The Megyn Kelly Show - Cuomo and COVID, with Janice Dean and Dr. Martin Kulldorff | Ep. 139

Episode Date: August 3, 2021

Megyn Kelly is joined by Janice Dean, Fox News meteorologist, and Dr. Martin Kulldorff, professor of medicine at Harvard University, to discuss the results of the investigation into sexual misconduct allegations against Gov. Andrew Cuomo that were made public today, what might happen next with Cuomo, the status of still-ongoing investigations into Cuomo when it comes to COVID and nursing homes, the state of the Delta variant in America, COVID natural immunity, kids and schools, vaccines and mandates, Dr. Fauci and freedom of choice, the elimination of alternate voices at the CDC, and more.Follow The Megyn Kelly Show on all social platforms:Twitter: http://Twitter.com/MegynKellyShowInstagram: http://Instagram.com/MegynKellyShowFacebook: http://Facebook.com/MegynKellyShowFind out more information at:https://www.devilmaycaremedia.com/megynkellyshow

Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations. Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show. Oh my gosh, the breaking news today on Governor Andrew Cuomo in New York. Would you believe we had Janice Dean booked? Sometimes you just get lucky in foreseeing the news cycle. We had her booked for a few days now to talk about the latest. what he has allegedly done and what he and his office did to cover up his misdeeds toward nearly a dozen women over the past year plus. Janice is here. Janice is the one who's been doggedly pursuing Andrew Cuomo for the deaths in the New York City and New York State nursing homes, which took the lives of both of her in-laws and initially felt torn about if he went down, would it be because

of the women issue? And why didn't the thousands upon thousands of seniors who were killed by this order he issued sending COVID positive patients back into nursing homes matter? Why wasn't that enough? Well, it's a complicated explanation, but hearing what he allegedly did to these women, state troopers, young executive assistants, women who waited on rope lines to meet him, to diminish them while he sits in an anchor post and says to America, I care very deeply about these issues, sexual harassment. How dare he? How dare CNN allow that? She's here. We thought this was going to be a COVID show. We talked to her about Cuomo, and we have Martin Kulldorff, a brilliant professor of medicine at Harvard University. He was co-author of the Great Barrington Declaration. You guys remember that?

He's going to talk about the Delta variant and the lockdowns and all the craziness that's happening coast to coast. So we've got everything covered for you today, but sort of a weird turn at the end of JD. One you'll find helpful. But man, what a show. Just before we toss to her, if you haven't watched it today, and apparently, you know, we're taping this around noon, Governor Cuomo's out denying, denying everything and standing firm. This guy's not going anywhere unless he's forced out.

Here was Letitia James, a Democrat, Attorney General of the State of New York, with her conclusions after an independent investigation was conducted into his behavior. The independent investigation has concluded that Governor Andrew Cuomo sexually harassed multiple women and in doing so violated federal and state law. Specifically, the investigation found that Governor Andrew Cuomo sexually harassed current and former New York State employees by engaging in unwelcome and non-consensual touching and making numerous offensive comments of a suggestive and sexual nature that created a hostile work environment for women. Over the course of the five-month investigation, the investigators spoke to 179 individuals, including complainants, current and former members of the executive chamber, state troopers, additional state employees,

and others who interacted regularly with the governor. In addition, they reviewed more than 74,000 pieces of evidence. Governor Cuomo sexually harassed multiple women, many of whom were young women, by engaging in unwanted groping, kisses, hugging, and by making inappropriate comments. Further, the governor and his senior team took actions to retaliate against at least one former employee for coming forward with her story. This investigation has revealed conduct that corrodes the very fabric and character of our state government. But none of this, none of this would have been illuminated if not for the heroic women who came forward. And I am inspired by all the brave women who came forward.

But more importantly, I believe them. If you want to make up your own mind, download the report. It's publicly available. It has texts. It has evidence. It has direct communications from his accusers to others at and around the time of the alleged incidents. It has an appendix, an appendix, which, which has an email from Chris, Chris Cuomo, appearing to draft a statement for his brother. Check it out for yourself. You come up to come to your own decision about whether this is appropriate from a sitting New York governor and a sitting CNN anchor who purports to be objective.

We're going to kick it off with Janice Dean. Martin Kaldorf will be after that. Thanks for sharing in this program today. All right. Ah, JD, this has just ended. This is such a, this is such a wacky day. We just did an interview with you this morning before this came out, which we're now going to throw in the garbage can. It's no longer timely. I don't know about you, but I'm reeling. I'm kind of reeling in my seat about what we just heard, the specifics of what these women alleged and what he and his office allegedly did in response. I don't even know how to put this into words. I always assumed that the sexual harassment charges would be the thing that might get him for many reasons. And I am so proud of those brave women today, those young women who really risked their careers and their livelihoods and their reputation

to go against this powerful monster. And to see our Attorney General Letitia James, who's a Democrat, go up there and just line by line, you know, deliver the information, the disgusting behavior. It's all about power. And, you know, it doesn't matter if we're talking about the nursing homes or we're talking about him giving out friends and friends and family COVID tests. It's all about abuse of power with this guy. And I think today is the first day that we're going to hopefully see some accountability. self, um, said this, this tweet is making the rounds May 17th, 2013 quote, there should be a zero tolerance policy when it comes to sexual harassment. And we must send a clear message that this behavior is not tolerated. Um, there's no room for any of this in any workplace and certainly not in the state house of the great state of New York.

I want to go through with you some of the specific allegations because we learned a lot, a lot from Tish James, that presser and the document, the executive summary and so on that they put out, which is over 160 pages long. Um, just so people don't have to take your word for it or my word for it. Let's, let's see exactly what the women went in and told Letitia James. And by the way, her, her independent investigators, a lot of these, they take pains in the report to point out are corroborated by independent texts, friends who came forward, aides who admitted they saw it, state troopers who witnessed some of the behaviors. It's not to say Andrew Cuomo doesn't deny it, but just know this isn't just, I mean, with all due respect to Christine Blasey Ford,

it isn't just somebody coming forward after 30 years and saying, this is what I remember without any corroboration. This is painstaking. Executive assistant number one had close, this is her allegation according to the executive summary, had close and intimate hugs with him, kisses on the cheeks, forehead, at least one kiss on the lips, touching and grabbing of her butt during hugs. And on one occasion while taking selfies with him, comments about her personal life relationships, calling her and another girl mingle mamas, inquiring multiple times about whether she had cheated or would cheat on her husband, asking for her help, finding him a girlfriend. And then there was this at the executive mansion, November 2020, when the governor, during another close hug with this young executive assistant, quote, reached under her blouse and grabbed her breast.

That's sexual assault. It doesn't even have to be that egregious and unwanted physical touch. It's a sexual assault under the law. That is clear. If in fact that happened, and it's pretty detailed under the blouse, grabbing a young woman's breast, who is a lowly executive assistant for you. There's a reason that's number one in the complaint against this guy. You know, it's, it's hard for me to listen to because I had that happen as well in an office in New York, uh, little superior. He did the same thing to me, uh, grabbed my breasts from behind. So, um, so I feel for these women. I really do. I know it's kind of triggering. It is kind of, I hate that

word, but God damn it. It is. You, you say that. And I, it brings me right back to that office. And I know it's not about me. It's about these strong women, but you have to understand that this kind of behavior, we can't put up with this or tolerate it anymore. These brave women. I remember that what I was wearing that day when my boss did that. So to hear that and to be, to be in an office with an attorney and to, you know, they're strangers, right. And you're telling them your deepest, darkest secrets that you don't even tell your boyfriend or your husband. Oh my gosh. He, I mean, I just, having gone through this, you've gone through this, you just want him to go away in shame. He, he allegedly did this to this woman and the complaint says for over three months, this executive assistant kept this groping incident to

herself and quote, planned to take it to the grave. Been there, right? Been there. But she found herself becoming emotional while watching the governor's state at a press conference on March 3rd, 2021, the following. Listen to the comment that brought this woman forward. I want New Yorkers to hear from me directly on this. I fully support a woman's right to come forward. I now understand that I acted in a way that made people feel uncomfortable. But this is what I want you to know. I never touched anyone inappropriately. I never touched anyone inappropriately. She wasn't going to tell. Even though other women had come forward already, the dam had already broken.

