The Megyn Kelly Show - COVID Reality on Kids and Masks, the Wuhan Lab, and Vaccines, with Dr. Nicole Saphier and Dr. Lucy McBride | Ep. 107

Episode Date: May 26, 2021

Megyn Kelly is joined by Dr. Nicole Saphier, radiologist and author of "Panic Attack: Playing Politics with Science in the Fight Against COVID-19," and Dr. Lucy McBride, practicing internist and author of the Atlantic column "I Tell My Patients Not To Mask Their Kids Outside," to talk about kids and masks (and whether they should get the vaccine), kids and schools, the politicization of the COVID Wuhan lab leak theory, the status of the variants around the world, whether the vaccinated numbers in America mean we've reached "herd immunity," the need to focus on good health in the COVID pandemic, the future of CDC recommendations, and more.Follow The Megyn Kelly Show on all social platforms:Twitter: http://Twitter.com/MegynKellyShowInstagram: http://Instagram.com/MegynKellyShowFacebook: http://Facebook.com/MegynKellyShowFind 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, it's me, Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show. Today we get back into COVID. We've got a lot to update you on. The restrictions remain in too many places, especially when it comes to our children and masks, and still you and your mask. Certainly in the Northeast and other states that have been hit hard by COVID. Texas and Governor Abbott have been proven prescient and pretty smart when it comes to how they get out of this pandemic and sort of admitting that the crisis, that the emergency is over. Today, we are joined by two really smart doctors, two women who have been really smart in predicting how this would go down. And they have been they've been pretty brave.

Our second doctor who you're going to hear from, Dr. Lucy McBride, she goes on MSNBC. She writes in The Atlantic and she's been saying, let's let's get honest. It's time. Why are we having our kids run around outside with masks on? That it isn't good for them. It's not healthy physically, emotionally, what have you. And she is somebody who the CDC listens to. So she's got real influence. And our first doctor, Dr. Nicole Sapphire, she's a radiologist at Memorial Sloan Kettering. She's also the author of the book, Panic Attack, Playing Politics with science in the fight against COVID-19. And she's been out there from the very beginning saying, look, this looks like it began in a Wuhan lab, that there was what appears to have been at least an accidental release. And she's been getting real honest

about do we need masks? Do kids need them even inside? And talking about whether vaccinated people can give this virus to other unvaccinated or vaccinated people. Anyway, she's all sorts of insights coming your way. And Lucy, you'll hear is somebody who she's an internist in Washington, DC. She's a mental health advocate. And she's also got a COVID newsletter. If you want to check it out, you might find that interesting, especially after listening to her at LucyMcBride.com. So getting to Dr. Sapphire and Dr. McBride in one second. But first, this. Dr. Sapphire.

Hi, Megan. Thanks for having me on. Thank you for being here. It's a pleasure. I'm looking forward to our discussion. I feel like there's been so much BS out there and, you know, it's like a full-time job separating fact from fiction when it comes to COVID as it has been since the beginning. Yeah. All right, let's start with this. I just got my second Pfizer shot yesterday, so I suppose two weeks from now I'm considered fully vaccinated, though I think I'm fully vaccinated now.

So let me ask you about that. So we've got 50% fully vaccinated of adults. We have got well more than that who have been partially vaccinated, one shot in the arm, almost 60% of the eligible population. And we've got an op-ed by a doctor I really like, Marty McCary. He came on our show. He's from Hopkins. A couple of days ago in the New York Post saying, look, the US positive rate is now at a record low. It's below three percent between all these vaccinations and natural immunity from people who have actually had the infection. He's like, this is called herd immunity. We have it. Why won't we admit it? Do you agree with that? Actually, Marty and I are good friends. Pre-COVID, he has now blurbed both of my books, my first one and now the second one. We have been in daily communication since the beginning of this pandemic.

And, you know, I completely agree with him. You know, I had a piece that came out in The Wall Street Journal a couple months ago that said, you know, Fauci, tear off these masks. Because by Memorial Day, I said it will be at an acceptable level where we shouldn't be wearing masks. And I dubbed Memorial Day to be called emasculation. That's my new name for this time of year. And, you know, I think that's the one thing that McCary and I have really continued to stand firm on in that, unfortunately, people are continuing to neglect the fact that natural immunity is proving to be quite strong. Now, that's not to neglect the fact that natural immunity is proving to be quite strong.

Now, that's not to say that we would have encouraged natural immunity to get us to herd immunity, because obviously a lot more people would die. It was the combination of existing natural immunity with the robust vaccine campaign that has gotten us where we are. But yet, if you talk about natural immunity, you're deemed anti-vax, which is crazy. Right. Rand Paul is under attack right now from some saying, oh, he's absurd because he's like, he's a doctor. He says, I'm not going to get the vaccine because I had COVID and I'm going to rely on my natural immunity. By the way, my own doctor here in New York,

who's an infectious disease specialist, said, you don't need the vaccine if you've had COVID, which to herd immunity, up to 90% of the population will have to get vaccinated. And that's just the most preposterous statement. I mean, it's hard not to laugh, but it's not funny. It's not funny, those statements coming out because they're so wrong. And they give the public this perception that we're never going to be at herd immunity and that we're going to be in this perpetual state of lockdown and crises. But that's just not true. And all you have to really do is look at the cases in terms of new cases, hospitalizations, and deaths. And we have reached all times lows since the beginning of the pandemic. We have gotten to a very safe spot in the sense that the emergency is over, and it is time for

Dr. Fauci, the CDC, and President Biden to come forth and admit the emergency is over. No, the pandemic is not over, but the emergency is. But the reason that they continue to neglect the fact that natural immunity contributed to this is because they think if you actually acknowledge natural immunity, then people won't get the vaccine. But that's not the case, because if you're not being fully transparent with people, they're going to catch on. Americans are a lot smarter than some of these old guard medical establishments would like to think them to be. And so they catch on when some of these statements don't make any sense. And that is why you start seeing the skepticism rise. Well, I'm sick of Fauci misleading us for our own good. What does he think he is, my daddy? You know, it's like, first he says, don't wear the masks because they

do nothing. Then he says, oh, you have to wear them all the time. That was just a lie. So you didn't buy up all the PPE. The latest one was, he said a couple months ago, yeah, you do still need to wear the mask, even if you've been double vaxxed. And Rand Paul again said, isn't that just really performance? You don't need the mask if you've been double vaxxed. And he took offense at that, said absolutely not. Now he takes off the mask and says, good news. If you've been double vaxxed. And he took offense at that and said, absolutely not. Now he takes off the mask and says, good news. If you've been double vaxxed, you don't need to wear the mask. I mean, I could go on about the Fauci misleading for, you know, supposedly for our own good. Because now even now he admits, yeah, I just didn't, you know, I just didn't want to set a bad example. So why did you lie? Why'd you lie to Rand Paul? And now again, here

we are, you know, natural immunity doesn't count. It's all about the vaccine. And now we're there. We're at herd immunity. And these, I don't know, I think they're just fear mongers refuse to set us free because as you point out, their refusal to align with the science and the facts, they really do have, it does have consequences on real Americans' lives. Listen, when you go back a year ago, when they said, we need to do these restrictions, we don't have any information about this virus. We don't have treatments. We don't have a vaccine. Okay. I understand in the beginning, we needed to do that because they did have some effect. But then when the time, the summer rolled around in the States that were doing really well, they had a hard time loosening up on any of those

restrictions. Even California by the end of summer said no more outdoor dining, yet they couldn't point to any truth that outdoor dining was contributing to their rise in cases. And with Dr. Fauci, unfortunately, that messaging when he has gone back and said, well, you may have needed masks, but I didn't want people to go and hoard the masks. And then he has recently said, well, in terms of the, um, I keep moving the mark with herd immunity. It's because Americans are finally ready to hear what I have to say. And now just recently he has said, you know, people said, Dr. Fauci, why are you still wearing a mask when you're around other vaccinated individuals? And Dr. Fauci said, well, I wanted to wait until the CDC updated their recommendation so that we didn't have conflicting messages. But I'm like, hey, you are supposed to

be the leader. Leaders need to push back when they see something wrong going on. If you do not push back against the CDC, the FDA, the WHO, and information coming out of China, then you're a bystander. You're not the leader that the country needed you to be. Yep. It was originally, he said, oh, herd immunity at 55 to 70% of the population haven't become immune. And now as soon as it started to look like more people would get the vaccine, he switched that to, well, it could be 75 to 90% of the country. I mean, I just don't listen to him anymore. I think Dr. Fauci has lost credibility.

There's just no reason to even factor him in because he misleads by his own admission so often. And we're not stupid to your point earlier. We get it. Fauci is not an honest broker, so we got to move on and find people who are. But the other problem we're facing right now is that the media, they're not honest brokers either. And I know you've pointed out that these panic inciting headlines about breakthrough cases when somebody has been vaxxed and gets COVID like the Yankee, the New York Yankee who got it and Bill Maher who got it. Your point is the media is making way too much of those. Why? You know, again, I think that you look back in the history of our nation and, you know, politicians have always weaponized our fear in a means to get elected.

