SIO423: Bill Maher Gets Owned By Peter Griffin On COVID Nonsense

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors — the audio is the record.

0:00:17 Thomas: And welcome to Serious Inquiries Only. This is episode 423, and I'm excited because I don't do this every month, but for this month, giving an episode-length slice of the January patron bonus for everybody. Love when I can do this, and the reason I do it is because the patron bonus often has a lot of good science and learnings in it, so, too. I feel like it's a good deal. Best of both worlds.

So if you'd like to listen to the whole thing at hit pause and go pledge at patreon.com/seriouspod. Many goodies. You won't have to hear any ads, etc., etc., all that. But you're on the fence. Maybe you're still deciding. I hope you enjoy this episode length slice of the January 2024 bonus.

Bill Maher on his incredibly lazy, stupid show, not a TV show, it's like some sort of podcast where he sits and is high and thinks he's a genius, had on Seth MacFarlane and they started talking about COVID and Bill Maher, don't know if you know this, is an idiot. So he is very anti-vax. He's got a whole slew of incorrect, misinformed, dishonest talking points about COVID. And I thought it would be fun to have Dr. Rick Sullivan, who from some of my favorite episodes.

Is a synthetic biologist. He has got a PhD in immunology. So, you know, someone that is qualified to talk about things like this. Also just so much fun. He's funny. He's smart. He's had some fun both roasting and correcting Bill Maher and his nonsense. Started this one for you guys a little bit in.

I kind of skipped the long intro just to get right to the point for this slice of the once again, on Patreon, there'll be double the length of this, basically, if you'd like to go there and find that. Things we learn about our natural immunity, some amount of vaccine policy.

Let's see, how come there are some things where you get like one shot and it seems like you're good for life versus things where we have to get a lot of shots in the process of correcting some of Bill Maher's very wrong information, we get a chance to learn a lot from an expert, which is why this makes a great episode of Serious Inquiries Only. So hope you enjoy. Thanks so much for listening. We go.

Let's see how long we can make it before we instantly stop. And you can yell stop at any time, but I'm not sure you'll need to because I probably will have already stopped.

0:02:39 Rick: Yeah, we'll see how this goes. Oh,

0:02:42 Clip: You still had to get a vaccine. That's powerful, Stu. We didn't do that in Europe.

0:02:46 Thomas: Already have to stop it. I know we're Did you check that? Do they do that? What does that even mean?

0:02:48 Rick: Yeah, yeah, that's crazy. They absolutely do that in Europe. First off, I mean, they still encourage people to get vaccines in Europe, what they've seen from the vaccines, what they've seeing from natural immunity, what they've seen from many other coronaviruses that have been circulating in people. This is not the only coronavirus to ever be out there. I mean one third of the common cold comes from the coronavirus family, right? This is a situation where we don't develop long term term sterile immunity to every single pathogen we ever come across. I think a lot of people think of like chickenpox, right? You get that once or you get the vaccine, you're never going to get it again unless some very exceptional things come about, right. So that's pretty much like sterile immunity that is good for lifelong.

0:02:54 Thomas: Yeah. Oh, yeah. Sterile immunity. OK. Okay,

0:03:39 Rick: And then there's other things that you're going to have that is short of that. And this is 100% where, yes, and he gets to this later and I don't want to jump ahead too much, but he kind of talks with like, oh, doctors, they were wrong, they said take the vaccine and you'll never get sick again, and it was like, no, we said this is going to prevent you from fucking dying like

0:03:56 Thomas: Literally every single thing that Bill Maher says that doctors or the big they told him is wrong. Like, he might as well be like, doctors said if I got the vaccine, my dick would be 14 feet long and I'd be able to dunk a basketball. They said that and they were wrong. You're And like, no, no. What?