This young woman wasn't going to tell because you know very well, as along with me, that women are terrified of getting this label slapped around them, that they're a complainer, that they're going to be a me tour. They don't want to get hired. They're afraid that they won't get hired. And that was the thing that did it. And she went to the investigators. She actually, she confided to colleagues who reported her allegations to senior staff in the executive chamber, who honestly, JD, the stories about the senior staff are almost as concerning. The web of aides who couldn't have cared less about the 11 women, staffers and outside the department as well, who came forward. I don't know what to say. It's, they all need to go.

They all need to resign in shame. And the fact that these people, his administration continued to try to smear these women, you know, up until a couple of weeks ago when Rich as a party, whose top aide was saying, I don't know if we can trust, you know, what's going on in the AG department. I don't know if we could trust these women and what they're saying. And, you know, the governor too, I remember a couple of weeks ago saying, you will be shocked when you find out, you know, what happened to me, you know, like him. Yeah. Like he's still, you know, it goes back to, don't be mean to me. You know, he's the victim. Give me a huge effing break.

Well, you got to hand it to Lindsay Boylan, who came forward first in December of last year, I think it was in a tweet who broke the dam, right? She was the first to actually say this happened to me. He kissed me inappropriately on the lips. He touched other body parts, made me feel very uncomfortable, asked me to play strip poker. And at the time she was running for office and they went for her. They dismissed her as a political operative. She's a Democrat, but they dismissed her as some sort of a political operative. And she stood alone for a while there. And I'm sure she was scared because he is a bully. And then one by one, other women started started coming forward. One one that I need to talk to you about. Trooper number one is how she's described in the complaint. They talk about how in early November 2017, the governor briefly met this trooper on at an event on the R.F. Kennedy Bridge, known as the Triborough Bridge in New York. After meeting her, he basically asked

to have her join his protective services unit, even though she hadn't met the requirement to have at least three years of police service. He clearly just had an eye for this young woman and brought her on board. Right. Then she joins the team. She says he harassed her. This is a state trooper harassed her on numerous occasions by number one, running his hand across her stomach from her belly button to her right hip when she held a door open for him in an event. What a prick. I'm sorry. I know he denies it. I want people to remember that. But this is an independent investigation that says he did it, that says his denials do not hold credibility, that talk about independent witnesses who verify these women, a state trooper there to protect his ass gets her stomach,

such an intimate body part felt up by him as she's trying to open the door for him. She's already in a subservient position to him. Then he ran his finger down her back from the top of her neck to her spine saying, Hey you, while she was standing in front of him at an elevator, this poor woman needed a protective detail of her own, kissing her and only her on was standing in front of him at an elevator. This poor woman needed a protective detail of her own.

Kissing her and only her on the cheek in front of another trooper, asking to kiss her on another occasion, making sexually suggestive and gender-based comments, including he asked her to help him find a girlfriend and described his criteria for a girlfriend as someone who, quote, can handle pain corroborated by several other troopers who witnessed much of this behavior, J.D.? It's, again, about power. We've talked about this. You know, victims of sexual harassment many times will tell you it's not necessarily about the sex. It's about having

power and making those people feel, you know, demeaned and that they can't do anything but listen to this lech. I'm glad it's all coming out, Megan. And I've always said I don't care what ultimately brings him down. I don't care what it is. I do want justice for my in-laws because there's a laundry list of scandals, not only with the sexual harassment, but with the nursing homes and him covering up the numbers and the $5.1 million book and using state resources and the friends and family COVID tests when nursing homes couldn't get them. And his brother, his brother needs to be looked at as well. His brother was giving detailed information almost as a lawyer to his brother and the administration on what to do about his sexual harassment charges. And CNN allowed it to happen.

Yeah, there's been no penalty to him for any of that. Chris Cuomo, now we know 11 alleged victims going forward one by one saying he grabbed my ass. He grabbed my breast underneath my blouse. He kissed me against my will. He told me, uh, I want somebody who, who can handle pain. One woman, he said, um, he told her he was lonely and he wanted to be touched. That was Charlotte Bennett, this young woman who was deeply traumatized. She was only 25 years old and said he wanted to date someone as young as 22 years old, uh, that he would be willing to do so. And so you read this, you find this out. I realize you're his brother, but you're also a news anchor in a major post. And you sit down and you say, let's dismiss it as cancel culture. It's called sexual assault. That's what it's called. Soon as you realize you're dealing with

a crime, we're beyond harassment now. We're beyond hostile work environment, which they alleged. You step out and you say, brother, you need a lawyer, an outside lawyer, not me. But instead, he advised him to attack them, to diminish them, to smear them. And the fact that this guy is still sitting at that anchor desk is a disgrace, Janice. CNN, you know, now is the time. You've had enough opportunities to protect this guy. Now we know that he was advising him to, you know, demean these women, smear them, and just keep going. So, you know, there's a lot of tentacles, obviously, here.

His administration, his brother, his family. But I hope that this is the first day of the end of his career. Well, Joe Biden had said in March that Andrew Cuomo must resign if an investigation confirmed the allegations. And Tish James has made no bones about it, that he engaged in serial sexual harassment, including against a number of current and former New York state employees by engaging in unwelcome, nonconsensual touching, as well as making numerous offensive comments of a suggestive and sexual nature, creating a hostile work environment. Can I tell you the one that stood out to me

as well? A woman in a rope line. She stood on a rope line, J.D., to meet him at an event in upstate New York, my home territory. And when she got up to him, this is May 17. She she said her name, Virginia Limiadis. When she when she got up to him, they say, quote, the governor reached her. He ran two fingers across her chest, pressing down on each of the letters that had her company name on it. And as he did so, he was reading the name of the energy company as he went. He then leaned in with his face close to her cheek and said, I'm going to say I see a spider on your shoulder before brushing his hand in the area between her shoulder and breasts below her collarbone. This woman, too, was not planning on coming forward until she heard his March 3rd, 2021 press conference

saying, I never touched anyone inappropriately. So good for her. And what a risk he took going out there and so boldly denying it. But you can't have a leader of a state out there doing this to women while governor JD, this isn't something that happened in ancient history. Yeah. And we need lawmakers now to step in front of the camera, like, uh, Gillibrand and Schumer and, you know, president Biden needs to say something now,

