The Problem With Jon Stewart - A Nuanced Conversation About COVID Vaccines (Yes, Really!)

Episode Date: January 11, 2023

It’s 2023 and we’re coming in hot with a conversation about COVID vaccines! We’re joined by Dr. Gregory A. Poland (director of Mayo Clinic’s Vaccine Research Group), Dr. Saad Omer (director of the Yale Institute for Global Health), and Zeynep Tufekci (professor at Columbia University), who bring something that’s often lacking from these conversations: nuance. We talk through why many non-crazy people are hesitant to get vaccinated, how our public health institutions have failed to communicate effectively with the masses, and why it should be perfectly okay to ask questions about the risks and benefits of any vaccine. Plus, writers Tocarra Mallard and Kasaun Wilson bring us up to speed on the latest Harry and Meghan drama. Season 2 is now streaming on Apple TV+.CREDITS
Hosted by: Jon Stewart Featuring, in order of appearance: Kasaun Wilson, Tocarra Mallard, Gregory A. Poland, Saad Omer, Zeynep Tufekci Executive Produced by Jon Stewart, Brinda Adhikari, James Dixon, Chris McShane, and Richard Plepler.Lead Producer: Sophie EricksonProducers: Zach Goldbaum, Caity GrayAssoc. Producer: Andrea Betanzos Sound Engineer: Miguel CarrascalSenior Digital Producer: Freddie MorganDigital Producer: Cassie MurdochDigital Coordinator: Norma HernandezSupervising Producer: Lorrie BaranekHead Writer: Kris AcimovicElements Producer: Kenneth HullClearances Producer: Daniella PhilipsonSenior Talent Producer: Brittany MehmedovicTalent Manager: Marjorie McCurryTalent Coordinator: Lukas ThimmSenior Research Producer: Susan Helvenston Theme Music by: Gary Clark Jr.The Problem With Jon Stewart podcast is an Apple TV+ podcast, produced by Busboy Productions. https://apple.co/-JonStewart

I need to see Twitter files eight, the Harry and Meghan. I mean, there are real big consequences for this type of misinformation. Huge consequences. You know what? From now on, his cream can no longer be clotted. He must drink regular cream. Wow.

He didn't mean that. He didn't mean that. You, sir, will drink the thinnest of cream with no clots. Welcome back to the podcast, The Problem, with me, John Stewart. The show's on Apple TV Plus season two's out now. It's our first podcast of the new year. We took 10 days to gather our thoughts. This show is going to be a banger.

We're going to be talking about that third rail thing, that thing that can surely get me canceled no matter what I say. Vaccine safety, vaccine hesitancy, vaccine misinformation. There are smart doctors and professors. They're going to be talking about that. But speaking of smart professors, Takara Mallard and Kason Wilson are here, the resident doctor and professor at The Problem.

You may call me professor. Professor Mallard and Dr. Wilson. May I refer to Dr. Wilson? First of all, welcome back. Happy New Year to both of you. Takara, I'm sure the Kitties had a lovely New Year's. Can you stay up till midnight with the Kitties anymore? Or are you just exhausted?

Oh, absolutely not. 8 p.m., everyone was in bed. Nice. I said, see you next year. And I woke up at 7 a.m. on the dot. Suck on that, Z-Crust. Son of a bitch. Oh, wow.

No, I'm sorry. That was really way more angry than I was. Now we have to address that. I want no beef with anybody. This is my beef-free year. This is, I am going to be the Auntie Kanye. Oh, no, now I've just created beef. Wow.

By suggesting. Oh, for God's sakes. You guys got anything before we get going? I'm having a great week. What? You want to know why? Yes. Because I love mess.

Love mess? And you know who's messy right now? Prince Harry. Oh, Harry. He is in his fuck-around-and-find-out era. And I am living. Really? I am living.

So his book comes out this week, Spare. Yeah. And in it, he is dropping all sorts of juicy tidbits. Spare? Why is it called Spare? Well, because he's the second child. And so there's Prince William. He's the heir.

And then there's Prince Harry. He's the spare. And that is actually what Charles said after he was born. He said, thanks, Diana. Now I have an heir and now I have a spare. Wow. That's fucking brutal. Did you guys watch the Netflix documentary?

I didn't watch the documentary. And I didn't read the book. And I can honestly tell both of you, I don't give a fuck about any of it. It seems like, look, I went to school in Colonial Williamsburg, which is basically a historic reenactment of a certain time. And that's how I view the royal family.

They seem to be actors in a costume drama that is playing out. It looks like one of those Tony and Tina wedding kind of participation plays with the public. I don't understand. It's a vestigial tale of a colonial past that makes no sense to me. And whatever individual hurt they have in their own fucking inbred family matters not to me or to.

Oh my god. What? Oh, wait. I just said there was no beef in this. OK, I've made it over. I've made a huge error in judgment. Put this over the ether beat. Honestly, when you see them out in public, do they not look

like actors in a period piece and someone's about to yell cut? It is like it is like watching a civil war reenactment in 4K. Right. Yeah. It makes no sense. And they wear the. Oh, find me the hat that makes me look the worst. I want that one.

OK, that was a dig. Give me the one with the full fucking name on it. I want the full fucking chicken. Yo, drop some bombs for John's beef with Harry and Megan. Tired of it. Tired of it. My favorite Harry and Megan article, the headline was, the new princess is straight out of Compton.

I was like, yes. This is the kind of foolishness I live for. Yes. Oh my god. Listen, listen, listen. I don't have the book, but I'm going to order it. I'm going to order it from Megan because I support Black-owned businesses and I want her to be happy.

I really do. At this point, you know, they need the money for their security, the institution cut them off. And also they're trying to combat all the misinformation about them as a couple, Megan as an individual. I was reading something that said I think it was fewer than 90 accounts were responsible for over 120,000 tweets that were negative about them and Megan Marco, which is insane

because their reaches was over 17 million users. But I also think it's like it is a great example of how much misinformation you can find online, how much they've had to unveil things about their life, not just to like share and be vulnerable, but to combat all the misinformation that you find online. And you know, just kind of like every episode at this point,

this is like exactly what happens this week. So obviously we're all like watching football one day and then Damar Hamlin happens and terrible. And then a lot of the conversation on Twitter ends up being like, see, that's what happens when you take a vaccine. Right, misinformation. The Damar Hamlin case is why I wanted

to do the podcast today with the doctors and the professor because I don't know if you guys were watching the game, but like as soon as that happened, you were like, that's going to be devastating. Whatever that was, he went down in a way that people don't go down from injury. That's going to be devastating. And I spent the rest of the time trying to tune out

the announcers talking about how difficult it is for them to talk in this moment. But second of all, trying to find news of his condition. Right. I can't tell you how much I saw of terrible, how many athletes are just collapsing and dying. Terrible that, you know, they're all, this is what happens in the vaccine.

