The Megyn Kelly Show - Getting Real About How COVID Started and COVID Vaccines, with Josh Rogin and Scott Gottlieb | Ep. 175

Episode Date: October 6, 2021

Megyn Kelly is joined by Josh Rogin, columnist at The Washington Post and author of "Chaos Under Heaven," and Dr. Scott Gottlieb, former FDA Commissioner and author of "Uncontrolled Spread," to get real about COVID-19, and the failed effort to investigate the COVID lab leak theory, how the Chinese are working to clamp down on any real investigation, the potential dangers of the 2022 Olympics in China, what we know about Peter Daszak and his involvement in gain-of-function research, masks and kids, the pros and cons of vaccines and vaccine mandates for children and adults, and more.Follow The Megyn Kelly Show on all social platforms: YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/MegynKellyTwitter: http://Twitter.com/MegynKellyShowInstagram: http://Instagram.com/MegynKellyShowFacebook: http://Facebook.com/MegynKellyShow Find out more information at: https://www.devilmaycaremedia.com/megynkellyshow

Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations. Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show. We have a great show for you today. In today's episode, we're getting real about COVID-19. Some stunning, stunning reports breaking in the past day or so about its origins and the vaccines. We've got the former FDA commissioner and now actually the author of the New York Times bestseller Uncontrolled Spread, Scott Gottlieb, today. Really looking forward to that discussion. He'll be here in just a bit. We'll talk about natural immunity. He's on the Pfizer board. What does he think about natural immunity? We're going to get into that. The increasing politicization of the vaccines, politicization. It's hard to say that word. And also the top mistakes that the U.S. made when it came to the pandemic.

Did the lockdowns help? He's still defending them, I think. Do masks really work? We'll get into that and we'll get into the truth on all of that plus he's going to take your calls how about that that's exciting but first washington post columnist josh rogan is here he joins us again to talk about how science is closing in on coven's covid's origins and the signs of course point to the lab leak theory but some are still denying it and what's going on with the u.s agency Agency for International Development and their new project to dig up more viruses around the world? That was an announcement that just came out. Didn't we just get through a pandemic or still in the midst of one as a result of

folks doing that, trying to say, oh, let's take the virus, see how we can make it more dangerous all in the name of keeping us more safe. Yeah. How'd that work out? Josh, thank you so much for being here. Thanks for having me. Congrats on the new show thank you sir um okay so by the way your your episode where we talked about the over the origins of covid and all the covid stuff the first time you came on is still just killing it in our archive so i recommend it to everybody and read generally people want to know how we got into this mess so that we don't have to do this every two years as it turns out even though the the Biden administration doesn't seem to want to know. The Chinese definitely don't want to know. WHO doesn't seem to want to know. But Americans want to know,

how did we get into this nightmare, this pandemic? Because unless we figure that out, we can't figure out how to keep our country safe. That's as simple as that. What's the point? And it's been such a lackluster effort on our part to actually get to the origins. Let me just spend one minute with you on that since you're following it so closely. The Biden administration took another look at this after the WHO fell down on the job. That guy, Peter Daszak, was on the committee. They went over to China. They didn't see anything. They didn't push back. They were followed around by Chinese miners the whole time.

Miners, not miners. That would be weird. And they so then they came back with this baloney conclusion. And then the Biden administration said, all right, we're going to take a closer look. You said it was a waste of time what they did. They our own intel communities came out and said, inconclusive. It's inconclusive whether it was a lab leak or his natural origins. And you said the whole review was doomed to fail. So do we put any stock whatsoever in what the Biden administration told us inconclusive about how it started? You know, tragically, it seems that the Biden administration has decided to throw its hands up that they don't have any real plan that I can tell

to try to figure out how he got into this mess. They won't release any of the intelligence that they're sitting on. They won't press the Chinese government to open up any of its books or open up the labs for any real investigation. They have this, if you think about it, horrendously and obviously weak alibi that they want China to cooperate with the World Health Organization when they know and they'll tell you when the cameras are off that that's never going to happen. And we wasted a year not looking for the coronavirus origins because people thought the lab leak was a Trump idea and they didn't want to get behind a Trump idea. So all the scientists who were the closest friends of the lab, like Peter Daszak, you just mentioned, called it a conspiracy theory. And we went through

a year of that. And then finally, the Biden administration came in and they said, no, it's not a conspiracy. Actually, some in our own intelligence community think it was the lab and we're going to look into it. And they promised to look into it. And all of a sudden you couldn't call it a conspiracy theory because that would mean that Joe Biden would have to be in on the conspiracy. It doesn't make any sense. Right. So now there was some hope. And now after they did it, what we found out is that they didn't really look. OK. And, you know, it's like that the drunk person searching for their keys under the streetlight. And the cop says, why are you searching for your keys on the streetlight? Oh, the light's much better here. You know, what the intelligence community did essentially was they looked inside their own files and they didn't look anywhere else. They didn't look at the EcoHealth Alliance. They didn't interview anybody. They didn't talk to Robert Redfield, who was the head of the CDC and a virologist who said it probably came from the lab. And then they put him in like the witness protection program or something. I haven't seen that guy in months.

And they didn't talk to Matthew Pottinger, who was leading the investigation at the time for the Trump. They didn't care. So they looked at their own files. And then the funniest thing, I mean, saddest thing, but kind of funny was that they determined they couldn't even read their own files. Our vaulted, vaunted $80 billion intelligence agency couldn't understand the, they didn't have any Chinese speaking, you know, scientists who could sort through the data. So they just said, oh, we're never going to figure out. And the Biden team was like, okay, I guess we'll never figure it out. And that's an abdication of their fiduciary responsibility to keep us safe, to protect

us, you know, and what, you know, just what you mentioned today, we can get into this a little bit more, this USAID PREDICT program. Basically what they announced is, our own government announced that they're going to pour another $125 million of US taxpayer money into hunting viruses, including SARS-CoV-2 related viruses

all over the world for the next 10 years with no additional safeguards, no additional scrutiny, no accountability, no oversight, and no idea how we got into this mess. In other words, we don't know, right? For all your listeners out there who are about to tweet at me, we don't know how the virus originated. We don't know if it was a lab. We don't know if it was natural spillover, but we got to check out both theories. All I'm saying is we can't rule out the labs. We need to check it out. And we should probably do that before we spend another 125 million dollars on expanding this research because that's crazy it is crazy and this this organization i mean what

what's gonna who's gonna be watching them to make sure that there isn't a leak or that it isn't mishandled or i don't know that you don't have a guy like peter dazik in there doing stuff and then misleading us because that's the other thing that's happened today is that guy Peter Daszak who runs EcoHealth Alliance which is a taxpayer funded organization you and I are paying for them who seems to be behind every corner in this entire story he's the guy who went over to China and he was like there's nothing to see here it's definitely not a lab leak the Chinese are great meanwhile we know from all the reporting we've seen over the past year or so that his organization was getting tons of taxpayer money, including approved by Fauci's organization that to perform what very much looks like gain of function research. He's denying it, but research that takes viruses back, coronaviruses and makes them more effective toward humans. And now there's a push to get him out of that organization for having

misled us over and over. And continues to mislead us. It's really important what you're talking about, Megan. Just for all your listeners out there who aren't immediately familiar with who Peter Daszak is, he's this guy who runs this thing called the EcoHealth Alliance. It's a non-profit. They take money from the US government. They take money from the Chinese government, actually. And they work to collect viruses all over the wild and bring them back to a bunch of labs and play around with them and see what's what. And when they find a really dangerous one, they're like, oh, let's study that one. And they were doing this in Wuhan. Okay. And we don't know if that led to the virus outbreak in Wuhan, but they were doing bat coronavirus research that made it more infectious to humans in the same city where the back coronavirus pandemic broke out so it seems to stands to reason we should probably check it out and peter dadgik has been at the forefront of telling us not to check it out for a year and a half now a couple things changed recently really importantly since the last time we spoke megan one was that you know the intercept published these documents uh from peter dadgik's eco health

alliance which said that they asked the U.S. government, a part of the U.S. government called DARPA, for money to do bat coronavirus research. That was very specific. And this is a little technical, but it's really important. They asked DARPA to fund them to put a furin cleavage site on the protein of the- Can you say that one more time? Say furin cleavage, explain, because most people don't know that. Furin cleavage site means that they took the back coronavirus and they added a part of it that made it more infectious to humans and that's what they wanted to do and now we have a back coronavirus that's more infectious to humans because it has what guess what a human of fear

and cleavage site anyway it's the same exact thing and it that's not as if that's not a smoking gun it's about as close as we're going to get. Can we just break that down though? Because look, speaking of the intercept, they reported a couple of months ago or maybe a month ago that Peter Daszak's group, EcoHealth Alliance, had applied to Fauci's group and the oversight group for a grant to do this, what looks like gain of function research. Fauci denies it, but all these scientists have come out and said that that was gain of function research that Peter Daszak wanted to do and that they did get the money, that they did get the money.

And now today there's another report saying Daszak went to effectively the Pentagon and said, I would like a grant from you to do gain of function research. And it was denied. I think it was uh that's the darpa one eight that was okay so there's two separate ones that was in 2018 but so he he did get money from fauci and fauci's organization to do correct this dicey coronavirus research and then he also went to the pentagon and made very explicit i want to do gain of function research on bat coronaviruses. But the Pentagon said, dude, no, that's way too dangerous.