because from what I've heard, uh, you know, listening to New Yorkers, people in the media and even lawmakers that the only person Andrew Cuomo will listen to is Joe Biden. So Joe Biden needs to do something. Give him give him a little phone call. And he was supposed to be the attorney general. Oh, my gosh. I mean, this guy was the anointed one. Can you imagine? Right. No, exactly. This is going to be the person in charge of our lawmaker, our lawmaking and enforcement of our laws, including this kind of thing. I don't can we let's spend a minute talking about due process because I do care about it. And not all women, not all women, women should be believed. We've talked about that before. Right. Like some women do lie. Some of the things Tish James said today, I wish she hadn't said I wish she hadn't kept saying saying her truth. You know, that's, that's a bullshit phrase. There's truth, right? There's truth. Her testimonial, that's okay. And she said, I believe, I believe the women. Okay. I just, we, the guy does deserve due process. Any man accused deserves due process. So what does that look like here? I mean, that's a good point. You know, I, I'm not a good judge because I am very biased and I think he's guilty of pretty much everything. So, but I hear what you're saying. Yeah. I mean, she,

she's out there basically saying, I believe these women and And well, I mean, there's I don't know what person except for his family would go on the record publicly as a sort of a sweeping denial, actually publicly. And then he went in for 11 hours and spoke to Tish James and offered his denials. And they're detailed in her report. If you want to see specifically what he's denied and what he hasn't. He basically claims that anything, no inappropriate touching, but there were some kisses, but they were all initiated by the women. Sure, sure they were. It's weird how they all just, no one can keep their hands off of him if you read his denial. And now it's a matter of the court of public opinion because this is a political matter.

Even she said that. When it comes to a crime, she's saying prosecutors can do what they want to do. I'm not bringing charges against him. That wasn't within my purview. He had to assign her the power to do this investigation, which he did under duress. Like they were, there was too much pressure on him to, to, to ignore it. So she didn't have the purview to say criminal charges are being brought. She said prosecutors can do what they, what they think is appropriate. So now it's a political matter.

That's what this is. And politically he can come out and say anything more he wants to, but I think it's, it's done. There's an independent investigation. These are the findings. People read the report, come to their own conclusions. Well, and also, you know, you have to think that maybe he doesn't want to step down because he gets the, you know, he gets the benefits of having attorneys work for him as the governor of New York. So I don't know if it's a really sound thing for him to step down financially. Right. As governor, he is, you know, they're going to protect him, his attorneys. If he steps down now, that's going to be, you know, a money pit of lawyers. Hmm. I'd have to look to that. I mean, there are some exceptions. If you're accused of misconduct in your sort of as a personal matter, as a man, as opposed to as governor, not every act would be represented by the governor's lawyers, or at least in some places.

I don't know the law, but this is as governor. So we'll see. I don't know what's going to happen. this allegedly. He was winning Emmys. He was given a book deal. He was allegedly using state staff to write that book instead of working on state policy and fighting COVID and so on. They're writing him the book he made $5 million off of while going to fundraisers and being the toast of the town, celebrated by his brother on CNN, celebrated by even recently by people like Whoopi Goldberg and Ben Stiller going to these fundraisers. All of this had come out, much of this had come out, no one gives a damn.

Yeah, it was difficult. But if it wasn't for him celebrating himself with his brother and going on all of the channels, NBC, ABC, CBS, and with the soft focus and the family and everything, oh, look at this governor, he could soft focus and the family and everything, you know, oh, look at this governor. He could be president someday. If it wasn't for that, I don't know that I would have become so vocal. You know, that's the thing that made my blood boil. The thing, seeing his brother on CNN with the fake Q-tip, I mean, the next day I went on Tucker Carlson's show and told the story of my in-laws and how the governor was putting COVID positive patients into nursing homes and how I believed he was covering up those numbers. And even though it was just me out there, I felt somebody had to speak up.

So, you know what? I'm really glad that this guy, instead of, you know, kind of being quiet about it, shouted to the world how great he was. That's interesting. And the media did too, right? They did his bidding as well. Right. I mean, this is all, it all ties together because the nursing home situation, I mean, with all due respect to these 11 women, it's, there's no comparison, which one is more egregious. There's just no comparison. His, but his disrespect, bullying nature and view of humanity is just tools at his disposal is consistent throughout. But I mean, you it's one thing to have a highly unpleasant, disturbing experience with the guy in his office. And it's another to have your parents die like Sean did. You know, your your hero firefighter 9-11 husband had both parents killed in these

New York nursing homes after his order sending COVID positive patients back in there. And this was something that was called to his attention as a potentially deadly decision. Of course, they're saying the nursing homes can't handle this. They're too small. They're going to be breathing right on other people who are the most vulnerable. And he didn't listen. He did it anyway. And then when caught, he denied it. He denied the numbers of dead. He always tried to blame everyone else. The nurses, God never took responsibility. Didn't care. Just kept saying people die. They die. And now again, you know, attacking and retaliating against at least one of his accusers. At some point you have to look at the guy and say,

we've seen your character in office as a governor and we're done. We're done. Yeah. I don't know if we'll ever see justice. I still am angry about the DOJ that Biden's administration decided it wasn't valid to go look as to why these governors put COVID positive patients into nursing homes. Why doesn't he want to know the origin of that? Don't you think that as we go further on and we have another pandemic, God forbid, that wouldn't we want to know the answers as to why these governors issued that mandate? So he dropped his investigation. I'm going to be vocal about that too. I mean, Senator Tim Scott and I are already trying to, you know, rattle some doors. You know, I'm going to pound some doors in Congress if I get the chance to, you know, rattle some doors. You know, I'm going to pound some doors

in Congress. If I, if I get the chance to say, this is important, these, this is our greatest generation and you don't care. You don't care why thousands died and infected patients were put into their most vulnerable places. That is an atrocity. Um, and I want to find out why our governor did it for 46 days and why he covered up the numbers and why he decided to write a book instead of writing condolence cards. I don't know if we'll get those answers. But again, Megan, I've always said that I don't care. I don't care what gets him. He needs to go. He doesn't deserve this position. And he is really a truly awful human being. And it's the report goes on to talk about him behind the scenes trying to do damage control as the women come out one after the other saying, OK, I'll agree to apologize and get counseling. We'll say I'm getting counseling, but we'll postpone that decision or that announcement till later. And Chris Cuomo is apparently weighing in on all of this, according to the report. You know what measures like, oh, counseling. I'm so sick of the damn counseling. You know what I mean? It's like you don't get counseled out of stuff like give me a break. Like he needed to

be counseled to be told, don't grab your employee's breast under her blouse. Don't shove your tongue down somebody's throat who works for you. Don't say you want to date a woman who likes pain or you feel lonely and want to be touched to your staff, don't grab women's bottoms, don't grab women's chest to wait on the rope line. What counseling is going to disabuse him of these notions? Yeah, that's a good point. And, you know, to the Albany press, too, I've talked to a lot of reporters that have followed this governor, and many of them have told me that he'll never go down. Albany reporters, they're like, you know, your, you know, your, your, your crusade is a valid one, but he's Teflon. He's not going anywhere. And I just think to myself, my gosh, if I listened to you people, we wouldn't be here today. If the

women listened to those people, listen to all of the big media channels saying that he was the go-to pandemic politician. Man, I'm still sort of in a state of shock, but I'm so proud of those women. I'm so proud of the people that stood up. He's a monster. And I don't know what's going to happen. I think the lawmakers, the assembly in New York really needs to get their act together and they need to impeach him. Yeah. If he doesn't resign, there is still an active impeachment investigation going on in the state assembly, which I know you don't have any faith in. They're slow rolling it just to bounce this. Yeah. But the pressure just amped up significantly. And on him,

on them, there's a separate investigation by the U.S. attorney and the FBI into some of these nursing home allegations. And we'll see whether that goes anyplace. But Letitia James really had more power than anybody. She's already come out and backed your allegations about his dishonesty on the on the nursing homes, that his understatement of the numbers and so on. And now this, and I know she wants his job. I mean, I know that. She's a Democrat. Some people say she's the next attorney general or she's the next governor, but these are outside investigators and these are women who came forward with their testimonials supported by third party witnesses. So the public's going to make its own decision. I don't know, JD, when you think back on your past year, you know, when you first sort of took up this mantle as an activist when it comes to him and this issue. How do you think you've changed?