You know, vote for me. I'll save the economy. Vote for me. I'll save you from the pandemic. Well, the media is doing the same thing because as they've woefully proven throughout this entire year that they are aligned with certain political narratives. They are not the unbiased media that we would have them to be. I mean, even myself, I can tell you, I was criticized heavily on certain networks when I gave any sort of credence to a possible lab mistake error that could have contributed to the pandemic. And now all of a sudden,

because Dr. Fauci says it's a possibility, well, I guess it's a possibility, but where are the retraction pieces calling me wrong in the fact that everything I said was discredited by real experts? But that's one of the reasons why I wrote the book, Panic Attack, because it was appalling to me that how big tech in the media immediately with knee-jerk anti-Trumpism was working tirelessly to prove President Trump wrong in everything that he did. And they were raising up Dr. Fauci as the white knight and the hero of the pandemic, when the truth is we still didn't know. We needed the trial and error discord. That's normal in science. What's not normal is what the media did and politicized that discord. Not right to the blunders. Rather, it is the weaponization of a public health crisis to invoke panic in an election year that resulted in the greatest consequences, which, children and not being in school. We have created

this perceived risk of COVID-19 in our young children. People are so fearful of it that not only have they kept children out of school, but when they're forced to go back to school, they're making these young children actually wear masks. But if you really look at the real risk of COVID-19 to children, it does not parallel the perceived risk. And in fact, the CDC of suicide attempts amongst our children, the substance abuse. There is so much that has come out of all of these restrictions, but it's because they have put out this perceived level of risk that wasn't necessarily real. Yes. And they won't let go of it. I mean, this is the battle that we're fighting now, which is, you know, what happened to follow the science, believe science we do. And the science is saying the

kids are not significant transmitters of COVID. They are not where the risk is, nor is there an emergency for them that would justify vaccines, uh, in these young ones. And yet this is where it's going. I mean, this is already where it's going. And when, when you say, all right, well, I mean, like I'm relieved personally that all my kids are under the age of 12 and I don't have to vaccinate them. You know, right now I just feel like it's not necessary in the risk benefit calculations to, it's not the right way for, to justify a vaccine of my seven-year-old. And what I hear in response to that is, oh, don't worry. It'll be ready for him by, by September.

Fauci's like, you know, hopefully we're going to have the vaccines ready for kids as young as two by September. And sooner or later, all babies are going to have to get it. There is zero chance I would give my baby a COVID vaccine. Well, Megan, I can tell you, I have been speaking on this and writing on this a lot. And I agree with you. I have three kids of my own, and I can tell you two are under the age of 12. My oldest is 21. He made the decision to get vaccinated on his own accord. He teaches summer camps over the summer, and he works with autistic

children. And he said he would feel terrible if he gave the virus to a disabled child. And I applaud him for that. He didn't do it for himself. He did it for those around him. And that's why most young adults, we encourage vaccinations. But when it comes to vaccinating the young children, as I have said, COVID is not an emergency in them, especially as viral transmission has gone down, as we've gotten new data that showed even the low hospitalization rate of young children has now even been inflated. So the risk of severe illness is even lower than we thought. And under no way, shape or form, should the vaccine be expanded under emergency use authorization for these young children,

because COVID is not an emergency for them. And to just expand it through that without seeking the full FDA approval is irresponsible in my opinion. Right. And why are they? Why? Why are they doing that to our kids? I understand the pressure on the grownups to get the vaccine. Totally get it. Why are they so focused on the children with the masks and the vaccines? It's like we have gotten to herd immunity already without mandating that. So what is it like? They just want to drive the vaccination numbers up or what? So I think that there are a few things here, Megan. First of all,

we vaccinate the most vulnerable, right? Our elderly, because that's going to save the most amount of lives. That's going to keep the most amount of people out of the hospital and keep our country functioning. You move on to the younger populations, not necessarily the children, but the younger populations, young adults, because they can still transmit the virus. They're not, may not be hospitalized for it, but they're transmitting it. And when you transmit the virus, that is how those variants form. And unfortunately, at one point, a variant may form that's going to escape the immunity. And we will start all over again, which that is why we don't want that to happen. However, thus far, every single variant is covered by the vaccines and looks like natural

immunity. The Brazilian variant has a little bit more breakthrough infections than the rest, but natural immunity, vaccine-induced immunity has been very strong. And as we see, our community viral transmission level is so low. I think they're just having a really hard time letting go. The emergency's over. It's over. We got to let it go, people. That's right. It's like Macri said, at some point we have to live our lives. That time is now. And the goal, it was never to prevent any tests from coming back positive for COVID, right? I mean, like, yes, there may be some random,

rare breakthrough infections. It's meaningless. The goal was to prevent serious illness and death. And the vaccines do that. That's happening. And you can even with the holdouts on the vaccines, the country's numbers are falling precipitously when it comes to positive tests and serious illness as a result of COVID. We have to stop doing surveillance testing, especially on the vaccinated. It is the most ridiculous waste of resources you can imagine. Yes, you want a snapshot of how much virus is still circulating, but again, we need to start looking at how many people are hospitalized, how many severe illnesses there are, not how much asymptomatic cases there are, because as we know, as you reach herd immunity, even if you are an asymptomatic

case, your ability to give it to someone else is very low and it doesn't matter. It's just like swabbing people for having MRSA on their skin. MRSA can be a deadly bacterial infection, but people have it all the time, but we're just not walking around swabbing them because it's not causing a problem. It only causes a problem if they're immunocompromised or they have an infection. That's when we look for it. We need to start moving our train of thought from testing everyone just to see if the presence of the virus is there to whether it is actually clinically significant. We have to move towards that. And what are the odds of a vaccinated person spreading COVID to another vaccinated person? You're saying even to a non-vaccinated person, they're not an effective spreader once they've

had the vaccine. But what are the odds of a vaccinated person actually spreading it to a vaccinated person in a way that would be deadly or problematic for the recipient? I can't even give you an actual figure, but there's been various claims that show that the risk of that happening is so exceedingly low, it is just negligible. I mean, it's, it's unmeasurable how low that risk is. Now, if you've been vaccinated, if you've been vaccinated and an unvaccinated person who has COVID comes by you, what are the odds that they can give it to you? So here's the thing.

You have to remember, not everyone responds the same to vaccinations. You have people who just don't mount a strong response for whatever reason. That's why none of the vaccines have said they were 100 percent efficacious in all adults. And also those who have certain autoimmune diseases on medications, transplant recipients, they don't necessarily mount a strong immune response to the vaccine, but they are still mounting an immune response much like more, mostly are more than 50%, which is better than the flu vaccine, mind you. So again, when you have more people in a population who have some form of immunity, even if you're not at 100%, the risk of that virus transmitting between two vaccinated people, two immune people, or even one person with immunity to one person a mask, avoid gatherings. That's fine. Whatever you want to do to live your life. But for the greater good of the population, it's unnecessary.

Yes. And now, but what you get in terms of the fear-mongering is what if? Variants, one never knows. We just saw the teachers unions, the second largest run by Randy Weingarten, who's citing debunked and conspiracy based facts about alleged facts, but really lies about Florida and the numbers there to try to push back on schools and what's happening down there. So this person is not a not a reliable person to listen to. But they basically the claim is variance, variance, variants, variants. And that's why we had to have interminable masking. Even the CDC director, right? Walensky, Rochelle Walensky, that she she can't take good news if it hits her over the head. She just goes back to the variants. They're a wild card. They could reverse the progress at any time. And your pal Macri,

he was saying, why would any doctor say that right now? Right? It's unproven. It's unlikely. And you know, it's like, it's like, I mean, you're in the in the cancer prevention and treatment business. It's like saying to a cancer patient, he says, when you're discharging them from from the hospital after a long and successful battle with cancer. Remember, there's a small chance it could come back, it could come back at any time. So my message to every patient that I tell have cancer, and then they get through their treatment is they understand that there's risk with everything in life. But if all you do is focus on that risk and perseverate over that risk, what was the point of prolonging your life? Because

you're no longer enjoying your life. You're no longer living your life. And I mean, I have many criticisms of Brandy Weingarten, the teachers union leader, but you know, she tweeted out showing the CDC study. This is the problem with people who like to cherry pick data based off of headlines and don't actually read the studies is that she was like, you know what, here's the CDC data. It shows masking in schools that helps decrease transmission. So therefore schools need to have masks in the fall. And it's like, did you read that study? Because let me tell you what that study showed.