0:04:03 Rick: Yeah right no you You know what Bill Maher would say? He would actually say, "And I still can't dunk a basketball." Thanks

0:04:19 Thomas: Yeah. Okay. That's pretty good, actually. I should have thought of that. Yeah. Okay. Hey, leave the comedy to me, damn it. You're showing me up. You do well, oh, am I gonna say a science thing better than you, Dr. Rick, and then you're gonna feel fucking okay, I'll just move on, uh, good

0:04:33 Rick: No, actually, I think you've had some great science insights, it's all right, I'm just trying to hold my own, that's all, uh,

0:04:38 Thomas: Times, but right off the bat we're already, he's already just wrong, and you don't have to do a huge deep dive, but if what makes the difference between those things, because it is true, there are certain things like, like chicken pox, and where it's like you get, it you, or you get maybe a vaccine for it, and you're like good for, for like ever. What, like makes that difference?

0:04:43 Rick: Mono like yep Big part of that is the robustness of of your immune response on one side, and then there are these other factors on the pathogen side. So things like tetanus, like we, we get a tetanus vaccine. The reason the tetanus vaccine works so well, and once you get it as a kid a number of times, you only got to get it like a booster every 10 years, right? Where the flu vaccine, you got to give it every year. Well, that's because of multiple reasons. One part of it, the tetanus vaccine elicits a T cell response like no other. So we have a ton of T cells ready to amount to an immune response. And remember, the T cells, they're the master generals. They're, they're eating the hot dogs and saying, "Yeah, go kill these vampires," right? Harken back, right? So

0:05:35 Thomas: I I really hope people have listened to that episode or that's going to be so confusing.

0:05:38 Rick: Going to be so confusing, make no sense whatsoever.

0:05:39 Thomas: Go find Dr. Rick. That was one of my favorite episodes we've ever done. It was so much fun. Go find that if you haven't. Pause this right now. Go listen to that. Okay.

0:05:44 Rick: That so it depends on how vigorous an immune response you generate to that vaccine or that natural infection. A lot of common colds, they don't seem to elicit that sort of really long-term response. That's why we have so many common colds. We get them all the time. You not like that. Well, I just got sick. I shouldn't get sick from this ever again. It was like, well, that's a different virus that got you this time. It just has the same symptoms.

0:05:59 Thomas: Hmm.

0:06:11 Thomas: So is that a couple of different things going on? Is it that the virus mutates all the time too much? Or is that a separate function?

0:06:17 Rick: Yeah. So, I mean, there's these things called antigenic drift and antigenic shift, and antigenic shift is like all of a sudden we have a new strain of flu out, H5N1, H1N1. You know, whatever. It's like there's been a shift, a change in actual protein that that virus is now using. And now that looks very different to our immune system. And that tends to cause like flu outbreak Or it could cause a pandemic, where antigenics drift is, you know, it travels around. Every time viruses reproduce themselves, they're really terrible at it. They really, uh, have to have very air -prone or the geniuses It it kind of is, and that they, they just make all kinds of mutations all the time, and so it's like evolution on steroids, yeah.

0:06:29 Thomas: Mm -hmm. Mm -huh. Yeah. Or are they fucking geniuses? Because it sounds like a superpower. Can I'm glad humans don't do it that way. That would be pretty disturbing. Like every time we had to actually, humans to reproduce, we have to mate like 4 billion times. And then 3,999,000,000 of them is like, are Cronenberg, oh, you know, whatever, like, just total, like, we make just these absolute monsters, you know, and then we have to just wait for like that one kid, oh, finally there's a Phoebe, okay, and she's like just kill all these other disgusting. That would be horrible. I'm glad we don't do it that way, but it sounds like viruses kind of do it this way, I

0:07:03 Rick: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. We do not Yeah. They absolutely do. They're playing the numbers game. Same, 100%. And of that, they change over. And for some viruses, it doesn't even take all that long. For COVID, it doesn't seem to take that long. We have all these new strains. Seems like there's some research out there that even suggests some folks with long COVID end up being kind of incubators for rapid mutational changes. I think that there's actually more recent data out there that looks at, you know, other ways that you're, you're getting these rapid antigen shifts and drifts happening with COVID, because it's especially prone to it, and it has such a fertile field. But the take-home message from that first sentence is, no, that's stupid. Not every vaccine provides sterile immunity.