I can't give up. I mean, there have been so many times where even Sean, my husband, has said to me, how long are you going to keep doing this for? And I won't give up. I won't give up. I can't, I've gone this far, right? I mean, this is over a year in and the dam is breaking, you know, like what if I hadn't gone on Tucker Carlson's show in May and said, this is what I think is going on? You know, I've become friends with these women who have come forward. You know, we have become friends. And I've messaged several of them today and told them I am standing in solidarity with them. And we've got this.

I feel, you know, people think I'm political. This has nothing to do with politics. I don't care who they voted for. I'm so proud of these young women, Megan. I'm, I'm, I'm so proud of those young women because they risked everything. Yeah. How are they? I think they're okay. I mean, I think they feel what I feel that sort of like adrenaline rush where you're like, Oh, could this be it? Could we be getting him? Is this the moment? Right. But there's, you know, there's still, there's still time. We still have to figure out what he's going to do. Right. I mean, if you judge by history, he's not going anywhere, right? No. And he's protected by a powerful machine.

And it's time for lawmakers to stand up. Kristen Gillibrand, Chuck Schumer, who are the most powerful New York politicians, and Joe Biden. Joe Biden needs to do the right thing. And he needs to call his buddy Andrew Cuomo and say, buddy, it's time to go. Yeah, you got to go. Janice, without you, this would look very different. This whole story would look very different. I really do wonder whether even Lindsey Boylan ever would have sent that tweet had it not been for Janice Dean and all the tweets and activism that preceded that. And I just mean activism in terms of calling attention, looking for real answers. That's all it took because the press did not do its job. They were too busy lionizing this guy.

And there was one woman and a couple of lawmakers who had who had skin in the game. They had lost loved ones of their own Democrats who said, yeah, we're going to push harder. Yeah. You know, I get how smoothie is at the press conferences, but something bad happened here and we're going to look into it. And we don't care that we stand alone and we don't care how many times in your case, I get attacked by the press or Soledad O'Brien or Matthew Dowd. You can call me whatever you want. I'm not stopping. And that's where you remain. That's where you still are. I'm so proud of you. I think our journey together helped me to get to this point. So I thank you and your friendship. Well, it made me feel watching that today, her talking about the women and their testimonials and some of the stuff he did woman after woman, it did remind me of the ale situation

and, and sort of the shock when you realize how many women are there and that you weren't, it wasn't just you and you know, there was a culture that allowed it, not just, you know, just one bad guy. And then you have a different way of looking at it. Like I was immersed in this situation that was not on my own making. When they talk about like Melissa DeRosa, just moving one of the complainants and saying, no, no young women can be with the governor from now on for his protection for his, this was, she had an obligation to report it up the line. And according to Tish James, she didn't, she didn't, she didn't care about the women in that office. She cared about power and protecting him. And if he goes down, she ought to go down in disgrace with him. She and that guy,

Rich, both of these people have come after you as well. They're like his jackals. You know, in the movie, The Omen, where they're the jackal, there's the jackal that supports little Damien. There is jackals and jackals in these situations have to go too. Yeah. Well, it's a good day today. And I do feel a small part of justice is being done. And I believe the angels are on our side, Megan. Yeah. Yeah. You're one of them.

You're looking left and right. And you've seen a bunch of twins there, JD, because you're all goodness. And I just, I love you so much. Thanks for being, it seems right that you were here today for this, this particular story. I feel, I feel it was serendipitous. Right. Uh, okay. To be continued. Love you lady. Martin Kaldorff's coming up next. He's professor of medicine at Harvard, and he was on the CDC's Scientific Committee for Evaluating Side Effects of the Vaccinations up until April. They kicked him off. And wait until you hear why. This guy's been very brave about pushing back against some of the narratives all along.

But the CDC doesn't apparently want differences of opinion. Some sense talk on Delta, on lockdowns, on mandates, and his story about the CDC right after this. Let's just get right into it. The CDC says the war has changed because the Delta variant is far more contagious than the earlier variants. You have much more of the virus in your nose, even if you've been vaccinated. And that's why we all have to mask up universally. And we have to sort of go backward and start fighting this war as though it were March 2020. Do you agree? No, any virus will have mutations, and some of them might make it more contagious, so that it's spread more easily from person to person. But the key thing is twofold. One is that we have a lot of people who have national immunity from COVID because they've had COVID during the last year and a half. We also have a lot of people

who have immunity from vaccines. So it doesn't make sense to look at cases. We have to look at mortality and death. And what we've seen now is a decoupling of cases and death. So if you are immune, your immune system doesn't prevent you from being exposed to the virus. It doesn't prevent the virus from entering your body. And even if you're immune, the virus can start replicating in your body. So it's very possible to test positive for this virus, even if you have a well-functioning immune system that works against the virus.

What the immune system does, it protects you from severe illness and it protects you from death. So we have seen in many places that this decoupling from the case counts and the mortality. So in England, for example, there was a big spike of cases that's now on its way down during the summer. There's a little blip in the mortality because there are still some people who are not immune yet. We saw in Sweden there were three waves of cases. The first two had mortality also. In the third wave during the spring, which peaked about in April, there was almost no mortality. The mortality was very, very low and now Sweden has close to zero

mortality for about a month now. If we look at the US, in July the COVID mortality was lower than at any point since March of 2020 when the pandemic started in the U.S. So that's good news. We have a lot of immunity now in the population. Most of it, I think, is from the natural immunity from people having had COVID with or without severe symptoms, but of course also from the vaccines. So it's very strange that we now are going through this whole thing again when we have had this decoupling. And when the pandemic is over, the virus is not going to go away. Zero COVID is impossible.

Australia has tried it, but failed. Or as some jokers said, they have now successfully eradicated the virus a dozen times. But it is impossible to eradicate this virus. It will be endemic. It will be with us

forever. We will live with it. But the mortality, we're not going to see the kind of mortality that we have had in the last year and a half. Every season, there will be some older people who have a weakened immune system that will unfortunately die from this virus in in future years, but these huge waves that we have seen of mortality, those we will not see once the pandemic is over, once it's endemic. All right, a couple of things to follow up in there. Let's start with natural immunity. Why and how did we get to the place of pretending that natural immunity means nothing, that even those who have had COVID have to get the vaccine? How did we get to the place of pretending that natural immunity means nothing? That even those who have had COVID have to get the vaccine?

How did that happen? That's a very good question. And I don't know, because to me, as a public health scientist and somebody who's been working with vaccines for a long, long time, it's just stunning. Two and a half thousand years ago, the Greeks, they knew that there were natural immunities. So when they had an epidemic, they used people who had survived the disease to care for those who were sick, which was smart to do.