Yes, last fall, the CDC looked at elementary schools K through five. They found the two metrics that reduced spread of the virus were with increased ventilation, you know, whether it's filtration systems, windows open, what have you, but also teachers wearing masks. And that was, again, before the vaccine. When it came to whether the children were wearing masks or not, that was actually not statistically significant, having a reduction in viral transmission. So she really just negated her own argument. Listen, teachers are now vaccinated. The vaccines are stronger than those masks are. Those teachers are safe. And the parents of the children who are going to school,

if they want to be vaccinated, they're safe too. So the children should be in that school. They should be in person full time and without masks on. And yes, if there are outbreaks, they can take a look at that. But I'll tell you, the levels right now are lower than previously present flu levels, which people have deemed acceptable. And when it comes to severity in children, COVID-19 is not more severe than some of the worst flu seasons for children. And we never were masking up. They were not canceling school and they certainly weren't doing their schooling on Zoom. She won't listen to reason. And unfortunately, Randy's very powerful. Right. She runs the second largest union in the country. She said this in response to Texas. The governor there has said that public schools in Texas are not allowed to mandate face a mask, you may. He's not saying you may not do it. He's saying the government may not require it. The school may not require you to mask up your kid.

And still she pushes back. And this is the quote. Last week, quote, a study conducted by the CDC found that masks were a key factor in stopping the spread of COVID. This is another another reckless and dangerous move from the governor of Texas. Right. I mean, they love to beat up on Governor Abbott, but he's been right. All of their prognostications on what would happen in Texas when he lifted the mandates before have turned out to be wrong. And as you just pointed out, this one's wrong, too. She, Randy, is misleading. Again, it ties down to this fear mongering, and I really don't understand it.

You know, I wrote an opinion piece last summer when teachers were not wanting to go back to school and you were seeing those protests saying, how can we teach your children if we're dead? You know, all of these panic inciting headlines, again, the impetus of my book. And I said, hey, you guys are frontline workers. You are tasked with educating our young generations. Let's figure out a way to get you back to work, just like the rest of us frontline workers have been doing since the beginning of the pandemic.

And I needed them to change their mindset and to see the importance of their role. What has happened over the last year? You see education levels are down. Face mask wearing, we're only going to see the consequences of that. We know that facial recognition is vital when it comes to childhood development and children are not developing those social skills that they need to develop to become human beings and functioning members of society. This data is all going to come in the next few years. The people tasked with educating our children need to treat themselves like frontline workers. They are protected with the vaccines. There's ample supply. If they want to

get vaccinated, get vaccinated, but stop punishing the children. Totally. Plus, it's like, why? Why is the lady who is, you know, probably in her late 60s, who checks me out at the grocery store, who deals with far more people on an intimate basis, you know, up close and in her face, grownups, by the way, they're in the grocery store doing her essential job and the teachers who can stay far away from the children if they need to. They don't have to be on top of each other, pretending that it's unsafe for them to be with a far more low risk population. We all know it's a lie. It's an absurdity. So but down in Texas, they have reason, unlike here in the Northeast, where these states are still cowering in fear. But just to go back to the Texas thing,

Randy says, you know, another reckless and dangerous move from the governor of Texas. This follows up on everybody melting down when Governor Abbott lifted a lot of the mandates there and actually threatened to fine cities and local officials if they imposed mask mandates. Back then, when he lifted the mandate in March, Biden said it was Neanderthal thinking Fauci. He's inviting another search. Beto, this is a death warrant. Gavin Newsom, absolutely reckless. All of them totally wrong.

You'd think they'd learn. They don't learn. So Texas is doing its thing. And we're all jealous. I'm jealous here in New York, New Jersey, different story. So can we talk about what's happening here? Because now the CDC, after, after issuing ridiculous prescriptions for the summer, I mean, they were saying kids had to wear masks every day in day camp. Um, by the way, the New York times just ran a piece the other day saying experts, experts, they had all these experts say it is, and I quote, somewhat safe for your kid

to swim in the water without a COVID mask. It's somewhat safe. You can consider taking off that piece of fabric when they're in the ocean. This is how insane people have gotten. But it seems like the CDC is dragged along to every loosening of the spigot. Well, Megan, you know, when the CDC first put forth their long awaited recommendations of what people can do now that they're vaccinated. I mean, mind you, they did this like three months too late. And what did they say? They're like, good news. You can go out and walk your dog by yourself without a mask. You can go and do outdoor dining without a mask. You can have small outdoor gatherings without masks. And it's like, I hate to break it to you, but we've been doing that like for the last year without a vaccine and it has not contributed to community

spread. So thank you. But that was a talking head nonsense, not helpful. And now here we are again. They're still saying kids have to be wearing masks outside and distancing. Not only is that ridiculously anti-science, but it can be harmful. It's hot. Yes, exactly. That's what I keep saying. I mean, I, I said to my daughter, we had a soccer game. She's on the soccer team this past weekend. It was 90 degrees here in New York. And they had said it was a visiting field that the girls are going to have to wear their masks on the field. And I said, Yardley, I just want you to know that we're going to be having a very awkward public moment if they enforce that. There is no way I'm letting you play with a mask on in 90 degrees. It's totally anti-scientific.

It's dangerous to you, according to our pediatrician. And I said to Doug, my husband, I go, I'm going full Norma Rae on them. I'm going to stand up there with the sign saying no masks. Her red union. But you get the point. Because if we don't start standing up to this BS, they'll keep these little ones in masks forever. Up next, some of the mainstream media now seem to be finally getting around to admitting that there is, let's say, a better than average chance that this virus started in a Wuhan lab.

You know, people who've been paying attention have suspected this and believed it. And some, I don't want to say know, how do we know anything that happens in China, but pretty close to know, have known it for a long time. So how about that theory? And what does our doctor think? Because she's one of the people who said, I think it came from a Wuhan lab and was shamed for it early on. That's after this break. The Wall Street Journal now has a report saying three researchers at the Wuhan lab, that Wuhan lab that was devoted to studying coronaviruses and bats, became significantly sick in November of 2019. They needed hospital care. The journal reports, it's based on a U.S. intelligence report, and they say that the WHO is about to meet to

discuss the next phase of the COVID origin investigation, but they've already met. And their earlier report just a couple months ago said, yeah, it doesn't look like it came out of a Wuhan lab. Then we found out that they're completely in bed, the WHO with China. The main guy who was behind that report, all of his research is funded by China. So we can't listen to that. And Pompeo, like you, came out and said he tweeted over a year ago, I told Martha Raddatz that the Wuhan virus most likely came from a lab leak. She stopped just short of offering me a tin hat. The CCP, the Chinese, said I was an enemy of mankind. And now, well, now the left wing media is scrambling to get on the side of truth because their new narrative now is that, yes, there was some stuff out there, Nicole, about, you know, possibly the Wuhan lab.

But really, the reason they didn't go with that was Trump. And I give you I'm going to give you the floor, but I give you Maggie Haberman on CNN with this line. Listen. A lot of the discussion about the lab leak, I think, was clouded early on because there was the suggestion by some that it was somehow a Chinese weapon that caused this. That's not what we're talking about here. We're talking about a lab accident. But we've come a long way from people dismissing this as a conspiracy theory to a lot of people taking this seriously, Maggie? We have, John. And look, I do think it's important to remember that part of the issue when this was first being reported on and discussed back a few months after the pandemic had begun was that then President Trump and Mike Pompeo, the Secretary of State, both suggested they had seen evidence that this was formed in a lab, and they also suggested it was not released on purpose, but they refused to release the evidence showing what it was.

And so because of that, that made this instantly political. Listen, it only got made political because the media made it political. The bottom line is, yes, a biological weapon, weaponry across the globe is a thing. And there are people developing biological weapons such as anthrax and coronaviruses that could potentially be harmful to global populations. However, in the beginning of the pandemic, when people were discussing the close proximity of that Wuhan lab, whether or not they were saying that there was an intentional escape or leak of the virus, or if it was an accidental leak, the bottom line was it was quickly, quickly just canceled and not discussed whatsoever. And the truth is, yes, there were some people saying that this was intentional. And I can tell

you my personal opinion is I don't believe this was intentional. I believe that I think that accidents in these labs happen. This wouldn't be the first time it's happened and resulted in epidemic. It's actually happened before. I talk about it in the book. And these lab leaks can occur. They've happened in the United States, too. The big thing that happened was the cover-up by the CCP and then the echoing of because President Trump mentioned it, did everyone say that this is conspiracy and would not even hold a book on it. And he, and the, the, like the main people in that lab, a couple of people who may have had COVID have been, have disappeared. They're like, they're no longer around the unclear what happened to them, but the, the, it's not like the United States

where you're going to, even the United States covers things up, just ask Glenn Greenwald, but we're not going to have some report in which they admitted, or we catch them. We you're going to, even the United States covers things up, just ask Glenn Greenwald, but we're not going to have some report in which they admitted or we catch them. We're just going to have to use our own intelligence. All right. Let me ask you this. I want to talk for a minute about vaccines. As I said, I just got my second Pfizer and by the way, I feel fine. I had it, you know, last night at six o'clock, I feel a hundred percent fine. So for what it's worth, my arm is only slightly sore and I didn't get any of those other symptoms. I know other people have had different experiences, but I still hear people worried about vaccines. I tweeted out.

