way it's done, 97% of positive PCR tests, if you're doing it the way the FDA recommended during this whole pandemic of 2020, 97% were positive, but they were not contagious people. But they were being confined and curfewed and contact tracing and all this stuff, because 97% of positive PCR tests with a cycle threshold of 35 or more, 97% were showing dead virus, not contagious people. So this kind of information, I was the

only one that brought this up in the task force. I, in fact, distributed the data. Nobody on the task force talked about this. There were refractory to the facts that were very important when you're designing the policies about what to do. So the PCR testing data was very flawed and misleading, and it's still being used all over the world, incorrectly in many countries. The data on hospitalizations from COVID is misleading, and the deaths from COVID is misleading. It's not that I'm minimizing the disease. Many people died. It's a tragedy who died. And the deaths from COVID is misleading. It's not that I'm minimizing the disease. Many people died. It's a tragedy who died. But the problem is the policies that were implemented throughout the pandemic didn't protect people from dying and instead locked down the low

risk people. And those policies were recommended by Dr. Birx and Dr. Fauci. Yeah. And they were implemented. They were implemented. And at least one of those is still calling the shots. I mean, Fauci's he's still he's been you know, he's a demigod now. And that we have a president in the White House that will do whatever he says. And that's the frustration. I really do wonder whether it's just going to take the political threat of another Virginia, but this time a 50 statewide type Virginia in November of 2022 to make them stop, just stop with the mandatory masks and the mandatory vaccines and firing people who have natural immunity who don't want to get the vaccine. I personally believe nothing other than their political fortunes being at risk are going to make them see reason.

I'll give you the last word. Yeah, well, I just want to say we're in an era now, I'll repeat this, where individuals have to start being the critical thinkers. You have to trust yourself. You have to look through the studies if you want, but you also have to find people who are speaking credibly, consistently, and showing the facts in a very concise way, and you will arrive at the best decisions for yourself and your family. We only wish it weren't quite that hard. All right, I want to tell everybody

again, you got to check out Dr. Atlas's book. Please support him. He deserves it. It's called A Plague Upon Our House, My Fight at the Trump White House to stop COVID from destroying America. Doctor, great to have you. Hope you can come back soon. Thanks for having me. Appreciate it. And want to tell our audience that we are also continuing to follow the breaking news at the Kyle Rittenhouse murder trial. Just a short time ago, the judge banned MSNBC reporters from the courthouse. The ban came after a producer, a freelance producer for MSNBC was caught following the jury bus. Here's the judge explaining what happened. Listen. A person who identified himself as James G. Morrison and who claimed that he was a producer with NBC News, employed for MSNBC,

under the supervision of someone named Irene Bayan in New York. The police, when they stopped him because he was following in the distance of about a block and went through a red light and stated that he had been instructed by Ms. Bion in New York to follow the jury bus. I have instructed that no one from MSNBC news will be permitted in this building for the duration of this trial. Wow. Turning me now by phone, my pal and ABC News chief legal analyst, not to mention host of the Dan Abrams show on Sirius XM and the founder of Long Crime Network, which actually is reporting some of this today,

Dan Abrams. Dan, you heard it right from the judge that they caught this guy, James J. Morrison, freelance producer for MSNBC, that he was instructed by this booker, Irene Byan, in New York to follow the jury. And he was caught. Your thoughts on it? Yeah, I mean, look, it's still sort of unfolding. I'm still getting notes in real time from people at the courthouse about what we know and what we don't know. I mean, initially, it's funny. I told your producers, well, you know what? It seems that

it wasn't a reporter for, it wasn't connected to MSNBC. And then I got another saying, wait, wait, hold on, hold on, wait. It seems it was someone who was a freelancer. So look, bottom line is, if it's true that someone at MSNBC instructed a freelancer to follow the jury, you know, it's not only moronic and despicable, it's illegal. So, you know, you're not just talking about the possibility of MSNBC not being allowed back in the courtroom if it turns out that this is true. But, you know, the person involved could be facing charges for trying to, you know, for refusing to adhere to a judicial order, etc. So this is this is really bad. This is true. And not only that, I agree with you 100 percent on the ethical violation. But this guy and now MSNBC are going to wind up in a motion for a mistrial and possibly