I was like, holy shit. When it first happened, it was horrific. And I think the part that stood out to me is that people acted like it was something that had never happened before. I think that's the part that freaked me out. Like, I don't, do people just forget that Corey Stringer died.

Right. Of a heat stroke during training camp. Yeah. Hey, every year during training camp, high school kids die of heat stroke. We watched Tunga Valoa twice have a concussion and just get thrown back out there. So the idea that this got weaponized in a way

that's like, no one ever gets hurt in football. It must be the vaccine. It's just like very strange to me. Like this is... It's the quick part that was so scary. I was watching the game and when it happened, I'm like, they're not giving me enough. I'm going to go to Twitter.

Someone must be like there in the stands. I need to know what's going on. CPR, ambulance, he's not giving the crowd the thumbs up. Like what is happening? And immediately, I'm saying like three minutes after this happened, it was died suddenly. Vaccine deaths, vaccine conspiracy, all trending. And I'm like, did something else happen I wasn't aware of?

And I'm like, oh no, it's still just about this game and it's about Damar. But I think this was, I think different just because of the misinformation that happened right away and how quickly people latched on something that truthfully did happen and then attached all this other need to it. I'm going to tell you something,

not surprised in any way, shape, or form. Really? At the speed of it, at the depth of it. And here's how I know. Be honest with yourself and be honest with me. When you hear of a terrible event, shooting, mass shooting, something along those lines. How long before your thoughts travel to

white guy, black guy, Muslim, Jewish, white supremacists, right? How long? 30 seconds? How long before we look to the cultural fault lines that exist in our country to categorize almost any event that has import? I find myself doing it all the time.

It's terrible, but I do it. Okay, point taken. The doctor is speaking. It took me years to finish the undergrad. I don't deserve it. It took me seven years to get a bachelor's degree in acting. Don't do that. I don't know.

I, yes, I 100% agree. I just, I guess I thought this kid is 24 years old. He was born, he was born after Titanic. I guess the part that I think stood out to me the most is his family hopping on Twitter to be like, please, please stop sharing that video. But there is no truce in the culture war. That's what we have to understand.

There is no armstice. There is no ceasefire, no matter what happens, no matter how terrible, no matter who pays the price. That is, there is no ceasefire. And it happens with everything. And it's exhausting and toxic and debilitating and corrosive. And it's really hard to contain. And it didn't help that the NFL was like,

get back on the field. We're so sorry for your loss. Second down. We're sorry for your loss. So you remember my, the craziest thing was the announcers are like, well, I've been heard that the players have been given 10 minutes to warm up. And meanwhile, the camera was in the hallway

where the two coaches were like, if these motherfuckers make a scope out of that, right? Are you, you're with me, right? My guys are crying. I don't know if you saw that, but my guys are crying. And we don't know what happened. Like, it couldn't have been more, the divergence between what we were seeing

and what they were saying. I mean, I kind of expect that from the NFL, honestly, though. They're like, we couldn't tell he was crying. He was wearing a visor. He was so emotional about the game. By the way, is, has there been any moment more sort of like, I'm a Buffalo Bills fan now. How crazy is, I mean, I'm a Giants fan,

but I'm rooting for those kids. Is the same thing happened after Hurricane Katrina where the Saints returned? I think anytime something bad happens to NFL's like, we need to kick off. Hey, listen, it doesn't after 9 11, Mike Piazza's home run, you know, the first game back after 9 11,

like those moments happen in sports. And it's what, you know what they are? They're exclamation points on story lines. And I guess we view everything as narratives anymore. But I have to say it was, it was something to watch. That's for sure. But getting back to the pandemic, I'm going to grab these doctors and we're going to talk.

And then I'll come back and you guys tell me everything that we missed. You got it. You got it. All right, bye guys. So we're going to bring on Dr. Gregory Poland, Dr. Sad Omer and Professor Zainab Tafechi. Bring them on.

All right. So we're stepping on the third rail today. We are talking about the most controversial medicine known to man vaccine. We're very excited to have joining us, Dr. Gregory Poland. He's the director of the Mayo clinics vaccine research group. Pleasure. Dr. Sad Omer, director of the Yale Institute

for Global Health. Thank you. And Zainab Tafechi, professor at Columbia University columnist at the New York Times and Pulitzer finalist for bringing clarity to the shifting official guidelines about the pandemic. Thank you. Thank you all so much for joining us.

I want to start out with a disclaimer. I am a science feeding man. I believe vaccines may be along with antibiotics the most miraculous invention for public health in the 20th century. But I too have questions and I am confused. And full disclosure, I have been vaccinated, I think it's got to be four times.

I get a flu vaccine every year. So I am a believer, but I am also, I get fearful when I hear certain things about myocarditis or when the sand shift beneath us between the vaccine will eradicate this disease and well, it will lessen your symptoms. So I want to give you guys an opportunity first

to just make a statement about the vaccine, this conversation and all that and we'll start with Dr. Polin. Well, John, what I heard you say I would call discerning wisdom. Yes, that's right. I think everything you said was absolutely correct and it was very well said.

I've been a vaccinologist for 40 years. I would echo exactly what you said. Obviously I'm a fervent supporter of vaccines. The data supports that it has been one of three things that has most prolonged the human lifespan and reduced suffering and disease and death. But we are right to have questions. We are right to be discerning.

We are right to be skeptical and communication style should reflect where we know and where we don't know information. And I imagine that's what we'll really get into and talk about today. That's exactly right. Dr. Omer. Yeah, so vaccines have been some

of the most effective public health interventions. That's what I do. I work on vaccines, various aspects of vaccines. But those of us who actually work closely with vaccines are somewhat paradoxically more respectful of people asking questions. There's nothing wrong with asking questions. Where you go with those questions,

what you do with these questions is another story. And in the public discourse, we have somehow evolved into having this dichotomy of pro versus anti-vaccines. Correct. Whereas you have a whole range of perspectives on vaccines. And in fact, we know from data for several years, at least a couple of decades,

that only a small, small fraction of people, two to 3% usually in a given year, that is gung-ho anti-vaccine. There's a bigger chunk of people who are the so-called fence-sitters who have questions. And then there's a huge chunk of people who don't wake up every morning and think about vaccines. Oh, I don't know that that's true, Dr. Omer.

I think, well, every morning I wake up and I think about vaccines. Professor Tafichi. So I think it's almost like it's a victim of its success, right? Vaccines have completely transformed what childhood is like. If you walk by any cemetery, read any history books, just look at anything in the pre-vaccine era, you find that so many children died.

I have a friend who got polio because very unluckily, his family was away the week the vaccine was given when he was a kid and he's one of the last polio victims in Turkey because of that. So we've lost the connection to what it was like before, but with many things that succeed, you forget that there's a lot of effort that goes into making it work.