I refuse to tweet a stupid picture of myself, but I tweeted out saying I'd gotten the vaccine. And some people wrote comments like goodbye, like good luck. We'll miss you when you're gone. There are people out there who think this is an existential decision. So can you just address that, your thought about the safety of the vaccines? So let's talk about that because, you know, there's vaccine hesitancy and then there are anti-vaxxers. And those are very different people. The anti-vax movement existed well before COVID. And they truly believe that vaccines are created by the government and

big pharma and are given to us that cause more harm than good. And it's going to be very difficult to ever move them away from that way of thinking, despite how much evidence and data that is shown to them. They are of a mindset that really we're going to have a difficult time with. Now, what the vaccine hesitant, you know, listen, I understand them. We had this Operation Warp Speed at the beginning of the pandemic come forth. We had a president who was a business leader and he said, all right, we're going to need a vaccine. I'm going to put billions of dollars towards this. Listen, I'm going to say to the researchers, do whatever you have to do. I'm going to help you manufacture these vaccines while you're researching them. So the moment you determine if it works, it's going to be ready to go. We've never had that

before. Coronavirus vaccine research has existed for decades, but they've never had that funding before. Well, Operation Warp Speed did that. That was a huge gamble. And you have to know that even though that was expedited, it was expedited in the sense that it was manufactured in parallel. The process of discovery and determining if it was safe was not done with haste. And while we have seen reports come out that there have been some complications, I can tell you that there's always going to be complications when it comes to vaccines. And you have to think about how many people across the globe at this point have gotten vaccinated. In the United States alone, we've delivered over 100 million doses. I mean, and the fact that there have been so rare occurrences of any safety issues tells you

that all of these are rare. But there will be risk with anything you do, whether it's walking outside, getting in your car. I can tell you you're much higher likelihood of dying in a car crash than you are to have a severe side effect from the COVID vaccine at this point. And so it's important that the messaging is there. And unfortunately, again, the media grabs hold of things. When we were hearing about the blood clots, when we're hearing about some of these other things, we have to put them in context and how few they are compared to how many people have received it. Yes. I, you know, I'll tell you just not for nothing, but a woman, another mom at my kid's school was telling me she, she got the J and J vaccine

and she did get a blood clot. She was not counted in the number that led to the shutdown, but she she did get it prior to that. And what happened? I was like, well, she's a young, healthy woman. I said, well, how did that manifest? She said she was she got the vaccine. And it was either later that day or the next morning, she was grabbing her purse to go out. And suddenly her finger was killing her. She looked down at her finger and it was all swollen and big. And she thought, OK, I don't know what this is, but I did just get the J and J vaccine. So she called the doctor. The doctor's like, get to the hospital right now. She went to the hospital. Apparently they couldn't give her heparin because you're, this is a secondhand, but she said that

you're not allowed to have heparin right after you've had the vaccine, at least that vaccine. Well, let me clarify that. So the reason that the reason these clots, these blood clots are so interesting in the people who's are post the J and J vaccine is so heparin is a medication that helps break up clots. So if you're having a stroke or a heart attack or any other blood clot, you know, we give the heparin and it tries to break it up. Well, what we're seeing in these patients is there's something called HIT, heparin inducedinduced thrombocytopenia, where you're actually having an autoimmune response to the heparin and you start breaking down your own platelets. So the heparin is causing you to destroy your own platelets. I'm not necessarily

helping the clot. And now you're going to have a bleeding disorder because platelets stop you from bleeding. And so that is the biggest concern, because if someone was to present with a blood clot, you give them heparin, but the heparin was actually doing more harm than good in these patients. So it was essential to get the word out to healthcare people to make sure if they're recently post-vaccinated not to give heparin. Well, her biggest takeaway, she's fine, 100% fine. But her biggest takeaway was the number of doctors who were all over her in the hospital because, you know, the medical community is very primed to, I think for good reason, try to keep these vaccine complication numbers low and make sure that these are survivable events, which it completely was for her.

But, you know, I was about to get the J&J vaccine and I would have gotten it. I still would get it even right now if I hadn't had the other one. My audience has heard me talk about how I actually tried to get the J&J vaccine, but CVS shut me down. Long story. Anyway, but you know, you do hear these stories and I understand their reticence to go for it. And now can I ask you about the there's a report in the New York Times that the CDC is investigating heart problems in just a few, just a few young vaccine recipients. I always look at this because it's like, well, would they have had heart problems without the vaccine? Like if you take a big sample, anybody's going to have a few problems, right? But they say most appear to be mild, predominantly in adolescents and young adults,

more often in males than females. And your thoughts on, it's called, I guess, myocarditis. What do you tell parents who are worried about that? Myocarditis is a fancy word for inflammation of the heart. And, you know, I can say that there were actually reports of this out of Israel following the Pfizer vaccines. Again, a handful of reports, mostly young adult males, a few adolescents. And when you look at the grand scheme of things, how many people were vaccinated there, the occurrences were extremely rare. But so I can tell you that just like with blood clots, SARS-CoV-2 can cause inflammation of the heart. So when you are giving someone a vaccine that is supposed to emulate the immune response to SARS-CoV-2, it's not so surprising that you're going to have inflammation. And it may mimic that of what happens when you're infected with the

virus. And since we know young adults and adolescents actually mount probably stronger immune responses to the vaccine than older people do, it's not surprising there's more inflammation. But again, this is something that they're going to have to look at very, very thoroughly because we know that SARS-CoV-2 poses a very low risk of severity when it comes to young people. So what is going to pose more risk? Are there going to be more cases of cardiac inflammation following vaccines, or are there going to be more young people who get the virus that are going to have cardiac inflammation?

And especially when we have such low viral transmission, they're going to have cardiac inflammation. And especially when we have such low viral transmission, they're going to have to, they have to take that into account. And unfortunately they're not, again, they're not acknowledging the emergency is over. I think it's prudent and very important to have a safe and efficacious vaccine for all ages, whether it should be universally recommended. I'm certainly not on board, especially when it comes to younger people. What vaccine did you get? I assume you got vaccinated. Well, so Megan, you'll be the first to know I am not vaccinated and I'll tell you why. And I'll tell you why this is, this is the debut. I've actually never spoke about this publicly.

Great. Well, I love to break news. Big news. So of course I was offered it the moment they became available by my institution that I work at. But I have an autoimmune disease that affects my heart. And just like I desperately did not want to get COVID-19 because I was terrified it would affect my heart, my entire family rallied around me to try and keep me safe, despite the fact that my husband and I were going into the hospital nearly every day working. When it came to being vaccinated, I had strong conversations with my rheumatologist and my cardiologist saying, Hey, guys, what do we think about inducing

inflammation right now? And, you know, they said, I think we should give it a few weeks, although we have no evidence saying you shouldn't get it. We don't have any evidence saying you should get it. We know that COVID wouldn't do well in you, but we don't know what the vaccine would do. And after about several weeks of data, they started coming around saying, you know what? We think the right thing to do is for you to get it because we can treat your autoimmune flares. We still don't know how to treat COVID-19. So I started to go and get it. And then I fell down my staircase at home, 18 stairs, top to bottom, a couple of days before Christmas. And I destroyed my shoulder. I've had two surgeries to repair the damage. I've been in a sling since Christmas. And general anesthesia causes my disease to flare terribly. So we all just said,

let's put the pause button. We have a lot of inflammation going on. So we're going to wait. I have a weird question for you. Yeah. Do you think you manifested the fall down the stairs? Do you think there was like some part of you that didn't want this, you know, given the risks that you didn't want it? You know, I do think we sometimes mess with ourselves like that. Hey, listen, that's a good question. Good gosh, no, I would have taken 20 Pfizer vaccines by now, rather than dealing with what I've had to deal with. I mean, I have been more convinced over the last six months of data that, you know, specifically the mRNA vaccines have are doing an incredible job across

in our country, across the world. I find them to be very safe. I have many colleagues who have autoimmune diseases, who are pregnant, who have all gotten them. But this is just my story. But my point is, I think that everybody needs to assess their case individually. And just because I'm a health worker doesn't mean knee jerk. I should have it. I have, but it does underscore your, like what a responsible professional does. There you are a doctor still going into the hospital when it was dangerous. Unlike these teachers, right? Who, as we said earlier, face very little risk. They just won't do it. But can I stop you and ask you about MRNA? I confess, I haven't spent that much time figuring this out. I understand it sort of modifies your DNA in some way, but I'm not

even sure about that. But I do think that's one of the things that gets people freaked out. Like, don't touch my DNA. So can you explain that? Sure. So mRNA, you have to know, there are certain different types of proteins and certain, a lot of aspects go into just talking about DNA. And, you know, without getting into the nitty gritty of it, when it comes to these vaccines, mRNA is essentially a piece of genetic code that your body takes up. It's not incorporating it into your DNA. It's just bringing it into a cell. Your cell is reading that mRNA and making the proteins to develop the immune response against. That mRNA codes for the spike protein of the

virus. So your body sees the mRNA, codes it, makes the spike protein essentially without the virus. So it's just hanging out there and your body sees it and attacks it. So then in the future, if you were to be exposed to the virus, your body's like, hey, I know what these things are. I'm here to attack it. It's different than traditional vaccines in the sense that we would take other viruses, we'd kind of make them weak, and then we would inject them into people. And so people would see it's the virus. The virus was weakened, so it can't necessarily harm you. But so that's how you would recognize it in the future. But one of the most incredible things with the mRNA vaccines are

they're much easier to manufacture. They are much easier to tweak so that they cover variants and make boosters. And I truly believe that this is going to be the future when it comes to vaccines because of just how well they are doing, how safe they're proving to be, how few contraindications there are, and how just easy it is in terms of manufacturing and distribution. What else do you think we're going to be able to get vaccinated against thanks to this technology? Honestly, I think the sky's the limit. We are already looking to vaccinate against cancers, recurrent cancers, trying to get it so that we can activate a

person's own immune system to fight off those cancer cells. You know, I think obviously pathogens, viruses, bacteria, that's where the focus is, but you will certainly be hearing about it when it comes to cancer treatment and prevention as well. I picture it as like creating a little army base camp inside your body. Like here's the little guy who's going to fight COVID. Here's the guy who's going to fight breast cancer. Here's the guy who's going to fight pancreatic cancer. Thanks to this, these mRNA vaccines, which are just, they're miraculous.