0:08:06 Thomas: Don't know, we're five seconds in but

0:08:08 Rick: I know. Yeah, this is going to be an eight-hour bonus here.

0:08:11 Thomas: No. I think that we got a lot of science out of the way here in the first five seconds. I think this will only be seven and a half hours tops. Is it that you don't see a chickenpox of that? You're not like, well, chickenpox changes all the time, you know, and there's 50 million different versions and we can't. You if I missed that in the answer somewhere, but I still, I don't totally get why. Is it just something about the virus or is it something about us or both?

0:08:14 Rick: Yes Yes. It's always both, right? I mean, some of it is about the virus. Some of it is about the, have a lot of herd immunity to chickenpox it doesn't spread very well. And

0:08:43 Thomas: Oh, okay. Oh. Okay, so it doesn't get the chance, the... okay, okay, interesting. That's

0:08:48 Rick: And, you know, a lot, the thing like with flu in particular is such an example, a counter example to chicken pox is, it jumps species all the time. It jumps into, you birds and flies around the the world and all this stuff, you know, so a lot of the the seasonality to flu is driven by bird migrations and other things like that, like, well, as the seasons and all these different things. Yeah.

0:09:09 Thomas: It's just picking up all kinds of mutations and gunk, feathers. It's got, it's crazy, this virus. Got everything. I've

0:09:12 Rick: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So chicken pox is pretty highly specialized at this point in the human reservoir. It, it, of passes through, you also have it for quite a long time, so your immune system gets really good at getting, mounting a vigorous response, and your, your immune system's always doing a cost-benefit analysis, right? We talked about this in that original episode, of, you know, how many chefs can you have, you know, the your just have, you a t-cell, you, you can have all of your t-cells be against the flu, or you're gonna die from tetanus, or vice versa, right?

0:09:27 Thomas: Interesting. Oh.

0:09:41 Thomas: Yeah. Right. Yeah.

0:09:48 Rick: You need to keep, keep some capacity. And so if you're not seeing it regularly, and you're not, it's not nearly killing you, then maybe you're going to retain some of those chefs, but you're gonna whittle that down to the barest number possible to meet the needs of how often are you going to see it,

0:10:03 Thomas: But at the same time, it is weird that for something like chicken pox, it's like, we're always keeping a chef in there forever, like, just that's interesting, okay, but

0:10:09 Rick: Yeah. Yeah. Look back into that. I will get back to you on that one for some future bonus thing, but that is an interesting question.

0:10:18 Thomas: I threw, I, a lot at you, that, that was not at all, uh, ahead of time, and you did a wonderful job of answering. So I will let you off the hook, and I'm going to go back. So we have that first sentence again, then go back on the video. See how far we get this time.

0:10:18 Rick: Yeah, Okay.

0:10:30 Clip: Like, even if you HAD the disease, you still HAD to get the vaccine. That's powerful, Stu, we didn't do that in Europe. They do that here. There's mandatory vaccination and grades and so on. But if you already had the disease, you're a natural immunity. That was debunked. Now, don't you know people who've had COVID four or five times? I do. You know

0:10:51 Thomas: Let me know when you think we should stop it. I actually don't know. What do you think?

0:10:53 Rick: Well, I mean, it's just so masterfully dunking on them already. I mean it's just like, what the hell? What do you mean natural? People Well, get it multiple times. I've had COVID multiple times I've have the vaccine, the booster the, you know, like you know

0:10:56 Thomas: Yeah.

0:11:07 Thomas: Let's see how he deals with that. Cause I think Bill Maher has an answer to that. Let's, let's see.