And once it succeeds, of course, we want it to be even safer and even better. It's kind of like you want to, so our standards are higher. So when vaccines first came around, people took it. They lined up their kids and cried with joy, even though the safety standards were lower, to be honest. Like at first, it was- But certainly trust in institutions

was higher back in those days. Well, but also we didn't know as much because at the time they were preventing something so horrible that people kind of were like, it was very obvious to people that whatever risk there was, it was less than the illness. But as time passed, as we made the vaccine safer and safer and safer

and the illness got less and less and less because of the vaccines becoming so widespread, people have kind of lost the sort of balance between, yes, you have to study the trade-offs, you have to study the risks, you have to make sure it's as safe as possible. But what people have lost sight of, I think is the other side of the equation,

which is these horrific diseases that luckily, people are not tested with because so many of kids and people are vaccinated. So this is what I worry about. I think there's a solution, unfortunate solution, a tragic solution, if the anti-vaxxers succeed, is that we will see horrible, horrific outbreaks

that kill so many kids in such a horrible way that it's gonna be a wake-up call and we're not gonna have to argue back and forth like this because it's gonna be right in front of everybody's eyes at tragic cost. And the whole reason I think we have to have these conversations and answer the questions and explain the safety and talk about the trade-offs

is to make sure that the lesson doesn't happen that way, that we prevent the sort of learning by human tragedy. Well, let me go to something Dr. Omer said because I think this speaks to what he's talking about. You said there's probably about 2% to 3% of people that are just hardcore, no vaccines for a variety of reasons. I mean, this has been, for years now, there's been a growing movement on the far right

and the far left that is very vaccine skeptical, very much about natural immunity, a lot of different issues and we're probably not gonna get into a whole lot today. But I do wanna get into kind of a post-mortem, as post as you can get for a pandemic that's still going because for that 2% to 3% of hardcore folks who are very active on social media can be,

let's face facts, brutal on social media and threats and all kinds of the things that come their way. But the response from the powers that be, the people that have the information really was certainty. Certainty and when you start out with certainty and I'll liken it to something and this may be the worst analogy that any of you have ever heard,

the two calamities of my adult life have been 9-11 and the pandemic. Both I feel like had their mission accomplished moment where they stood behind a banner and it's over and slowly facts on the ground began to shift and sort of laid waste to that certainty and that sort of moment on a boat. But rather than deal with it in an upfront manner,

it was dealt with either with condescension or with shaming or with anybody who questioned it. There was no discerning between the 2% to 3% who would never take a vaccine and the quite large number of people who thought, this is brilliant, but wait, I have to get another one? Wait, but it doesn't handle that very, oh, wait, but I was told this cures,

so it doesn't cure it, you can still pass it. And so all these things start to come up and it becomes a victim of the very certainty of the powers that be. And these suspicions are not crazy. These are not crazy things to be nervous about. So how do we in a post-mortem have a more adult conversation with people

and not just shut them down? So that's a really good question. Just to clarify, the 2% to 3% is the usual vaccine refusal. In COVID, what was alarming was it was a bit higher, but it was around 7% to 9%. Even that wasn't like 30%, 40%. There were a lot of others who had questions but were persuadable.

The first thing was that pandemic has been a communications amateur hour, public health communications amateur hour. My research group was concerned because this wasn't our first rodeo in terms of even a pandemic, let alone an outbreak. We had done a lot of work during the H1N1 pandemic that we had concerns enough to ask the question,

what will be the vaccine acceptance? So early May, 2020, we did a national survey to gauge vaccine acceptance of the forthcoming vaccine. And we found was that only 67% of the people would accept the vaccine right away. There was a small fraction. This is in the early stages of the pandemic

when it was really raging. It was raging and we projected it to a few months. Nobody had the exact date available because as you remember, everyone was projecting a little bit later. So we presented these scenarios. There are systematic ways of gauging people's attitudes and we found that not only that, it was 67%,

but also there were three, four factors. We created a so-called statistically predictive model of vaccine acceptance. One was region. The other one was education, age, and then race. And all of these things turned out to be prescient. That's the magic of measuring things in advance. And a lot of us were jumping up and down saying that,

look, we are coming up with this technology, which is wonderful. So I do vaccine trials as well. I do the other side of vaccines as well. And I was really excited about it, but we need to absolutely pay attention to these human factors. And I said that on, I don't know,

I think Dr. Polin was on these calls with the Operation Warp Speed. A lot of us spoke up on these calls. Right. But wasn't that the first mistake? Why would you name something that is, that people are hesitant about, warp speed? Doesn't that, why don't you just name it,

going as fast as we can and not paying attention to what might happen? It was an unfortunate name, I think, and gave the illusion that corners were being cut and things like that. But to your point, John, I really do think that these are discussions that should be approached with,

if you will, scientific and intellectual humility. We don't know. Oh, humility. What a perfect word to describe what didn't happen. In fact, I will tell you, in my four decade long career as a vaccinologist, I describe this as a matrix. There are so many factors changing so quickly over time

that we need to admit, in many ways, we're building the airplane while we're flying it. People are doing the best they can, but the distortion of the pandemic by human behavior has made this much more difficult. But that implies a burden on us as public health officials, as physician scientists, to give some voice to those uncertainties,

to the humility that we should have in describing this to a public that is rightly skeptical. So let me jump in as the social scientist here. I always joke that I'm a doctor too, technically, but I always joke, like, in an emergency, I can do an emergency review if they ever call for a doctor. I can read the literature really fast,

but in this particular case, it actually turned out to be very important from the beginning, sort of social scientific understanding of how people behave, why they behave, how authorities behave, was put to the side. And this is a major problem, I have to say, with public health and with all the respect

to the two actual useful doctors on the panel with us, it is a problem with the field of medicine as well. There is a lot of not trusting the public, not leveling with the public, not talking about the uncertainty, and just trust us attitude that is very common among public health practitioners in places of power that is very common among medical doctors as well.

I'm not saying all of them, I have great, like some of my best friends are medical doctors once again. Certainly not Dr. Omer, Dr. Polin, they're beyond reproach. Why would we even be thinking of that? No, of course not, but so this is the thing is that, so it is of course very understandable to say what the heck is going on. In fact, I ended up writing a piece for the New York Times

on the unvaccinated because I was so upset that they were being portrayed solely as the crazies that you could easily find on Twitter spouting nonsense. I was like, where is the research? Who are these people? What's going on? And when I dug in as a social scientist and looked at what research was available,

what I found was a small number of people who were genuinely irrational and just had decided this was their culture war, but for most people, they were confused. In this country, we don't have great health insurance and a lot of people do not have a regular doctor. They do not have regular access and the uninsured were most likely to be unvaccinated.

