The Megyn Kelly Show - COVID Truth on Fauci, Vaccines, and Masks, with Sen. Rand Paul, David Zweig, and Dr. Vinay Prasad | Ep. 156

Episode Date: September 9, 2021

Megyn Kelly is joined by Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, journalist and author David Zweig, and Dr. Vinay Prasad, of UC-San Francisco, to talk about Fauci and his COVID failings, the origins of COVID and the Wuhan lab, the actual science behind masking kids in school, whether we really need COVID vaccine booster shots, whether kids actually need to be vaccinated, why the CDC keeps changing their recommendations, the demonization of scientists, and more.Follow The Megyn Kelly Show on all social platforms: Twitter: http://Twitter.com/MegynKellyShowInstagram: http://Instagram.com/MegynKellyShowFacebook: http://Facebook.com/MegynKellyShow Find out more information at: https://www.devilmaycaremedia.com/megynkellyshow

Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations. Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show. Oh, we have a lot to go over today. Today's show is all about COVID. And I have to tell you, I've been enjoying the prep for today's show, just reviewing the latest that's out there. It's the information that people are being given is so unreliable. And today we'll change that here. We're going to dive into the truth about masks, vaccines, boosters and uncovering the hypocrisy and the lies. I'm excited because in just a bit, we're going to have Rand Paul here and we're going to talk to him about the latest documents that just got released, putting the lie to Fauci's testimony and that contentious back and forth he had with Rand Paul where he claimed we never funded gain of function research in China. That's the research that makes a virus like a bat coronavirus more transmissible, more dangerous to humans.

We never did that. Well, that's not true. Rand Paul's been saying it. And now we know based on these documents that the intercept just got it's all there, black and white. We're going to get into that in a minute. Listen, today, there's a lot happening with COVID. President Biden is just a few hours. He's going to give a speech that's expected to lay out a plan to push broad vaccination and mask mandates. He wants pressure on private businesses, states and schools to enact stricter vaccination and testing and again, masking. Los Angeles is going to vote this afternoon to potentially require, require, okay, this is a public school system, require the

vaccine for students 12 and up. Young, healthy children forced to take a vaccine by a school system they have to go to. If you live in the district, your parents work there. It's not so easy to pick up and move. And now they're going to have to take the vaccine against a virus that realistically poses very little risk to them. We weren't requiring this with the flu. The flu is far more dangerous. It has been to children. We'll get into that. You can't say that. But guess what I did? And I have a doctor on later to back me up. So what would you do if you were a Los Angeles teacher or a parent? And guess why you're having to do it? Yeah, because of the teachers unions. Plus, we've got first day of school this week

everywhere having smiles between friends. Not not really. No, they're non-existent because they're masked. Well, today we're going to be joined by a journalist. I've been trying to get on the show for weeks. His name is David Zweig, and he has written a great article, a bunch of them in New York Magazine saying, we owe our children and our families the truth about masks. He did a deep dive into a major study by the CDC. OK, 90,000 children were studied. And guess what? It showed there is no real value to masks. Why wasn't that everywhere? Right? Why wasn't that publicized

anywhere? You know, your friends are trying to shame you for not being pro mask mandates in schools. Well, we'll talk about what you're going to say to them, um, with David in just a bit. Uh, it's unbelievable. The CDC is also under fire for now coordinating mass guidance with the teachers union. It wasn't going to mandate them for kids. The CDC was not going to mandate them for kids in schools until the teachers unions, who are all about getting more and more dues paying members on board and pushing other weird far left agendas that have nothing to do with teachers unions like Medicare for all and cop reform. They got that put into the CDC guidance. And we're going to discuss that in a minute. And then we'll get to Senator Rand Paul. As I mentioned, he's calling

for now the DOJ to investigate Dr. Fauci and whether he lied before Congress repeatedly about whether America knowingly funded the dangerous coronavirus research at that Wuhan lab. He's standing by. But before we get to him, a quick look back at how the lab leak theory went from conspiracy they couldn't talk about to what appears to be true and a possible cover up. Vara pneumonia has hit central China's Wuhan city. Authorities have reported 27 cases in total. December 2019, a pneumonia-type virus begins to spread in China. Within weeks, the entire city is sealed off. Drastic measures to halt the spread of that deadly virus. Wuhan, China, ground zero for the outbreak, now under lockdown.

Initial reports focused on a wet market as the origin of the virus. Most of the patients are reported to have worked at a local seafood market. They said there was no reason to suspect the virus was transmitted through humans. A storyline pushed heavily by the Chinese government and by the World Health Organization. But critics take notice of the market's proximity to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, a world-leading center for research on bat coronaviruses. We also know that just a few miles away from that food market is China's only biosafety level four super laboratory that researches

human infectious diseases. In February 2020, Senator Tom Cotton said the US government was investigating whether the virus came from the lab. The media responded by mocking him, calling him a fringe conspiracy theorist, playing a dangerous game. SEN. TOM COTTON, This question about the Wuhan lab, we know that it's been debunked

that this virus was manmade or modified or anything like that. All the while, the World Health Organization continued to give cover to China. This past March, it concluded in a joint report with the Chinese that the lab leak hypothesis was extremely unlikely, despite WHO investigators spending just hours on the ground in China without access to records, samples or key personnel. Were there Chinese government minders in the room every time you were asking questions? There were Ministry of Foreign Affairs staff in the room throughout our stay. Absolutely. They were there to make sure everything went smoothly from the China side.

In May, under pressure, President Biden ordered intel officials to redouble efforts to investigate the theory. We have to have access. The world has to have access. Senator Rand Paul says this fight is not just about China. It's also about how the scientists, who study potentially deadly viruses, are funded by the U.S. government. Dr. Fauci, knowing that it is a crime to lie to Congress,

do you wish to retract your statement where you claimed that the NIH never funded gain-of-function research in Wuhan? Senator Paul, I have never lied before the Congress. But now, Fauci's denial is coming under new scrutiny. This week, The Intercept published documents reportedly showing the agency Fauci leads knowingly funded research into bat coronaviruses that were deliberately manipulated to the huge known risk of mankind. All the evidence is pointing that it came from the lab. There will be responsibility for those who funded the lab, including yourself.

I totally resent the lie that you are now propagating. What we're alleging is that gain of function research was going on in that lab and NIH funded it. That is not... Get away from it. And if anybody is lying here, Senator, it is you. Joining me now, Senator Rand Paul. Senator, great to be with you again. Thank you for coming on.

Thanks, Megan. Thanks for having me. That is unbelievable. I mean, what happened, we've known it, but now we see the supporting documentation, and it was worse than we knew. The NIH and Fauci's organization within the NIH, the NIAID, was offering grants, was funding grants, not just approving them. They were funding this group by this guy, Peter Daszak, EcoHealth Alliance. And that group was absolutely doing bat coronavirus research in Wuhan at the lab. And it was gain of function research to try to take these bat coronaviruses and make them more transmissible, more dangerous

to humans. They did it for supposedly good reasons to try to investigate the consequences to public health. But that was happening. And that's exactly what Fauci told you was a lie in that exchange. You know, I was kind of surprised by his answer. I actually thought he would back down a little bit and say, well, in retrospect, we made an error. But he's actually doubled down. And really, his opinion hasn't changed since 2012, when he said that, yes, a scientist could become infected. Yes, a pandemic could occur coming from a lab, but even if it happened, the research would be worth it. Even after 4 million people have died,

in retrospect, he's still unwilling to look back and say, my goodness, 4 million people died. If this came from an experiment in the lab, shouldn't we do something differently? The latest material that came from the Intercept through the Freedom of Information Act, actually shows now that the funding goes on through 2025. So I passed an amendment about a month ago unanimously to say no more funding to Wuhan Institute from the U.S. taxpayer. It hasn't been signed into law, but it passed unanimously in the U.S. Senate. And yet, Dr. Fauci, Peter Daszak, they're still spending

money with the Wuhan lab. They have not learned a thing. I mean, it's chilling to think about the fact that this may have come from this Wuhan lab and that it may have been funded in part, to some extent, by the American government, that the man we've been looking to and trusting as our chief authority on all things COVID for the past 18, 19 months. Dr. Fauci may have been part of the group that approved the very project that ultimately endangered billions of people and cost four million lives so far. I mean, it's that's what we that's what it looks like. It's it looks like Peter Daszak's group was funding, if not the exact research that led to covid that this this branch of coronavirus, then one that was very close to it. Yeah. And this is sort of this game that Dr. Fauci plays. In the end, he responds and says,

well, the virus in question is molecularly so different from COVID, it couldn't have been the COVID-19. But we've never alleged that. If it were COVID-19, everybody would know that. It's a virus using gain-of-function techniques that was made to be more transmissible in humans. That's what gain-of-function research is. But not one interviewer, when he goes on to mainstream TV, which is all he does, mainstream left-wing TV, they yuck it up, they laugh, they court all, they think how hilarious these conspiracy theories are, but never once does someone ask him, why is this not gain-of-function research? What they were doing was taking the SARS virus, which is a coronavirus. This caused a pandemic in 2004. It was very deadly, 15% mortality, but not very

transmissible. So you have a very deadly virus that doesn't easily infect people. It doesn't go very far. Now, how smart would it be to take a very deadly virus that's not very transmissible and add different S-protein genes to it to see if you could make it more transmissible? So in one of the experiments, they got eight brand new viruses from a cave, hunting around in a cave in South China. They bring it, they take the genes for the S protein on the unknown viruses, and they combine it with the SARS backbone genome, and then they reverse the transcription to make a virus. And lo and behold, they found at least two out of the eight were transmissible to humans. So they have created something that doesn't exist in nature. And in

fact, their argument that, oh, we can use this to study how to make vaccines, it's not how we make vaccines now. We don't make vaccines based on a novel virus that doesn't occur in nature. We actually have the ability, which is incredible technology. And I think ultimately, history will judge the development of the vaccine as one of the most incredible scientific developments in such a short period of time. But we can take a brand new virus that's infecting people and making them sick, and we can sequence its genome. They have automated technology. They can do this within days. They can develop a vaccine within days to an existing pathogen. There's no reason to create pathogens to study for vaccines anymore. The technology has gone beyond that.