0:11:12 Clip: You've had COVID five times probably because you had too many vaccines. I didn't have COVID the vaccine gave you COVID. Uh, well, that's certainly really unscientific about the fact that the vaccine, which does weaken you in order to strengthen you, says you have vaccines.

0:11:18 Rick: Yes, exactly. Too many vaccines.

0:11:29 Rick: Okay, stop.

0:11:29 Clip: Exactly, but

0:11:29 Rick: We gotta stop.

0:11:30 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah.

0:11:30 Rick: We gotta start.

0:11:30 Thomas: Yeah. Okay. We got, yeah.

0:11:31 Rick: It does not. There's too many things piling up here already. Too many vaccines. I mean, I have that written in my notes with like exclamation points after it with question marks, you know, it's like, what does too many vaccines, like, this is so dumb. I mean, it is such a reductionist of you that your immune system can only deal with one thing at one time, that you have dozens of lymph nodes all across your body that must must only do one thing. Are you kidding me? There's like millions of cells. Like our bodies can only breathe. Well, then we're going to die of thirst or eating.

0:11:50 Thomas: Yeah, yeah, yeah crap. I gotta take a shit. How am I going to do that?

0:12:09 Rick: Yeah, exactly, Exactly. Almost like if you could trace Bill Maher's footpath in logic, it would just be would be like how a Roomba rooms through a room vacuuming. Every time it hits a wall, it just backs up and tries a different direction and changes arguments.

0:12:10 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. So Pretends it was never there. Yeah.

0:12:23 Rick: Yeah. And I was like, I meant to do that too.

0:12:23 Thomas: Uh, so, what about this claim of, it yeah, weakens you before it strengthens you? So if you got the vaccine, this is Bill Maher's brilliant way of dealing with what it is a pretty obvious counter.

0:12:31 Rick: Yes. Yeah. Dr. Bill Maher.

0:12:36 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah, Dr. Bill versus Dr. Rick here. Yeah it weaken you before it strengthens you?

0:12:38 Rick: Yeah. Yeah. Bill doesn't understand a symptom versus a cause. I'm a baby when it comes to the COVID vaccines. Even I get them and the next day I'm like, oh, I am so tired and I mean the first time, whatever. But I mean, that's a symptom. That the cause. That you have a fever is weakening you, has nothing to do with you getting You got

0:12:45 Thomas: Yeah, yeah.

0:13:03 Thomas: If anything, it would strengthen you, wouldn't it? Like A fever is meant to kill off stuff, right? And so it's like if you already had a fever, it'd be harder get to infected again possibly. Is that that right or

0:13:06 Rick: Yeah.

0:13:15 Rick: You're already tripped off that immune response to a virus, in this case from the vaccine, that your body is saying, be on the lookout for vaccine. And it's short enough time that for the first few days after you get the vaccine, it takes like two weeks, they say, to really kick in. The reason for that is, you know, I talked about how, you go to the lymph nodes, those antigen -presenting cells, they make you up the vampires, hot dogs, go to T cells and the B cells in the lymph nods. And that's where you get those swollen lymph nodes.

0:13:45 Rick: They're replicating. Well, that takes time. You but the first few days after you get the vaccine when you're weakened, so to speak, your body is like kicking off all the innate stuff that that's broad spectrum protection, like that's saying, hey, we might have a pathogen, everybody be on the lookout. So

0:14:01 Thomas: So I don't know if there's research on this, but there's no reason, or let me know if there is, but is there any reason to suspect that in the X amount of time, let's say two weeks just for fun, after you get a shot, a booster or whatever, that you're more susceptible to getting COVID, is there any reason to suspect that is

0:14:14 Rick: Have Not come across any research on that. I mean, does doesn't mean it doesn't exist, but

0:14:23 Thomas: Is there any reason, based on your knowledge of how this shit works, to think that that would Conceptually be true.

0:14:27 Rick: No. I don't, don't think that that would at all be conceptually true, because on the short term you have your innate immunity that's about broad spectrum, so Even that should protect you, even from other viruses. Then No.