They didn't have somebody to ask. I found a lot of people who were confused. They were afraid of COVID. They were afraid of the vaccine. They didn't know who to ask. They saw the shifting guidance that wasn't properly explained and we saw this again and again on things like masks,

on things like infection-based immunity, on things like myocarditis risk, we did not get. Look, here's the best of our knowledge. Here's what we changed. Here's what we got. We got this sort of very certain speak that then shifted and then shifted again. And then pretended it didn't shift.

Because I have a son. I looked it up. I had to make the decision, you know, Moderna versus Pfizer, all those things. There's a lot of nuance that hasn't been communicated. That's not that complicated. Here's an example. So the highest risk for myocarditis,

as you're pointing out, is men in the 16 to 17 year old age. If we give a million doses. My son, my son. Yeah. We give a million doses of an mRNA vaccine. We prevent 57,000 cases of COVID-19, 500 COVID-related hospitalizations,

and 170 COVID-related intensive care unit admissions. The price we pay is 73 cases of vaccine-associated myocarditis. Now, most of those are benign. In fact, if we hospitalized them, we hospitalized them more often than not to assage our own fear. There's a rare one that can be more significant.

But it is that teeter-totter I was talking about. And you know what it ends up being is your own psychological predisposition. Is it the sin of omission or the sin of commission? I have literally walked out of the consulting room with one mother saying, if something happened to little Johnny because I gave him this vaccine,

I could never forgive myself. I go into the next room and the mom says, how could I not give little Ashley this vaccine? If she got COVID and something happened, I could never forgive myself. And there's the nuance that we've been talking about. We have not equipped the public, even the public health authorities

who are discussing this with that kind or that level of communication. And detail, but the real lesson there is apparently, parents cannot forgive themselves. No matter what they do. But here's another thing. In other countries, they also talk about how to lower their risk.

So we have great research from Canada and a couple other countries that if you space it to at least two months. So between the first vaccine to like two to three months and also use Pfizer, which is lower dose than Moderna. So in a lot of other countries, they said there's a tiny little risk, but to avoid it, you should space the vaccine

and men under 40 should get Pfizer rather than Moderna. That is straightforward scientific. That's what other sane countries did. And that's like as a mother of a son, I did the same research. I'm like, why aren't they telling us? Never been communicated. I hate saying this because I want the CDC to succeed.

I want them to be much better, but I'll give you a non-vaccine example. Is that for the longest time, the US wouldn't approve rapid tests for clinical, non-clinical like home purposes because the FDA argued people would do wrong things with it. Like what? Test themselves.

Swap the ear. You do the ear. They would be like, they can't interpret it unless a doctor is enrolled. I was like, are you kidding me? And then because like, of course people can, you explain to them. Here's the false positive.

Here's what it means. Here's what you do and let people make their empower people. And finally, when we approve them, it became gung-ho and we're gonna give everybody lots of rapid tests and great. And then when Omicron hit, when there was a shortage, CDC started saying, we're not really sure we can trust rapid tests for like ending isolation.

I'm like, how convenient? Just when we have a shortage, you change your mind again. As a person who loves these institutions and wants them to do better. This was the most painful thing to watch over and over. And again, very, very much respect to the clinicians that are at the front lines, the two medical doctors here, the whole, I mean, the tragedy of the long COVID patients

who are still left behind and denied very often by their own doctors. There's a lot of these things where patients are not treated as partners. And then it feels the worst people who use these weaknesses, not to try to make this all better. The way I want to, they use it to feel their grift,

their ideology, their nonsense, which is gonna get people killed. Dr. Poland, you wanna jump in? Dr. Poland's been waiting patiently. Yes, sir. Zainab, I would endorse what you're saying and it extends beyond that. My daughter is a mental health and trauma specialist.

She and I have written a few papers on this last summer in the Yale Journal of Biology and Medicine. And we talked about the distortion of pandemics by human behavior, whether we're talking about institutional behavior, public health officials, the medical authorities, whoever it may be. Ironically, right before the pandemic started, and I have sat and been a participant

in many tabletop exercises, we did an international tabletop exercise in Washington DC. The one area that we can't get focus on is on the whole anthropology, sociology, and psychology around pandemics. Well, about healthcare in general. Yes, and that is what distorted this. Dr. Omer.

Yeah, so if I may build on Professor Tafiki's point, it's absolutely correct that the face of the medical establishment and the face of public health establishment was not communicating. The folks that were presenting the face of these entities were not communicating effectively, but I would add a little bit of nuance.

Look, these are individual people, and what happened during the pandemic was a lot of people within these organizations and outside these organizations without actual experience on communicating, on, you know, without the background and training that was relevant to a public health response

were not the face of the pandemic. I'll give you an example. I would not have imagined that the, Anne Shuckett, for example, deputy director for the CDC, one of the most experienced folks during the pandemic that was available to the CDC, Nancy Messonnier, the person who sounded the alarm earlier on.

These people have been involved with anthrax response with Ebola response, with H1N1 response. None of them were utilized to their full extent by the establishment. So they weren't the face of the pandemic response. So that's what I talk about, like very sincere inclusion of expertise that was, a lot of it wasn't relevant

and not taking advantage of the experience we had within the government. Agreed. Let me proffer two things because I think it's, you know, and again, we may be over intellectualizing something where there are certain obvious things that kind of stare us in the face.

One is the face of the pandemic and many of the people that came out. And this is something that we see in every industry and perhaps the medical community needs to rethink that sort of revolving door, but it may seem like, well, that's just how business is done and wouldn't they want the expertise on their boards and those boards pay those things.

But that kind of conflict of interest fuels mistrust. It does in every industry. I find the same problem on Wall Street when you have an SEC revolving door. Moderna, Pfizer, J&J, these are enormous companies making enormous profits. Now, I'm not suggesting that they exploited a crisis or created a crisis,

but these are reasonable concerns for people that there are conflicts of interest between profit and public health. I was just like tweeting about that today because Scott Gottlieb, I think that's a good example because he's the ex-head of FDA, he's head of Trump's FDA and he's on the Pfizer board. So when the whole thing started

and when I started seeing him, I couldn't have been more wary of the guy. Like he was, he's on the, I think an AI fellow like as ideologically out there from me as possible. On the other hand, while I completely acknowledge that this is a major conflict for him to be speaking up, I listened to him throughout like almost three years now and he went on business press,

he went on conservative media and he actually ended up making a lot of sensible points that I thought were informative balance. He was very wary of vaccine mandates. He was one of the first people to point out that natural immunity was a thing and it worked, but vaccination was safer. So I found his message correct and actually useful