Right. And, you know, when the Pentagon says the research is too dangerous, you might want to think about it. But the reason that they were doing all this research in China, as you remember, is that the Obama administration banned this type of research. And then in the early part of the Trump administration, a team led by people including Anthony Fauci turned it back on. And they built an oversight mechanism for gain-of-function research. And then they classified all the risky research as not gain-of-function. In other words, they built an oversight system, and then they built a loophole, and then they drove through the loophole and bragged about it to the world. And so you can get caught up in this semantic debate over what's gain-of-function research or research or what's not gain of function research. But the point is they knew they were

doing risky research and they knew they were doing them in Chinese labs that had bad safety standards. And then when the coronavirus popped up next to the labs, they said, how dare you look at the labs? Don't you dare look at the labs? We can't even talk about the labs. But why do you think that the report, again, that just broke about Daszak's group seeking to do gain of function research and getting funding from our Pentagon to the tune of $14 million in March of 2018, and then he was denied, why do we care so much about that when we already know he got money from Fauci's group to do what appeared to be gain of function research in connection with the Wuhan lab, separate and apart from that Pentagon grant? Yeah, no, it's a great question. Two reasons. One is because this particular proposal was so specific that if it had been funded, it would have created a virus that has the same exact weird characteristic that the SARS coronavirus has. In other words, they were proposing to build something that looks almost exactly like what the SARS coronavirus ended up being. And if that's a total coincidence, that's the craziest coincidence in the history of the world,

that they were proposing a specific change to bat coronaviruses, and then were denied. And then somehow a bat coronavirus pops up in Wuhan, where they're collaborating with that exact characteristic, the same exact one. Yes. Just make that point again. So Peter Daszak, just because the Pentagon said no to him, he was getting funding from our government and he was doing back coronavirus research and he was doing it in connection with the Wuhan lab. It wasn't like he was sitting by himself in North Carolina. He was over there. He was dealing with the so-called bat lady. Right. This guy's up to his neck in the back coronavirus research and then him and anthony fauci and nih director francis collins have the gall the audacity to go on national television and go before congress and say there's no evidence that it's related to the lab all of that is circumstantial evidence everything we just talked about constitutes what i think is very compelling circumstantial evidence it's not proof but it's enough that we can't just say oh well we just

can't look at the lab so you know how dare these guys go before the American public, especially the ones that are employed by the U.S. taxpayer like Fauci and Collins, and say there's no evidence that it came from the lab? Well, the reason there's no proof is because the Chinese government has covered up everything at the lab. They silenced the scientists. They jailed the journalists. They won't let us into the lab that we funded. Right. We funded a lab. They won't even let us in when the pandemic breaks out next door. And now the proposal is to what, you know, double that research. Does that make any sense? And, you know, the scheme that Peter Daszak and the EcoHealth Alliance had going, they had so many streams of income.

They were getting money from the Department of Homeland Security. Check this out. To do coronavirus pandemic disinformation fights. In other words, they were hired by the U.S. government to fight pandemic disinformation. He was the architect of pandemic disinformation. And they spread pandemic disinformation, exactly, using our money to do it. And that's through the looking glass. That's some really sinister stuff when you just think about it for two seconds. And, you know, even Anthony Fauci to this day will say, well, OK, well, listen, if you want to go hunt for the origin in China, feel free, because he knows that the Chinese government is never going to do it.

But it would be very easy for Peter Daszak and Anthony Fauci and Francis Collins to open their books. And that's the second point that I want to make here is the reason that that contract was so shocking is we didn't know about it, you know, and it's been two years. OK, and how dare the EcoHealth Alliance not tell us about that? And what else are they hiding? If two years later, the document could come out, that constitutes a pretty good hint, a pretty good clue of how this may have happened. And that's not to say that Fauci funded the virus. I don't think I think that's too simple. I think what happened is we built them a lab. We taught them how to play around with viruses. And then they built another side of the lab, the side that they didn't tell us about, the side with the Chinese military, where they did stuff that was really dangerous that we didn't have any insight onto. And what the Defense Department was paying Peter Daszak to do was to keep an eye on all of that. The Defense Department, the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, is about reducing the threats. And he did the opposite. He increased the threats, it looks like. And even if the lab leak theory isn't true, there's a huge vulnerability there. There's a huge risk there that we can't deny. And how can we do business with all these Chinese labs that tell us to go pound sand when the

pandemic breaks out? It's really nuts. And then the politics of this are so screwed up that progressive Democrats are just sworn allegiance to the idea that the lab leak theory couldn't be true. But that's not scientific. It has nothing to do with reality. It's just their confirmation bias and kind of like their kind of ideological authoritarianism. And, you know, that pervaded for so long that, you know, we can't untangle the story. That's why conversations like the one we're having right now are so important, because people actually do want to know. They actually do want to figure it out. And even if the Chinese don't cooperate, even if they don't like it, we have to figure it out. And that means forcing our own

government agencies to be more honest with Congress and with the American people. And it means the Biden administration has got to get up off of this tushy and do something, OK, and not just sit there and punt to the WHO, because that is a terrible, terrible alibi. OK, so can you just say it one more time, the fancy term you just used, the whatnot fusion? What was it that was spliced in that he wanted to splice into to make the bat coronaviruses more dangerous to humans? Right. So what they were doing is you have these bat coronaviruses and they link to human lung

cells in something called the ACE2 receptor. And the part that binds with the human lung cells is called the spike protein or the S protein. And what the coronavirus that's plaguing the world has that no other SARS beta coronavirus has ever had in history is an added piece that makes it bind to human lung cells even better than before, even more than before. And that piece is called a furin cleavage site. And that's been written about before. A lot of science writers have noticed that. And some say, oh, well, it's just possible it evolved in nature. Sure. It could have been a random mutation that

for the first time ever, this popped up in a SARS-related coronavirus. Or it could have been part of the experiments that they were doing in one of these Wuhan labs. And the fact that Peter Daszak of the Equal Health Alliance submitted a grant application to do exactly that should tell us something. It should tell us that there was a lot of interest in making these bat coronaviruses more infectious to humans. And there's a reason that SARS in 2002, 2003 only killed, what, 8,000 people. That's a lot of people. I shouldn't say only. That's a lot of people. But we're up to 4.5 million, right? 700,000 Americans dead, right? That's a super virus. That's what Robert Redfield said, that the way the virus acts, and if you look at this thing called the Führer and Cleaver site, the unique characteristic that makes it so dangerous are very, very suspicious. And because the Wuhan labs were doing this type of research, and now we know that Peter Daszak was proposing to do exactly this type of research. Well, yeah, he's got a bunch of tough questions to answer that he refuses to answer that he won't even answer that he won't even respond

to Congress. Can we talk about Richard Mueller for a second? Because he and Stephen Quay had a great op ed in the Wall Street Journal, great piece in the Wall Street Journal in June on June 6 2021. And now they just dropped another one yesterday. And I had Mueller on my show. He's Professor Emeritus of Physics at the University of California, Berkeley, also former senior scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. He knows what he's doing. And originally, he wrote a piece saying, I've looked as a scientist at the data that was published advertently or inadvertently by the so-called bat lady out of the Wuhan lab. And the fingerprint is right there.

It's the genetic fingerprint of COVID-19 shows you that it's got this thing. I think he's talking about for urine cleavage site, but in his original piece, he refers to it as something else. But he says it basically is the thing that tells you a human has been here. He said it can happen in nature, but it's extremely rare. And it's much more common when a scientist has been there. He says it's the exact sequence that appears in COVID-19. And he says, okay, hold on a second. I just want to make sure I have the right quotes. Could have happened naturally through mutations, but it's incredibly rare. It says much more likely that it was lab escape. And he says, let's see. This is what he points to. He says, when you look at the other coronaviruses, the ones that were responsible for SARS and MERS, he says they took a long time to get powerful, to get good, to get good at what they did, to sort of rapidly spread amongst the human population and get to their most contagious selves. Not true with COVID-19, SARS-Co humans already adapted into an extremely contagious version. No serious viral viral improvement took place until a minor minor variation occurred many

months later in England. Such early optimization is unprecedented and it suggests a long period of adaptation that predated its public spread. Science knows of only one way that that could be achieved. He says growing the virus on human cells until the optimum is achieved. This is what's done during game gain of function research. They use quote humanized mice. They're repeatedly exposed to the virus to encourage the virus to adapt, get better, get stronger, figure it out. And his latest piece says, OK, you look at the previous like the background before SARS and MERS outbreaks, they found the animals. You think it's a natural origin? They found the animals

that hosted the viruses there before they made the jump to human. More than 80% of the animals in affected markets were infected with the coronavirus when they looked at those. Not so here. The WHO team searched for a host in early 2020. They tested more than 80,000 animals from 209 species. Not a single one was infected with SARS, COVID, with COVID-19, basically. And so he goes on to make the point, we can only wonder if the results would have been different if the animals tested had included those humanized mice kept where? At the Wuhan lab. Right, right. Well, it seems like he read my book, Chaos Under Heaven, which had a lot of this information in it. Thank you. Thank you. But what he's pointing out is that,

again, circumstantial evidence, there's a ton of it. And he's pointing out something else that should be shocking to people. We've spent a lot of time looking for the natural origin. Sure, it might take a long time. That's where 99 nine point nine nine percent of the resources have gone. And the WHO report, which is like four hundred fifty pages, only spent three pages on the lab just to tell us not to look at the lab. And why is that? You have to come to the inescapable conclusion that it was rigged. The the the WHO study was rigged and the scientists who are telling us not to look at the lab have a conflict of interest amongst them. Peter Daszak and Anthony Fauci. And, you know, scientists can disagree.

Listen, Megan, I've talked to scientists who say, oh, no, I definitely think it came from nature. And I've talked to scientists who say, no, I definitely think it came from the lab. But we have to discount those who have a financial conflict of interest. And then all of a sudden the table flips this way. Right. It's it's? It's 70-30 natural origin. But when you take out the conflicted guys who've been misleading us for two years, all of a sudden it's 70-30 the other way. And that should tell you something, that the discourse has been corrupted by these guys who failed to acknowledge and admit their conflict

of interest while doing everything they could to bolster the Chinese Communist Party's propaganda, by the way. Not to say that they were agents, just to say that they're helping the Chinese Communist Party propaganda. Remember, the Chinese government has its own lab theory. Their theory is it came from our lab, right? It's not like they're not saying it came from nature. They're saying, oh, it came from a lab, but the lab was in Maryland, right? Now, of course, that doesn't make any sense because the outbreak didn't happen in Maryland. It happened in Wuhan. But if you just think about that, they must know that eventually we're going to find out what you just found out, what you just read, which is that if you look at the virus, there's a lot of evidence it might have been evolved in some way in a lab. It seems

pretty clear. It seems pretty obvious that we should check that out. So the Chinese have a lab theory and you have these scientists who are super conflicted. And Peter Dajak was so caught up in this conflict of interest that he had to resign from the lancet commission right that was he was the head of the commission to look into the origins for lancet and then they had to shut down the whole commission i mean this is and they put out in the lancet it's not a lab it's not a lab and then they they wound up embarrassed because i think he was assuming we'd never find any of the evidence right and we have found the evidence let me say this. So Mueller, Richard Mueller ends his most recent piece.