And so I'm calling not only for an end to the funding in China, I don't think we should be creating these super viruses in the United States either, because I think there's a potential that we create something that is so terrible that it may cause, you know, incredibly more harm than this one even did. That's a great point. And that's the sort of the sequencing that happened in China is important because while Fauci denies gain of function research was done with any U.S. money, these documents obtained by The Intercept contain several critical details about the research happening in Wuhan by our guys with American money, including experimental work with humanized mice conducted at the lab in Wuhan Center. more human characteristics to see if they could infect them with this terrible COVID version, not COVID-19, but a terrible version of COVID. And literally, there was an article in the Wall

Street Journal, an op-ed by two really smart guys, Stephen Quay and Richard Muller, a couple months ago saying, here's what happened. We actually looked at the genome of COVID-19 and we are telling you that optimization of this virus has happened before it got to us. It suggests a long period of adaptation that predated the spread, not of the virus that they were working on under Daszak, but of COVID-19 itself. They said, science knows of only one way this could be achieved, simulated natural evolution, growing the virus on human cells until the optimum is achieved. That's precisely what is done in gain of function research. Mice that are genetically modified to have the same coronavirus receptor as

humans called humanized mice are repeatedly exposed to the virus to encourage adaptation. That is what they are seeing in COVID-19. And it's what these documents show we were funding the experiments on in these other COVID viruses that Dr. Fauci takes no responsibility for. Right. And so we'll never know for certain that it came from the lab. Here's the evidence for it. Number one, they've studied 80,000 animals in those wet markets and not one of them has COVID. The other thing is, is we take COVID-19 that's available in humans and being transmitted human to human, and then they try to reinfect bats. And they find that COVID-19 is more adapted for humans than bats. So if it came from bats to an intermediate host, there should be some infectivity back to either a host or to bats. And they find that it's more adapted to humans,

which makes people very, very suspicious that this was pre-adapted. Some of the scientists have said this didn't evolve. It was pre-adapted to be successful in humans. And that's very, very worrisome. And even the possibility of that should give us pause. But Dr. Fauci was asked a month ago by Senator Kennedy and committee, do you trust the Chinese? And he said, well, that's where the bat viruses are. It would be malpractice not to go there. Well, it's one thing to study the bat viruses. It's another to trust the Chinese Communist Party. Some of the virology labs are populated with people directly from the military. Now, while I don't think this was released on purpose as a bioweapon, I think they do study bioweapons. And I think that the Chinese communists have shown

themselves not to be trustworthy. But the fact that Dr. Fauci still considers themselves to be trustworthy, that he's still funding this Chinese lab shows him to be unfit to be in any position of authority. So that's it exactly that we now we have yet another look by our Intel community at how this thing originated. And it was utterly useless. It was rushed. It was basically another look at the first failed attempt. And they came up with absolutely no useful conclusions whatsoever. But you tell me because my takeaway on all of this is here's the bottom line. The NIH, which is, you know, the organization that oversees Fauci's organization, his group was women.

They were collaborating. This is what Josh Rogin has said of The Washington Post, who's been doing great work on this. They were collaborating on very risky research with a Chinese lab that has zero transparency and zero accountability during this crisis. And no one in a position of power has been willing to address or even acknowledge that risk. In fact, Dr. Fauci appears to be arguing that the system worked and it most clearly did not. Yeah, and this is one among a number of judgment errors that he's made. The other incredible error, and this can't be underestimated how big an error this is, is to discount natural immunity. This is immunity you

get if you've gotten COVID and survived. There's about 40 million people officially who have gotten COVID, but when you do antibody studies to see how many people got it and didn't know they had it, there's over 100 million people now in America who have had it through natural immunity. But he wants to pay no attention to that. So if you're a 15-year-old, you know, he wants them to mask up. But if you're a 15-year-old had COVID a couple of months ago, he still wants them to be vaccinated. There's no sense behind that. All of the studies are now showing that if you get COVID naturally, your immunity is at least as good as a vaccine. In fact, some studies are showing it might even be better.

Now, that's not an encouragement to get it. It's a deadly disease. You don't want COVID, particularly for those at risk. But it is an argument for, I mean, my goodness, we have thousands of hospital workers. When there was no vaccine who risked their lives every day, I was there with them, taking care of patients as COVID was going through the roof. The ones who got COVID and survived, don't they deserve to be given the credit for having had the disease instead of saying, oh, we're going to now fire you from the hospital unless you get vaccinated? Vaccine mandates that ignore natural immunity, ignore the science, are unscientific and should not be

adhered to or promulgated by the government. It's crazy. People are losing their jobs, their travel rights, all sorts of access rights who have had COVID, who have natural immunity just because they don't want to take the vaccine too. It goes against everything we know, even if we're not doctors like you are, about how one develops immunities. It's the reason why I can take care of my kids who have terrible stomach viruses and they can breathe all over me and I don't get sick because I'm 50 and I've had a lifetime worth of exposure to these viruses that they're just now coming into. And we don't ignore that when it comes to

a parent taking care of a child, but we ignore it here when we're actually firing people and taking away their liberty for not getting these vaccinations. It's unfair. Dr. Fauci is also risking lives every day with misinformation on the mask. So if you're 80 years old and your spouse has COVID and you're staying with them, and this is what happens across America, you're staying with your spouse to take care of them. You're intimately with them. You're helping them get food and clothing. You're taking care of your spouse. If you wear a cloth mask, you're putting yourself at risk because there's no value in a cloth mask. So by telling people that all masks are the same and that they all work, he's really putting

people at home. He should be telling people, number one, if you're dealing with someone at home wearing an N95 mask, but number two, he should also be telling people that there is a treatment. The IV monoclonal antibodies can save your life. They're now approved even for a spouse that's not yet sick or positive. They take it and it's an 85% reduction in hospitalization or death. But instead, Dr. Fauci utilizes all of his 20 interviews a day to talk about putting masks on that don't work, bad information, misinformation. And I've yet to see an interview where he's telling people there's a window of time. And if you miss it, you can't get the treatment. Monoclonal antibodies, they don't give them the first day, but they also don't give them the last

day before you're on the ventilator. There's a window of time as you're getting sicker, you're eligible. But if you miss that window of time and you get admitted to the hospital, they won't give you the monoclonal antibodies. Florida is doing a lot with that now, I know. And on the mask, we're going to cover that a little bit later about, you know, the local authorities say it helps. It helps when it comes to adults. But with respect to children, there is there's just there's no data to support the use of masks, masks in schools. And in fact, the CDC's own study suggests of 80,000 kids that they they don't do anything that they're actually not valuable at all to children in schools. But I'll get in that in one second with my next guest. But I want to ask you, what should happen to Dr. Fauci now? Because I mean, it seems clear from these documents that he did mislead Congress. He might have been trying to pull some sort of semantic trick on you. But you tell me, what should the DOJ be doing? What should Congress be doing? And should he be fired? Absolutely, he should be fired immediately. We've referred him for a criminal referral to

the Department of Justice because lying to Congress is a felony punishable after five years. But at the very least, he should be fired because the misinformation he is giving out is threatening lives. Number one, on masks that don't work. But number two, on not promoting the one treatment that everybody in America needs to know about. And this is IV monoclonal antibodies. And so, yes, absolutely, he should be fired. So do you think there will be any follow-up, you know, given that obviously it's a Democratic administration that is siding with Fauci? Will there be any follow-up for this? I don't think that there'll be anything done by the Department of Justice. I think they'll be politicized and there won't be any judgment.

As far as him being fired, we know that where everybody was once listening and thinking he was an objective scientist, now that they know that there was a cover-up on the Wuhan thing, that eight of his scientists immediately told him it looked like it came from a lab. And then within days, he's emailing all night. And within days, they have meetings and everybody now is on the same page. They've changed their mind as to whether or not this came from a lab. This looks to me very much like a cover-up, but he's lost a great deal of credibility. But now he's involved with telling us whether we can play football, whether we can

be in the park, whether baseball should be played. He's become so incredibly full of himself that his dictates now are seen as merely the ramblings of somebody who's an elitist, who doesn't care about individual liberty, and really probably has a conflict of interest when it comes to where the virus actually originated. I know he calls, he says, I am science. Just to your point about the media, CNN's Jim Sciutto interviewed Fauci hours after the Intercept report broke and didn't ask him a single question about it. You know what he asked him to do? To tee off on Ron DeSantis. It's just a shameful statement of how our media funding this kind of research that led to a lot of deaths. But I got to ask you this before I let you go, because I know that you wrote this op-ed in early August on Fox saying, you know, resist, resist mask mandates, choose freedom. I have people write me all the time saying, how? You know, my kid can't go to school if I don't put the mask

on him. They'll kick him out. My boss is telling me I can't enter the building unless I get this vaccine. What can I do? And it's hard because I put myself, I have three kids, but my kids are now grown. I don't have to fight the same battles. But I see people fighting the battle at the level of the school board. Go to the school board meeting, sound off. If you're able to teach your kids at home, teach them at home. If you're able to go to private school, go to private school. We're seeing the biggest growth in homeschooling and private schooling that we've ever seen because people want their kids to learn. If you look at who's suffering the most from all of these lockdowns and absent schools and virtual schools, it's poor kids and

minority kids. And so we've got to push back. This is a time when we try to talk about educational choice, school choice. I have a bill in Washington that says that the funds, the federal funds that go with poor kids, they should follow the poor kid wherever the poor kid wants to go. If the kid wants to go to a private school, a church school, a non-secular school, homeschool, the funds should follow the child and we should have school choice. And guess what? Competition will improve the scores that are languishing throughout our country. Wouldn't that be nice? Senator, so great to see you again. Thank you for everything you've been doing on this. All the best.