0:14:34 Thomas: So the booster doesn't weaken that, right? No. Okay.

0:14:39 Rick: Not At all, but the fact that you might feel crappy and you feel Like You're getting sick and you don't like want to Go out and you do not like having a fever, and all of that is there, and those, you, many people would say, like, oh, you are in a weakened state. And it's kind of like, but not, not from an immunologic point of view. In fact, your immune system is saying, hey, we think you're about to get sick. Why don't you lay back and like, yeah, it's Like, why don't she take it down a notch and what you're doing in life, maybe not go see a bunch of people, maybe stay home and get some good rest and fluids. So we can do our job without you getting in the way. And that doesn't mean that you're more likely to get ill. It's just your immune system's saying, "Hey, we're worried you're getting sick." Why don't you take it easy for a minute while we, you know, use up a bunch of energy to respond to this new thing? Yep.

0:14:40 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah like you're in defense mode. Yeah yeah yeah.

0:15:28 Thomas: Question about that, uh, now the traditional, you, that all I learned about in like grade school or whatever, was the whole, like, yeah, they give you a little bit of the virus and it primes you to be able to deal with it later, but Am I wrong, that's, isn't that not exactly what's going on, isn't it kind of different now with the mRNA, whatever?

0:15:40 Rick: Oh. Yeah. No, it's, it's fundamentally different now, yeah, yeah. I mean, we've gotten so much smarter, I mean, that is the thing, is you calls them out on this, you know, people take the measles and mumps vaccines, all these other vaccines, those are much more designed in the old way of doing things. Of, you know, kind of either damaging the virus in some way or making it unable to replicate in when it's inside of people, and that is where you have much more likely of a chance of like actually getting the disease from getting the vaccine, you Know, that would happen in the early polio vaccines, but You know.

0:15:46 Thomas: Hmm. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Fucking.

0:16:19 Rick: Everybody lined up and took them because it was still saving millions of lives, and yes, there were people That Absolutely.

0:16:24 Thomas: Obviously. Yeah. Yeah.

0:16:26 Rick: Got polio, but. But the cost-benefit analysis was, yeah, duh. You know, like,

0:16:29 Thomas: So. Even. That is brilliant, like, even, even that science of, and, and it's, I imagine it's gone through stages of brilliance, like, I think at first, yeah, that sounds right, where it's like, okay, it's some small just dose of it at first, and that you Know, that is dangerous, like it Is true that That's still Going to possibly, uh, some people in a way, or infect them, but it's such easy fucking math to do, to be like, well, we have polio, which is fucking terrible if you get it, like, let's Look at the goddamn numbers, Bill Maher, and see, okay, just a trolley problem, but like, not even a particularly hard trolley program, you know, it's not like, not like one of the tough ones where it's like, well, do you save the old lady, or do you say two, uh, Middle-aged, and you're like, okay, that's a little whatever. But like, this one is, well, no, on one side, there's just an astronomical number of people getting a really horrendous disease. That's just

0:16:43 Rick: Right. Yeah. Totally dangerous.

0:16:58 Rick: Right. Right. Yeah.

0:17:23 Thomas: Awful. Like it's, it's a really awful one in polio to get on the other track, a of that, like a, just an absolute fraction of that. And is, even if it was like a 50, 50, even if it was like, well 10 million people die on this track, but 5 million people die in the other. And those those 5 million people, by the way, they will die from the vaccine. Hypothetically, that would still save 5 million People. And it would suck. Like that's nowhere near reality. I just want to make sure I'm flagging that this is me creating a wild hypothetical. It still would be astronomically smarter and save so many lives to do something that was that shitty.

0:17:25 Rick: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Right.

0:17:59 Rick: We did. I first mean, vaccine was like, the smallpox vaccine and in which they use cowpox. So it was like a virus that did make you sick, but it was just not going to kill you. You know, that was the difference. So, I mean, it Was like, they purposely were getting you sick and you can have total kinds of consequences from that, but It's saved tons of people's lives. So people are like, yeah. Sign me up. Is a great idea.