This just dropped yesterday, I think. Yeah. And he ends it with the following. Let China keep its firewall of secrecy. A suspect who refuses to testify can still be convicted. We have an eyewitness, a whistleblower who escaped from Wuhan and carried details of the pandemic's origin that the Chinese Communist Party can't hide. The whistleblower's name is SARS-CoV-2. He's saying the fingerprint, the smoking gun is right there in the virus. Just look at it. All of the characteristics of it are telling us where it came from. If only we would open our eyes and still just to round back to what we talked about at the top josh um now this usa aid you know the

the the agency for international development that we talked about that's already been up to this and its neck and and dealing with all this um they they're announcing a new 125 million dollar project as we mentioned to detect unknown viruses with pandemic potential and see how they can make them more dangerous for us and in their release, this is what they say. The COVID-19 pandemic is a strong reminder of the connection between animals, humans and the environment and the effect that an emerging pathogen spilling over into humans can have on people's health and global economies. No, it isn't. No, it isn't. At best, we don't know that. How can they say that? At best, it's unproven. Right. But like this, we're about to give them one hundred twenty five million dollars to take viruses and make them more dangerous while they're still looking right at us and telling us not to believe our lion eyes.

Well, listen, Megan, I hope sincerely that Congress will intervene and prevent that program from moving forward until or unless new safeguards are put into place, until or unless we're ensured that none of these problematic Chinese labs will be included until or unless the definition of gain-of-function research is not used as an alibi to fund gain-of-function research without stating as much. And that's our only chance here. It just seems like the Biden administration has abdicated its responsibility. I know people in Congress care. The question is, are they going to do something about it? And by the way, the one part I disagree with is, no, we can't let China off the hook. No, we have to use our power and influence to press them for access to those labs. And what happened to the database they took down that had all the public database that had all the virus information in it? We need to see that. And if not, there should be diplomatic and scientific

consequences, because this is not just about public health. This is also about how to deal with the Communist Party of China that is now having a grave, grave effect negatively on our national security and our public health. Okay. And so now there's really interesting evidence coming out about when China knew it had an outbreak on its hands. And Josh actually tweeted this out and said, you guys should watch this documentary by Sherry Markson. It's Sky Australia, Sky News Australia. And we've got a couple of really good clips queued up. The documentary is called What Happened in Wuhan?

And I'm going to play those clips and ask you to put them in perspective for us and tell you, ask you to tell us like what we learned from this. Because there is a lot of good information in this documentary. And I think I would love to use your expertise for you to explain it to us. So we're going to do that right after this break. When Josh Rogin, columnist for The Washington Post, continues with us. He's brilliant. You can tell that yourselves. Don't miss that. We're going to be back in 90 seconds.

Welcome back to The Megyn Kelly Show. With me today is Josh Rogin, columnist for The Washington Post and author of Chaos Under Heaven, Trump, She and the Battle for the 21st Century. Well worth your time. Buy that book. You will not be sorry. You'll learn more there than you learn in any newspaper on the origin of COVID-19. Okay, Josh. So Sherry Markson of Sky News Australia does a great piece. It's only like an hour long. What happened in Wuhan? And you tweeted out, it's got a ton of good info, which coming from you is the ultimate compliment for anybody reporting on this. The first soundbite we have is her, Sherry, speaking to a Chinese defector named Wei Jin Shang, talking to him about, because he's here in the United States, but he's still very, very well connected to top people in the Chinese Communist Party and elsewhere. And she's trying to ask him, when did they know that there was an outbreak underway? You'll hear a reference to the 2019 military games in China that happened in October 2019.

Let's listen. When did you first hear that there was a virus in Wuhan? Was it during the time of the military games? Yes. I learned there was an unusual exercise by the Chinese government during the military games. And so I told Diamond about the possibility of the Chinese government using some strange weapons, including biological weapons, because I knew they were doing experiments of that sort. Wow. Okay. I'm going to get your comment on that, but just to add a little context to it. The military games again happened, happened in October of 19 in in Wuhan. There were reports of athletes becoming sick afterward.

Nine thousand athletes were there. They went home to some 100 plus countries. So what biological weapons? That's different from that's not exactly the same as lab leak. I realized it was a part of the Wuhan lab. We don't know what's going on in the Chinese military was reportedly in there. But what do you make of what he just said? Sure. Well, first of all, everybody go watch Shari's documentary. She interviewed President Trump, John Radcliffe, Mike Pompeo, Miles Yu, a bunch of other people who had a first a front row seat to this whole thing. Radcliffe is the former director of national intelligence. Yes. And top Trump

administration, but also people who had who were inside the system, many of whom who I talked to from my book wall came to the conclusion that, hey, there's a lot of circumstantial evidence pointing to these labs. We should check out these labs. And, you know, I also know way he was a leading democracy, pro-democracy advocate back when China had a pro-democracy movement. Now he lives in exile around here, around Washington, D.C., and he's credible. But you don't have to believe him. There's a ton of public information put out by the Chinese government about their biowarfare strategy. And again, this is something that you could get canceled for talking about a year ago, but now it's kind of obvious. We have a biowarfare program. They have a biowarfare

program. Guess where theirs is located? Where all the viruses are. OK, where all the we at the Wuhan Institute of Virology and other places also in Beijing. They have a network of now. Was this part of that? We don't know. OK, are we pretty sure that they have a biowarfare program that involved viruses? Yeah, absolutely. Is it a coincidence that the PLA took over the Wuhan Institute of Virology after the pandemic broke out? No, probably not. OK, so we don't know the details of how the yeah, sorry, the Chinese military. So we don't know the details of how their bio warfare program is connected to this, but we can't rule it out. And that's not a conspiracy theory. That's just an obvious, I think, well-established fact. Now, the thing that you talked about next, which is like, when did this thing start? Well, that's a real mind blowing kind of idea, because most of us assumed that it started in December. Then we found out maybe November. Then Robert Redfield said maybe September or October. And that changes everything, because that means that if it's true that it came out in September

or October, which is when the Wuhan Institute of Virology took its database offline, coincidentally, I guess, right? You know, if that was the truth, then that means they covered it up for four more months even than we thought. We knew they covered it up some, but it should be another four months. And, you know, I got contacted by several athletes who were at those Wuhan military games in October of 2019. And this is not, you know, they had their own experiences. And many of them

said they got deathly ill with what they later realized to be COVID. There was no COVID tests at that time. Many of them still haven't been tested. But one of my sources said that in his team of 15 athletes, five of them got so deathly ill, they had to put them to the back of the plane on the way home to keep them away from everybody. And they also said that when they were in Wuhan, it was eerily quiet and the government was doing all sorts of weird things like making everybody wash their hands all the time. And and the public was into I mean, there's a men if you look at the sort of history of procurement of the labs, there's more evidence that something happened there in September ish. Wait, I want to get into that. I want to I want to get into that.

So so yeah, soundbite number two. I'll let you finish your point. You finish your point and then I'll do and then I'll get into the PCR machines. Yeah, there's a mounting pile of evidence that says we have to rethink the whole timeline of this pandemic and account for the fact that China must have been covering it up far longer than we previously believed. When did we believe they knew that they had a virus on their hands? Well, originally, the Chinese government and their scientists said their first case was in early December. That's what we thought for a while. And then later we found out that, oh, through our own intelligence, that there had been some cases in November.

And then it started popping up in other countries in their blood samples from like November, December. And they're like, oh, how did it get to Italy in November and December? That was one clue. And then we started to learn more about what was going on in the labs. When did the researchers get sick? It turns out they got sick in October. That was another clue. Then there was the Wuhan military games thing.

That was another clue. And sooner or later, everyone in the know started to realize, oh, wait, this thing must have been circulating much earlier than we previously knew, which means they let it out earlier, which means they sent it through the military games to 100 different countries, which means that's what's going to happen when they have the Olympics in Beijing in four months from right now. So how can we have an Olympics in China when the last time they had an international military event, they hit the virus probably.

And it may have been a super spreader, the very first super spreader event. Now we're going to trust them again by sending our athletes there again how does that make the most the most generous interpretation is that they hit it while they knew it was out i mean there's not you know we listen to the the right way zhen xing and it's like well maybe they did not hide anything maybe it was intentionally set out who the hell knows all right wait soundbite number two i realize you don't think that's what happened i don't think soundbite number two. I realize you don't think that's what happened. I don't think so. Soundbite number two is where this is Sherry Markson talking to former DNI John Ratcliffe, our United States former DNI under Trump, about the Chinese buying up PCR machines. Now, you guys know PCR tests, right? We've all had to have one of those. They test for COVID. They suddenly started buying them up like crazy, like they were candy in 2019.

Listen here. There was a buyout of PCR equipment used to test for coronaviruses in Wuhan in 2019. The next month, one of those machines went to the Wuhan Institute. Is this something you're aware of, that they bought a PCR machine in November 2019? I wouldn't be able to comment on that. How significant would this purchase be? Would be significant. Is it a smoking gun? Ultimately, I don't think there's ever going to be one specific smoking gun. I think there's more than just smoke here. I think there's fire from a whole bunch of different sources. I think that would be another compelling piece of evidence if you need more.