I wish we were as smart nowadays. It reminds me of any mother who's had a sick child over and over in their toddler years knows that she must have some sort of immunities because we don't get the virus over and over that our kids are getting. Because, you know, for me, I'm 50 years old. I've had a lot of viruses. Now I'm immune. And that's why, to your point, you can go in there and take care of your kids when they're sick over and over without getting it yourself. Yeah. And, I mean, now we have vaccines for so many of our infectious diseases. But if you go back to the grandmothers, they dealt with children who had chickenpox had mumps, rubella, et cetera.

And that was a part of life at that time. Now it's not. So maybe that has changed people not understanding natural immunity as much as we used to do. But in the beginning, there was no reason to believe that COVID will not provide immunity for the future. And now we have the scientific studies that show us that if you've had COVID, you have very good immunity.

Not only to actually COVID, there has been a study out of Hutchinson and Emory who shows that those who have recovered from COVID-19, they also have immunity against SARS-CoV-1. So SARS-1 that we had earlier in this century, as well as immunity against the four common coronavirus that have been around for a long time. I don't understand it. I mean, other than does the CDC want to line the pockets of Pfizer and Moderna and J&J? Because that would make sense, right? Just we want to get as many people getting vaccines and therefore these companies getting paid as possible, or they have a sincerely held belief that you can raise your immunity level from, I don't know, prevention of 80% to prevention 90% of the time if you just add on to your natural immunity with the vaccine. I mean, what do you think is the reason they're essentially harassing people who have had

COVID to not go in restaurants and not get on airplanes and not go into arenas if they don't get jabbed? I don't know what the reason, because there's no public health reasons for it. And it's also stunning that you have scientists who obviously understand this, but they're not speaking up about it. I mean, we have had the virus for about almost two years now. So we have very solid evidence that we have long-term protection. The vaccine hasn't been around, has been around for a year shorter. So we have less evidence for the vaccines. And you wouldn't normally for viruses,

you would expect the vaccines to be not quite as good in terms of the same immunity as natural disease. But this idea that people have had COVID need to get vaccinated is very strange. And it's also very damaging because there are places in this world where older people who need this vaccine because they are at high risk, everybody can get infected, but there's a thousand-fold difference in mortality between the oldest and the youngest. So older people need the vaccines, and there are

many people in South Asia, in Africa, in South America, and so on, who has not received the vaccine. So instead of vaccinated people in the US and Europe who already had the disease and who are therefore immune, those vaccines should go to other countries where there are many older people who have not been vaccinated. 12-year-olds now, and younger, they're talking about getting it to five-year-olds at some point this fall or winter and beyond. They don't they don't need this. They don't they don't need it. And I don't know, you tell me whether you think it's appropriate for them to even be. They haven't yet talked about mandating it for the young ones, but some of the schools are going to do that.

Yeah, that's wrong for a few reasons. But if you say, look at the children, for children, COVID is less dangerous than the annual influenza. Every year in the US, depending on the severity of the influenza, between 200 and 1,000 children die from influenza every year. And that's, of course, very tragic. In the US, so far, we've had, I think, 300-something reported COVID death among children. But we don't even know how many of those are truly from COVID versus with COVID because CDC hasn't done the audit.

And John Hopkins professor Martin McCary wrote a very important, I think, op-ed. I think it was in Wall Street Journal where he was arguing that CDC should make these audits to find out. And they have thousands of employees, so it's not so difficult to do for them. But they haven't done it, and that's sort of surprising,

because that's sort of their job, I think. But even if all of those were COVID deaths, it's still less than an average influenza season. So the risk, the mortality risk for children, they can get infected. Most are asymptomatic. Some will be mildly symptomatic. Very few will be hospitalized.

And almost nobody would have mortality from this. So it's very surprising that there's this push and drive to vaccinate children. Because we don't know enough about adverse reactions. We know that myocarditis, which is that the vaccine causes myocarditis in young people. But we don't know yet know what exactly, we don't have a precise estimate of the risk for children of myocarditis as of yet. Yeah, right. And I think that's a legitimate worry for parents, myocarditis. I mean, families like my own, where we have a bad history, especially with the male population of my family, of heart disease and heart events. And I don't want anything that's

going to further potentially compromise my children's hearts when the risk on the other side is essentially a mild cold. Yeah. And a good example is actually Sweden, because in the first wave in the spring of 2020, Sweden was the only major Western country who did not close the schools, where schools were open throughout the pandemic, throughout the height of that wave. And this was done without any masks in the school, without social distancing in the schools. Six children were told to go home, but there was no testing of the children. And among the 1.8 million children ages 1 to 15, both in preschool, daycare and schools, of those 1.8 million children in Sweden doing that first

way, there were exactly zero deaths from COVID. And there were a few hospitalizations, but not many, maybe half a dozen, two dozen. So this is not a serious disease for children. How the immune system works is when children are young, they're exposed to various viruses, and that builds their immune system that they rely on for the rest of their lives. So I would say that with this pandemic, we're actually kind of lucky in the sense that it is not something that affects children very much. Yeah. So now we vaccinated 90% of the old people, 90% of the people over 65 in America have gotten at least one jab, 80% and it's growing, have gotten double,

double jabbed. So they're fully vaccinated. So the most vulnerable population is protected. Or if they haven't gotten the jab, there's a reason for it, right? They've chosen, they can't, and therefore they'll take the appropriate precautions or they just don't believe in it. And that's, that's freedom. That's their choice. They'll live with the consequences one way or the other. But what we're hearing from Fauci right now, this is a quote is that the fact is if you get infected, even if you are without symptoms, you very well may infect another person who may be vulnerable. Okay. We know that's true, but then he says, so in essence, you are encroaching on their individual rights. So if you get it, if you've been vaccinated, but you get it and you

have the virus in your nose and you give it to somebody else who is not vaccinated, Fauci's message is you're encroaching on their individual rights. How are we supposed to deal with that? It's a very strange mindset. We have lived with infectious diseases for hundreds and thousands of years. And this idea that we blame the person who is infected another person, that's something that we should never, ever, ever do. Infectious diseases is not about blame or fear. So that's wrong thinking. That's all I can say about it. Well, I mean, the unvaccinated are the ones who are getting sick, right?

It's the people who are vaccinated who are getting these breakthrough infections. First of all, the numbers are very low, which you wouldn't know to watch the news right now. Axios had a report pointing out that less than 0.1% of vaccinated Americans are testing positive for COVID-19. So it's 164 million Americans have been vaccinated. They say around 125,000 people have tested positive for breakthrough infections in about 38 states. Again, that represents less than 0.08% of those who have been vaccinated and zero point zero zero one percent have died. So, you know, your your risks of getting this thing, if you've been vaccinated, are still extremely low. And then when you get it, your risks of getting seriously sick from it are even lower. And your risk of dying if you've been vaccinated are next to nothing. So this is about

the people who have chosen not to get vaccinated, falling subject to the Delta variant. And the CDC's messaging is somehow the rest of us who've been vaccinated have an obligation to protect them by masking up now, universal masking. And your thoughts on that are what? Well, if somebody doesn't want to get vaccinated, that's their own responsibility for doing that. And if they're old, I think they made the wrong decision. But that's a decision that they can make. But they shouldn't then demand that other people put masks on to protect them, especially since there's not much evidence about masks, actually. So the key thing we should do is to encourage all people to get the vaccines. If they got only one shot, they should be encouraged to get the second if it was Pfizer

or Moderna. And the way to do that is not through mandates or vaccine passports, because public health should be based on trust. So they should be encouraged to do so. And if there are people who want it, who haven't gotten it yet, maybe because they are homeless and so on, then we should have more outreach efforts to get the vaccines to them. But to put masks on people or children, for example, that's not the right way to do this. I saw you said something like you had an alternative way

of referring to masks on children that you proposed. What do you think people should be saying? Children should not wear masks, I think, at all. I don't think it's good for them. If we look at, I mean, I know, for example, Fauci was arguing for it, but I think that was a triple stumble he made because, one, there's absolutely no evidence that mass works on children. There is no scientific evidence. Secondly, even if they did work, children are at a minuscule risk for mortality and very low risk from severe disease. Third, they don't transmit it to other people.