0:18:10 Thomas: Yeah.

0:18:21 Thomas: You know what? That's what happened behind this whole anti-vax movement is back then, I don't even think it was a particularly hard decision because people saw what happened if you got sick. And now we've gotten too good with vaccines where it's, I don't know what measles looks like. I don't even know, you know, like I don'T really know what I've seen pictures, but like I haven't had a friend who died of polio or whatever. Back then it's like, no, you did, you did have a lot of childhood friends, you know, just lots of them who probably died. And then when presented with this brilliant science, which is both in some ways, but also a brilliant discovery to do this. If was there going to be a huge risk, you're like, well, shit, I've seen the other side of that. Now we don't see it. So I think Bill, like Bill, anti -vaxxers, they don't know how we have it, you know?

0:18:28 Rick: Yeah. Yep. Yeah. Yep. Yeah. Right. Well,

0:19:06 Thomas: And it sucks.

0:19:07 Rick: And they really, it's super disingenuous too, because I mean, honestly, relying for the most part on this idea of herd immunity that, you know, we used to talk about a little bit at the height of the pandemic, of why people need to be vaccinated even if you were like healthy enough that it probably wasn't going to kill you. I mean, it's just, it's, you're basically saying, as an anti-vaxxer, you're saying, I am so protected from everything you just described, from all of the negative effects of not taking these vaccines for the most part. And the reality is they are mostly protected because everybody else is doing it.

0:19:40 Rick: And It's so unfair on that to say that I don't believe that anybody should have this burden when that's why you had in places, even like really liberal Marin, where you would have measles outbreaks for no good reason.

0:19:38 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah, free rider problem.

0:19:51 Thomas: Yeah? Yeah.

0:19:52 Rick: Because the herd immunity had waned so much, and the anti-vax sentiment on the left had had so much in certain communities that now you had kids getting really sick, and you know, it was no joke. And then you saw rebounded rates from that because people got like a sense of it, they, they saw that, you know, kids were getting really ill, and then they questioned And

0:19:57 Thomas: Absolutely.

0:20:12 Thomas: It just sucks that we're that stupid as a species. It really does you know

0:20:15 Rick: And I've talked to people that, or heard arguments that, you know, people are saying, but my kid, their, their immune system's so fragile, all this stuff, I don't want to give them this vaccine. And like, I get that, I'm a parent, you know, but I'm also like, like, if your kid is that fragile, then you should be asking everybody else in the world to get the vaccine.

0:20:16 Thomas: Yeah, Yeah, that's right. I mean, the people who are immunocompromised, it was for those people that we really all needed to get it, just so we don't carry it. Maybe, maybe I'll be fine, maybe if I carry it, I'll b asymptomatic, I'm a healthy young guy, whatever, but like, still, I could carry it and spread it, right? And like there are people who can't get the vaccines for different reasons, and it it is really such a slap in the face, such a selfish thing for people like Bill Marr to do.

0:20:35 Rick: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah, no, absolutely. And those people who truly are immunocompromised to the point. And there are plenty of people that, I mean, you can even get illnesses that say you can't take vaccines anymore because you are immunocrompromise now, that. You, and so those people are relying on herd immunity, they are, and we have a social compact, you know, it's like, if you're gonna, yeah, yeah, I guess, I guess that's, that's the issue, right? But I mean, we have this, you know, especially all these, like, you know, if you're going to be a pro-economy, everything, then, like, economy only works because we interact with each other, we go to places, people interact, so the flip side of that is you have to mitigate it, right? Have, have to take care of other people. You don't drive a hundred down side streets through crosswalks with, you know, people crossing it. You know, we have a social compact that it's not just what you want, um,

0:21:03 Thomas: Yeah, some of us do. Yeah.