I don't need more. I don't need more either, John. Okay, so Josh Rogin, then on top of her reporting there, you've got The Telegraph with a report out yesterday saying, and they're citing a study done by Internet 2.0, a cybersecurity consultancy that specializes in examining data from China. I don't know if that's Sherry Martin's source. Okay, same source. Yeah, that's that's uh sherry martin's source okay same source yeah that's the same so they put a little bit more meat on the bones um saying that internet 2.0 concluded that spending on pcr equipment in hubai province that's where wuhan is where the lab is increased to 13.4 million in 2019 from 6.9 million the year before and 5.7 million the year before that. The Internet 2.0, that company concluded, quote, the virus was highly likely to be spreading virulently in Wuhan, China as early as the summer of 2019, definitely by autumn. Right. So there's a lot there. So this PCR test thing, I think of that as like one data

point. OK. And it doesn't tell us anything really by itself. But when you put it into the larger puzzle, it bolsters the case that something was amiss in Wuhan around this period. Another thing is that the Wuhan Institute of Virology started buying like a new air conditioning system in September. That was part of the report by the House of Foreign Affairs Minority Committee. Yes. There was another. Right. There's also the report by the House of Foreign Affairs Minority Committee. Clorox wipes. Yes. There was another... There's also the reporting that the Chinese government started to buy up all the masks. And why were they buying up all the masks and PPE? Again, in October, not in January. And then we sent them all the masks. And then when we got hit, they wouldn't even send us the masks from our own factories, from the ones we had in China that we thought

were ours. But it turns out aren't ours at all. So again, I would put this into a tab. I wouldn't put too much focus on PCR tests or this or cell phone data or what's the parking lot full of this day or on that day. All it shows us is that there's so much about these Wuhan labs that we don't know. And what Radcliffe said that was really important in that clip was that he can't talk about the intelligence that we have. And the Biden administration could snap his fingers right now and release a bunch of information that would help us understand what's going on and how we got into this mess. And they don't want to do that. It seems like they don't want to do that because they don't want the issue, the problem of dealing with it politically and diplomatically. They don't want to throw

progressives under the bus. They don't want to complicate U.S.-China relations. And they're doing that at the cost of our national security and our public health. So, you know, all Radcliffe has to say is, hey, Biden, why don't you just release the stuff that I've But but put it over 95 percent that this came from a lab. Having seen whatever it is he's seen and it matters. It does matter. All right. We have got more to do with Josh, including a third clip. We're going to do it right after a quick break. Josh Rogan of The Washington Post is with us today. Very excited to have him. So we actually the third soundbite we have is again of our former national intelligence or director of national intelligence, John Ratcliffe, speaking to the issue you just raised, Josh, about what does Biden have that he could release that would help us all understand? Here he is. Listen. Is there still major intelligence that goes to proving the virus came out of the Wuhan Institute of Virology that's still not in the public domain? Yes, there's compelling intelligence that hasn't been declassified. When you declassify intelligence, you risked the potential human

sources or signals intelligence, where your eyes and ears into their actions are coming from. And so we put out as much as we felt we could safely do at the time. But I think the time has come for the Biden administration to declassify additional information that would, again, more evidence if you need it, that the Chinese Communist Party officials acted badly, bullied international officials, covered up intelligence and reporting on this. There is more intelligence out there, and I'd like to see it declassified because it'll create additional pressure, not just on Chinese Communist Party officials, but others that still continue to deny that China is a bad actor here. But that's not going to happen, right? There's not even a whiff that Biden's going to

declassify anything. And he doesn't want to. Why? You touched on it before the break. Right. So some of the things that we the known unknowns, as Rumsfeld used to say, are that we know that there were sick researchers at the lab in October and November of 2019. We don't know what they were working on. I'm told that it's back coronaviruses. That would seem relevant, right? What were their names? Where are they now? Can we talk to them? You know, we know that the EcoHealth Alliance and the NIH were doing business with the Wuhan labs. We haven't seen the documents. We haven't seen the files. You know, we don't, you know, so there's lots of obvious stuff that they could release now. Why they don't do it. You know, it's it's because they don't see a political upside in finding out how we got into this mess. And that's the crazy thing is that in Congress, who's resigning, by the way, after decades of service, you know, or Peter Daszak or any of these guys to to put their hand on a Bible and tell us what they know and then to show us the records. And, you know, I get it. I understand

why they're in a bind. They're trying to set up a summit between Joe. But that's what they're doing right now. Jake Sullivan is in Zurich meeting with the Chinese leadership to set up a summit between Joe Biden and Xi Jinping. And the Chinese are flying planes over Taiwan every single day. And it's a tense situation. I get it. This is an inconvenient thing to bring up. OK, but it's 700000 dead Americans. So we're going to need some answers. And there's no statute of limitation on 700000 deaths. And it informs how we move forward and how we do science and how we protect ourselves from the next pandemic. So, yeah, it's all political downside for the Biden

team. But you know what? Tough. You know, what about the rest of the world? I mean, are they as dependent on China as we are? I mean, isn't there somebody more? Is there some other brave actor anywhere who can get to the bottom of this since we don't have the spine for it? You know, it's as it turns out, every time a country raised this issue, the Chinese government punished them horrendously. When Australia called for an independent investigation, the Chinese government decimated their beef and wine industries with a snap of the finger in the middle of a pandemic, crushing their farmers just for suggesting it. OK, and that's because, you know, that's how much the Chinese Communist Party is devoted not to finding the answer, but just to making sure that nobody else does.

That's all they want for them. Not knowing is enough. And, you know, and as it turns out, the U.S. government is the only organization in the world that's left that's powerful enough to stand up to the Chinese Communist Party. And all we really need is the will to do so. Let me ask you about Daszak in one other way. This letter that was written, I think it was a couple of days ago, October 1st, from top scientists to the HHS secretary demanding that he be booted. They say he has concealed several extreme situations of conflict of interest, withheld critical information, misled public opinion by expressing falsehoods, and they want to push him out of this nonprofit eco-health alliance,

nearly the entire budget of which comes from us U.S. taxpayers. They say the board has a moral and a legal obligation to investigate his behavior. And some of the things they cite him as having done, they accuse him of having lied when he said the Wuhan lab didn't keep live bats on premises when recently uncovered footage from 2017 shows bats in cages there. Whoops. That he made unfounded claims about why virus samples

and sequences held by the Wuhan lab were taken offline, making them, oh, weirdly inaccessible to outside researchers. He failed to publicly disclose that EcoHealth Alliance had applied in 2019 to the Pentagon for that gain of function research grant you just mentioned. And they mentioned Fauci and Collins repeatedly denying that federal funds went to support that kind of research at the Wuhan lab. But, you know, there's real questions about whether, in fact, we did. But here's what I want to ask you. Why wouldn't the board investigate him? I mean, the obvious answer is because they were in on it, because they knew, because they can't fire Peter Daszak, because they'll go down with him. So who's going to investigate the board? I don't think they will get rid of him, right? If their hands are dirty, they're not going to get rid of him. So what are

our options? Because this guy clearly should not be staying in this post. Right. I mean, again, we can't have the scientists policing the scientists. It doesn't work. That's what we should have learned from this pandemic. We can't have Anthony Fauci overseeing Anthony Fauci. We can't have Francis Collins overseeing Francis Collins. We can't have the EcoHealth Alliance overseeing Peter Daszak because it doesn't work. OK, none of these organizations are self-correcting. Now, the fact that it's U.S. taxpayer money means that we actually do have an out here,

which is to get Congress and the administration involved, because that's your taxpayer money, my taxpayer money. And there's no accountability. There's no transparency, even in the biggest crisis in the world. And, you know, the thing that I was going to add to your list is that he actually, you know, coordinated the effort to call the lab leak theory a conspiracy theory, as we now know, by coordinating all those letters from the scientists and put a chilling effect on the scientific community that's only falling right now, two years later. And, you know, that's really what's going on. It's not just that's why the lab leak theory is so explosive, not because it implicates China, because it implicates us, because we funded that research, because it implicates our labs and our scientists and our heroes of the pandemic, including Anthony Fauci, who I'm sure was

trying to prevent pandemics, but is now helping to obscure the investigation into how we got into this pandemic. And you're right. We never let the boards of the companies police their own companies. It's it's a it's foolish. We have to have Congress and the Biden administration do it. And if the Biden administration won't do it, then we have to have Congress push them to do it. And again, that's kind of happening. But I mean, geez, it's slow. And every year that goes by, we get farther and farther away from the truth. You know, it's easy to talk about this in the abstract as a policy matter and throw the numbers out there.

But it's like, you know, I think of just just last week there was a funeral for Don Sorrell, who is my son's teacher. And, you know, he was his music teacher. And my son was devastated when he died from COVID. He had gone into the ICU during the quarantine, and then things looked like they were getting better, and they weren't. And he took a turn, he died. And they had to wait, of course, to have the memorial. But you know, so many people have lost loved ones, but Janice Dean, my pal, both of her in-laws and so on. Kids have died. Like, forgive me, but these fuckers have lied to us for long enough and we need to know the truth i mean just to put too fine a point on it but

we need to know this people die millions of people are dead and peter dazak is allowed to get away with his lies the biden administration looks the other way the information's there if only we will push for it and demand it. And we have no assurances this won't happen again. It's infuriating to me, infuriating. There's just nothing we can do. And I don't even know if we get another president in there, Josh, whether he or she would handle it differently because China's got us so, you know, by the you know what. Well, listen, there's a lot we can do. There's a lot we must do. There's a lot we can do here, but there's also a lot we can do with China because in the end, really, it's not right.

All of those tragic stories. I'm so sorry to hear about your friends' losses. And we all have stories like that. But, you know, think about all the countries where they don't have vaccines, where they don't have food, where they don't have shelter, where they don't have water, and they don't have medical care or ventilators. And that's most of the countries in the world who are still suffering very, very greatly and will continue to for years and years and years. And, you know, if the Chinese Communist Party is allowed to avoid responsibility and accountability for that, what will that teach them? You know, yes, we have to we have to clean up our own shop. We have to realize that science is a national security issue, that viruses are dual use technologies. And we

have and if the Chinese government thinks they're dual use technologies. And we have and if the Chinese government thinks they're dual use technologies, then we have to think of them that way. Yeah, we got to leave it up against a heartbreak. So apologies for the mid sentence. But thank you. You're brilliant. Love love your book. Thanks for being here. We're going to pick it up with Dr. Scott Gottlieb, used to run the FDA right after this break. Don't miss that. Love Josh Rogin. Welcome back to the Megyn Kelly Show, everyone. Joining me now, Dr. Scott Gottlieb, former FDA commissioner and author of the book Uncontrolled Spread, Why COVID-19 Crushed Us and How We Can Defeat the Next Pandemic. Scott also serves on the board of directors of the pharmaceutical company Pfizer.