Up next, the journalist who has actually taken the deep dive into masks and the CDC's own research involving masking kids. The study you probably never heard of. Welcome back, everybody, to The Megyn Kelly Show. Joining me now, somebody I've been wanting to talk to for months, author and journalist David Zweig. David, thank you so much for being here. I've been reading your stuff in New York Magazine, and it's been a delight because now I know I'll just show my own bias. I assume somebody writing in New York magazine is probably a lefty and sort of catering to a more left wing audience.

Well, I don't know whether that's true about you or not. What I know is that your reports seem really fact based and fair and not agenda driven one way or the other. So you don't have to answer anything about your own politics. I just want to compliment you. Let's start with this, because here's just a sampling of some of the stuff you've written. The problem with the CDC six foot rule for schools. Why public schools shouldn't offer a remote option this fall. New research suggests numbers of kids hospitalized for covid is overcounted and is the second shot giving young men a dangerous heart condition. I want to get into all of that with you.

But let's start on the masks because this article went viral. And then the title of that one dated August 2020, 21 was the science of masking kids at school remains uncertain. Can you just tell us just tell us what this study was that nobody paid any attention to except for you, apparently? Yeah. So the CDC published a study that was a really large study of, I think it was 169 schools in Georgia. And it was something like 90,000 students. So this isn't, you know, in like one school with 100 kids, 90,000. And what they found was, was that masking students, along with a number of other interventions, including HEPA filters, including distancing, including barriers, they found that none of these things, but as the thing that people are so focused on, which is masks, none of them had a statistically significant benefit, which means that they may have seen some benefit,

but the way statistics works, that the sample size, the study wasn't powered sufficiently, which means there weren't enough people or there wasn't enough of a signal to say that this was statistically significant. And what really caught my eye was the fact that in the summary of the study, which is unfortunately what most people typically just look at a summary and that's it, including journalists, they didn't mention any of this in the summary. They mentioned that masking teachers, they did see an effect, a small benefit for that, as well as ventilation, primarily getting fresh air. They saw benefits. So those are the two things they added in the summary, But all these other what are called null findings where you're not seeing a statistically significant benefit, those were,

you know, buried deep within the study. And of course, they were largely ignored. And what's crazy is not about a month or a little bit more than a month after the CDC's own study of the 90,000 kids showing masks are of looks like no benefit. They issued a mandatory mask order for kids in schools. Yeah. I mean, to me, what I find most persuasive, perhaps even more than, you know, that one study, which which didn't find a statistically significant benefit, is that we have to what I've and I've done this with my reporting continually since since the spring of 2020, which is I continually to look outside the United States. And I think that's been one of the biggest problems in the reporting on covid in general.

And then my area of focus specifically regarding children and schools, is that time and again, people are reporting on this and not only journalists, but the public health authorities themselves issue decrees or give information without providing any context on how other countries around the world are handling this. In regard to masks, there are countries throughout Europe, none of them are masking little kids. They're all at different cutoffs. Some of the countries, none of them are below six because the World Health Organization has repeatedly re-upped its guidance saying, we do not recommend anyone under six years old wearing a mask. But beyond that, a number of the countries in Europe, it's not only below six, it's they don't want anyone under 12 wearing a mask. And there are a number of countries that are saying no masks at all, all the way through secondary school, which is their term

for high school, only wearing them in a certain circumstance, like in a hallway. So what I think your listeners really need to understand, what I think, and what I always try to do with my reporting is look at not only what guidance is being issued in the United States, but seeing how or if our guidance is different from other places around the world. And is there any evidence of more outbreaks in those schools that are not requiring the masking of children overseas versus American schools that are requiring it? I have not seen any evidence in any sort of like wide scale way that shows that children in Europe are at a higher risk than children in America, you know, relative to not

wearing masks or, you know, pinning it on schools being open or what have you. One of the problems, Megan, is that continually in the media and also some of the public health authorities cite specific sort of anecdotes or examples as if that, and that's not how science works, we know this, that you need to actually look at the larger picture to see what's happening. So of course, you're going to hear about an outbreak in a school or many outbreaks. We have, you know, 50 million children in this country. You're going to hear about things. The bigger question that people need to focus on is not some scary anecdote, but what is the broader picture that we're looking at? And time and again, I mean, study after study has shown that schools tend to have either the same or lower incidence of transmission than we are

seeing in their surrounding communities. Mm hmm. You know, it's it's like all the studies that you point this on your piece that have taken a look at masks outside of this massive one. They just sort of tick them off as one of many things that were part of the preventative measures in the school and then say these are the effective mitigation measures. But that's like me saying, OK, in order to prevent the measles, I wore a coat. I wore mittens. I used hand sanitizer. Oh, and I got vaccinated for measles. Like and then we just require all children everywhere to wear the coats and use the hand sanitizer. You know, it's like you have that's not how science is supposed to be conducted

in figuring out what is an effective mitigation measure. Right. So I talk about this in the article, and you raise a very important point, which is the CDC has continued to recommend what they call a layered approach, where you're doing a whole variety of things with ventilation, with masking, with this, that, and the other thing, and HEPA filters, and the list goes on. Plexiglass, social distancing. All of it, yeah, and hand hygiene. And to what degree each of these individual interventions are beneficial, you can't tell

if you're doing them all at the same time. There's no way to differentiate and know. So if you're throwing the kitchen sink at a problem, that's fine. And that makes sense initially with sort of precautionary principle. If this is March 2020, of course, we appreciate no one knows what's going on. We're wiping our groceries down with like bleach or whatever. I never did that. That's wise. But you can't continue doing a long list of things without looking at them individually and then claiming that they all work. As you said, if you're wearing mittens and pants

and all these other things. But that's exactly what the CDC has been doing, that they say, we know masks work because there's a low incidence of cases in schools while they do masks and ventilation, et cetera. And a number of the experts who I've spoke with for the article and who I talk with on a regular basis, and these are infectious disease specialists, epidemiologists, and aerosol scientists, have said it's entirely possible that almost the full benefit of the low transmission in schools is related to ventilation. That's entirely possible. And that masks maybe provide a marginal or no benefit at all. We don't know. So to continue to insist that it's masks when you're doing a whole variety of

things is unscientific. Now, people continue to say, well, but we know masks work. We know they work. And I'm not an anti-mask person necessarily. There is good evidence, I think, that some masks do work in some circumstances. So it's not that there's zero benefit of masks, but there's a difference between a kid wearing a mask in school that they bought off of Etsy or Amazon or something for seven hours in a classroom versus an adult wearing a well-fitted N95 in a healthcare setting or popping into Costco for 20 minutes. These are very different environments. So there needs to be a lot more nuance, I think, in how the guidance is distributed

and how we look at the science. Especially when you look at the CDC's guidance that two-year-olds need to be masked all day. Two-year-olds, sure, anybody with a child understands how easy that is, how compliant they are, how they're definitely going to keep it over their mouth and their nose all day long. It's like, I think the CDC has said, okay, you can take it off during their school nap time. Oh, thanks for that. So they don't suffocate. We appreciate that, CDC, a two-year-old who's got virtually no risk from COVID, but does from your mask. By the way, I had no idea that there was something called an aerosol scientist job. That's something to consider

if things fall through here. I do want to talk about Delta, though, right? Because this is what what we're hearing now is, OK, David, but this article was dated August 20th and the CDC study was, you know, six weeks prior to that. And dun, dun, dun, Delta has changed everything. What say you? You know, so what's interesting, I'm writing a book on the topic of kids in schools. And one of the challenges I've been confronted with as I work on the book is that, you know, the story keeps evolving and we keep, there's new things, there's and there's new things. And after Delta, there'll be Lambda and Epsilon. We're going to run through the Greek alphabet. But one of the things that has kind of crystallized for me is that the same themes repeat themselves. And one of them is that I'm not minimizing Delta. It is more contagious. But the evidence is very mixed at best as far as Delta being more virulent.

And the same fundamental things apply regarding masking or other things, if you're still specifically referring to kids wearing masks in school. One of the scientists who I spoke with gave me a good analogy. He said, look, imagine you're wearing kind of a junky old raincoat. Maybe it's ripped in places, it's very thin, and you wear it and it's drizzling outside. You're going to get wet. Some of the water is going to leak through. Now, if that's the benefit of that kind of junky old raincoat when it's drizzling, what do you think is going to happen with that raincoat if you wear it in an absolute downpour? So that was the sort of like metaphor he gave for if masks are at best perhaps marginally beneficial in schools before Delta,

what makes you think they're going to be beneficial after Delta, which is even more contagious and more transmissible? You know, you look at the numbers of children now being hospitalized and so on. We're going to get into this with our next guest, too. And it has a lot of parents alarmed. But there's a question about whether it's that more kids are – that doesn't necessarily mean that more kids are dying or actually suffering from severe disease as a result of COVID. What the media does is it takes cases and it takes any kid who's in the hospital with COVID as evidence that COVID put them in the hospital. And then they scare people without a lot of context. So, yeah, this is another great point and it's an important one. I wrote about this. I broke the story on two peer-reviewed studies that were published by a journal put out by the American Academy of Pediatrics. And both studies, they were done independently of each other. Both of them found that at least roughly 40% of the pediatric COVID hospitalizations were

incidental or were for cases that were not significant. So, you know, and this could be, for example, a trauma, someone breaks their ankle, you're in the hospital, automatically the hospital tests you for COVID because that's the policy. Boom, that's a COVID hospitalization. So they found 40% of what we are told are COVID hospitalizations are not necessary,

for pediatric casesizations are not necessary for pediatric cases are not necessarily because the child had severe symptoms of COVID. They could have been for any number of other things that send people to the hospital. So to me, anytime you see the pediatric hospitalization numbers, bear that in mind. Again, this is not my opinion.