They're not efficient transmitters to other people. We know that the children do not transmit it very much. So for example, teachers are much more likely to get infected by a fellow teacher than by students. So all those three things by itself would argue that we should not wear masks on children. So I find it very, very surprising this push to mask children in schools.

You retweeted an op-ed calling for this change, saying, instead of saying, wear a mask, we need to say, have their breathing obstructed. Kids need to have their breathing obstructed in order to attend school, which is where they're going. And to your point, Martin, they're saying now, these teachers who refuse to go into the classroom, saying it's too dangerous, it's too dangerous and we need to be at the front of the line for the vaccines and everybody has to be vaccinated. In New York City, 40 percent of the teachers have chosen not to be vaccinated. Forty. And the head of the teachers union, the second largest in the country, Randy Weingarten, is saying we'll talk about it should be a mandatory subject of negotiation, meaning that she wants money. She's they're going to jack up the city to make it worth their while, but their

while. But these are the same teachers who refuse to do it. And it's just one other point. Jim Garrity of National Review had a great line who said, clearly, these educators were not all that worried about catching covid. He says, apparently, the fear of covid was just powerful enough to make returning to the classroom unthinkable, COVID was just powerful enough to make returning to the classroom unthinkable, but not quite powerful enough to get them to get off their butts and go get vaccinated. Yeah, I think that should teachers should be able to decide themselves if they want to be vaccinated. So I don't think there should be compulsory vaccinations. I don't believe in mandatory vaccination on COVID-19.

I think that's counterproductive. I think if you force people to do something, then it's maybe likely that some people will be very suspicious and refuse it. And we can see, I'm from Sweden, my native country, and Sweden has never had vaccine mandates for any vaccines. Sweden has one of the highest vaccination rates in the world. And did very well with vaccinating older people with limited vaccine supplies. So it's much better to have voluntary vaccinations.

And I think that those people who are pushing vaccine passports and vaccine mandates, they have done much more to damage the confidence in vaccines than the so-called anti-vaxxers have ever done in the last, over several decades. So I've been working with vaccines for a long time. I'm a huge fan of vaccines. I think it's one of the greatest inventions of mankind. It has saved so many lives from smallpox and onwards. And we spent decades to build up a trust in vaccines through various monitoring the safety and so on, and education. And there's been a small group of people, anti-vaxxers who has been sort of arguing,

but they haven't been successful because there is very high confidence in vaccines. But now these, they call themselves pro-vaccine people, but I think they're actually more anti-vaccine because they are arguing for vaccine passports and vaccine mandates. And that is very counterproductive. So they have done more damage to vaccine confidence

than the anti-vaxxers ever did over a couple of decades. Can we spend a minute on vaccines since you are an expert? There's still so much hesitancy. There's a belief, I know by many, that the vaccine could cause infertility in women in particular, but possibly in men as well. Is there any reason to actually believe that? I don't think there's any data on that as of yet. But the key thing to remember is that when you have a new vaccine, and when you have a new drug on the market, there are always questions about the safety.

For example, when the COVID vaccines came out, we didn't know about the myocarditis. Now we do know that the vaccines causes myocarditis, and especially in younger men. But we didn't know that in the beginning. So when a new vaccine or new drugs comes on the market, there are questions and marks about the safety, which is why we monitor the safety. And it takes a few years before we actually have a really good picture of that. So if we look at the COVID vaccine, if you are, let's say, 75 years old, well, your risk from dying from COVID is quite high. It's worse than the annual influenza. So even if there's a small risk for some adverse reaction to the vaccine, it's still worthwhile for you to take the vaccines. You lower your risk of COVID with quite a bit for a potential small increased risk for something else that we don't necessarily know about yet.

So there, I think it's a no brainer. If you're 75 years old, you should absolutely get the vaccine. On the other hand, if you're 15 years old, your risk from dying from COVID is minuscule. So then the thing is, so then even a small risk from a vaccine, from myocarditis or something else, can tip the balance so that it's no longer an advantage-benefit-risk ratio. And that takes time to figure out exactly what those risks are. So we shouldn't at this point, I think, push vaccines on children.

We should certainly not mandate vaccines on anybody when we don't know exactly what the safety profile is of these vaccines. Up next, we're going to talk about some testimonials from doctors in various places, like Louisiana, saying hospitals are starting to fill up and this is becoming an ongoing problem. And what is, what does Dr. Koldorf think about that? And then I'll ask him about his experience on that CDC committee and why they bounced him off. Unbelievable. But first we want to bring you a feature we have here on the MK show called Asked and Answered, where we answer some of our listener mail. And Steve Krakauer, who's our executive producer, culls through the many submissions to find a few that sound interesting. And today, what's the one that we've chosen, Steve?

Yeah, Megan, this one came to us from questions at devilmaycaremedia.com. Love the questions that we're getting in there, so please keep them coming as well. This one comes to us from Charlotte Ritter, who is in our younger demo, I would say. She's going to be a high school sophomore next fall. And she has a question. She says, you have a lot of advice on how parents and

teachers can handle the wokeness that has invaded our country and systems. But how do you recommend students fight against the nonsense? It's a good question because I know a lot of students are worried about their grades. You have far left teachers. They reward thinking that mirrors their own. You worry about getting into the right college. I get all of teachers. They reward thinking that mirrors their own. You worry about getting into the right college. I get all of that. I've heard it all from students like you and their parents as well. And I have a very good friend who's very well educated and wants her kids to be as well. And she tells her kids, just go along. You just, while you're in school, you just, yes, of course, whatever you think. Cause you know, she just wants them to get into the best

school possible. Uh, and I get that. I would say I don't agree. It's not my approach to life and it's not really what I want my kids to do. I think if you have a principle, you have to stand up for it. I think you have to start practicing that early in life. I don't think it gets easier. I think it gets harder as time goes on. And if you have a lifetime of saying what you actually feel supported by facts, um, you'll live sort of a, I don't know, uh, an ethical life, right. That's true to who you are and your own values. And I think understanding that it's dicey doing that in an environment in which they will be against you, right. Especially the people in power over you will be against you. I think it can be helpful to, to use other people. So it, you know, whatever it is, like you, you might cite Abigail Schreier or you might cite Glenn Lowry or whoever,

some sort of well-respected people in the field, rather than putting it in your own words, you can say, well, what do you, what do you think of whatever Coleman Hughes's assertion as follows about the police? Um, or, you know, you could, you could, let's say you were talking about a me too issue and everybody was like, yes, you know, these people are all terrible and they deserve to lose their jobs. You could say, what do you think about Megan Kelly's assertion that as a, as a me too participant, I guess you could say that, you know, this, the movement's gone too far and that we've eroded due process to the point where the movement's lost credibility. Right. So if you can sort of put itoded due process to the point where the movement's lost credibility, right?