Scott, thank you very much for being with us. We appreciate it. Thanks a lot. Thanks for having me. Let me just pick it up where I left it with my last guest, Josh Rogin, who's been doing great reporting on the origins of COVID-19 and says, look, everything needs to be investigated and you got to keep some space open for the possibility that it was natural origin, but that the evidence is pretty overwhelming that this thing came from a Wuhan lab. And President Trump said as much in a soundbite that was in a documentary that we just discussed. So did our former director of national intelligence, who said he requires no further proof.

So I read recently that you were still hedging on it, saying you still think it's of natural origin. Do you still feel that way? Well, I wasn't hedging on it. You know, what I've said publicly is that I think it's 50-50. I think it's hard to make a call either way based on the evidence that we have. And this is going to be probably a battle of competing narratives for a period of time, if not in perpetuity, unless we have one of two things. Either we can definitively find the natural host, the zoonotic source, or we have a whistleblower

in China who comes forward with information that's more definitive that this came out of the lab. Why haven't we been able to find the host so far? I mean, we're not going to find it now. We already went over there. We tested 18,000 animals. We didn't find it. Right. So as I was saying, I think the side of the ledger that points towards a lab has certainly grown over time. And the case for this being a lab origin, I think, has gotten stronger over time. And the case that this came out of a zoonotic source has been at best stagnant over time and probably weakened. Because you're right, we've looked exhaustively for the zoonotic source. We haven't found it. We've fully disproven the lab, the wet market as a place of the origin of this virus. Even the Chinese government now concedes that the wet market wasn't the origin of the virus. It was just a stop along the way. And I think you have to start factoring in the Chinese government's own behavior where they withheld key information. You can certainly draw inferences from their behavior that this points towards a more potentially sinister source coming out of a lab. So I think that the lab side of the ledger, and Josh does a good job

in his book and in the articles he's written, the lab side of the ledger, and Josh does a good job in his book, and in the articles he's written, recounting some of the recent evidence that there was an outbreak of infection in the lab right around the proximity when we think that this virus first made its jump into humans, that the Chinese government had coronaviruses, novel coronaviruses in that facility that they were experimenting with, that have never been disclosed, that they were infecting transgenic animals with fully human immune systems, which makes it more likely that the virus could have become human adapted. And of course, all of that's true what you're saying, but that's why we all believe that it's a, it was a lab leak. I mean, at this point, you've got to place your bets and you look at the gene splicing that was done. Um, that now I talked about this report in the wall street journal

by these two guys, and they've just followed it up. Uh's Richard Muller and Dr. Quay, who talk about specifically how there is a gene splicing, there's strong evidence of gene splicing into the COVID-19 virus, and it's all there black and white. They call it the furin cleavage site, which would not be in the COVID-19 genome if this thing were from a natural source. It would be extremely unusual. I have a whole chapter in my book about the case why this could have come out of a lab. So you're talking to someone who believes- Well, what's the evidence that it's natural? I mean, maybe that's what I should be asking you. Well, at this point, I'm upset because we need to know, and we seem to be giving the Chinese a

total pass on this. And it's like, I'm open-minded. When this thing started, I'm upset because we need to know and we seem to be giving the Chinese a total pass on this. And it's like, I don't I don't I'm open minded. When this thing started, I'm totally open minded. I just tell me what it is. But we have just sort of phoned it in on the Intel investigation. We don't all the signs seem to be pointing to Wuhan lab. And we're not demanding that they release their information, the Chinese, which they still could. And, you know, you were in a position of power. Why don't you don't we care? We need the information. Right. As I say in my book,

the reason why it's important to get to the bottom of this question definitively and to find that smoking gun that can definitively prove whether or not this came out of a lab is because if we do assess that there's a high probability of this came out of a lab and we have definitive evidence of that, it's going to change how we govern research around the world and how much we trust countries to be forthcoming, not only about the research they're doing, but about outbreaks that they have. And we're going to have to get our foreign intelligence agencies more engaged in the mission of assessing and surveilling labs. And so there's a policy- Well, how are we not there? Explain to me. With respect, I just don't want to go into talking points because I were there like the the smoking gun.

You don't have videotape of the murder, but you've got a lot of circumstantial evidence around the murder. You can see the gun on the scene. It's still smoking. You can see the gunshot residue on the person you think is the main suspect. You have an eyewitness saying he did it. This is that's how circumstantial cases are made beyond reasonable doubts in courts of law. This is that's the genome right here. The splicing of the genome.

I'm not the right guest to be arguing that this I'm not the one coming on arguing this came out of a zoonotic source. I have not been arguing that. I've said that I 50 50 is not really this came out of a lab. So yeah, 50 50 is not it. You so you're coming over. You're going to give me it's more than more likely. I'm not coming over.

I've been there. I've been I've been out front on this and I've been criticized by people who are on the opposite side of this issue for having a high index of suspicion that this could have come out of a lab. What I'm just saying is, you know, if we want to sort of galvanize global action, it's going to take more than the inference and the circumstantial evidence that we have right now. It's going to have more. That's insane, Scott. We have so much. Look, we have so much. And we we did this Intel review, which was completely phoned in and effortless. I mean, it really wasn't sincere. And now you see like the former DNI saying Biden's got documentation that he could release Joe by President Joe Biden, and he won't do it. So look, you're not going to unless you've got the murder on videotape, you can never convince the jury beyond a reasonable doubt that 100 percent they've got it right. But you can get them to the point based on circumstantial evidence. They they they have figured it out. And I just think we're there.

I look, what do you make of the evidence that would still be obtainable potentially that I think could be really important here. The world could put pressure on China to release the source strains. They still haven't done that. If we have access to those original strains, that could get us closer to the natural origin of this virus. There's probably more information that could be gleaned from what that lab, we don't know what was in the inventory of the lab. They've never revealed the sequences of the viruses that they had on hand. There was an outbreak of an unusual strain of coronavirus in pangolins in proximity to when SARS-CoV-2 first started to spread, March of 2019. We still don't have access to those samples. So if we start putting pressure on China for those discrete pieces of evidence, I think that they can provide a stronger case on whether or not this came out of a lab origin or it came out of a zoonotic source. We don't have those pieces of evidence. What specifically should we do? Well, I think the World Health Organization's failed

to put pressure on China. One thing that they've refused to do is call on China to release those source strains under a premise that China is not obligated to do it under the international health regulations, which isn't true. What can we do? I think we can work through international bodies to put more pressure on China to release. What about the United States? The international bodies have done nothing for us. The WHO is in on it. They went over there and did an investigation that was absolutely useless. It wasn't worth the paper. It was printed on. Even they recognized that they had embarrassed themselves. Watch the 60 Minutes report on it. What can the United States do? What should we do this week to get real answers? Yeah, look, one of the things I argue in the book is that we need to get our foreign intelligence agencies more engaged in doing surveillance around the public health mission.

I suspect they're much more engaged now than they were before SARS-CoV-2, but I think there needs to be a much more explicit role for the CIA and the NSA in these kinds of endeavors. Historically, surveillance around foreign labs and emerging outbreaks has been left to public health authorities and largely the CDC. And we've seen these sort of multilateral commitments and agreements that we had in place didn't work at surfacing the information that we needed. Well, what about what about sanctions? I mean, A, we don't really need spies because we've got Peter Daszak. And I'm sure he's either spoken, or could be forced to speak about what exactly was going on there. He may not be speaking to us, but he's speaking to somebody, meaning the media, but he's speaking to somebody. And B, what about sanctions? Why don't we cause some pain for the Chinese so that they fork over the information? Are you in support of

that? We're missing the source strains. We're missing an inventory of what was in the WIV. We're missing some of the coronaviruses we know were circulating in China preceding this outbreak that could be helpful in determining whether they could have been the original strain, particularly that outbreak in pangolins in March of 2019. So there's some key information that if we had access, we're missing the blood samples drawn on the workers in the WIV. If we had access to those blood samples, we'd be able to test them to see if they had antibodies to SARS-CoV-2. That information was never made available. The Chinese told us that they didn't, but we never actually had access to the underlying data.

Do you know whether we've ever tested those 9,000 athletes who got it at those Chinese military games? Have we tested them or did we early on for the antibodies? Because that would be telling too yeah i don't know uh i doubt it i don't know how we would get access to those blood samples let's switch gears um there's so much to talk about vaccinations of children and i know you have three children how old are your kids um 11 11 and 8 so two of them will soon be vaccinated okay so i've got my my 11 year old just turned 12 last weekend. Um, I have a 10 year old and I have an eight year old, so we're kind of in the same boat. Um, and I knew very pro vaccination

of children and I don't want to just break. And I am very pro vaccination for adult. I just want to say that upfront. I got vaccinated. I have Pfizer. I got your vaccine. Um I'm more hesitant. I'm not vaccine resistant. I'm vaccine hesitant when it comes to my children. Maybe I'd feel differently if they were teenagers, like older, 18, 19, but I'm not sure. So I'd love to, I want to get into it with you on like why you love them and why you think that we should do them and all that. But I want to give you the chance to explain first why you'd give it to your own child, because to me, that's the best evidence. It's it's not you know, you don't you don't believe it's harmful. You work for Pfizer. I mean, well, you have a relationship with them. And I know a woman who works for Pfizer and she loves the vaccine and she said she's going to give it to all of her kids. And that

honestly made me feel better about it. So make the case for why I shouldn't be vaccine hesitant on my children. Well, look, I understand the hesitation any parent has about putting a medical product in an otherwise healthy child. And that's where a lot of the uncertainty and unease about vaccines derive from generally. You're taking a healthy child and you're using a medical product on them and there's risks associated with any medical product. And the bottom line is that SARS-CoV-2, as much as we've talked about the fact that, thankfully, it's not nearly as dangerous in children as it is in older adults, it's still a dangerous virus. I mean, this is a virus that certainly is more dangerous than enterovirus or echovirus or other viruses,

Coxsackievirus, that cause bad outcomes in kids when you see epidemics sweep through populations. People always point to the fact that only 500 kids, a little over 500 kids have died of SARS-CoV-2, which in and of itself is a tragic number and makes it more deadly than a seasonal flu typically is. But not this past year. But that's not, but that shouldn't be reassuring because we see a lot of long-term sequelae and makes it more deadly than a seasonal flu typically is. But not this past year. But that shouldn't be reassuring because we see a lot of long-term sequelae from this virus, and it's a virus we don't fully understand.