This is from two peer-reviewed studies that were published by the American Academy of Pediatrics. So there's not, I mean, as far as your research shows, again, we'll bring this up with our doctors coming on next too. There is not a greater risk of hospitalization or death from the Delta variant in children. Well, Delta is more contagious. All the evidence seems to show. So if you have a larger denominator, meaning if more and more people are becoming infected, you're going it makes sense. You're going to see an uptick in hospitalizations

through through whatever it is, in particular children, if they're unvaccinated. But again, that doesn't mean necessarily that Delta is more dangerous on an individual basis to each person who becomes infected. There's also some really interesting information, which is that an unvaccinated child based on certain metrics is actually at the same or lower risk than a vaccinated adult. So this notion of the kind of like panic around kids, I totally appreciate it. I have kids. I don't want my kids to be sick. No one does. That's normal. But what's happened is because I think largely of the media environment that we're in, coupled with some of the public health messaging, that people's perception of the risk has divorced from the reality of the risk. It

doesn't mean it's zero. Of course, some kids are going to become sick and have become sick. Unfortunately, some have even died. This is not something we want, but the world is filled with risks. And when you look at the risk of COVID to your child versus any number of other things, it's way, way down on the list. I mean, look, more than double the number of kids die drowning each year than they have from COVID, for example. I mean, we could start taking off a list, whether it's drowning, car accidents, suicides, all of these things present risk to children at a different scale than COVID ever has, including even during the era of Delta. I was reading a Washington Post piece talking about, you know, the pediatric cases saying

that they're surging as children head back to school. Again, cases is not the relevant metric. We're going to have cases. There's a pandemic. There's there's this thing called COVID and Delta is really contagious. Cases is not really what we should be looking at, but it's what the media touts. But the Washington Post talking about how the pediatric covid cases surpassed two hundred fifty thousand for the first time since the start of the pandemic. Most are not severe, they add. But nearly twenty four hundred kids were hospitalized nationwide with covid again with covid, not necessarily because of covid in the seven days ending this past Tuesday. All right. And then they go on to talk about how, OK, hospitalizations for children seem to be sharply

increasing as Delta surges to the point that you just made. And then they say they go on and say that they've gone up a lot, though it remains slightly below the January peak, the number of hospitalizations. And then at the very bottom of the article, Dave, they say, but based on the limited data available so far, it does not appear that the Delta variant is affecting the incidence of severe disease or deaths among children, which have been somewhat steady and relatively low throughout the pandemic. So it's basically like we're going to scare the living daylights out of you and then tell

you actually nothing's changed other than it seems to be a little bit more contagious. Just what you just said i mean i'm i'm communicating with pediatricians at top university hospitals around the country basically on a daily basis pediatric immunologists um as well as infectious disease specialists and depending where you are the hospitals are not overflowing it doesn't mean that there hasn't been a spike in cases in different areas. But as you noted, the actual risk to children of severe illness does not appear to be any more significant than it was before, even if Delta is more contagious. And again, I find those two peer-reviewed studies very persuasive and compelling regarding the sort of, as you noted, if you're hospitalized

from COVID rather than hospitalized with COVID. One of the things that's been rampant is an infectious virus called RSV, along with a number of other respiratory viruses from a number of experts I've spoken with. That is what we're really seeing a high prevalence of. And that's actually really dangerous, particularly to little kids. So what they believe is happening, at least for a certain segment of them, is a kid comes into the hospital, they very well may have a co-infection. You may have RSV and you may have COVID. So but that's always going to be checked as a COVID hospitalization

because they can run a panel and they test for all of them. So if it comes up positive for RSV, for COVID, for something else, you still are marking off the COVID box on there. But the data given to regular citizens, all we know is, oh, a kid is in there for COVID. But that's not necessarily the case if there's a COVID. For COVID is not the same as with COVID. It's like if I'm walking around with a basal cell carcinoma on my face and God forbid somebody shoots me and I

go to the ER and I die from my gunshot wound. You could say I died with cancer, but it doesn't mean I died of cancer. It's an important distinction. All right. Coming up, Dave and I are going to discuss the new emails showing the CDC completely bowing down to the teachers unions on mask mandates. They weren't going to do it. Then the teachers union objected. And that is why your kids now have to wear these masks in a lot of these schools. Do you have a thought about what your school district is doing? Call me.

Tell me about it at 833-44-MEGYN. That's 833-446-3496. Welcome back to The Megyn Kelly Show, continuing now with my conversation with author and journalist David Zweig. So Dave, one of the things we saw this week is that the CDC didn't really appear ready to issue mask mandates. The American Academy of Pediatrics had been calling for it, but originally the CDC wasn't saying we're going to do that. We're going to recommend that for kids in schools. And now we know the teachers union got involved and had one-on-one conversations with the CDC muckety mucks, and suddenly they shifted. And it appears to be as a direct result of pressure from the teachers unions,

which is crazy to me, considering that New York City, something like almost 40 percent of the teachers declined to get vaccinated. But they want me to mask my kid to make them feel better. Yeah, I mean, I think the interesting part about this story, rather than the sort of gotcha of like, look, we know they're colluding behind closed doors, so to speak. I mean, not that that's not important. But to me, the bigger story is why are they doing this if we know that vaccination and ventilation are far more important for mitigating the spread of COVID? It's become a bit of a distraction, more than a bit, this kind of battle over masks.

Again, you're not seeing this kind of hyperbolic conversation and emotional thing regarding it in most of Europe when kids there are not wearing masks. So to me, the takeaway of the teachers union thing is less about what's going on with influencing the policy, again, not to say that that's not important and worth looking at, but it's more about the idea if an adult is vaccinated, barring having some underlying conditions, they're at incredibly low risk. All adults in our country have now had the option to be vaccinated, should they so choose. And we know that kids are at incredibly low risk. So you have to ask yourself, to what end?

What exactly are we making little kids wear masks all day for, for what's now going to be years of their lives? Years, not a week, not a month, but for years, all day, every day in school. And you have to ask, why? What are we accomplishing? Who are they protecting? We know that kids are at incredibly low risk themselves. It's not zero, but it's very low.

And we know that adults who are vaccinated are at incredibly low risk of severe illness. So what are we exactly trying to achieve? And when you look to many countries in Europe, clearly they've come to a different conclusion than we have here. And I find that fascinating. It doesn't mean that it's apples to apples.

Of course, every country is different. But I looked up, Megan, I looked at the vaccination rates, the overall per capita mortality rates, and the current case rates within all these different countries in Europe. And it's all over the map. It's not like all of them have higher vaccination rates or all of them have worse case rates or mortality. It's up and down. The U.S. is kind of in the mix with all of them. Yet the one unifying thing amongst those countries in Europe is that they're not making little kids wear masks. And in many circumstances, they're not making making any kids wear masks all the way through high school.

One of the frustrations is what are the metrics? When do the masks come off? What are we waiting for? And will anybody tell us? Well, they won't. And wait until you hear what Rochelle Walensky, who I think is a hysterical, she's a hysterical person, is saying about that. We'll pick it up next when we pick it back up with Dave, and then our doctor will be joining us. Don't go away. Welcome back, everyone, to The Megyn Kelly Show. Coming up, Dr. Vinay Prasad. He's here to answer any of your questions about COVID. That'll be fun by calling me at 833-44-MEGYN, M-E-G-Y-N. That's 833-446-3496.

Get your questions about the vaccine, about boosters. We're going to get into vaccine, about boosters. We're going to get into that, uh, about masks ready. Uh, first though, we're going to continue my conversation with author and journalist, David Zweig. David. Okay. So we talked about why it looks like the CDC reversed itself and said, Oh, we do have to have mandatory masks in the schools because the teachers union, many of whom will not get vaccinated. I think this is my theory. Um, they want my kid to wear a mask because they've chosen not to get vaccinated and they think that's going to protect them. Whereas it should be exactly the opposite. They should be

getting vaccinated as the grownup to protect my kid who should not be forced to wear a mask. Um, but anyway, I want to get back to, um, their justification because you as a journalist did what most people don't do. And when they issued that new guidance saying, eh know what, actually, we do want mandatory masks for everybody in these schools, you called them up. And you called up the American Academy of Pediatrics, too, which was recommending the same and said, what said, give me your data to explain what you said, and then explain what they gave you. Yeah, for for the piece I wrote for New York about the masking guidelines in schools, and specifically regarding this Georgia study, one of the things that we hear all the time is, we know that masks work, you know, and you're

a piece of garbage if you disagree with that. And I'm approaching this apolitically. I'm not a Republican operative or someone who's against masking on some sort of like freedom or libertarian standpoint. I'm just looking at the science. And what I did was not only did I reach out to the CDC and the American Academy of Pediatrics, but I reached out to a handful of very prominent public health people who, you know, doctors who you see on TV all the time, who have really large Twitter followings, and some of whom who I have a sort of private dialogue with. And I reached out to them privately and said, hey, I know you are really in favor of kids wearing masks in

school. Please send me the best evidence you've got. What do you got? And it was incredible. I mean, one of the people, the first thing she sent me was a study from Massachusetts, which was where they found that there was no benefit of three feet versus six feet in the classroom. And I said, that doesn't say anything about masks. She sent me something else about a Wisconsin study. I said, that doesn't say anything either. And I saw this pattern over and over that when you actually push some of these people, show me evidence that masks work on kids in schools. They're sending you stuff, as we talked about earlier, where they're doing masks with a whole variety of interventions.