because he could reach people I probably could not. On the other hand, I kept thinking, why is it him? Why isn't there anybody else on that side of the spectrum? Couldn't there be somebody who isn't on the board of the company that made the vaccine? Correct, I completely, right. And here's the problem, here's the problem, there wasn't. That side of the political spectrum

did not produce people who weren't on the board of Pfizer. It's not just that side of the political spectrum. I mean, the left side of the political spectrum is also involved. That's a different picture. So what I'm saying is, I think he stepped up at a great risk to himself. So created the problem you talk about, but on the other hand points to the fact

that where are the people who don't have these conflicts who could step up and not have us be discussing something like this? So I'll give, that's a really good point. And actually sort of, I think the response might be illustrative. Two things, but I'll go back to your bigger point, John, which is, you know, is this a rational thing

to talk about? It is, absolutely. And the answer to that is, look, we do derive some value as a society for some people to be engaged with vaccine companies so that our science remains credible. It has quality and sort of all sorts of robustness. Having said that, as a society, as a community of scientists,

there should be a significant fraction of us who don't have that perceived or real conflict of interest. I have chosen to be that person. I don't take any money from a vaccine companies. I don't have, not even grants to my institution, et cetera. I do my own work. You know, I pay for my own meals in scientific meetings. Dr. Omer, how dare they?

No, exactly. You know what, when I see you, you and me are getting a little grilled cheese ass something. I'm gonna get you a little something, a little nosh. But the thing is, even the small stuff, and it's not that I see that there's an inherent ethical flaw with people interacting with vaccine companies. I do believe, on the other hand,

as part of the overall ecosystem, you should have a significant proportion of people who, if Scott Gottlieb, who's serving on the board of Pfizer, is saying the same thing, which passes that sort of scientific litmus test that those of us who are not engaged with Pfizer or any other company are saying the same thing so that the overall credibility is somewhat maintained.

What we need to do is to better explicate, better communicate what is the conflict of interest and the fact that there are a lot of us who don't do that. Coming back to the other point, so what were these people doing? Well, these people were actually working, doing the trials. So if you have the bandwidth, there's a very small overlap in that Venn diagram

where you were, so I was on several World Health Organization committees that required that because of their meetings were globally timed. I was waking up on a given morning for the first six, seven months at 5.30 a.m., prepping for the stuff. These were Vaccine Safety Data Evaluation Committee.

So we were getting the data almost live. This was Vaccine Recommendation Committee. I was doing my own research, Vaccine Effectiveness Research, Vaccine Acceptance Research. So all of that is out there in published literature. So there is that nuance. So because of that vacuum, that if I had to prioritize between tweeting out my own paper

and doing the next paper, I know I made that choice. Well, let me jump on the word nuance and I'll address this to Dr. Poland because I think, boy, nuance is a word that within any conversation in the 21st century is something that's generally missing and maybe science in particular suffers from that feeling of certainty.

And I think what science likes to project is certainty. And I think it's important to draw a distinction between mathematics and science. One plus one is two, but science is really about probabilities. It's really about this vaccine will give you a higher probability of survival than, let's say, just allowing COVID to take its course.

This drug will give you a higher probability to take its course. This drug will give you a higher, but nothing is certain. And I think maybe the myopia that afflicts that industry is the projection of certainty and really the dismissing of nuance. So in some ways, aren't we talking about a problem

within the industry as a whole in not talking about things as probabilities? Yeah. But you're like looking at the wrongs. I'm sorry, like Dr. Poland go and... Dr. Poland, and then you can correct me, professor. I will get a B plus on this, trust me. Well, we're not...

I am teachable. We're not certain, there's a probability, but part of the problem is, as you point out, communication and cognitive styles. So physicians and scientists are professionalized in one style, what cognitively would be called an analytic style, okay? What the population is, if you will, professionalized

is with heuristics, rules of thumb for how they make decisions. Daniel Kahneman won the Nobel Prize for kind of teasing apart how people think in the cognitive biases that they bring to this. And when you think about it, people get vaccines for one of only a few reasons, because they're forced to, because they're bribed to do it.

Bandwagoning, that is peer pressure and fear. Those are the only four known reasons for why people get vaccines. What we tend not to do in the medical and scientific profession, and this is where I would argue, we need cultural anthropologists, we need sociologists, we need psychologists, linguists at the table, and they're not, they are not.

We need them at the table to bring that nuance, because we don't even recognize the cognitive bias that we're using to communicate with. You're right. I mean, if I tried to summarize it very simply, I would say, vaccines save lives, they prevent disease, they prevent disability. Do they have side effects?

Yes, but wisdom resides in the balance of those risks and benefits. And in this case, it's decidedly tipped toward vaccines. However, because there are probabilities of side effects, and this is where the art of medicine- You suffered one, doctor. I did. Didn't you?

Right. I absolutely did. I developed tinnitus or ringing in my ear after my second dose, worsened after my booster. And we're still trying to work with CDC and others to focus on, is this a significant side effect from it? But the point being that you make a decision based on those nuances.

And so when you present nuance as certainty, well, common experience is gonna mitigate against that. And what you've now done is bred mistrust and skepticism. That's right. And that breeding mistrust leads to that moment now where a young man is struck down on a football field. And as I'm trying to search Twitter for results on his condition, all I'm getting is,

died suddenly, young men, all collapsing, all throughout the world, tens of thousands of people. And I don't know what to make of any of it. This came up when Grant Wall died. Same thing. And yet with empathy to his spouse, who is one of us, an infectious disease doctor, she insisted on an autopsy.

And recently that autopsy showed he died of a ruptured aortic aneurysm. But she made a great point, which is, these discussions must take place with empathy and with data. And with fact, because I've gotta tell you, again, a science-fearing man who's had the vaccines, I'm in that demographic where they told us,

you're the people we should keep in the basement and don't do anything for two years. But when I see these stories, even for me, there is a part of myself that has a moment of doubt. And professor, these are the kinds of things, we keep talking about how people actually behave and how people actually think, look, there are people that lost their jobs

because they wouldn't get the vaccine. And we don't, some of them might have been trolls and crazies and things, but some of them might have been reasonably mistrustful of something in their family backgrounds or their lives that caused them to make that decision. And they paid a pretty stiff penalty for it. Well, and this is really important in our society.