It's pretty crazy. All right. Here's my other question to you. It occurred to me, um, having researched the Pfizer vaccine a bit, and it said that after one dose, I was 82%, you know, effective at, you know, fighting off serious illness. And then I looked at the Johnson and Johnson vaccine, which said you're basically 85%. And I thought, why the hell am I getting the second shot? Why do I need the second shot of the Pfizer thing to go from 82 to 85%? Your thoughts? So this is a good question. And this is something, you know, my friend Marty McCary and I have talked about at length since

December. He and I had a little bit more of the mindset of what the UK did. We said when supply was an issue, we need to give as many people the first dose as soon as possible to get some level of immunity. Because even if it was 80%, that's much better than 0%. And, you know, that is not the strategy the US adopted. And they were really, they just kind of cowered to their own restrictions in the sense that, well, the clinical trial was only looking at two doses. It's like, OK, well, we are still in a time of crisis. And when you're in a time of crisis, you can't wait for those randomized controlled trials and stick to the black and white literature.

That's something that Dr. Fauci, unfortunately, had a really hard time with in the beginning. He is a scientific purist and did not want to go against the grain when it came to old guard academics. And when it came to the vaccines, yes, that first dose gives you a good response. But I can tell you new data out of India, this is interesting, that variant of concern in India that's now in the UK, study from England showed that variant B one, six, one, seven, two,

after two Pfizer doses, you have about an 88% effectiveness at preventing symptomatic disease, but it's only 33% after three weeks after that first dose. So, you know, okay. I don't, I honestly,

I could pick apart that study if I wanted to. However, there is ample data that shows two doses are better than one, except if you've had COVID, it shows that just one dose really just amps up that existing natural immunity. And so maybe you don't need the second dose, but overall recommendation, CDC, everywhere else, get your two doses on schedule. That really does give you the best chance for reducing your risk of severe COVID and transmitting it to others. Yes, I feel good. I got it. I'm happy to have been able to get it. I still think the vaccines

are miraculous and just a testament to American industry. But I also think the science says we can take off these masks and inside I want to be able to take off my mask. I want it to be optional. And I really want more than anything for my children to never have to wear masks again. I want to be in charge of whether they put that piece of fabric over their nose and mouth and not Governor Cuomo or anybody else for that matter. And so I'll give you the last word on that before I let you go. Just kids and indoor masking. We've covered kids and outdoor masking, but what do you think the rule needs to be on indoors? Listen, the CDC has recently stopped looking into mild COVID cases

in fully vaccinated people, and rightfully so, because we don't care. We don't care. The goal has never been to get to zero cases. It's been to save the most amount of lives. We know that if children are to get the virus, it's going to be mild. So we should not be counting cases in them as well. I have said many times over the last month or two, we need to start taking these masks off of children. They've been on them for far too long and the data actually supports it. Face masks will be doing more harm than good to these young children, especially now the emergency is over. It's time to take off the masks. Amen, sister. Well, listen, I hope you feel better. I hope you heal up and continue going forward in a positive direction with your own

medical issues. And thank you so much for your honest expertise. We're really, really grateful for it. Absolutely. Thank you so much for having me. Coming up after this break, we're going to bring on Dr. Lucy McBride, who first got my attention when she wrote in The Atlantic, and I quote, I tell my patients not to mask their kids outside. And as I mentioned earlier, she goes on MSNBC and says these things, and she will say it to anybody. She will say it to you, and I will ask her about masks inside, and we have a little news coming up on that. Okay, so stay tuned for her. But before we get to Lucy, I want to bring you a feature we have called Sound Up, where we bring you some sound, a soundbite that we feel you need to hear. Today, we're talking about the scandal around Cuomo.

No, not Governor Andrew Cuomo this time. His brother, Fredo Cuomo of CNN. Some people call him Chris. After laughing and joking with his brother last year on his 9 p.m. show. Oh, it was so fun. It was so fun between them. Wasn't it adorable? Except for all the people who were dying while he was asked no substantive questions. They did this in March of last year.

In March of last year, right? When people were dying by the thousands in the nursing homes. This is the thing Janice Dean, my pal, has been jumping up and down about for months, right? And she was dismissed as knowing nothing except for facts about the weather by Andrew Cuomo's administration. So these two went on CNN and yucked it up and Chris Cuomo took out the giant Q-tip, which now he can shove right up his... Anyway, they thought it would be hilarious during the peak of COVID to abandon all objectivity, give Andrew Cuomo a complete pass on any tough facts,

and try to boost Chris Cuomo's ratings. That's what it was about. They didn't care about journalism at all, CNN or Chris Cuomo. And it was disgusting. And Janice was disgusted about it at the time. And Anna Navarro, who's so hateful, tweeted out, look, if they want to come out and express a little levity during a tough pandemic, then good for them.

No, there are real journalistic issues in doing that, which you would know if you had spent any time as a journalist. But instead, you're just a hateful pundit who's got nothing but vitriol for anybody who's on the right where you used to be. But now you're a Jen Rubin who hates everybody who isn't far left of center. That's Anna Navarro. So CNN decided to let one brother interview the other because ratings. And that became deeply problematic, not only when the nursing home scandal just reached fever pitch, but when at least seven women, now the numbers are much higher, came forward to publicly accused Andrew Cuomo of sexual harassment and in some cases assault. All right. So what does Chris Cuomo do? Does he put the brother on? No, no. At this

point, he suddenly remembered he really shouldn't be reporting on his brother, never mind putting him on TV. Listen to what Chris Cuomo said then. Before we start tonight, let me say something that I'm sure is very obvious to you who watch my show. And thank you for that. You're straight with me. I'll be straight with you. Obviously, I'm aware of what's going on with my brother. And obviously, I cannot cover it because he is my brother. Now, of course, CNN has to cover it. They have covered it extensively and they will continue to do so. I have always cared very deeply about these issues and profoundly so. Really? Very deeply and profoundly? You've cared about the Me Too movement and women accusing

men of sexual harassment? Really? Well, that's actually not at all how you behaved in this case. By the way, his realization that I quote, can't cover my brother because he's my brother came too late, way too late in this process. All of us could see that at the time you put him on repeatedly because ratings. So don't try to claim the moral high ground now and recognizing it would be inappropriate to cover him. You already did. And you blew it at a really important moment. I'm sorry. I'm very fired up about this, in part because of Janice and just how she's been attacked

for trying to shine light on what Andrew Cuomo did and how CNNers like Anna came after her. Anna Navarro tweeted that in response to Janice for calling out CNN on it. And she's my pal. And I've seen her get dragged for trying to shine a light on this impropriety. And now it's all coming out. Now you can see for yourself why it was so wrong. He can't cover his brother. And it isn't true. He's always cared very deeply about sexual harassment, or he wouldn't, as we now know, thanks to reporting in the Washington Post, have been not just sitting this one out, but actively advising his brother on how to find his way out of the scandals. He was sitting with Andrew Cuomo

and his political aides on calls. And according to the Washington Post, and I quote, the cable news anchor encouraged his brother to take a defiant position and not to resign from the governor's office. The people said at one point he used the phrase cancel culture as a reason to hold firm in the face of the allegations. Two people present on one call said, so this Chris Cuomo, who cares very deeply and profoundly about women raising issues of sexual harassment, told his brother to hold the line, cancel culture, diminishing all of them, right? I mean, how do you think those women feel about Chris Cuomo and his profound commitment to harassment and stopping it, right? How do you think you'd feel if you were a woman

on Chris Cuomo's team at CNN? And why on earth does CNN, which has already said he will not be punished for this, not have any problem with him doing that, with him sending that message. Right. So when the scandal broke after The Washington Post wrote this story, Fredo addressed this on his show. And here's what he said. When my brother's situation became turbulent, being looped into calls with other friends of his and advisers that did include some of his staff, I understand why that was a problem for CNN. It will not happen again. It was a mistake because I put my colleagues here who I believe are the best in the business in a bad spot. I never intended for that. I would never intend for that.