And on the CDC's own website, where they have, I went through point by point, there was something, a zillion different citations for studies. I made a huge spreadsheet. I went through it with an epidemiologist to make sure I wasn't confused because I'm not a medical expert. So I had an expert run through it with me. And every one of these studies that they were citing, either A, where the low transmission rate may have been due to any number of factors. It could have been

masks. It could have been just because they're children and they're less likely to become infected to begin with. It could have been because of ventilation. That, or they had a thing where I was in a hair salon or they had something incredibly, a number of the studies that the CDC stated actually didn't have kids wearing masks at all. Like, how is that listed as evidence? So there's a lot of stuff when you start digging into the details don't quite add up. I will say this. It's possible that masks do offer some marginal benefit in schools. What I'm saying is we haven't seen sufficient evidence. And the one study and the CDC themselves,

they say this is the only study that's done this, where they're looking at different cohorts in schools where they said we were comparing schools where they did use masks and where there wasn't a mask mandate, didn't find a statistically significant benefit. And that was with 90,000 students. So it's entirely possible there could be some benefit if we have a larger pool. If we bump up to several hundred thousand or a million kids, we might see some benefits regarding transmission. We don't know. But then you have to ask a woman named Tracy Hogue, who is an epidemiologist, and she was

a senior author on another study published by the CDC. She made the point, she said, at what point do we then have to ask, is it worth this marginal benefit? Remember, a case is not the same thing as illness. Those are two different things. And just becoming infected doesn't mean you're ill. According to the CDC, they estimate that it's possible up to 50% of children who are infected are asymptomatic. So that's a really high bar to clear if half the people who are infected don't even know it as far as being kids. So I think these are all these sort of nuances that get lost. Now, maybe that's, I'm not an expert in public messaging from the government. So maybe they feel that making a very blunt recommendation is the only way to do things. But we can see in other countries around the world that they are doing very different type of advice, whether it's for mass, whether it's for vaccinating kids. seen, Megan, just recently, the advisory committee in the UK recommended against a blanket vaccination

for 15 to 17 year olds that or excuse me, for 12 to 15 year olds. That's very different from the guidance here in America. So these are things again, I'm always looking elsewhere. It doesn't mean that their country functions the same as ours, but boy, that's quite a different conclusion for an advisory committee in another major Western country to say, you know what? We don't think it's the best idea. Unless your kid has severe underlying conditions, we're not going to recommend that everybody get vaccinated, the 12 to 15 year olds. That's very different. As you know, we are speeding toward approving a vaccine for kids under 12. So that's quite an interesting contrast. It doesn't mean they're right and we are wrong. But to me, as a journalist and someone who's just curious, it does raise questions about

why are they coming to a different conclusion than we are here? Me too. Me too. As a journalist and as a mother, as a parent. Can you just tell us what happened when you contacted the American Academy of Pediatrics and said, what data did you base your recommendation on? Right. What happened was I was met with crickets. And the CDC, interestingly, sent me back two studies that had absolutely nothing to do with masking students.

And then they had kind of a banal statement about the Delta variant. And we think everyone should wear masks. So neither of them. So but I gave them the benefit of the doubt, even though they didn't send me the best study, as I mentioned before, I went through and started reading every single citation they had in their guidance to see maybe I'm missing something. Yeah, you tried to steel man their argument. You were unable to.

Like, maybe I'm missing something. Let me keep digging and digging. And by the way, I also reached out to, you know, a dozen different specialists who I talk with on a regular basis. Hey, am I missing something here? And that's the thing that it's worth looking at. It's not that we're automatically wrong and other places are automatically correct, but you have to actually look at what's being recommended elsewhere. And you have to actually, I recognize the average person, I guess that's why I'm here.

The average person is doing a different job than I'm doing. They don't have time to start pouring through CDC studies and whatever else and seeing this stuff. So of course, they're not going to be aware of this. And kind of dovetailing with that point, I keep mentioning looking at other countries, but the other really important piece of context I found, Megan, and this is something that's going to be a really big theme in my book, is that there is a fair amount of dissent within the medical community and public health community to what's being messaged, but people are afraid to speak

out. From the beginning, I've had doctors and others and epidemiologists and others reach out to me and say, thank you so much for writing that article. I really strongly disagree with what's going on, but then they won't talk on the record. And I have a long list of people who I talk with on a regular basis. And either they are explicitly told, if you are at a major university hospital and the chair of your department says, you're not doing it, don't speak out against the guidance or it's implicit. You just know there is a, you know, this is within your field. You have colleagues. There's a group think going on.

It's a big deal. If you're a doctor to actually speak out against the CDC, that's not something that's easy to do. So there are both explicit and implicit kind of baked in reasons why people have been discouraged from speaking out. And I'd say, and then we talked to a guy who was on the CDC advisory, the vaccine advisory group, and he spoke out against where they were going with it. And he probably got booted off the group. Yeah, that that has happened with a number of people. And there's enormous pushback against

others. This is sort of the last piece, I was going to say. It's not just about your boss or your colleagues, but the people who do say, and I face this pushback as a journalist as well. If there's any questioning, any sort of doubt against the sort of popular narrative, you're automatically, you know, not only are you wrong, but this ad hominem attacks that you're a bad person, you want to kill people, you're a lunatic. But again, is everyone in the UK and Denmark and Sweden and Switzerland, are they all lunatics? Do they want children to die there? So I think, to me, one of the biggest things, Megan, is that there is just this complete squashing of debate, and particularly in something related to science, that it should be not only reasonable, but expected for there to be dissent and for

there to be discussion and for it to not be these ad hominem emotional attacks where you see certain doctors or epidemiologists with a big Twitter following who are completely smug and obnoxious against journalists and against some of their peers. I've heard it said that science is a verb, not not a noun. And, you know, it's an ongoing process where new information gets added, new conclusions are reached. And that's why it's so frustrating. I mean, I'll tell you at our school, which is very, very tough on all the COVID things like mandatory masks all day long and everyone and mandatory vaccinations now for any kids who are 16 and up or you're expelled or you're expelled. I mean, that's crazy when you see about, you know, as you point out what's happening in other countries, you know, and there are side effects and so on that some of us need to worry about. Anyway, they they presented a doctor from Yale New Haven and the doctor was very pro

mask and very pro vaccine. It's like, well, you know what? I would love to hear a doctor who has a different opinion than this guy's because this guy does not represent every doctor and be able to make up my own mind. But of course, we're intentionally spoon fed different, you know, just what the school wants us to hear. All right. Let me let me ask about Rochelle Walensky, because I know one of the points you've been making is that the mask mandates, the masks in general, they have no end point. There's no specifics being offered to us. When can I take the mask off of my child? And here's what she said.

This is everything she says is just so out there. Remember, she cried. Anyway, OK, sorry. That's me, Dave. She said, if our children are vaccinated, we have full vaccination in schools. We have full vaccination in teachers. We have disease rates that are low. I think then we can start thinking about how we can loosen up. OK, so basically there has to be zero covid is essentially what she's saying.

And then maybe we can start thinking about taking off the masks. I don't I don't even know what to do with that. Yeah, I mean, and I quote a number of experts in my article who speak to this exact issue. And it's a real concern that the term du jour is off ramps. There's no off ramps. One of the reasons I think why they're not coming up with specific metrics is that they would be made up. No one knows.

No one knows the specific community rate or whatever else that you should tie to masks. I've got one. I know. Once the teachers union says it's okay, then we can take off the masks. Right. I mean, so that's one of the problems is that we don't actually have a good sense of when it is or isn't appropriate. And this kind of gets to a larger issue, just sort of like pulling the lens back that I think about a lot that also I hope to put in my book in a really big way is we also have to ask, who are the people making guidance for how society should run? it's entirely appropriate for those people to be infectious disease specialists and others in that area, because no one knows what's happening and there's a panic and we have to prevent a catastrophe. But we are now a year and a half into this. And at a certain point along the way, you need to bring in other people, whether it's child psychologists, pediatricians, economists, there's philosophers,

there's a variety of people whose voices and opinions because mitigating a virus is not the same thing all the time as human flourishing. And so it is not, I'm not here to minimize COVID. I mean, COVID is horrible and no one wants anyone to get sick, let alone for people to die. But we have to understand a context of COVID versus other things. I mean, to me, one of the most persuasive things is when you look at, you know, in 2018, 2019 flu season, I think it was 477 kids died. These are the CDC's numbers. Yet in COVID, the number is something around 400 in a much, much longer timeframe. That's cumulative over a year and a half. So we've had fewer children die from COVID than they did in a much shorter flu season. And by the way, remember those numbers,

that's without subtracting this roughly 40%, according to those two studies about, you know, sort of with versus from argument. So the numbers really change. Oh, and I'll take it one step further. You know, with the flu, they don't do universal testing typically when a kid goes. So these comparisons are very specious about, oh, you know, with the flu versus COVID that the CDC has made in the past saying that COVID is more dangerous than the flu. There's really no evidence of that. Oh, wait, I got to ask you this because we're a little short on time, but I really need to ask you about the side effects of the vaccine. Because I know you did an article as the mother of three