So it's a virus I don't think we should want kids to get. We should be taking measures to try to prevent this from becoming epidemic in children. So on that side of the ledger, I have concerns about allowing my kids to be continually vulnerable to this virus. And what we've seen in the literature so far is people who've been vaccinated against the virus, even if they get infected with it, they're less at risk for some of the long-term complications that we've seen with SARS-CoV-2.

And on the other side of the ledger, there was concern that this is a new vaccine and that it wasn't put through as deliberate of a development process. I would say on both those points, number one, these were the largest clinical trials ever run with any medical product in modern times. Fully 90,000 patients were enrolled in trials for the mRNA vaccines. The only vaccine I remember, the trial that I remember being on par with that was the rotavirus vaccine, which was about 60,000 patients. And we're 90,000 children. We now have data on more than three hundred million doses administered in the US. So it's a substantial database of. I know, but you're trying to you're trying to talk me out of my vaccine hesitancy on my children. I got the

vaccine. You got me right. But but my children, you only did testing on two thousand children. That's that's not the same. And, you know, the presumption is that the data from the adult population is transferable to the experienced and children. I mean, if you look at any medical product- But children aren't mini adults. If you look at any other medical product, you look at the data from 16 to 25, the side effect profile, and you do separate trials in children. You're right.

We're looking specifically at this vaccine in children. But the data set that's available for adults is informative. You don't just We're looking specifically at this vaccine in children, but the data set that's available for adults is informative. You don't just take that and throw it out. You use it to help inform the overall perception and pictures, the safety of the vaccine. That's what's been done here. Um, the, I want to, I want to ask you, cause I, you go on, um, CNBC, I've seen you on Squawk Box, and also I think Face the Nation. And one of the things you said, I really wanted to follow up on it, because you said there are different ways to approach vaccination.

You said it's not a binary decision, do I vaccinate my kid or not? Well, sadly, it kind of is for a lot of parents out there. And let's just talk about places like the Los Angeles School District, where it is a binary choice. They don't get to do any of the things you were saying on Face the Nation. You said you could potentially wait for the lower dose vaccine to be available. No, they can't. They've got to do it. You said if your child has already had COVID, one dose may be sufficient. That's not true. They're not allowed to do just one dose. They have to do two doses. That's what's been required of them. And I think I love like your push for flexibility, but it's not what's happening. It's parents are being mandated to get two doses, the full doses that are available right now, not a lower dose, the 30 micrograms for the kids right now, or they cannot go to school. That's not fair, is it? Well, look, I've come out and said

that I'm highly skeptical of federal mandates. I think that decisions around vaccination, to the extent that they're collective choices, and they are collective choices because your decision to get vaccinated or not does affect your community, your workplace. To the extent that these are collective choices, I think they should be made at as local a level as possible. So I think local school districts, states, mayors are well within their discretion to establish mandates for their local communities. I think that's where these decisions

should ultimately be made. So I wouldn't second guess any state or mayor or employer who feels that the only way to protect their local population, their workplace is through mandated vaccination because of the unique circumstances, the environment in which they operate. I think at a macro level, there are different approaches you can take to vaccinating a child. For parents who have concerns, whether those concerns are grounded in clear science or not, people just have general apprehensions, you can make a choice to extend between the two doses. You can make a choice in a child who's already had COVID, perhaps to give one dose that may be appropriate. There'll be a one dose that may be appropriate. There'll be a lower dose vaccine on the market. Hopefully at some point soon, the FDA is meeting on October 26 to discuss that vaccine that could potentially be used in children who are smaller

in size, who might be, you know, above the age of 12, but biologically, you know, not as progressed or smaller. So there's different approaches that you can take in consultation with your pediatrician to try to address whatever concerns you may have. I look, I appreciate you talking. It is too, because those parents in LA do not have that choice. They've got a stick of vaccine and their 70 pound 12 year old. That's the same as they put in their 200 pound husband. Right. You're talking about one city in one part of the country. Well, I'm living it myself. I'll be honest with you. I have my kids in private school here in Connecticut. They don't yet have to do it because as I said, my oldest is 12, but that's only because the Pfizer vaccine, your vaccine hasn't yet. Do you want me to defend?

It hasn't yet been permanently approved. So I'm just saying I'm about to face this because if I don't get my kid vaccinated by the time he's 16, he's expelled. So why don't you give me the answers instead of the questions? Because do you want me to defend the city of Los Angeles or criticize them? Because I'm not involved in making policy in Los Angeles or California. Well, I'm wondering how you feel, because what you said is we shouldn't involve we shouldn't second guess like a mayor. But this isn't we're talking about not talking about a mayor mandating for children or for adults. We're talking about a school district mandating it for children or they're expelled. And you and I both know that the damage of expelling a kid, forcing him not to attend school or, you know, even better scenario would be via remote. But that's not

even offered. That's not OK. Right. So it's like. So this is the broader question. Those who are skeptical of federal mandates may gather you're skeptical of federal mandates. I'm skeptical of federal mandates. And I've been critical of the Biden administration's decision to mandate this on on private businesses down to 100 employees. Are you also skeptical of local businesses, local towns making decisions for their community. And that's what it sounds like. See, that's where I draw the line. I don't like the mandates. I think if we're going to, first of all, we mandate vaccine as part of going to school. I know. And I got my kids all those. But they're new. This one's new. Well, by the time that this one is actually incorporated into the vaccine schedule, it's going to be a long way off.

You know, California moved quickly here. I wouldn't expect many other parts of the country to mandate vaccination. It's happening right now. I'm telling you right now it's happening in private schools and across the country. It's happening in my own private school right now. And by the way, you mentioned the flu. They don't mandate the flu vaccine. And that did kill more kids last year than COVID. A lot of school districts do mandate the flu vaccine, actually. It's not a nationwide thing, and it's not a school district-wide thing. And the flu vaccine's been around for a lot longer. So what's your point? I mean, you know, this is going to eventually be- My point is we know more about the flu vaccine not causing long-term

problems with children. It's not as experimental. I don't know what the reports are, but I certainly haven't heard anything about myocarditis caused heart inflammation in children from the flu vaccine. But the flu vaccine in most school districts is not mandated. It's not. Yeah. And this won't be either, Megan. You're talking about select school districts. This is by the time that this is incorporated into childhood immunization schedule, and I believe it eventually will be, it's going to be down the road when you have multiple vaccines on the market, fully approved by the FDA. Right now, we do not have that. So I wouldn't, I think the districts that you're talking about are the outliers. I'm not responsible for making their policies. And I

didn't come on your show to defend their policies. I don't run the city of Los Angeles. I'm asking you what you think. Whether you like these mandates or you don't. I'm telling you what I think. whether you like these mandates or you don't. I'm telling you what I think. What I think is that the federal government should give discretion to states, local businesses, mayors to make these decisions on behalf of their communities. That's where I think public health decision making should be made. That should be the locus of the decision making whenever possible. And to the extent that some districts are making decisions that you may not agree with,

what do you want the federal government to come in and block them? What are you for, the federal government doing this or not doing this? I'm for the federal government leaving discretion to private communities to do this. When the private communities step in to do it, even if they make a decision that you might not agree with, I don't want to take away their discretion to do that. That's when we traditionally left these decisions. I get it. I get that. But I, as a parent in up am upset that the, the principal of the school is sticking his nose in between me and my child. That should be a decision for me and my pediatrician. And, you know, and that's what gets me upset, right? Like I subjected myself to the, to the federal government. So there's a more fundamental question. I mean, is the decision to get vaccinated a collective decision or is it an individual choice? These are not just

individual choices. The reason why we mandate vaccines in the first place and have a childhood immunization schedule is because decisions that people make affect the community. So communities set standards about these kinds of actions. And that's why we have a childhood immunization schedule. Have some schools moved ahead of where the CDC is in terms of mandating this? Yeah, a couple, a handful have, and you're citing them right here. Most, I don't believe. You don't think it's coming at the CDC level? You don't think so? Because Dr. Fauci is already saying he's in favor of school mandates for the vaccine. Yeah, I wouldn't expect to see the CDC incorporating this into the childhood immunization schedule. Like I said, until there's multiple approved vaccines on the market, that's a ways off at this point. I hope you're right. It's certainly not

what we're hearing from Dr. Fauci. He's switched on it used to say it wasn't in favor of mandating the vaccine at all. And then certainly with respect to children, and now he's reversed himself on both of those things. And you know, it's like our kids who are going to have to take the risk and it with only 2000 children tested just over. I feel like you cite the 2000 in the clinical trial, which was a trial looking at antibody response. It was an immunological trial. There's been thousands of doses administered, more than that, tens of thousands. You have a pretty large data set on children aged 12 to 16, and that data is being used to inform the FDA's decision. And I mean, how long has that been in existence? In other words, have we had any long-term time to reassess that? In other words,