So if you can sort of put it in the mouth of somebody who's lived it, somebody with credibility, and take it away from you, Charlotte, I think that can help because it's you're introducing ideas into the discussion as opposed to arguing your own personal viewpoint, which makes you a bigger target in an environment like that. I think that's worthwhile. And I think it, I think we're going to get back to the place where that kind of thing is okay. I'm not saying you're going to win hearts and minds, but you might. And what I have found is when you are the voice of reason in a situation like that, you do have secret, I don't know if I want to say admirers, but people who agree with you, secret

allies who are so glad you did it. And I think it's almost how a leader is born, right? It's just taking risks that other people are too afraid to take. Uh, and, and let's say it does lead to a B plus instead of an a, right? Like what, let's play that out. Where does that go? So your grade point average is going to be a little lower. So you're not going to get into Harvard. Well, you shouldn't go there anyway, because if you're not woke, you're going to have a miserable experience at Harvard. Um, and you don't need to go to Harvard at all. I mean, are you dying to become an investment banker? I guess it could be helpful, uh, or go on to med school. I sure. Okay. I guess that would increase your odds of getting in, but why would you want to do those two things that becoming an investment banker is basically

assuring yourself a lifetime at the office. Yes. you get a big paycheck, but when are you going to spend your money? I just think reevaluate your life goals, right? Like, do you want to surround yourself with people who don't see the world at all the way you do and think you're a terrible person for the next eight years? I wouldn't. Um, I went to Syracuse undergrad and Albany law school and it worked out fine. Why? Cause when I got there, I actually worked my butt off and that opens just as many doors, just as many doors. If you work on your EQ, you work on your personality, you work on being well-rounded. Those will open a lot of doors that just a high GPA won't.

So it's not all about pleasing some jerk teacher who's going to judge you for having a different viewpoint. Some of it is about ethics, values, and maintaining your full self. So for whatever that's worth, that's what I'm going to tell my own kids, what I already have told my own kids, and they do speak up even now. And I also think it's a personal test of courage in some ways, but be smart about it. You know, you don't want to be a jerk and you don't want to be pushy about your worldview, but delighting in the discussion of alternate ideas is a practice I recommend to everyone from the earliest age. And if that's what you choose to do and somebody shames you for it, you write us back and we will shame them on this

show. Good luck, Charlotte. Good question. Steve? Yes. Keep them coming. Questions at devilmaycaremedia.com. Or any of our social media. We read Insta and every place else, Twitter, and sometimes get some good submissions there too. So more on that and hopefully from Charlotte later, but first this. Let's talk about 20 to 40, because if you're between the ages of 20 and 40, you're not in the high, high risk group, or even 20 to 50, let's you're between the ages of 20 and 40, you're not in the high, high risk group or even 20 to 50, let's say. Not the high, high risk group, but there is some risk. And even now, I heard there was a there was a clip online that went viral of a doctor out of Baton Rouge, Louisiana, a female doctor saying we the beds are filling up.

And she said there are no more beds for non-COVID emergency patients. You know, people who have heart attacks and so on are getting, I don't know if turned away is the right phrase, but they're struggling to find a place in these Louisiana hospitals for them. And she said we're missing too many staff because of COVID infections. And this would be among younger staff, right? She's not talking about 70-year-old nurses and doctors. But her point is this Delta surge is having a very real effect in the hospitals that she sees. She wants people to get vaccinated. And I think that people in that age group are more thinking, I'm probably not going to die from it. I don't know what the long term effects of the vaccine are. I know women have talked about fertility. And so what would you say to that group, 20 to 50 year olds who are

not vaccinated, who have the same concerns about we don't know the long term effects? So in science, there are certain things we sort of do know, but there's also gray areas. And I strongly encourage people who are older people to get the vaccines. I don't think children should get the vaccines, but there's the gray area between 20 and 50, where I think it has to be left to each person to make a decision because we have a pretty good picture of what the risk from COVID is, but we don't necessarily have a good overall picture of what the benefit-risk ratio is. So if somebody wants to get the vaccine, I don't think they should be afraid of the vaccine. But if somebody doesn't want to get it,

I don't think we should hold that against them. Now, if you work in a hospital or if you work in a nursing home and you're 25 years old, then I do think it makes sense to get the vaccine to protect the older people that you work with. So I think that is and I think that's that's why health care personnel and nursing home staff were sort of priority when these vaccines were rolled out. Not so much for their own protection, but to protect the people they work with. There, the vaccine mandates are spreading.

We just heard in New York that they're now saying that you're going to need proof of vaccination for indoor dining. So you're not going to be able to go to a restaurant in New York City anymore unless you can prove you've been vaccinated. Same for gyms. It's growing. I get your point. I agree with you. I don't like vaccine mandates

either. But as a practical matter, I feel like we're going to see more and more and more of them. And I just wonder whether, you know, what would happen if there were something, a terrible long-term effect of the vaccine that we haven't yet uncovered, right? Like, do you have any concerns about that? As somebody who's been dealing with vaccines for your professional life, do you worry that something's going to come out two, three years down the line that's going to really be a game changer on these things? I'm not losing sleep over it, but of course it can happen. We have found a few different adverse reactions. Luckily, they are very rare, not common. But there could be others that we haven't found yet. There are certain types of adverse reactions that are easy to detect.

For example, we know anaphylaxis, which can happen after vaccines, and it usually happens within half an hour. So those are very easy to detect. But other things that happen later or that are more common disease outcomes, they are harder to pick up. They take longer to pick up. So we don't know those things yet. But I wouldn't lose sleep over it i wouldn't uh not get the vaccine because i was worried about it but if you if you've had covid i don't see any reasons to take even those small risks because you're going to have good

immunity and more importantly i think it's unethical for universities or restaurants or so to require vaccine mandates because, as I said, these vaccines are needed elsewhere in the developing world. And the other thing is there may be a long-term effect of the vaccine that we don't yet know,

but there may also be a long-term effect of COVID. So, you know, you do have to engage in a long-term effect of COVID. So, you know, you have to, you do have to engage in a risk calculation on a personal basis. Now, let me ask you about Delta because they're saying that Delta peaked in India and in the UK pretty quickly. It was basically over the course of a month, it peaked and went away. Do you think that's what's going to happen here? Because I think folks are wondering how long we're going to be dealing with this very infectious Delta variant.

And as we go back into school and we go back into the cities after the summer, do you think it's going to look like it looked in April 2020 for the next 10 months? No, but also the U.S. is such a big country. So the patterns are very different. We're seeing increased cases in the southern parts of the United States, for example, but we're only seeing very modest increases in mortality there. So it could very well be, I think, that in those states it's going to come down again, and it has already started to come down in some of them. But then there might be other states where we will see an upsurge in the fall that would not surprise me in terms of cases. On the other hand, the key thing is we should not worry about cases, we should worry about the mortality. And even if you are immune, you can still test positive and therefore you officially are a case.

But in reality, you have no symptoms, only mild symptoms. So what we have to worry about is the mortality. So mortality has gone up a bit. It's still at one tenth what it was at the peak, but it's gone up a bit in the States. How concerned are you about that? At this point, I'm not concerned because July had the lowest since the pandemic started. So even if it goes up a little bit, then it's going to go up and down. There are certain seasonal patterns to this virus, and the seasonal pattern is different in different parts of the United States.