kids, two of whom are boys, and this particular side effect seems to affect boys more than girls. You did a piece about the heart inflammation that is, it's recognized, it's been announced by the public authorities to the CDC and others. heart inflammation that's coming from the vaccine in some cases, not not a huge number, but a statistically significant number in boys who get the vaccine. So how, what did you find when it comes to that side effect and how concerning it is? Well, what we did find is that there certainly, and this is the CDC's own number. So I'm not making, you know, it's not me making up the numbers. It's from the CDC when they had their advisory committee meeting about this, that the number of young males who had what's

called myocarditis, this inflammation of the heart or pericarditis, that's the inflammation around the heart, that the numbers for young males were off the charts. It was something like 60-something per million where they had expected zero to four per million. And the thing that bothered me was, and it bothered a number of other, not other, but it bothered a number of specialists who I spoke with, was that when you have, when you merge different groups together, which is what the CDC did, they took young males and combine them with young females, but the females had an entirely different risk perspective than the young males. So, and then on top of that, they added in, they took young males and took, and young females and

made a co-ed and took it all the way up to age 39. And they said, hey, look at this. There's only 12 cases per a million. Well, sure, you can keep making the pot bigger and bigger. You get the point where you're going to bury the signal amid the noise. So I just couldn't understand why you would possibly do that when the evidence is actually there to differentiate. And I keep mentioning this, but other countries are coming to different

conclusions about whether it makes sense to just, boom, vaccinate everyone immediately. I'm not against vaccination. I'm vaccinated. And I think the risks are, relatively speaking, very, very low. So I think to put things in context, the risk of COVID to a healthy kid is incredibly low. And the risk of the vaccine to most kids is incredibly low. But when you look at the actual numbers and how they weigh out, it's not as clear cut as the CDC has made it seem. And again, there are other public health authorities who are coming to different conclusions about it. Yeah. I mean, this is how I feel. I said this to Dan Abrams.

We had a little spar on his SiriusXM show yesterday saying, look, in my own family, my dad died at age 45 of a sudden heart attack. I've got a heart issue. It's a thing in my family. And the last thing I want to do is anything that would in any way compromise my boys hearts. I mean, every parent feels that way. And some of us have extra medical reasons to feel that way. And so I do not want Rochelle Walensky or our head of school or anyone else telling me I have to, I've got to risk their heart health for, to protect against a virus that they are at absolutely next to no risk of being hurt by, right? They don't have any of the immunocompromising factors that would lead to, you know, death or hospitalization based on what we've seen so far. So that's, I mean, it's just trying to get people to understand when it comes to one's children,

like we have a responsibility. We got to be careful. I have to advocate on their behalf. They're not 18. People, you know, Joe Biden today is going to make a hard, hard push for mandatory vaccinations, and it's common for kids and mandatory vaccines. And I just think people need to keep in mind there are all sorts of reasons why these mandatory policies, with very few allowed exceptions, by the way, are problematic. Dave, you're amazing. I hope you come back. Thanks for having me. Anytime, anytime. And coming up next, we're going to be joined by Dr. Vinay Prasad. If you're not following him on Twitter or watching his great YouTube videos, you should be. And we're going to talk to him about masks, about the Biden announcement we're

expecting. And what about the I word, ivermectin? Plus, if you've got questions for the good doctor, he's here to answer them. Call us at 833-44-MEGYN. That's 833-44-3496. Coming up. Welcome back, everyone, to The Megyn Kelly Show. I think one of the most chilling things that has happened during this pandemic is the demonization and silencing of doctors. It's not just journalists, all right, as Dave was saying. It's also doctors who dare not fall totally in line with the CDC's line of thinking. It's crazy. But one of the doctors not afraid to speak his mind is my next guest, Dr. Vinay Prasad. He's a hematologist, oncologist, and an associate

professor in the Department of Epidemiology at the University of California in San Francisco. Welcome, doctor. Great to have you here. Thanks for having me so much. Okay. So there's a lot to go over. Can we just pick it up? At the beginning of our show, we had on Rand Paul, who was talking about masks, and he was making the point that he doesn't think masks work. And I know that when it comes to cloth masks, I think you agree. But can we start with the overall thought about do masks work? Okay, it's a good question. I guess the first thing I would try to say is that may not even just be a yes or no answer. It might depend on the circumstances. So I think, you know,

if you are taking care of somebody in the hospital and they're known to have SARS-CoV-2, I think most of the providers would wear an N95 mask. And we believe that's an important mask to wear because you're going in a room with someone with known disease. But I think we're asking about community masking. The average person, when they go to the grocery store or kids in school, which we can talk about. And I think we had a piece of evidence that came out last week, which was the Bangladesh cluster randomized control trial. Of course, Bangladesh is different than the United States, that's for sure. And in this study, it took place at a time where there was essentially a 0% vaccination rate, and very few people had had natural immunity to the virus. And in that setting, a surgical mask, so not the

N95 mask, but rather that surgical mask that surgeons wear in the operating room, that mask demonstrated a benefit, but cloth masks failed to demonstrate a benefit on their primary endpoint, which was you had symptoms and then you were found to have SARS-CoV-2. So I think that's the best evidence we have to date, which is that cloth masking, even in Bangladesh, and this well-done study didn't work. Surgical masks did work, but this is a population that essentially had zero immunity going into it. So how much it extrapolates to the United States, a lot of questions. Does it extrapolate to schools?

We can talk about. OK, so then let's take children and let's slap N95 masks on them and make them wear them eight to nine hours a day. What's wrong with that plan? So I think that's that's a that's a that's a plan that will be unpalatable for a few reasons. One, I think, thank goodness, despite how zealous restrictions have gotten, I haven't heard anyone seriously make that claim.

Thank goodness. And here's the challenge, I think. Anyone who's worn an N95, especially when you wear it correctly, it puts a great deal of pressure on the face. And even as a doctor, and I've worn it for extended periods of time, I find it uncomfortable for a certain amount of time. To do that to kids day in and day out, given that the risks they face from this virus, I think it's a recipe for people aren't going to use it correctly. One, I don't think we even have the supplies to do it if we wanted to do it. Two, I don't think they would wear it correctly. And I think there'd be a number of problems that would

ensue. And so I think, you know, the reality is if you go to most of the schools where there is a mask mandate, the kids are wearing the cloth mask. I think that's what we see. Ninety plus percent of them wearing a cloth mask. Which is like the comfort check at the airport when you take your shoes off. It's not doing anything. I guess my position on this issue is always that a couple of things. One, we have to acknowledge the United States is very different than our peer nations. And I think your last guest spoke to this. The United Kingdom, UK, they have never

masked a child in school under the age of 12. Sweden, they have not masked children, particularly elementary school children, and Denmark and some of our peer nations, they have not done this. And I think the reality is, the truth is, we simply don't know if asking children to wear cloth masks, particularly very young children, confers a benefit. The last thing I'd say is, we simply don't know if asking children to wear cloth masks, particularly very young children, confers a benefit. The last thing I'd say is, in the United States, we've gone so far the other direction, the American Academy of Pediatrics and the CDC, they advise two-year-olds in daycare to wear cloth masks. And that's a recommendation that's actually contrary to the World Health Organization's guidelines, which actually do not encourage it younger than the

age of six. And it's a recommendation where I have written about because I think it's a place where if you want to do that, go beyond the WHO, you really need to bring rock solid evidence that kids benefit from that. I've looked at the evidence. It's certainly not rock solid. It's far from that. So I would be very reluctant to make such a recommendation. And we haven't even gotten into the significant downsides to a child and having a mask on his or her face all day, the social barrier, the language barrier, the inability of the young ones to pick up on emotional cues. I mean, sort of your EQ, your emotional intelligence is formed by looking at facial expressions and so on. And we just take it away without any real data on the other side. In fact, as our last guest was saying, the data appears to be that it doesn't help the masks in school. All right. There's so much to go over. So I want to move on. Ivermectin,

how do we feel about that? Is that an effective treatment of COVID in your view? I will say my view is I remain open-minded. You could persuade me. And there are four ongoing randomized control trials of Ivermectin. And if any of one of them shows an impressive result, I will be persuaded. But I'm the kind of doctor that until I see strong evidence that a therapy works, I'm generally apprehensive. I'm reluctant to prescribe. And the reason is B, simply, that most of the things we think work in biomedicine, most of the pills the pharmaceutical companies develop, most of the pills that people repurpose or use for a different purpose, they just generally don't work. So I really require that kind of gold standard evidence,

the same kind of evidence that I sort of asked for masking to prove to me ivermectin works. But I will say one thing, Megan, ivermectin has become a culture war issue. And I think that I'm also concerned about the demonization. I'm concerned that, you know, people who seek out these alternative remedies, they don't deserve our scorn. They deserve our compassion. They deserve an explanation as to why a doctor is or is not prescribing that. And I think some of the people who are heaping a great deal of scorn on users of ivermectin are the same people who early in the pandemic were very happy to recommend therapies without good evidence as well. So they have been there. They've

committed that error. And I think ivermectin is the kind of thing that's really become sort of a cultural issue. And that's problematic in my mind. If science takes on political dimensions. I know, because if we could come up, forget the controversies over the vaccines mandatory or not, if we could come up with a cure, imagine how wonderful that would be. Then we could take off the mask. Then we can we can not mandate vaccines to enter buildings. But we don't have a cure. And I don't know, are we working as aggressively on finding one as we were on finding a vaccine? That's a good question. We've had a number of drugs that offer some modest benefit. If you were to develop SARS-CoV-2 and get ill or get hospitalized, or even if you, you know,

came into contact with somebody SARS-CoV-2, we have a few drugs, you know, the monoclonal antibody. You like that? You like the monoclonal antibody? Rand Paul was saying, this is amazing. I think where it has proven benefit, it's a useful therapy. It's a little bit tricky to give because you got to give it in the IV, but where it has proven benefit is proven benefit. No one can take that away from that.