And I am sorry for that. It's also important for you to understand, not only do I not cover this here, I've never tried to influence this network's coverage of my brother. In fact, I've been walled off from it. This is a unique and difficult situation, and that's okay. I know where the line is. I can respect it and still be there for my family, which I must. I have to do that. There's so much wrong with that statement. I don't even know where to begin. You've never tried to influence the network's coverage of your brother, except for when you had him on and gave him a total pass repeatedly during the height of the coronavirus. Right. We're leading to his lionization in part as this fearless leader of New York when

we had record deaths in nursing homes as a result of his order sending COVID positive patients back in there. That's all been documented and then lied about the numbers who died in the nursing homes because he didn't count those who had been moved while sick with corona from the nursing homes into the hospitals. All the other states were counting. They were counting the hospital patients. They understood you can't subtract those just because they were dying in the nursing home. Then he moved from the hospital. Doesn't mean that's not a nursing home death, not Andrew Cuomo. And this came out over his objection. He tried to mislead. That's what the New York state attorney general found a Democrat. Okay. So that's the guy to whom Andrew or Chris Cuomo gave a pass, But it's not about you not trying to influence the network into not covering his sexual harassment scandal.

It's about you getting your hands dirty on the actual scandal and advising him. There are two parties to this, right? It's the actual principals who commit the deeds or misdeeds that wind up in the news. And then there's the news coverage. So you were on the wrong side of the news coverage when the actual nursing home scandal broke and the coronavirus was, the pandemic was at its height. And then you were on the wrong side when it came to the actual principles in the, in the debate, when he got accused of sexual harassment, you were, you were involved in taking a side. You're not allowed to do that. You can't take a side. You can't go to the, it would be the same as if some

female anchor went and sat down with all the seven sexual harassment victims and said, here's how you get them. Here's how you're going to bring them down. Right? I've interviewed a lot of sexual harassment victims in my time. Trust me. I understand that's inappropriate. Kindness. Sure. Support for the trauma they allege. Sure. I would do that. But you don't do what he did. You take a side, you actively push, say it's cancel culture, hold the line. That is so far over the line, he can't even see the line anymore. And I get it, it's his brother. You know what, then you got to take a leave of absence. Even Brian Stelter, the hall monitor was saying that. Take a leave of absence. You can't actively get involved in the news story and maintain your post

on that desk and just shrug your shoulders and say, it's OK, because I'm not actually going to cover this particular scandal. You've already covered him. You're in it. Your network covers him. You can't. Again, back to the message he's sending his employees.

You can't take this position, given the role you have at CNN. All right. That's sound up for you. I had a lot to say. It's been weighing on me. I think this is a show about COVID though, so we'll go back to that. I should point out that none of my guests signs on to my particular feelings, yes or no. I haven't run any of that by them. Those are my thoughts on the matter, my personal opinion, and my opinion as a journalist.

Now let's get back to somebody who understands medicine. And that's Dr. Lucy McBride in one minute. Megan, how are you? I'm great. Thank you for being here. Oh my gosh, thanks for inviting me. I'm thrilled to be here. I have such respect for your work and your mission, and I'm just thrilled. So thanks. Oh, thank you so much. I loved your article in the Atlantic, right? I'm not sure where exactly I read it online. But I read it almost in full on my podcast not long when it when it first came out. Oh, yes. Since this is what we need good sense. And I respect that you you will say in anywhere you you've said it on MSNBC, you're like you'll go anywhere

and just speak truth about the science and where we are. So before we get to the children, because I am definitely focused on that, can we just talk about the grownups? Because I know your principle as a doctor is that good health is about much more than the absence of disease or illness. And don't you feel like we've totally lost sight of that,

what we're doing to ourselves, what we continue to, in some cases, willingly do to ourselves right now, just doesn't make any headlines and it's dangerous. So to me, having seen patients for 20 years as a practicing primary care physician, I've realized that health is more than the absence of disease. As you said, health is not just about preventing illness. It's also about promoting health and well-being. People are the integrated sum of different components. Their mental and physical health, their lived experiences, their genetics, their environmental exposures. Of course, they have blood pressure and cholesterol and numbers on the scale that matter a lot. But what really matters when we're thinking about health is

trying to meet people's broad human needs, preventing them from disease and preventing them from despair in tandem. When I'm counseling a patient on whether to go back to work, for example, in a global pandemic, I'm thinking to myself how to protect them from the virus and protect them from the distress that comes with not being able to go to work, not being able to, for example, get a paycheck they need to feed their family or not see their loved ones. Those have emotional costs. When the benefits of seeing people in person when you get vaccinated outweigh the risks of COVID-19, then that's the decision tree we use and then the path we go down. Yeah. Well, I mean, I feel it now because I confess I had almost no fear of COVID. I just, you know, I just didn't think that I was as much at risk. I didn't think my children were as much at risk. I knew my loved ones who are in the high risk category were taking

great precautions. I cared about the country and the world, but just on a family level, I wasn't in a panic about it. I was pretty relaxed about it. I mean, my friends would tell you I was very relaxed about it. And I just think that's how I generally approach all these things. I just, I'm not a panicker. I tend to lean into calm. So it takes a lot to really get me worked up. But that is why I, being on the opposite end of, you know, risk tolerance, appreciated one of the lines from your article. And I quote, different people are entitled to different fears and different levels of

risk tolerance for their families and communities. Now, I think most of the people here in New York would read that and think you're talking about them. They are high fear and low risk tolerance, and they want the standards to stay very exacting on the masks and so on for a very long time. But I, as somebody who is at the opposite end appreciated it because I feel like my side is now aligned with the science and we want the restrictions to considerably lighten up, if not go away. And instead, it feels like in my town and elsewhere, I go to New Jersey during the summer and they're worse. They're worse than New York. Instead, we have resorted to we all must live by the standards of the most frightened person in our, socially. For example, I had a patient this morning who is a liver transplant patient. She's been vaccinated, but her immune response

to the vaccine has not been robust. So she not only is anxious about the pandemic because she happens to be an anxious person, she's also afraid of getting COVID because she doesn't have a robust immune response. So there are people who are vulnerable to fear. There are people who are vulnerable physically and other people who are vulnerable to both. At the same time, I have patients who, you know, like maybe even my oldest son, who's not that risk averse and who is a five alarm extrovert and, you know, who's who, who parenting through a pandemic has been challenging and enlightening, actually, because trying to tack down a 19-year-old's social life is a little challenging.

And his needs are different than someone who is vulnerable, elderly, and immune suppressed. The point is that my job, hopefully I'll always have a job because there's nuance when you're counseling individual patients on risk and risk, there's nuance when you're counseling individual patients on risk and risk tolerance. Specifically, when I'm counseling patients, I try to make sure one patient at a time that fear is not in the driver's seat. So fear is not making the decisions on whether or not to go visit your mother in the nursing home after you've been vaccinated. For example, if someone is afraid to go back to work, even though they've been vaccinated, my job is to help frame that risk by delivering facts and guidance that are rooted in science. But fear is a normal human reaction to a trauma like the pandemic. So I don't blame anyone for

being afraid. That's actually how we survive. It's just we have to calibrate our fear to the actual facts. Well, right, because it's one thing if you're in the jungle and a big tiger is coming for you, a significant amount of fear is totally appropriate. You're probably going to die. But if a little house cat is coming your way, you got to adjust your response. And if you're feeling the same fear as you as you did with the tiger, you got to work on you. That's not like, okay, everyone else in this jungle has to react as though the tiger's coming at me. No, you got to work on you. You said it. So, you know, because we have all been exposed to, you know, unbridled, in some cases, fear, but at some level, an anxiety response to this threat called COVID-19,

it's normal to feel anxious and have heart palpitations, sweaty palms, tight muscles, headaches, insomnia, to have a gravitational pull to alcohol at the end of the day to take a load off. Those are normal. The problem is they affect us mentally and physically. And then when you're anxious, you can actually have this kind of cognitive distortion where you overreact to threats that aren't actually that threatening. We saw. Can I ask you a follow up on that, though?