I mean, it becomes, what epistemological lens are you gonna look through in order to make decisions? Once we reject the scientific method, we're in a world of hurt, but that scientific method needs to be transparent, it needs to be radically honest, it needs to be communicated with all the humility and nuance, and we need to hear people's stories

and their journey and respond to that, not in some sort of reflexive scientific way as much as we do in an empathetic way. Right, professor. So I'm gonna put on my sociologist hat because I'm, again, and I'm going to slightly disagree. I don't think anybody's making that kind of individual decisions really because-

Cut the mic, cut the mic, she's disagreeing, cut the mic. Because see, this is the thing, this is what people don't understand about scientists. There's no people that love arguing more. Like if you don't like arguing in doubt, it's the wrong profession for you. So that's why, this is what we do. We argue most with the people we love, but-

Pure review. That said, that said, when you get up, go to the airport, and line up to get in, in an aluminum tin, whatever can, that's gonna hurl you in the sky. That's right. At like that kind of speed, at 30,000 feet, you are not doing your own research,

you are not considering this and that, you're not using the scientific method. You are trusting the institutions, and because the institutions have delivered. It's not like airplane flying was always safe, they're like planes, but after there's an accident, there is transparency, there is accountability, there's research, there's experience,

you keep getting on the plane and it keeps ending up. I mean, it's otherwise an insane thing to do, like we just sit there and like get, you put up, I don't know, 100 chimps there, and there'd be no limbs left by the end of that thing. We're a very sort of passive social species. By the way, 100 chimps is actually Southwest's new motto. John, when you go to the supermarket

and you buy salad or chicken or something, and when you don't go to your own basement and try to understand, does this have E. coli, you don't have an expertise in bacteriology, you are not really using the scientific method because you cannot, even though I'm a great fan of vaccines, when somebody injects me with that vaccine, I haven't tested what's in it,

I haven't checked if they screwed up the dose, I haven't checked if it's the right dial, I am putting my trust in institutions that I'm expecting to function in a particular way, I'm expecting them to work on my behalf, I'm expecting them to be transparent, I'm not expecting them to be perfect, but I want them to be trying.

This is why the conflicts of interests are important, this is why the revolving doors are important, this is why right now the FDA, FAA, the SEC, all of our institutions have been captured, defanged, corrupted, EPA including, like there's a lot of good people there, there's an enormous number of people who are trying to do their best,

but they keep getting out lobbied, industry revolving doors, you see this in the tech industry, half the Obama White House went to the tech industry, and they go back and forth, this is how you get good tech regulation in that kind of environment, so there's a way in which our institutions are failing,

as I don't think it is fair to expect any single person to quote unquote do their own research and read all these scientific papers and try to, because you will be confused, there's a reason why Dr. Amer and Dr. Poland are reading and writing those papers, because it took years and years of training, it took a lot of understanding,

it takes, I see this all the time on Twitter, somebody will have a screenshot from a paper, and we'll say, look, they found this, and that sentence does say that, but there's like 30 paragraphs before it, putting it in context. No context. Right, it doesn't say that,

so the thing is what we need, and this is what I think so important to, I think there's like the sort of, what's the right word, mirage, that we can empower individuals to navigate this, and I'm convinced that you cannot empower individuals one by one, what you need is functioning institutions

that yes, communicate properly, do their best, empower people. Individuals can be though, a powerful check on institutions. Correct, and they are partners in this. We need that as part of the ecosystem that helps cleanse it, and I'm talking about being able to discern

between those who are bad faith actors, and believe me, in the vaccine debate, there are a lot of bad faith actors, but there are also people who are genuinely concerned, and unfortunately, when these institutions struggle, the real victims, not just the public, but the rank and file in those industries, the nurses and the doctors who are on the front lines

and who are dealing with, in clinical settings, that mistrust, or that hostility, or that anger, while putting themselves at great personal risk on the front lines of a pandemic that we still don't quite understand, and now that we've gone into sort of quadratic equation variants, as it moves along,

but I still don't know, when we talk about polio and we talk about smallpox, there was an eradication to it, and that became our expectation, and this follows much more of maybe a flu model than it does with an eradication, but that certainly was not the expectation in the beginning of this,

and it's been difficult for them to communicate the ephemeral nature of these different variants and the different things that went, and I agree with you guys, I think there needs to be almost a peer review about that linkage between the institutions of science and the public that they serve. Well, you know, you're really arguing

for this idea of trust in institutions. And how do you build it? And let me just give you one example. The vaccination rate for COVID in Denmark is among the highest in the world. Oh, they love their vaccinations there, that and Harry. They trust their government,

they trust their public health officials. Trust has to be earned, though. It has to be earned. It has to be earned. Absolutely. No question about it. And Denmark was one of the first countries to be able to drop a lot of mitigation measures. They were the first to be able to get over

the worst part of the pandemic, because all the things other people complain about, the lockdowns, the mass, the this and that, Denmark showed how you can get out of it as quickly as possible when you have functioning institutions. What they did is they said, okay, we think it's safe to take masks off now,

and then when it surged, they said, okay, put your mask back on. And the population trusted them and did it. And they navigated the pandemic really very well. Dr. Amir. Coming back to trust, so a lot of my research groups is now focusing on how do you develop the science around trust?

And it's work in progress, stay tuned. But what we know so far, in terms of public health institutions specifically, there are three dimensions of trust. One is perceived empathy. So the entity has my interest at heart. The other part is perceived lack of conflict of interest. So these are overlapping, but slightly different things,

but we already discussed that. The third thing is perceived competence. And as much as I love my colleague at the CDC, we had falling down of actual competence, not in the area of vaccine safety. I've been paying attention. This is what I do for a living. Vaccine safety was delayed.

So the problem there was the systems were so sclerotic. And the fact that they have this kind of, what they call scientific review, internal review, which I think Dr. Poland has also suffered through that, when if you have even one CDC author, it goes through this black hole of review, which doesn't add to the science. Because of that, there was a delay in the safety science

come out, but there were a lot of other scientific shortcomings like not paying attention to genomic surveillance. Like Professor Toficci alluded to, the fact about ending isolation after five days without testing or sort of broader isolation guidance, not relying on rapid tests. Let's stand six feet away from each other, but only for 15 minutes.

And only if you're in a laboratory, but if you walk outside, then you got to put a hood over your head, but then you got to wait. I mean, it really got crazy. This goes back even further than that. I mean, very early on in the pandemic, I published an editorial, my colleagues panned it.

It got published and it was, I called it the tortoise and the hare. And I predicted at that point, this S only approach to vaccines was doomed to fail. And that's exactly what's happened. And what it uncovered was the relative lack of understanding. I've studied RNA respiratory viruses for 40 years. And it made you realize that there was not a deep understanding

of the hypermutability of this virus. And this virus was going to change very rapidly. So unilateral one-sided, we're going to deal with this variant was doomed to fail. The result of this absent, some really important advances in vaccinology absent those. Your great, great, great grandchildren are going to be getting vaccines against coronavirus.

That's the ultimate implication of all this. So yeah, so to build on that, one of the things that we have fallen short is that we, it was supposed to be a relay. And we, after one or two legs, we gave up on the development program in all its force. There was no more funding. There was no more funding and no more sort of serious effort

to develop the next generation of vaccines. For example, the pan-coronavirus vaccine. So these are, the government is still investing in this. But to be fair, you're also, again, none of this is occurring in a vacuum. So you're also up against a society that is suffering in isolation. And that is ultimately that mission accomplished problem.