But, you know, I think that the challenge is that I think it will be very unlikely that anyone will find any medicine that can take somebody who's suffering from the throes of SARS-CoV-2, severe COVID-19, and 100% cure them with like a single magic pill. I think that's unlikely. So I think the best we can hope for is try to mitigate the damage by vaccinating adults by, you know, I think that's really the best thing we can do, vaccinate adults, and then we'll see where natural immunity gets us. And the combination of those two might get us to sort of a a way. But I do I do wonder, you know,

do I need a booster? Because now because I've seen the reports like this is a money grab by Pfizer, Moderna. Of course, they're like, oh, you definitely need a booster. I'm like, well, I'm healthy. I don't really I wasn't really worried about dying from covid even before I got the vaccine. So what do you make of boosters and whether I know older people may need them, but what about the vast majority of us? Yeah, I guess it's a great question. I am, again, willing to be persuaded, but I haven't seen anything that's persuaded me to date. And I think there's some problematic things in this booster saga. Now, you may remember that the way kind of all got started was Pfizer, I think, announced that they thought that boosters are going to be necessary. And then there initially

was pushback from Fauci, from CDC, and they scheduled a meeting in the White House to talk to leading officials in the administration. They had that meeting. Israel has met with the White House talking about the possibility of waning immunity from the vaccines over time. And then the White House launched about a month, a month and a half ago, a campaign to promote boosters. And they even gave us a target date, September 20th, the date that many people thought there would be widespread availability of boosters. In response to that, two leading officials at the Food and Drug Administration, the two senior officials in vaccine research and review, they resigned. And it has been leaked in multiple news stories that one of the reasons they resigned was they resented political pressure to approve a booster on this

timeline. Now, for me, what I want to see to prove to me that it's worth it for me to approve a booster on this timeline. Now, for me, what I want to see to prove to me that it's worth it for me to get a booster is you need to show me that if I get a booster, I'm going to have a reduction in hospitalization and severe SARS-CoV-2 than if I didn't get a booster. That's the kind of evidence I want to see that I'm going to benefit from getting this booster. I think it's a lot easier to show that when somebody is older and frailer because their probability of being hospitalized despite vaccine is higher than a younger, healthier person. But I really need that evidence. And again, that's another controlled study that I think they have to show before we jump into boosters. The last thing I'll say, Megan, is the World Health Organization, the WHO has begged member nations not to give boosters

in very wealthy nations before we can at least give older vulnerable adults globally the first shot. And I think that's an important question of fairness and equity in combating this pandemic. Well, especially because, I mean, even if you don't want to be fair about it, you're just self selfish. The more variants go around the world, they eventually wind up here in America. So we should want as many people worldwide to be vaccinated and protected against this virus as possible. I heard something interesting on the Daily today, the New York Times podcast, where they said it's like offering a booster to Americans, you know, people who are young like we are and want a third shot is like offer. It's like somebody like the Titanic goes down and people are

in the water wearing life jackets. But the life jacket gets a little frayed and somebody comes by and gives you a new life jacket. Meanwhile, there are other people who have no life jackets. They have no life jackets. It's like, well, never mind what happened to. Scientists who don't go along with sort of the most restrictive, you could say woke. I don't know what it is, but line on covid or frankly, transgender transitions and so on get ostracized and silenced. And I think it's making a lot of us look at our scientists a little differently. I don't have absolute trust anymore. I'm starting to wonder whether the American Academy of Pediatrics, for example, has an agenda that I should question. I guess what I'd say about that is I think you're hitting on something that I think is true and interesting, which is that the more you demonize people rather than engage on the merits of the argument, the more scientific points of view and policy positions become tied to political party,

the worse we are in a state of science. You know, it doesn't make sense that, you know, that that ivermectin may be embraced more by one political party than the other. That just doesn't make sense. You know, it's something that's worth testing and therefore ongoing tests of it. It doesn't make sense that masks are embraced by another political party or lockdowns are embraced by one political party. These should be things that if they work insofar as they work, we should all get behind. But I think you're speaking to, I think, a broader problem in the culture, which is when we hear people say things that don't agree with our worldview, we'd rather they just not say it or insult them or demonize them or think poorly of them than actually try

to explain why we disagree. We don't want to have conversations. And I think you're terrific about actually trying to go talk to people who don't always agree with you and have meaningful conversations. No. Well, thank you. I try because I actually do want facts, you know, and then and then fine. You can put a partisan spin on them if you want. I'm I'm open to listening to that, too. But we're still we're not living in a post post truth era. Truth is still knowable. And I appreciate it when people like you say, I don't know yet, you know, and I I didn't get to this with Rand. But one of the things Senator Paul had said earlier was, I can't tell you in one of the articles I read, I can't tell you about ivermectin because we haven't yet pursued enough studies on it.

And that made that too may be politically motivated. You know, it's sort of put in this class of like, oh, that's hydroxychloroquine stuff. You know, that's crazy tinfoil hat stuff. And to this moment, I can't tell you the truth on either one of those because I feel the same as he has. As much as I look for information, I see big question marks everywhere. I think you will find that if one of these four well-done randomized controlled trials shows a benefit of ivermectin,

and I think there's another thing to point out here is that when we talk about drugs in COVID, whether it's ivermectin, the monoclonal or steroids, you know, the question is not only does it work, but if so, where does it work? Does it work if I came into contact with someone in COVID to prevent me from acquiring it? Some drugs work for that. Does it work if I have a mild cough or cold from preventing me from that getting worse? Does it work if I'm hospitalized and I don't require oxygen? Does it work if I require oxygen? And does it work if I have to be on the ventilator? And a drug may

work in some circumstances, but not others. Steroids work amazingly if you require the ventilator or if you're on oxygen. But if you're hospitalized, not on oxygen, they may even be detrimental. So, you know, a drug doesn't always work for everything. It might work for some, not others. All the more reason to do well done studies. What about the vaccines? Because I know you've said when it comes to teenagers, 12 to 18, let's say around there, you say it's a tough call whether to vaccinate your teenager. I'm definitely wrestling with this. I don't have teens yet, but I have 11, 10 and eight. And I'm I'm not looking forward to when my my oldest turns 12

and my school looks at me and says he has to get it. Yeah, we can talk about that, the mandates as well, because L.A. County has just announced plans for doing this. But first, we can talk about this issue. So I mean, I think no one would be opposed or have any questions about vaccination if there was absolutely no safety signal at all. And there was only this benefit on SARS-CoV-2 reduction. And the truth is, we did know as early as April of this year, that there is a safety signal. And that safety signal is myocarditis, which your last guest talked about, which is an inflammation of the heart. It's more common in boys. And it happens to hit a certain age range of like 12 to 24-ish. That's kind of the peak increased incidence of myocarditis after the vaccine.

And the reason it gets so tricky is if the same myocarditis happened in 85-year-olds, we wouldn't be having this conversation, I don't think, because the risk of SARS-CoV-2 in an 85-year-old is colossal risk. It's extremely bad, but it's happening in an age group where you really do have some genuine difficulties in reconciling whether or not to do one dose or two doses, because most of the risk is after two doses. I should mention that. Most of the risk is after the second dose. That's the increased risk. One dose provides some level of immunity. The second dose provides probably a marginal increase in immunity, but comes at the price

of myocarditis. The United Kingdom has taken a different view. If you're 16 or 17 in the United Kingdom, they're offering one dose currently. If you're younger than 16, they're not giving any doses. Their expert body has advised them not to give doses younger than that age. The United States, of course, is aggressively pursuing two doses in everyone 12 and up, whether they're a boy or a girl. Girls have a much, they don't appear to have this massive increased risk of myocarditis.

So I think, you know, we talk so much about personalized and precision medicine. We have to do it, which means we should consider age and consider gender and make the appropriate choice and have that dialogue. And I think I've written many commentaries on this. I feel like the CDC has not done a good job of actually thinking through all the alternatives. The alternatives aren't always two or nothing. There could be one. There could be perhaps refinement in dosing. These are strategies that could be pursued. I like that. I like that because I also read in reading up on things that you had talked about

and things that are in the news. I mean, there's obviously a risk to kids in getting COVID. It's not like they're totally risk-free. And one of the weird things that's happening with COVID now is potential kidney damage. It could happen to kids. It could happen to adults who have suffered from COVID. I saw that paper and I've seen so many papers about all the bad things COVID can do to you. And I guess I struggle with a lot of them because one, I will concede anything that makes you really sick that sends you to the ICU, there's going to be a convalescence period. And a lot of your organ systems are going to be impaired. But the question that comes in my mind is, you know, how much does COVID do more than

other things if you adjust for the level of how sick you got? Like, in other words, if I just had a mild respiratory infection, should I be more worried if it was COVID than three years ago, rhinovirus or influenza? And I think that's a really tough question to handle. One of the challenges with that paper on, I think, renal dysfunction or kidneys getting worse over time is that some of those people got really sick from COVID. And if you get really sick from anything, your kidney function is not going to be as good as somebody who never got sick at all.