Because I also feel that those of us who cannot take one more day of these unnecessary restrictions are having some of those reactions, right? We're feeling constricted. You know, I feel anxiety when they say to my kid, she's got to put a mask on and run around outside in 90 degree weather with other nine and 10 year olds. No, it makes me angry. But like my anger or anxiety about stuff like that doesn't seem to count. Your only fear or bad feelings only seem to count on the COVID scale. If it's of COVID of getting COVID, right? It's like a lot of us are worried about stuff or business owners worried about their business and all that stuff. It's just been not factored in

as relevant. So just as is the case in my patient interactions, one at a time, there are harms of doing, and there are harms of not doing. There are harms of action. There are harms of inaction. If I have a cancer patient and we're deciding on a treatment plan and the patient can't tolerate the chemotherapy because it makes them so sick and they understand the consequences of not treating aggressively this cancer, you know, that's a choice they make. There are harms of doing and harms of not doing. Similarly, and by the way, my job in that situation is to help people decide based on their broad human goals and needs and unique medical conditions to decide the best plan for them and to arm the patient with facts and science. Similarly, in COVID-19, there are harms of COVID-19

and it's unique to different people based on their underlying conditions and vulnerabilities. There are harms of the pandemic restrictions themselves. As the public health landscape has changed, as we see a steadily dropping case rate, death rate, hospitalization rate, as the country is being blanketed by these miraculous vaccines, it no longer makes sense to have the kind of restrictions we do in general. That said, people are welcome to mask freely when they want to if they're vulnerable. But let's just say this, Megan, it does not make sense to mask anyone outside. If you want to mask outside, by all

means, there should be no shaming or blaming for masking. It's not political. It's up to you. But what makes me frustrated is not so much seeing my daughter go out to camp in a mask because it's required. It makes me frustrated that it's not science based. There's no data to support a mandate masking anyone outside, vaccinated or unvaccinated, old or young. If you want to mask outside, that is, of course, your decision. Yes. No, I want to get to the masking of the children. But before I get to that, I agree with you. I do not agree that people who choose to wear masks should be shamed in any way. You know, I I I don't think I don't comment on Megan Fox

wearing basically a Kleenex tissue to the Music awards the other night because that's that's up to her. Right. Kim Kardashian prance around in dental floss on the Internet as much as she likes. It's not my life. She's comfortable. Go for it. Right. You want to wear a mask forever. It's fine by me. I have a woman, a friend here in New York who she's like, I'm never taking it off. Like, go for it. No problem. We're actually going to we're planning a Fourth of July party at my place in New Jersey.

And I was joking that I was going to put a sign on the outside of our fence reading no masks allowed. But it is a joke because just across the street from me, we have a dear friend who's suffering from cancer right now. And in no way would I ever guilt or shame this man for wanting to protect himself. I want him to be masked if he wants to be masked. So anyway, that's where I stand on it. But the problem is we do seem to be catering to like the most scared denominator. And now, and now I really resent it. Now I'm like, forget me. All right. I'll, I'm generally a rule follower,

but I'm done with my mask. I've had my second shot. I'm good. But my kids, and this is why your article so spoke to me, because you'll go on Fox, but you'll also go on MSNBC. And I do think it's more sort of the left wing that needs to hear your message, that the masks on the children are unnecessary,

at least outdoors. And yet that should be a the children are unnecessary, at least outdoors. And and yet that should be a no brainer. And it isn't. And you said, I tell my patients, kids with or without vaccinations do not need to wear masks outside despite CDC guidelines. So are this is the sea? I haven't actually seen the latest CDC guidelines on outdoor masks on children. Are they still saying they should? They are and I have a little inside person on that the CDC is still recommending outside masking for for kiddos. But I have heard through the grapevine that is going going to change, as it should. The problem with CDC issuing guidance that is, as you said, catering to the sort of lease-com denominator and the fear-based narrative is that it runs the risk of causing

people to distrust our public health institutions. Now, this is not to say I don't respect Rochelle. This is not to say I don't respect Rochelle Walensky. She actually went to Harvard Medical School and Johns Hopkins, where I did all of my training. And I think she's a very, very, very smart, educated, wonderful person. She's speaking to every American, and that is hard to do. As we know, the pandemic has been so tragically politicized. Masking somehow has a political meaning when it's really not political whatsoever. But the point is this, they unfortunately lose credibility when they do cater to that fear-based narrative. They need to be a little more flexible and nimble and

issue more nuanced guidance for children in particular. Children are the people who right now, as you know, are not vaccinated, not eligible to be vaccinated, the 11s and under, and also who have suffered uniquely in the pandemic from isolation, loneliness, depression, anxiety, and in many cases, you know, their safety has been sacrificed and they're not being fed because they're not going to school. So the harms of pandemic restrictions right now on our children as a whole greatly outweigh the benefits, the protection against COVID-19, which kids are generally spared from the horrors of COVID-19. Have kids died? Have kids gotten very sick? Yes, it's very, very uncommon. And moreover, as we blanket the country with vaccines and adults, and as the case rates

drop in adults, the case rates are also dropping in kids. In other words, kids are indirectly protected by the adults around them being vaccinated. So there is no reason right now, zero reason to mask kids outside unless they want to. And there's really no indication right now that in the fall, for example, there should be any masking or plexiglass or any of that theater right now in schools. That's what I want to get to inside, because I'll tell you, our school right now is saying they gave us sort of the preliminary, I think they're sort of laying the foundation to get us prepared for the ultimate guidance to come out is saying, we're not, we don't think right now we're going to mandate vaccinations for children who are 12

and up, you know, because they can get it. But we do think we're going to require indoor masking across the board when they come back. And, um, for anybody who hasn't been vaccinated in particular. And that means my seven-year-old will have to wear a mask again all day long. And so my son's still gonna be, my oldest is still gonna be 11 when he goes back to school. My daughter's still gonna be 10 when she goes back to school all day long. And for what?

And the reason I mentioned the seven-year-old is how far could you take this? I don't know that they're going to have an out-and-out cure for COVID once you've gotten COVID between now and the time he turns 12, right? And what about parents who just don't want to vaccinate their child or they have something with their child where they, you know, we just had a doctor on saying in her case, in her own case, she was saying it didn't make sense to vaccinate her because she's got an immunocompromised situation that doesn't allow it. Anyway, what if you got a kid like that?

They have to mask for five years until they're like or internally. Why don't we take it out to senior year of high school? So this is exactly what we need is is is metrics issued by the CDC. We need to have clean metrics like the UK had when we have, for example, three cases per 100,000 population in a certain community, then we should be able to lift mask mandates for anyone vaccinated or unvaccinated, no matter what age they are, with the understanding that anybody who's high risk can mask, anybody who hasn't been vaccinated can mask, anybody who lives with a high risk individual, of course, can mask. But I have every confidence that the restrictions are going to be lifted by the fall.

So if you were in charge of the guidance for schools, in charge of the CDC, in charge of, you know, all these schools trying to make a decision on masks for the fall, what would you advise? I love that question. So thinking ahead to the next academic year, the science supports a return to a regular life. Teachers are vaccinated by and large. Case rates are falling right in front of our eyes right now. And by the time the school year rolls around, cases will be even lower, which protects kids indirectly.

Twelve and up will be vaccinated, those kiddos. And also by then, we will hopefully have more confidence in the very facts that are this, that plexiglass barriers don't make any sense from a disease mitigation standpoint. The virus is largely airborne. We don't even have plexiglass. The spread from athletic equipment and surfaces is so minuscule and small that we just don't need to take those precautions to protect our kids from COVID-19. What we need to do, and we need to hear from the CDC, is this, that there are clean metrics as to when we can really lift these restrictions, follow the UK's lead, and, you know, wait till hospitalization rates are two or three in 100,000 a day while we are mass vaccinating adults. In the meantime, at camp, kids should not be masked outside. I mean, it just doesn't make

sense. It's not rooted in science. There are dangers there. Kids can pass out from wearing a mask outside. Again, there's nothing political about what I'm saying. It's just rooted in science. Is it possible to transmit the virus outside from unvaccinated to unvaccinated person? Yes, it's just extremely unlikely. And and so okay, so you're if you were in charge of the world, you would recommend if the vaccination rates are, you know, what they are now if the infection rates are, I mean, are we far off of that? It depends on where you are in you know, what they are now, if the infection rates are, I mean, are we far off of that? It depends on where you are in the country, but we're getting there in a couple of different parts of the country and anything can happen. Like, you know, I don't have a crystal ball.