So it seems like the southern states have in the summer months an increase. Yeah, because they're all indoors in the summer months and we're all indoors in the colder months up here in the Northeast. So yeah, it follows a certain pattern. Can I ask you this, Martin? If we put you in charge of COVID policy in the United States right now, what would you do? I would remove vaccine mandates. I would remove any mask mandates. I would not have any lockdowns anymore. I would try very hard to reach those older people who have not yet been vaccinated, try to encourage them to get vaccinated. I think that is important. And then the other thing that we have to deal with is,

and I think that's the top priority now, because of the lockdowns, we have a backlog of uh other things for other health for cancer cardiovascular disease for diabetes for mental health and so on for childhood vaccinations so if i were the in charge i would focus on getting catching up with all of those things, catching up with cancer treatments and cancer screenings, catching up with diabetes treatments, dealing with all the mental health issues that we're dealing with. And it's not just a public health issue. I think it's something we have to sort of take care of each other.

So it's not just the public health, but it has to do with these mental health issues that we now have. It's something that we have to try to help each other with with neighbors and family members and colleagues at work and so on to to help us all overcome those issues that we have seen now with with these lockdowns so all that harms from the lockdown is something that we're going to have to live with and die with for many years to come now. Because for example, if we didn't detect a cancer, if the cancer wasn't treated in time, most of those wouldn't have died in 2020, 2021, but they might die three or four years from now instead of living another 15, 20 years. Can I just round back with you on masks for one second?

Because there has been an ongoing debate about whether they work. As we bring back, there's the CDC's recommending national mask mandates. The former COVID advisor to Joe Biden was on TV this week, admitting that the masks we all wear, they don't work.

That, you know, sort of the garden varieties masks that we buy in any given store, they don't work. That, you know, sort of the garden varieties masks that we buy in any given store, they don't work. And here he is, here's how he put it. We know today that many of the face cloth coverings that people wear are not very effective in reducing any of the virus movement in or out, either you're breathing out or you're breathing in. And so basically he went on to say,

without an N95, it's kind of pointless. Do you agree with that? Yeah. I mean, the most funny or ridiculous example is this winter I was skiing and the ski slopes require you to wear a mask. Now, skiers often use masks in the winter just to keep warm. And those ski masks were perfectly valid to fulfill the mask mandate at the ski slope. But these ski masks actually have holes for your mouth and for your nose so you can breathe properly through the mask. So to me, that's the most ridiculous type of mask mandates that I have encountered. So, but yeah, I mean, in a hospital settings, masks are very important in many ways,

in many situations. But the problem with masks in the community is not whether they work a little bit, a tiny bit or not at all. The key thing is also that a lot of people have been told that be safe, wear a mask. And then they think that because they were wearing a mask and because everybody else was wearing a mask, they would be safe. And they had people in their 70s or 80s going to the supermarkets because they think they are safe because everybody's wearing a mask. So that's not true. So this public health message that masks will keep you safe

have actually been very dishonest. And I think a lot of people did not socially distance them or physically distance themselves sufficiently because they thought, they believed these public health messages that mask kept them safe when they didn't so if you're 75 year old and you haven't gotten the vaccine yet you it is important to physically distance yourself so you don't expose to the virus from others but masks is not going to make it it's not going to make that difference you know it's not going to make it. It's not going to make that difference. You know,

it's not going to keep you safe. Only physical distance is going to keep you safe. So don't go to a crowded space. If you're old and haven't got another thing. We're back with the end of our show in less than one minute. Last thing I wanted to ask you about, we've been following your work for a while here. We love the Great Barrington Declaration, where you actually, you and some other very

well-respected doctors called for focused protection of older, high-risk people instead of these oppressive lockdowns, which caused incalculable harm around the globe, not just here in America. You were a member of the CDC's Scientific Committee for Evaluating Side Effects of the Vaccinations until April of 2021. And you had been critical of the pause in the J&J vaccine for older people, saying that's not desirable, it's not necessary. In particular, you shouldn't be pausing it for older people. And then I read that two days later, you were removed, quote, for public statements you had made on policy opinions. So did the CDC remove you because you objected to the pause for those about 50. I think for people below 50, I think there was a good rationale for doing a pause. But for those over 50, because there was absolutely no evidence that these blood clots were a risk for older people.

And there was evidence that they were not at increased risk. And this J&J vaccine actually had a very important role because it's a one-dose vaccine. So for certain populations which are harder to reach, lesser fluent people, or people in very rural areas which is difficult to go to the doctor, a one-dose vaccine is quite an advantage to have. So by pausing it, it made it more difficult to vaccinate all the people who needed this vaccine. And I think-

Well, and it undermined confidence in the vaccine. I mean, that was kind of the end of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine for many. Exactly. Exactly. So that's very unfortunate, I think. So I guess I'm in the usual position of having been removed from CDC committee for being too pro-vaccine. Well, and then four days later, the CDC once again allowed the J&J vaccine and Rochelle Walensky used your exact reasoning in reversing that decision. So did they apologize to you? Did they ask you to rejoin the committee? No, but I was very happy to hear that four hours later they followed it.

Yeah. So I was very happy to hear that. That was the important thing. Can you tell me having been on that committee? I don't know. I feel like Rochelle Walensky is she is a true sky is falling type public health official. I mean, she just seems to put the worst spin on everything. She seems to assume disaster lurks around every corner. And I've kind of stopped listening to her. But what is your opinion of her and those making these decisions for us? I think a principle, one important principle of public health is that one should not use fear and shame as a tool in public health. One should base it on trust by giving honest assessment of public health issues, including vaccines. And it's also important to let many different voices to be heard because it's okay for scientists to sometimes have different views. They see things from different perspectives,

but the key thing is then to let all the voices be heard and compare notes between what different the scientists think. So to remove certain scientists because they have a different opinion about some topic i wouldn't do that because as a scientist those who think similar to me i don't really need to listen to them because i know what they think but the people who need who view things differently from me those are the ones who are really interesting for me to listen to because those are the ones I can learn something from or see from a different perspectives. And then I have to sort of see if my own views holds up or not after listening to them. So I think it's more important to listen to the scientists who have different views than

I have than it is to listen to those who have the same views that I have. And that's not what they're doing right now. I don't think so, unfortunately. And it shows in the policy announcements that they're issuing for the rest of us. Martin Koldorf, you've been wonderful. Thank you so much for your honesty throughout this whole process

and for being a voice of reason. Well, thank you. And it's been a great pleasure to talking to you. A delight. Thank you. Do not miss tomorrow's show. I'm really looking forward to this. We have Julie Kelly and Andy McCarthy on January 6th and these hearings that we've been watching. Julie Kelly's been doing amazing work. This woman has been following

what's happened with the people who were arrested. How long have they been held? What kind of charges are they facing? What sort of due process are they getting? Why are so many being treated like they're 9-11 terrorists as opposed to trespassers who actually didn't wind up hurting anybody? And what of those who did? Andy McCarthy, too, has been doing great writing for National Review, and I listened to his podcast,. There really were a lot of people there who tried to hurt police and did hurt police. What should happen to them? They should have the book thrown at them. So how are they being handled?

And where does this whole thing stand? We were told there was an insurrection. Do we see that in any of the charges? Is that bearing out in the actual courtrooms? Andy McCarthy with a truth bomb, along with Julie Kelly in the show you do not want to miss. Go ahead and subscribe to the show now so you don't. Download it. Give us a five-star rating while you're there and would love a review from you while you're on there. So all that said, we'll see you tomorrow, same time.

Thanks for listening to The Megyn Kelly Show. No BS, no agenda, and no fear. The Megyn Kelly Show is a Devil May Care media production in collaboration with Red Seat Ventures.