You've got school kids that are home. You've got people that can't go out. And so everybody's rushing to have that moment on a battleship with a big sign, rather than explaining that for all our human progress, this microscopic being, this virus, can still have its way with a population and still, you know, cause us great pain.

And it seems like, and we can talk about the state of play right now, which is rather than losing a million people a year, we've sort of settled into this acceptance of a thousand deaths a week. And that's where we're at. Well, let's be fair though. This is, okay, here's the thing.

I take what you're saying and coronaviruses, like the other four human coronaviruses also reinfect quite often. We had a pandemic and within nine months of its sort of official start, we had vaccines that were and still are incredible at severity, death, hospitalization across the board. And if you look at the current things,

if you get the updated vaccine recently, the even for like rates of death and hospitalization, even among the most frail and elderly are very, very low. Most of our deaths is because we have not taken up to booster. If you look at countries like Singapore or other countries that track this really well, they also have the Omicron, they also have the mutated one, but their death rates, their hospitalization rates

are very, very low. So it's not that the vaccine is, it could be better. I would love a pancoronavirus vaccine, but the one we have, if we used it, would have gotten us so much better out of this. And on top of this, there's the question of long COVID, which for a minority of people is very debilitating. And those people, and this is what I wanna say,

you need to get there, like the firefighters after 9-11, the long COVID patients are the firefighters of this pandemic. They're being left behind, everybody wants them. Yes. Left behind in the sense that medical science is not looking into it or in what way? It's not looking into it anywhere near enough. There's not new funding in the new bill.

These people are very sick. How prevalent is this? Somewhere around 10 to 20% of people who develop COVID have a complication or a long COVID. It's a significant number. Yeah, but the severe one is lower than that. Yes, the severe one that we're talking about is much lower, because if it was 10 to 20%, you'd see it.

If you look at the United Kingdom, which calculates this really well, because we don't have good epidemiology in the US, they find about half a percent of the population is severely affected. That's like a couple of million people, perhaps, like half a percent. And these people have been sick for more than a year,

most of them. Most of it is pre-vaccine. You have the occasional post-vaccine, but that's rarer. And even though Congress allocated a billion to it like two years ago, the very first trial from it, from that billion 2023, is starting now. There's no new money for it. And these people are so sick, so severely sick,

that they can't protest. Do you think this is because we're still kind of fighting on that we haven't opened up that second front? No, we want to move on. We want to move on. Look, after 1918, we got the roaring 20s. And there's a small but substantial number of people who are very sick, who are the true casualties

of this pandemic after the people who died, and that we want to move away from. Well, the issue, I don't think it's quite as simple as what you're saying. The issue tends to be one more systemic in medicine. Look, there were post-infection syndromes after influenza, after Lyme disease, after a variety of infections. What tends to happen in medicine is that entities

we don't understand tend to get ignored. So what we need to address this issue, and it will have implications beneficial across medicine, is the right funding for things like this. It really is difficult to begin to categorize, to develop biomarkers, to understand syndromes. We talk about long COVID as if it's one thing, it's not. That's a wastebasket diagnosis.

It's multiple things, different what we would call clinical phenotypes. Some people have neurologic predominant long COVID, other people cardiac, other people psychological and psychiatric diabetes, difficulty with thinking and brain fog. So there are different kinds of quote long COVID, probably related to severity of disease

and to genetic predisposition and other issues, even what variant they might've gotten infected with. So you need for academic investigators to get interested in this, they need funding to carry out these studies. 100% agree with this, by the way, we're not disagreeing at all, like totally agree with what you said, yeah.

Let me make a suggestion to that then, because in a lot of ways, and listen, there's not a lot of transparency at all, but there's a lot of mistrust over kind of virus research and DARPA and the various things that are going along. Perhaps if we were to look at long COVID as a national security effect, and get some of that sweet, sweet $850 billion of funding

that goes to the Defense Department, which goes towards weaponizing all sorts of varieties of things, we could make some real headway on this. And maybe that's the shift that has to take place is that it's not just altruistic doctors in their spare time at 5.30 in the morning, faxing things. It's the United States government recognizing long COVID

and these issues as a national security problem. And John, I would agree, it is a national security issue in this regard. It is an economic issue. And it's an economic issue among our most, if you will, productive segment, age-wise of the population. So this is a real issue.

You don't have to be an altruist. So there's a paper out earlier in 2022 that multiple sclerosis, which wasn't really understood for a long time, in fact, is follows from an Epstein-Barr virus infection decades earlier, as Dr. Polamp was- Did they post-infection? Correct, as not-

Probably, probably. Probably, but- That science isn't firm. Always, always, always, but it's a great study and it's a very strong study. And as Dr. Polamp was saying, we had post-viral infectious diseases following the 1918 pandemic.

We've had something we call ME-CFS, which is 75% of the victims traced to a viral infection and then it's a baffling disease. There's a bunch of things. After, for example, there's a randomized trial that shows that if you get the influenza vaccine versus not on people who had already heart disease, the influenza vaccine cut all cause mortality

and cardiovascular mortality by an astonishing two-thirds. But even that, that's a really smart way to put it because one of the problems that we have is some of the side effects of the vaccine mirror the effects of COVID. Of course. So now you've got this all in the mix and those who wish to create havoc will look at those

and say, oh, that wasn't COVID, that was the vaccine. So, but I'm pitching you, John, we need post-viral research money because there's all these... You don't need to pitch me. I'm with you. No, but you need to be out there because the thing is...

She's giving you an assignment. Oh, I didn't realize that was an assignment. So the thing is there are other neurological complications. There's a huge rise in, say, Alzheimer's diagnosis after both influenza and COVID infection. So the post-viral world is potentially the next frontier and we have in long COVID, a large number of people left behind

like the firefighters were left behind. And so we have to view this as an opportunity to really make some progress. We need funding, but apparently Congress doesn't allocate funding unless a very talented, super handsome, charming, wonderful... Give me the name of this fella because I'm gonna find him and I'll go make him do it.

Tvela goes and yells at them at the galleys and drinks some of his friends along. Do you have the phone number for Julia Roberts, by the way? No, I don't. I'd like her to. She's not actually Erin Brockovich. She's just Julia. Well, the policy people can't always tell the difference

and so this is, we bring some friends along too. Understood. Guys, I wanna thank you all so much. I know you're awfully busy. This is a conversation that I feel like needs to be had more frequently and more publicly and I truly do appreciate it. And I know the pressure that all of you are under

to get things right and also from a public that is mistrustful and all those different things. Dr. Gregory Poland, Dr. Sato-Mair, Professor Zainab Tveci, thank you so much for being a part of the discussion today. Wonderful. Thank you again. Thank you.