We could have, you know, variants from India come over and mess up our metrics, right? Which is arguably, you know, the second best reason to vaccinate people in India. The first best reason is because we care about our global allies. So I don't have a crystal ball. Could case rates increase and could hospitalizations increase? They could. But if you look at how wealthy we are as a country and how motivated this administration is to get shots in arms and how motivated people are around the country to get shots and you look at at the curves and you look at UK and Israel as the seniors and where the sophomores, I mean, we're going to be in such better shape in the fall than we are now. And right now we are in excellent shape. Okay, good. So I like that. So if Dr. Lucy McBride is setting policy for the United States, it sounds like she's going to say the kids don't have to be masked inside schools come fall. Come fall, if the hospitalization rates are consistently

two to three out of 100,000 a day, which we should be at. And look, I don't claim to know every single thing about public health. But I do know that the public is angry, the public is afraid, and the public is desperate and thirsty for more nuanced guidance. People, and parents in particular right now, are really, really agitated and distressed about their kids, not just because they want their kids to play with their friends, but because kids are actively depressed. The suicide rates are going up. Kids are not being fed. They are not safe. So it's a real crisis. It's a mental health crisis. We all know about post-traumatic stress, right? When you've experienced trauma, whether it's the loss of a

loved one, the loss of a job, or the loss of your in-person high school experience, or just the mere loss of the contours of normal life, we all have experienced loss in the pandemic. And that causes a post-traumatic stress reaction for anyone if you're human. There's also something called post-traumatic growth, where you can take the things you've been through and make meaning and find resilience and be stronger. We need to understand that Americans as a group, we have been through a collective trauma. We need to understand that Americans as a group, we have been through a collective trauma. We need to know that COVID is going away, not forever, not completely, but that the trauma and the reverberation on our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors is going to be

lasting. And when we hold our kids hostage to restrictions that are not rooted in science and evidence. We have big costs to their emotional health, well-being and safety. Exactly right. The cost of these children and having these masks on their faces and not seeing one another. And you don't see smiles anymore. You don't see smile. I notice it just when I'm walking on the street. And whatever you see, I always like whenever I see an older woman in particular, we catch eyes. I smile at them. I just love the faces of older

women. I don't know what it is. I don't plan on letting my own face get like that, but I, but I like seeing it in other. And I miss it. Like I'm smiling and I think they're smiling. I'm trying to smize, you know, smile with your eyes. But it's like, this is bullshit. I would just want to show my face and give them a big toothy grin and have that moment of connection. And that's just, that's just me little ones who, you know, there's so much they learn by being with one another and figuring out facial expressions where they, that's sort of where they show their emotions, right? They haven't managed to use the words perfectly to express them. I just, I'm not much of an activist, but I feel like getting to be one on this particular issue. You know, back in March, 2020, we had a very different situation. We didn't know what kind of animal this, this virus was. You know, we had to really make it clear that everyone was vulnerable. Everyone, you know, it needed to be all hands on deck to protect ourselves, our communities from this lethal virus. We were watching TV. We're watching, you know, we're watching people in ICUs and refrigerator trucks outside of emergency rooms. And people were terrified. And we should have been right, because we have lost.

I think it's almost 600,000 American lives. This is nothing short of a trauma. At the same time, that was then and this is now. As you said earlier, we were acting like it was a tiger in the wild because we needed to. It's not a tiger anymore. It is for some people who are vulnerable and we need to respect their vulnerabilities. But for most people and for kids in particular, the harms of the pandemic restrictions

outweigh the benefits. And the emotional health toll on kids is huge. That's right. And I noticed that you had mentioned at one point, even for adults, that two in five Americans report an average weight gain of 29 pounds during the pandemic. I mean, that is, that's a lot. And of course we did exactly the wrong thing, which is like no gyms and in places like California, no parks, no exercising. I was

like, sit at home, eat, drink, and don't go outside to exercise while we increase one of our comorbidities, obesity. And that too causes depression. You got an extra 29 pounds on you right now. You absolutely probably have more depression than normal. So it's like all these things need to start shedding. We need to shed the pounds. We need to shed the restrictions. We need to get back to real life and people who need to protect themselves should absolutely do so. But I personally say the time for all of us making these enormous sacrifices and freedom to protect this number of, you know, afraid or compromised people, the balance has shifted in favor of normalcy. We all lived it when it was not in the favor of normalcy. It has shifted as far as I'm

concerned. Anyways, I'll obey the rules because I'm generally a rule follower, but it's time to fight at least for our kids. Absolutely. And I'm a rule follower too. I'm a fact follower and a science follower. I also think there are some things that are hard to measure. It's very hard to measure and quantify distress and anxiety. There's no kind of like blood test or MRI for emotional trauma, yet those phenomena need to be put in the decision-making rubric in our individual, you know, decisions for health and in the public health landscape. Just because it's harder to measure someone's depression doesn't mean it shouldn't weigh into the decisions on how to, you know, treat this person or how to treat this population. And the stress itself is making people sick. I

mean, I witnessed the physical health fallout of emotional health and distress every day. People are stress eating, they're binge eating, they're isolating themselves. They're adding, you know, pounds, not because they don't know about healthy eating, but because they are emotionally eating. So my job isn't to shame people and say, hey, you've gained 29 pounds. It's really to say, look, let's talk about the stress. Let's talk about how to better manage the emotional reaction that's normal in a global crisis.

And let's have you build a coping kit that hopefully we built before, because that's normal in a global crisis. And let's have you build a coping kit that hopefully we built before, because that's part of my job in general is not only to help people with like managing the blood pressure, but managing the mechanisms by which their blood pressure is high, you know, whether it's and that's only that's only considering the patients who come in to see you. I mean, a lot of people who gain 29 pounds, they just postpone their, their appointment appointment with their doctor because they don't want to talk about it. Yeah, I wrote a piece on abandoning shame in the doctor's office. I talked about it with a patient this morning who said, I really didn't want to come in and I wanted to lose the weight before I saw you. And as I say to her every year, you know, you need to bring your whole self to the

doctor. I am not here to judge. I'm here to provide a safe space under which we discuss what it is that's driving the weight gain. And for her, it's stress eating and the stress of losing her mother during a pandemic and managing the job and parenting kids on Zoom school has caused her to drink more, eat more. Her blood pressure is high. Her diabetes markers are higher. So, you know, my job is to say, tsk, tsk, tsk, you know, time to get your act together. It's really to help her figure out how to best manage stress by resuming regular exercise in a sustainable, healthy way, by trying to prioritize healthy eating so that she isn't drawn to the stuff that, you know, saps her energy, by just assessing her relationship with food, assessing her

relationship with alcohol, and ultimately asking for help through asking for help with me. We're going to also help her get into some therapy. I think we need to make therapy universally available to every American, like we should make healthcare available to every American. This is a mental health crisis. This is a pandemic about a virus. It's also a parallel pandemic of mental health and crisis. So if we don't address the emotional and resulting physical health fallout from COVID-19, we are really missing an opportunity to help people get healthier from the ground up. It's funny because I come from an Italian mom and she 100% raised all three of us to be emotional eaters. You know, my brother, he used to, he used to joke too, that there, no amount of food was enough.

She'd say, you know, you're hungry. Can I get you anything? Pete would say, no, mom, good. She's good. She goes, okay, I'll just get you a sandwich then. Right. And I find myself stopping all the time if my kid falls down or if they're depressed or if they're sad or something hurt, stopping myself from giving them a cookie or offering them a lollipop or, you know, because I do think that's sort of teaching emotional eating. But, you know, it's sort of society, too. And we sort of built it in like food is attached with celebrations and it's attached with nurturing wounds. And you really just you have to be a little bit more strict. For me, I know we're definitely going to do a show on this. Intermittent fasting has made all the differences. If you have that. Oh, let's talk about it. Maybe let's talk about it because

here's the thing. I know a lot about nutrition and I can counsel my patients all day long to eat kale and quinoa and, you know, minimize refined starches. That is really the tip of the iceberg when we're talking about nutrition and health. The missing piece of the puzzle here is the relationship to food. Every single person on the planet has a relationship to food that is beyond just hunger, right? And the thing about food is that you have to deal with it three times a day, sometimes five times a day, depending on what's healthy for you. And so if you have a relationship with food that is complicated or disorganized or disordered, then you're walking around with a tiger on a leash every day.

So those phenomena only got worse for people with disorganized eating during the pandemic, because again, you're at home, you are ordering food, you're anxious, you can't go to the gym. So I'm seeing an enormous influx of people who were kind of flirting with disorganized eating who are full blown disordered. And so again, my job is not to shame people and say, hey, you got to go on, you know, low carb, and like, get your act together is to say, look, let's think about the stress that is driving the relationship of food that unfortunately, you have to manage. You can give up alcohol,

which is very hard for some people and not necessary for everyone. Of course. Thank God. I love my glass of wine, my glass of bourbon every now and then. But you can give those things up, but you cannot give up food. Food is a complicated phenomenon. And ultimately in primary care medicine, you know, food and the relationship to it and what you eat matters so much to your health. Amen. Doc, thank you so much. I hope you come back. I would love to come back. I'll come back tomorrow if you ask me. Coming up on Friday, we're going to get into these anti-Semitic attacks we've been seeing, not just in the United States, but overseas as well. In London,

it's getting nuts. What we've seen in the streets is anti-Semitism. And it's been right in your face and not just in the streets. I mean, it is, forgive the term, Jew hatred. And if you spend two minutes on Twitter looking at the hate being directed at the Jewish people and the Israelis, which, as you know, are not necessarily always exactly the same group. It's stunning and it's disgusting and how it's allowed to stand in the wake of Twitter and Facebook and these other companies trying to take the moral high ground when it comes to the deplorables. Right. Where's their moral high ground now? We're going to have one of my favorite Kelly file guests, Ambassador Ron Dermer. He's the former now ambassador to Israel.

And he is a super smart guy and understands this region and our country really well. Former ambassador of Israel to the United States, I should say. And so we're going to get into what's happening in this country and where this is going. Don't miss that. Thanks for listening to The Megyn Kelly Show. No BS, no agenda, and no fear. The Megyn Kelly Show is a Devil May Care media production in collaboration with Red Seat Ventures.