I'm inarticulately trying to say there's been no long-term testing because we just came up with the vaccine. And I love the vaccine. I think it was miraculous. And I think we should be really proud of the guys at Pfizer and Moderna and J&J who did this. But there's no long-term testing. And while I might take the risk for me knowing that, I've had my kids, I don't have to worry about any of that stuff. And I realized there's no evidence it hurts fertility. I want to say that out loud,

but I understand I talked to a lot of young women who are hesitant for that reason. I look at my own kids and I have a different responsibility for them, right? There has been no long-term testing and my littlest guy is eight. I understand that. Look, there's long-term data available now in adults, obviously. The vaccine has been on the market for well more than a year and a half. You

go back to the original trials, the first patients were dosed probably almost two years ago at this point. There's been 300 million doses administered in the US, almost 6 billion doses of vaccine delivered globally. This is the largest database of information that we have. A year and a half of data is a long time in terms of a vaccine safety database. Usually side effects come manifest in three months. If you're postulating that there's some latent risk associated with the vaccine that's manifest after a prolonged period of time, what is it? It wouldn't be anything necessarily. Well, but if you have a theoretical concern,

it's worth articulating what it is. Most of most vaccine related side effects are much more immediate within the first two months. If there is some kind of latent issue to associate with vaccination, it's probably going to be from exposure to the spike protein, which you also get exposed to in the context of the virus. And so it's hard to postulate what that would be, what a latent side effect that would be that would only become manifest after a very prolonged period of time, which is why most vaccine related side effects are seen within the first several months. That's important to know. That's important to know. Most vaccine side effects are seen within the first couple of months. And that's true for children and adults? It's true for vaccines generally. Usually within two to three months, you see most vaccine-related

side effects, which is why the FDA wanted at least two months of follow-up data on at least half the patients in the clinical trial when they initially authorized this vaccine, because most of them are actually manifest within the first two months. There are cases where you see certain things that are unmasked after about three months, like Guillain-Barre is typically something that's a little bit more delayed. Well, I mean, that does make me feel better. And I will, I'll be honest with you and say, as kids start getting vaccinated, you know, we're not the first to do it, right? The kids have been getting vaccinated now for a while. I started to feel better about it, right? You look around, it's like, you're not seeing too

many terrible reports. And it's like, and I realize there are some there's always some and you never know causation but my own hesitancy gets a little weaker as time goes by and more kids and I think the parents who are way into this should go first you know the people who are dying to have that kid injected with the Pfizer vaccine go for it I would love it if you went first. And I'll sit back and I'm willing to take the risk of my kid getting COVID in the meantime. But my own hesitancy is waning a little as I see lots of kids get it and seem okay, though I still have, you know, sort of the big question of long term. And then I do worry about myocarditis because we have a history of heart problems in our family. All right, we're going to pick it up on the opposite side of this break. Let me just pay the bills for one minute and then we'll pick back up with some more on vaccines and masks and all the rest of it.

Can I ask you one other question, Scott? One of the things that's in my craw is the fact that over in the UK, they recommend just one jab for 12 to 15 year olds, right? Just one jab. And they say that's what they think is safe. So it's driving me nuts that back here, if you just want one jab, which you say could be, could make sense too. It's, it's deemed not good enough by the people who want you to vaccinate your child. Like, shouldn't people allow you to get just one jab for your kid if that's what you and your doctor think is right? Well, again, no one's preventing it. I mean, you're talking about

a single school district that put in place a mandate that requires, I guess, the full, I don't, I'm not even familiar with what Los Angeles has done. I said two doses saying that, that they require two doses to be fully vaccinated to attend school. In most parts of the country, you know, those are decisions that parents can make in consultation with their pediatrician. As best I know, it's not being mandated anywhere else or in the country, or maybe you're suggested in some private schools that you have to have the full course of the vaccination. We'll see where we end up on this. There are studies underway looking at different dosing schedules, both extending the interval

between the two doses, as well as looking at one dose, particularly in people who we know who have already had COVID, where one dose could be sufficient at inducing a long-term immunity, as well as lower dose formulations in children. So all those experiments are still underway. We're going to have much more data over the next six months on some of these questions. Let me ask you quickly when you think that, because I know Pfizer has submitted some data to the FDA on five to 11-year-olds and its vaccine. It hasn't yet applied for the emergency use authorization, has it? It's going to imminently. So that meeting's October 26, where the FDA is going to evaluate that application for kids ages five to 11. And remember, that's

the 10 microgram dose. That's a dose that's one third the dose that's being used in adults. Same formulation, same exact vaccine, but in a lower dose. Right. I mean, to me, if you're going to get the vaccine, it makes sense that your little guy doesn't require as much of it in his or her body as your husband or yourself, which is one of the things like, you know, if you've got a thin 12 year old or, you know, a smaller 12 year old, you should be allowed to, to talk about that. You should be allowed to give him the 10 micro gram as opposed to the 30. Don't you think?

And I suspect, look, I suspect there's going to be parents and pediatricians that, um, discuss those kinds of decisions. And, you know, my point about this not being a binary choice was just that I think you have discretion to talk to your doctor about what this best strategy is for your particular child. Well, you should. I mean, look, I'm experiencing it firsthand myself, as I mentioned, and I feel for those parents in LA, you know, public school is a lot trickier than private school. I can pull my kids and put them in another school tomorrow, but public school, you know, you're stuck there. You live there, you pay taxes, they got to take your kid. It's just a lot more complicated. Let me talk to you about natural immunity, because you keep, you're stuck there. You live there, you pay taxes, they got to take your kid. It's just a lot more complicated. Let me talk to you about natural immunity, because you keep saying you could get one dose if your kid had COVID. And it's not just about kids. Don't want to talk

about natural immunity of kids and adults, because Marty McCary, who we've had on the show, he's a doctor at Johns Hopkins, well-respected doctor. He's made the point that natural immunity should count. And if you look at what they're doing in some places in Europe, like Italy and other places, they're recognizing that natural immunity from COVID should count to get you on the airplane, so you can keep your job in a place that's requiring a vaccine passport, if you will. On August 21st, Israel published the most powerful and scientifically rigorous study. He writes in the Wall Street Journal, on this subject to date, they sampled more than 700,000 people, found that natural immunity was 27 times more effective than vaccinated immunity. So why should anyone who's got natural immunity have to have a vaccine?

Well, look, I think we should recognize that people who've had infection, particularly people who've had recent infection with the Delta variant have immunity that's probably going to persist for a period of time. I don't think it's going to persist forever. I think at some point they'll need to get vaccinated in order to make sure that they secure that immunity in the long run. But there is a durable immunity that people acquire from infection. And we don't see a lot of people getting reinfected after prior infection. I wouldn't argue that natural immunity is better than vaccination. I frankly wouldn't argue that vaccination is better than natural immunity. The data right now is mixed. You can find studies on both sides of this equation. What I would say is that natural

immunity does confer protection for a sustained period of time, not forever, but for a sustained period of time. Now getting to the policy question of whether or not we're going to allow natural immunity to substitute for vaccination, you know, one of the reasons why we require vaccination as a policy matter, as a demonstration of immunity, is because we can verify vaccination. It's hard to verify prior infection if the people who are previously infected are unwilling to, you know, bring a positive PCR test or embrace things like immunity immunity passports in Israel, where they actually recognize natural immunity as as being protective and as a substitute for vaccination for entry into public venues, for example, they have the green card system where you can demonstrate that you either were recently vaccinated or recently infected. I suspect that if we adopted such a practice here in the U.S., there'd be a lot of people, particularly folks who want to rely on natural immunity, who wouldn't want to embrace such a system. They wouldn't want to have a

passport-type system. Can I ask you something? If you have the antibodies, if you had COVID, does it necessarily show up in your blood? I mean, would your blood test absolutely show that you had had it? You could use the antibody tests in a binary way to say whether or not you've been exposed to the virus or not. They're not reliable in terms of giving a quantitative measure of what your level of immunity is. Probably the most reliable way, if we wanted to rely on natural infection as a demonstration that you have immunity that's going to be durable, the most reliable way, if we wanted to rely on natural infection as a demonstration that you have immunity, that's going to be durable. The most reliable way to do it would be a proof that you actually had the infection.

So proof that you were PCR positive. OK, so let me jump in and ask you a follow up. And particularly recent proof. So let me ask you a follow up, because I know that, you know, the subjects or the studies are showing that all these vaccines wane over time, but especially Pfizer. It must be said more so than Moderna, as it turns out, the effectiveness in keeping you out of the hospital. vaccines wane over time, but especially Pfizer, it must be said, more so than Moderna, as it turns out. The effectiveness in keeping you out of the hospital, it wanes over time. There was a study just out today by you guys that hit the presses today or yesterday saying the Pfizer vaccine is only 47 percent effective at preventing hospitalization six months after your second dose. So if there's a way of telling that, right? Do you test somebody's

blood to see how effective the Pfizer vaccine is six months after your second dose? Or are you just looking at the number of hospitalizations? Yeah, I'm not familiar with the 47% figure that you're citing, but the data that we're looking at, that people are looking at, is mostly data coming out of Israel that shows declining vaccine effectiveness from infection and arising instances of breakthrough infections that are causing more symptomatic and severe disease, particularly in older individuals vaccine a long time ago. Now, you know, the challenge in drawing conclusions about one vaccine being more effective than the other. And I've been very careful not to do that, even when data came out suggesting that perhaps Pfizer was more effective than other vaccines. I've always said the same

thing, which is that I think these vaccines are largely comparable, is that the Pfizer vaccine was authorized first, it was used first, particularly in an older population. So there is a possibility that you're going to see the decline in efficacy first with the Pfizer vaccine, because it was deployed earlier and deployed in the population that's more at risk from COVID. So you might unmask the declining immunity first in this vaccine. I'd be careful not to conclude from the data because the data that comes out hasn't been corrected for time. And if you remember, the Pfizer vaccine was authorized here in the US in mid-December and was largely deployed initially to nursing homes, health care providers, and distributed through hospitals because of the requirements around the cold chain storage. And so it went into a population that was either more likely to have a bad outcome from COVID, people in nursing homes, for example, or more likely to come into contact with COVID, healthcare workers, for example. So I think it's hard to draw comparative conclusions based on what we're

seeing right now. We'll have a better handle on this when we start seeing long-term data on all the vaccines. Okay. But I mean, I have it in front of me, but I just write, this is your study. This is, I don't, you may not be familiar with it, but this is a Pfizer study showing that after six months after the second dose, it only has a 47% effectiveness rate. It says, hold on a second, the effectiveness of Pfizer and Biotech's COVID-19 vaccine against infection tumbles over several months, falling from a peak of 88% a month after receiving the two-shot series to 47% six months later, according to an observational study published Monday in the peer-reviewed journal, The Lancet. So my point is not to rip on the Pfizer vaccine.