appellate court papers if if this kid, if this guy, Kyle Rittenhouse, gets convicted, because it'll be cited as one of the many things that intimidated this jury into coming up with what the defense will argue was the wrong verdict if it doesn't go their way? Yeah, I don't think that this will be the best argument. I think that the defense's argument about this video is actually a much stronger argument than some guy who didn't actually, you know, get in touch with the jurors, etc. You know, I think that this question about the quality of the video, you would think people are going to say, oh, come on, what's the big deal about so that the defense is saying, well, you know, they got a version of the video, which was of lesser quality. Well, part of their defense has been that you. We'll see if the prosecutors did this intentionally. They say it was inadvertent. But that's a big issue because there you're talking about literally the defense making arguments in court that now they can totally they can say we would never would have argued. You can't see the video if we'd had the original version of it. booth and potentially and wants to hear directly directly from them, as well as from expert witnesses on which he said from the beginning on whether this tape should have been admitted

at all. So it's certainly going to be potential grounds for an appeal if this doesn't go the defense's way. I want to tell you that NBC just issued a statement. I will read it in full. Last night, a freelancer received a traffic citation while the traffic violation took place near the jury van. The freelancer never contacted or intended to contact the jurors during deliberations and never

photographed or intended to photograph them. We regret the incident and will fully cooperate with the authorities on any investigation. NBC News spokesperson. I will say that's good enough. That's no, that's not a good. So so we started this conversation by me saying, you let's see whether NBC is admitting. So they are. They're admitting that this person worked for them. OK, bad fact. Number one, they're admitting that the person was following the the bus. Bad fact. Number two, and they're not denying that someone in, you know, an executive there was instructing him to do this. That's horrible fact number three. So, you know, while some people are going to read that and say, oh, you know, NBC's sort of sort of owning up to a minor violation.

That to me actually makes this now a bigger story. Yeah. And and I don't know. It sounds like it happened last night. So he must have been following the jury van, I'm assuming, on their way back to, you know, from the courthouse to their main location. Who knows? But there's only one reason a producer follows a jury van. They either want to contact the jurors or they want to see where the jurors live so that they can contact them later. Either way, totally impermissible, way out of line. And any journalist knows you're not supposed to do that.

The jurors in particular are supposed to be held inviolate. You don't mess with them. If their identities are public, sure, you can contact them after the trial and ask them if they want to speak. But you don't follow them. You really are messing with something very high stakes. Because, you what I was thinking as we were talking about this? Well, maybe someone said, you know, go so you can get a sense of what they look like for later. But you know what they look like. You're here for, you know, it's not like so there's no I was trying to think of like, what could their possible explanation be? It can't be, well, I just wanted to get a visual on them for later. Because the visual you can get in court of all the jurors.

So you're exactly right that following the jurors back, the only reason that you would do that is to see where they're going. And that period is unacceptable and impermissible. Yeah. I mean, this is these bookers for the big networks are famous or infamous, depending on your view, for their aggressive measures in trying to book guests. And the jurors in the Rittenhouse trial will be a major booking if they decide to do it. But there are limits. The law limits what they can do. And this is this is gross. And NBC is not going to get away with this statement, because if it really was this Irene, as the freelancer identifies by name, Irene Byan in New York, who told him to do it, she's got some explaining to do, too. Oh, this is one on one. Right. Megan, I mean, look, you've covered a lot of cases. You know, obviously I have to.

And this is seriously one on one, meaning like, you know, you hire a producer to go to a trial. It's probably the three things you tell them are, you know, follow what's happening in court and take notes. See if you can get any interviews in the hallway and stay away from the jurors. Right. It's like it's one of the very basic things that you tell people who are covering a trial. And now they're going to need to add follow what happens in court and do not follow the jury. By the way, that, that booking producer has now deleted her LinkedIn. She's in a lot of trouble. And so is this freelancer. And so is, so, I mean, look, MSNBC is banned from the courthouse, but as far as I can tell, NBC isn't, they share resources. I can attest to that. I'm sure you can, too, from your time at MSNBC.

So, you know, the punishment isn't all that punitive, but the judge is doing the right thing. Let's see where we go. This isn't over. Right. I mean, this is the punishment for now. Let's see if this goes further than just a traffic violation. It really is going to depend on the intent here, right? I mean, if it was truly just a traffic violation from someone who happened to be in the same place as the jurors, boss, okay, but that's not the way the judge is interpreting it as of right now. Exactly right. Exactly right. Dan, such a pleasure. Thanks for pinch hitting here. Appreciate it. Sure thing, Megan. Talk to you soon. I want to tell you tomorrow, we'll have all the latest on the Rittenhouse trial for you.

We're also going to be joined by Adam Carolla. Always love talking to him. And go ahead and download our show, The Megyn Kelly Show, on Apple, Pandora, Spotify, and Stitcher. And go to YouTube.com slash Megyn Kelly. Do me a favor, subscribe there. That helps our show. We appreciate it. And thanks, everyone, subscribe there. That helps our show. We appreciate it. And thanks everyone for listening. Thanks for listening to The Megyn Kelly Show. No BS, no agenda, and no fear.