Thank you. Woo! Shit got heated! Boom! No, I actually thought, you know, it was really interesting. I don't know how you guys felt, but to hear the people that are really involved in the day to day talk about how they felt

like everything was mismanaged. Right. And what a detriment that was to all the good things that were actually happening. I thought I was crazy this whole time. I thought it was just me being like, mask, no mask, what's the difference between this vaccine, that vaccine, should I do it now?

Can my kids really get it? What's going on? And it was like, no, just take it, just take it. And I thought that I was, you know, I was in patriotic enough. I didn't trust the science enough because I was simply hesitant. And now I can hear from three professionals

that like, no, no, no, there was, there was some, you know, some messiness going on. Yeah, I think it was just so interesting for the first time here. Like, whenever there's something going on that you don't know, it's okay to ask questions. Yes. But it was not made to seem like

it was okay to ask questions. And the only grace that I'll ever, I thought the key word of the whole thing was humility. Right. And I think that's the thing that wasn't afforded. And you can give grace to decisions made in the heat of catastrophe. But I think the hard part is getting people

to separate malevolence from incompetence from situational difficulties. And that's the thing that I think we weren't able to do. Do y'all think that we've gotten past the point of trying to build trust with the American public? I thought that was like the comparison between Denmark and America and the vaccine numbers. When it comes to building trust,

I feel like trust has become a partisan decision. Like you choose a side and then that's, when they're empowered, that's what you trust. Like... Oh, that's interesting. Like, I guess Takara was saying like, talking about like building trust and how that's different in America.

Like it's just interesting to me. But you have to think that again, Denmark is a homogenous country. Yes, I know they're migrants coming in, but it's pretty homogenous. And here in the United States of America, we have so many different groups of people who have very distinct and specific relationships

with United States and with institutions within the United States and with the medical system, with healthcare. No question. And that really affects a lot of decisions. I was watching Amani Barberin. I don't know if you remember her, John, she's the one who has that great quote about like,

if they call you a hero that means you're willing to die, but she was talking about vaccines and vaccination hesitancy. And she was saying, it's really a shame that people can't ask questions anymore, one. But it's also really scary that because people aren't allowed to ask questions, they tend to turn to a pipeline that is very alt-right.

And we're seeing that with a lot of older black people going incredibly conservative, incredibly queuing on, simply because they're not able to ask these questions. And so it's either, are you gonna take it or are you not gonna take it? And it's, well, I'm not gonna take it. And this is exactly what happened at Tuskegee. This is exactly what happened with gynecology.

And it becomes part of that, well, true storytelling. And then also part of a little bit of mythology that's being created on the alt-right. You know, picky blinders once said something that I think is apropos here. And that is the politics is in the line, it's a circle. And that the far left and the far right ultimately often end up meeting at the same place.

And that place is generally the mistrust of institutions and discomfort in outcomes. And I think you're finding that far left, far right are kind of sometimes meeting in that place. I always think, you know, it's not that we can't ask questions is that we're not very effective at answering them and people accepting those answers. You know, it's a lot of those conspiracies are always,

I'm just asking questions. You're like, you're not just asking questions. You're sowing doubt. Because when people answer those questions, you're not accepting those answers. But Dr. Polin did something that I thought fascinating in that interview. He actually read the statistics on myocarditis and vaccines.

And when I heard that, I was like, why have I never fucking heard that before? With such clarity. With such clarity. Why is it so hard? And I think as much as we mistrust institutions, institutions mistrust us. And that's part of the issue is that they believe,

as someone once said, we can't handle the truth. Who said it? I'm not familiar. Might have been a gentleman by the name of the Joker. I was gonna say Johnny Cochran. You can't handle the truth. I should have said it in that way so that it was a lot clearer.

But that's the part of it. And in a divided country where there's mistrust in institutions, I would actually say our response to the pandemic has been remarkably successful. Right, all things considered. With all the infighting and all the other things, the fact that we've got 60 to 70%

of fucking anything in this country is kind of shot. When it comes to misinformation, like I just hope that people realize that every single thing you're reading about Damar Hamlin and his heart condition related to the vaccine, none of that is based on the doctors who treated him.

Right. 100%. None of the doctors said a word. Well, of course they don't. They're in bed with the pharmaceutical companies. They get a cut, for God's sakes. Don't you know anything? Dr. Wilson, at long last, sir.

Thank you, man. A lot of professors, I'll prove wrong if I got that doctor before Monday. These are the, I'm telling you, man, this is why I have truly enjoyed doing this podcast because you're allowed to kind of grab some people that are pertinent to conversations that you feel like are intractable

and to deconstruct them and step through it. Right. I just, it's invigorating. I can't recall which of the doctors said it, but I think there was like, oh, you know, there's a mother in one room who's like, you know, if I don't get my kid the vaccine and they get sick, I feel horrible.

And another mother saying, if my kid gets the vaccine and they get sick, I'm gonna feel horrible. And that's such a representation of what people are feeling, whether it's like making their older parents go get vaccinated, their children go get vaccinated, themselves like, oh, I'm the only caregiver. What if something happens to me?

What if it makes me sick anyway? And I still miss work. And I just started this job. Like, I can't, I think there's so much nuance to this hesitancy and it doesn't always mean that someone is like related to some political sphere or conspiracy theory. There's so much nuance to the hesitancy.

And I'm gonna share here that I had a baby in 2021. And when it was time for her to go get vaccinated, I was like, I am going to need some time. Hell yeah. Because she literally sneezed when she saw the sun for the first time. So who knows? Who knows what this vaccine is going to do to her?

You know that's a real phenomena, right? With newborns, they leave the hospital, the sunlight hits them and they're like, and they're like, what is that? I still do that. If I don't do this, I swear to you, if I look at the sun right, I can sneeze. I swear to you.

If I feel the tickle and I catch the sun right, I can sneeze. If that's not on your acting resume, you're doing it wrong. Can sneeze when it's not raining. Special talents. Takara, I think that's dead on. Good shit, guys.

As always, an absolute pleasure. And we'll talk again when Harry has the sequel book where he reveals, I don't know what he's gonna talk about. A $40 million book deal, there better be a sequel. I mean, I got to get our money's worth. Let's go. I'll tell you everything you want to know. I'm very good at bullet points.

Don't you worry, I will keep it up to date. Just send me a little something because I really can't watch any of this. I find the whole thing crazy. That is all for us. Please send your comments about our podcast and the vaccines to someone other than me. Thanks to Dr. Polo, Dr. Omer,

Professor Tefechi for joining us. Takara and Kay, as always, check out the problem airing now on Apple TV Plus. And we will see you next time. Yeah, bye-bye. The problem with John Stuart podcast is an Apple TV Plus podcast and a joint busboy production.