There's been a lot of data. Yeah, I don't know. I'm not disputing. No, I understand. I don't have stock in Moderna. I'm not trying to get people to get that vaccine. No, I know. I'm not familiar with every article that comes out. I've said that there's declining vaccine episodes over time. I got it. I got it. But let me get to my real point. My real point is the natural immunity wanes over time. So does Pfizer's immunity. Like they both go down over time. So, I mean, why why should I be looking at natural immunity as somehow less effective, even if I don't buy the Israel study that shows that studied 700000 patients? You don't have you can't show me a study here that's that's come to an opposite conclusion about the vaccine being more effective. They both weigh. Right. So the best, the best

argument would be that a vaccine, if it has declining efficacy over time, and we don't know what, what the efficacy of the vaccine is going to look like after you get a third booster, you may get a more durable response, but a vaccine can be redosed. The immunity offered by a vaccine can be redosed. The immunity offered by natural infection, I presume it could be redosed if you want to go out and get reinfected, but that's not really a good way to sustain long-term immunity. Obviously, you have a period of immunity from your initial infection, but if you want to sustain that immunity at some point, you're either going to need to get infected again or you're going to need to get vaccinated. So on that front, do you think those of us who

have been vaccinated are going to be looking at a situation when we have to get an annual vaccine? It's unclear. I think for a portion of the population that's more vulnerable to COVID, this might become an annual vaccine. And we may end up shifting the vaccines to be using a Delta backbone for the vaccines. If more of the mutations that happen over time are within that Delta lineage, the infection that's more prevalent right now, which a lot of people believe is going to be the case, you could well see a situation where the future vaccines are based on a Delta backbone to give you better protection against that Delta variant. What about, can I ask, we only have a few minutes left, but I got to ask you about masks

because I haven't picked enough scabs. Let's talk about masks is that I'm so over them. I think, I think most Americans are so over them. And, you know, we talked with this journalist, really smart guy, did a long piece for New York magazine, David Zweig, on how the CDC's own study of 90,000 kids in Atlanta showed that masks were not effective in preventing COVID. There was no statistically significant difference in schools that required students to wear masks compared to schools where they were optional. And indeed, they don't require them for the younger age kids in the UK, Ireland, Scandinavia, France, Netherlands, Switzerland, Italy. And there is no greater incident of school outbreaks in those countries relative to the schools in the United States. So can we finally take the masks off of our kids? Well, look, for every article you cite that shows that there may not be an impact of masks,

there's other literature that points in the opposite direction. No. Did you read the David Zweig reporting in New York magazine? He looked at every single one, not one. He looked at every single one. I think I think on balance, the masks probably provide an incremental benefit. But, you know, the consequence of going into the school year without any mitigation in place, any tactics, I say no mitigation or or keeping kids in defined social pods, geographic pods or implementing testing in schools. We've seen we've seen states that have taken that approach in the South. Florida took that approach. They didn't have any mitigation in place in a lot of those school districts. And we saw the virus become epidemic in the schools.

Now, of course, it's way through. What schools did it become epidemic in? Amongst children in school spread? That's not true. It's true. If you look at the level of infection among kids in Florida and some of the other southern states, which didn't implement a lot of medication early in school year, you saw very dense outbreaks. There's a study showing they got it in school? Well, when 27% of new infections are among kids, you're going to argue they all got it at home after the infection levels had started to decline rapidly among adults. The only category of growth in infections, if you look at the last two months or six weeks in some of these states, was among children under the age of 18. So it was

school-age kids. Strong presumption is, did I sequence all the children to actually, did I sequence them to trace the origin of their infection? No. You're right. I do not have that. But you're setting up a straw, ma'am. You went to write to, oh, I'm not in favor of a school doing no mitigation. Me neither. Me neither. But the masks are not effective and there aren't studies proving that they are. The CDC's own study, deal with that, 90,000 students in the Atlanta school district, prove that they do not have any effect. Why isn't that valid? Why isn't the CDC relying on its own study to allow us to unmask our children? My policy prescription would be that in a setting of a very contagious variant that we don't know how hard or easy it's going to be to control in

a school setting where the imperative is to keep kids in the classroom and also keep them safe. We should go into the school year adopting all the reasonable measures that we can take and peel them away as we see how successful we are. Masking has negative effects. Masking has negative effects on children. That's been proven as well. This is not a harmless measure and it's not helping. So why wouldn't we be honest about the CDC's own information? Well, that's what we're going to agree to disagree. I think that there is the balance of the evidence, I think, points to the fact that the masks have worn properly and used properly, use high quality masks on the margin. They're beneficial.

And that's they're not kids aren't wearing N95s. You know that. And why would it be? Why would the kids in the UK and Ireland and Scandinavia and France and Netherlands and Switzerland, Italy be fine not masking? But our kids somehow are in a different situation. Look, we have we have different circumstances in our schools. We have schools that are more crowded, schools that are older, have poor ventilation. There's different situations in school districts.

And this is, again, where you've been to Italy. Districts haven't. I think they have more room than we do to try to implement the measures that they think are going to protect that schoolhouse. I would have gone in. My advice to policymakers would be to go into the school year with as many measures, reasonable measures as you can take to try to protect that environment and withdraw them if you see that you're being successful. Look, a lot of schools aren't doing routine testing in the schools. They're not keeping kids in defined geographic pods.

They're letting whole classes intermingle. And I don't want to see this become epidemic in a school setting. I've seen large outbreaks in the schools, including in my local community. And I don't think that this is a benign virus in children. I don't want to see the entire American population. The data show that when the kids are getting it, they're getting it from teachers, not from other kids, and that the kids are not effective vectors of this virus. Do you dispute that? That's not true with Delta. You're talking about data that comes out of studies with the old Wuhan variant. Delta is such a contagious variant

and the kids mount very high viral loads that we do think that the kids are transferring this infection. It's different. And the CDC has been very slow to do evaluations of that. So you can't base assumptions on this variant. They do no studies. They let Israel do it all. I mean, they've let Israel and the UK do it all. That's a good 300 pages of my book are about the shortcomings of CDC, which we didn't talk about today.

So thank you. Well, it's implied in all these mandates that we're getting left and right from the CDC. Listen, I love to talk about Rochelle Walensky because we could spend all day on her too. Listen, not everybody would come on and take my tough questions. And now you're going to get the really tough questions because my audience is going to call in Scott Gottlieb next after the break, taking your questions, only the kind ones, or I'm hanging up on you. 833-44-MEGYN. That's 833-446-3496. Welcome back to The Megyn Kelly Show. Dr. Scott Gottlieb, former FDA commissioner,

is sticking around to answer some of your questions. I want to start with Pat in Illinois. What's your question for the doctor? Hi. A couple of times during the discussion, you referenced the fact that this was a decision that impacted the community, and so it couldn't be an individual decision about whether or not to get vaccinated. But my understanding is recent studies, and most recently one that was released by the CDC, showed that the viral load and the viral spread happened regardless of whether a person was vaccinated, that they had the same viral load and spread the virus just as effectively as those who were not vaccinated. So given that, in what way does this impact the community, whether an individual decides to get vaccinated or not? Go ahead, Doc. Well, look, I mean, if the community

is vaccinated, you're going to dramatically reduce the odds that this virus is going to Go ahead, Doc. risk of spreading the virus based on the data that we see coming out of Israel. So the study you referenced looked at blood levels of virus and people who are vaccinated and then had breakthrough infections and also looked at virus levels in their nasal swabs and showed that they had high viral titers on par with what people who are unvaccinated had. But what it also showed was that their viral levels declined very rapidly because they probably cleared the infection more quickly. And what it wasn't measuring was the amount of virus that they actually had in their lower airways, which is a more operative question or measure for gauging how infectious they are. What we've seen in the data out of Israel, and again, the data is coming out of Israel because the CDC isn't doing a good job of collecting this, but what we've seen out of that data set is that people who are vaccinated,

who have breakthrough infections, are far less likely to spread the infection in the community. And when they do spread the infection, it's mostly within the household. And that's probably because they're only infectious for a brief period of time. And if you're only infectious for a brief period of time, where are you most likely to spread the infection? Probably within your home. All right. I want to get to number four, Bob from Massachusetts. Hey, Bob, what's your question? Hi there. Thanks for doing this discussion. It's very useful. Sure.

I have a two-part question. It has to do with- Just cut to one because we don't have a lot of time. You got 10 seconds. Well, okay. As far as the VAERS site is reporting a lot of adverse effects and even death, that doesn't seem to be systematically studied or understood. Certainly, many of them could be written off as probably, you know, other underlying problems, but there could be a strong percentage of that that is realistic. I hear reports about people

who have died from the vaccine within 24, 48 hours. Okay. You want him to speak to the side effects. My apologies, Dr. Gottlieb, but we literally have 30, 40 seconds for you to address that. Go for it. Yeah, look, the various data set is a challenging data set to work with because what you're collecting is just reports of events that are associated with administration of the vaccine. So things that happen in proximity to someone getting a vaccine, just because something happens when you're delivering a vaccine, you're delivering 300 million doses of vaccine. Things happen every day to people. What you want to be able to do is see on a systematic basis, whether there's a causal relationship between the vaccine and the event that you're trying to observe. That's much harder to tease out from something like the VAERS

database. You need clinical trials to look at that. And what you're looking for is whether or not there's a higher incidence of some event that otherwise occurs. I got to leave it at that. Well, I apologize. Hard break. I'll do better the next time, doctor. Thank you very much. We appreciate it. Tomorrow, we got the president of the National Border Patrol. See you then. you