So I think it's kind of tough to tease out the long-term consequences of COVID-19 from just being that sick compared to other illnesses. And I actually think that's coming in the heart. And by the way, I didn't mean to skip over the fact that myocarditis, that heart inflammation, it can be mild and it can be nothing that goes away, but it can also potentially be fatal. So the stakes are high and we really do need answers on this stuff. All right, listen, enough of my questions. What about your questions? I'm sure you want to talk to the good doctor. We've got the lines firing up right now.

We're going to do that next. If you want to call in, there's still time. It's 833-44-MEGAN, 833-446-3496. So our doctor of an eye is still here with me and we're taking your calls at 833-44-MEGAN. The phone lines are lit up. 833-446-3496. We're going to start now with Jenny from the block.

No, it's Jenny from Tennessee who's got a question for Dr. Prasad. Jenny, what would you like to know? Hi, I am an eighth and ninth grade English teacher, so words matter to me. Why do we call this thing a vaccine? And here's my rationale. Never in my life have I once ever feared smallpox or polio or MMR. Why? Because I'm vaccinated. I'm kind of ticked off that kids today don't have to suffer through the rite of passage of chickenpox because they are vaccinated. Yet we call this a vaccine and it's still, it's never going to be eradicated. So do

you think that we misnamed it? Shouldn't it be more aligned with like a flu shot that we get once a year? It's got several different strands in it. You have the probability of getting the flu. If you do get it, it may not be as severe, or you may get the full-blown one. Okay. Go ahead, Doc. Yeah. So I guess I would say that, I think, I mean, I think the reason we call it a vaccine, I guess, is that it just means that you're getting a little bit of the bad thing. So you're training your body's immune system that when you actually see the bad thing in real life, you're going to fight it off better.

And you're right. I think some vaccines are so good that the disease in question is a disease we almost never talk about. But other vaccines are not as good, such as the flu vaccine. And so you can still get the flu even if you've been vaccinated. And it does appear increasingly like that there are breakthrough infections of SARS CoV-2 for people who've gotten this. So, you know, your point's well taken. What I would say is like, you know, what is the reason to get it? Why do, you know, we advise adults to get it is that I

think your risk of bad outcomes and your risk of even acquiring it in the first place are massively reduced by getting this vaccine. It does have a massive reduction in the risk of bad outcomes from having gotten it versus not having gotten it. And that's been shown in many series, including in Israel, United Kingdom, and including in the randomized trials that led to approval. So quick follow up on that, you know, because we've had breakthrough infections, they call them breakthrough. But are you still more I know Delta is more contagious. You can still get it if you've had the vaccine more so than the earlier variants. But are you still more protected than an unvaccinated person from getting COVID if you've had the vaccine, even with Delta? Yes. And certainly more protected from the thing

that we were always should not forget what the goal was. The goal is, you know, not that the virus goes in your nose and you can detect it on a swab. The goal is to avoid you getting really sick, going to the hospital, feeling terrible and being intubated and dying. And this vaccine protects against that marvelously. Okay. All right. Let's go to Robert in Florida, who's got a question about the vaccine and also boosters. Hey, Robert. Good afternoon. Quick question. Got the Pfizer vaccine, you know, four or five months ago. And they're saying now that Moderna is a little more effective than the Pfizer. Has anybody done any studies or anything else to see if in the near future, we could go ahead and get a Moderna vaccine on top of the Pfizer? That's my question.

That's a good question. I would say one that the dose was always different. Moderna's dose was always more than the Pfizer dose. And there are many, many studies that are coming out trying to calculate what we call vaccine efficacy or how well both of these work. I will tell you, you got to take all these with a grain of salt. And here's a couple of reasons why. You know, in all of the countries that debuted these vaccines, who were the people who got them first? You know, some places it was healthcare workers, but in a lot of places, we start by giving them to the oldest folks among us because they had the highest risk of bad outcomes

and gradually gave them to younger and younger folks. So when you start to look now and say, well, you know, what's the risk of breakthrough infection in people who got it nine months ago? Well, that's enriched with older people. Why? Because they were the ones who got it nine months ago and younger people may have gotten it sooner.

So these are kind of very tricky variables to kind of adjust for. So what I would say is I think that question, your specific question is being looked at like as we speak, people are very interested in knowing if you got two Pfizer's, do you need a third Pfizer? You potentially could get a Moderna. And I think we will learn the answer to that probably the next couple of months. But right now, I don't think they have, there's an authorization to give that booster in your situation. The only caveat I would add is if you are severely immunocompromised. So I would say, go talk to your doctor. There is an EUA for people who are immunocompromised, how that's defined, you know, you need a doctor to sit down with you and go over your medical history. But they do have an authorization for boosters.

EUA, Youth Authorization. By the way, is there any booster for people who have gotten J&J? It has not happened yet, although that's something where there's a lot of interest in doing that. And there've been some really nice op-eds. I think one of the New York Times by Paul Sachs

that people can read sort of making the case for that. But that's right on the cusp, I think, of happening. Okay. We're going now out west. Let's go to Michael in Colorado. Hey, Michael, what's your question? He's looking at the mountains. He's thinking about going out for a hike.

No, here he is. Oh, no. Okay. We lost him. But I think we've got Chris in Michigan teed up next, unless my team tells me I'm wrong. Hey, Chris. Hey, Megan. How are you?

Good. How are you doing? Good. So we've got kind of a unique situation up here. I'm up in northern Michigan. One of the few things that Governor Wittner did lately was allow each school district to decide for themselves what their masking policy would be. Now, our school board locally came up with a great plan to satisfy all sides. No mask if you don't want to. If you want to wear a mask, great. They provide a sterile classroom and clean it. Or you can do online virtual learning. So everybody was in support of

it. And on a Friday afternoon at 530, our local four-county health department, the Northwest Michigan Health Department, decided to trump the school district and issue a mask mandate for four counties. And since then, this was without board approval. Since then, they had a board meeting in which there were six hours of public comments from health professionals, parents, ultimately in which the health department board decided to rescind the order in which she is refusing to do so. So in response, we got a group of high school students, which reached 60 today, that refused to wear masks and ultimately had local law enforcement called and asked them to leave the school. Wow. What a mess. I'm like, poor Chris. I mean, what do you make of that, Doc? The school board comes to a reasonable decision that the parents are happy with and

the local health officials step in and say, we know better, you will mask those children, especially in light of the questionable mask data. Yeah, I will say this. I'll say that what I view as the, I mean, I think this is a question that there's so many people who want the answer to this. There are people who strongly believe you need the mask mandate.

And then there are people like, I think, Chris, who points out that what about the other option, which is an optional system? You can wear it if you want. You don't have to wear it if you don't want to wear it. And I think the truth is this is where the CDC has failed us. This is a massive research priority. If I was in charge of the CDC, I would run a study, 100, 200, 300 schools, and we randomly assign them to those two strategies, the mandate versus the optional. The control is optional. So no one is not allowed to do it.

If they want to do it, they can do it. And then let's ask, is SARS-CoV-2 spread lower in that school? Are fewer children hospitalized? The truth is we just don't know the answer. And to me, it is nails on a chalkboard when I go on and I watch people, scientists who I respect, say that this is proven beyond a doubt. It is not. There is not that level of evidence.

And that is a big problem. We can't live in this pandemic world into year two and not generate this evidence that people, there's a crying need from the public. So I would say we need to push on the CDC to do the studies to answer the question, is that push for mask mandate beneficial? Or is the solution that the school board came to in Chris's region sufficient? I have to say, I don't trust them. I don't trust the CDC. You know, they had that that study of the 90,000 kids in Georgia, and it found that there was no conclusive evidence that masks worked at all. In fact, it looked like they didn't have any much of a factor, if any. And they didn't even tout it. They didn't put it in the summary. They totally ignored it. And then

they issued mask mandates. So I don't trust them. I have to say studies are great. I mean, I don't trust. I agree with you. I mean, I agree with you in the sense that anytime you live in a world where people become true believers in any direction, it's very difficult for them to impartially adjudicate the evidence. They become true believers. I do think there are ways in which you can create a diverse group of people, not just solely run in the auspices of the CDC, but bring in other people who are more critical and get them to agree on a study design. And let's just see where the chips fall. That Georgia study, I think it's a problematic study in the sense that I just think it's not

useful to draw any firm conclusion. But you're right. I think the CDC did not emphasize that conclusion. And I said so as much to David in his article. Yeah. And there's a reason why. Okay. I think we've got Michael from Colorado back. He's done looking at the mountains and he wants to ask you a question. Michael, what's happening? Hi, how are you guys? Thanks so much for having me on. You know, if if this vaccine is is doing work, reducing the risk of an adult getting a major side effect and major illness from COVID-19 and we are going to be living with this for so long. Where is the messaging about doing what you can to stay healthy so that you are generally a healthier person and much less at risk of getting severely ill from COVID going out and getting, getting a run in, getting some sunshine, losing 15 pounds. I mean, all of these comorbidities

that we are walking around with are just as dangerous as anything. All right. We got 40 seconds for you on that doc. Go ahead. My answer is I could not agree with you more. I've heard people say this over and over again, which is why doesn't public health messaging include general wellbeing, losing some weight, which are modifiable risk factors for bad COVID outcomes. I couldn't agree with you more. We need to invest in that. That needs to be part of messaging, living a healthy life and doing the things you talk about, I think, are reasonable things. And I would like people to say it more, just like you do. Oh, so helpful, you guys.

This has been a delightful call in session. Really appreciate you guys phoning in. Doctor, appreciate your expertise so much. And don't forget to join us tomorrow. Please, everybody. We're going to take a look back at 9-11, 20 years later. Dan Crenshaw will be here. Deborah Burlingame, whose brother died captaining the

flight that went into the Pentagon and much, much more. And don't forget, you can check out the show on YouTube and on podcast later today.