0:21:41 Rick: Little bit too much soapbox there but

0:21:41 Thomas: You're a narcissist like Bill Marr. No, and it's so true. We'll get back to the video, but it is so obviously Bill Marr's whole shtick, because I don't know if you caught this, but his, the way he dealt with the strike was so fucking bad. Like, we played a clip, I actually don't remember if it made it to the recording because we were just going off a little too much on where there's woke about it. But I forget if it did or or not, but anyway, there's, there was this exact bullshit setup where he was talking to, uh, Jim Gaffigan, uh, it was another one of this exact kind of thing, where, where Maher was like, yeah, but you know, the writers, fucking, it's hard to be a writer, so, you know, get back to work, essentially. And you're just like, dude, you do not realize how good you have it. Like, you just, he is so lost in his own bullshit privilege. Absolutely. Okay, we're going to keep going.

0:21:43 Rick: Yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah Oh,

0:22:22 Thomas: Let's follow this rigorous line of debate. So we've gotten, you, they made you get it even if you had it before, natural immunity. And then he's like, that's debunked because, you don't know, people have had a bunch of times, Seth says. And he's like, wow, you know why, too many vaccinations, it weakens you I think that's where we left off, let's see where these scientist goes after that

0:22:27 Rick: Yeah, oh, wait,

0:22:42 Clip: While you were in a weakened state. Yes, that's why so many people like me got it, did not have it while the thing was raging, and I was taking zero precautions because I was never that afraid of it, but that's anecdotally. Okay, and I've never had COVID. I get a flu shot once a year, I haven't had a flu in 20 years. Right, well, I haven't even, I don't get a flu shot. Okay, so this is all anecdotal, but, right, but you know the difference between anecdotal and statistical. I do. And statistically, you still have a 90 percent better chance of not being hospitalized, not dying, if you're vaccinated. Oh, good. Well, but that's assuming all people are alike, and that is one of the giant fallacies in your way of thinking. We are not okay, all alike. Yes, I would recommend and have recommended the Cover vaccine for the high risk people, like if you're 90 or fat, get it, absolutely, you need it. Some people don't, but you, had Djokovic didn't need it, but you had Aaron Rodgers didn't need it something like 1900

0:23:43 Rick: Okay, Yeah, first off, if you're old or you're fat, I mean, just the way he says that is so elitist and terrible and victim shaming, or I don't know, victim, whatever, he's turning some but I don't know if it's the right word, but just shaming somebody for having a compromised immune system for whatever reason, you and Rogers did need it. You know why they needed it? 'Cause they're professional athletes that travel all around everywhere and interact with tons of different people, and especially those folks are more likely to be asymptomatic than symptomatic if they catch the virus, so if they do get the vaccine, they're more likely to not even be asymptomatic, you know it's like, yeah

0:23:49 Thomas: Yeah no kind of yes it is that, yeah God yeah plus this idea that we, we perfectly know who is going to be affected

0:24:28 Rick: Right

0:24:29 Thomas: And who is not. I mean, there was a Broadway actor that, that Lydia followed. It kind of, she was, I remember this when it was happening. She was kind of following this guy at the time, you know, blanking on his name, but he was not doing well, and it was really sad. She was following, the story was like, I think he might have had to have an amputation.

And then and he was, he was completely healthy before he got it, and then he actually passed away, like, he he just did, it was, and the idea that you're just gonna, know, well, no, I know, like, he looked like Djokovic, he's an athlete, you know, he looks good, he'll be fine, well, maybe not, like, and also, as you say this is just one argument out of 50 why this is fucking stupid, the others are, yeah, but you also can spread it to a bunch of people, you're traveling, though, right, the people who need it the most, it's not necessarily like, like, if we had a limited supply, um, I remember this from some of the early kind of analysis, it isn't true that you'd want to only give it to like the oldest, weakest, whatever words

0:24:45 Rick: God. Yeah. Yeah, maybe not.

0:25:23 Rick: Yeah?

0:25:23 Thomas: You want to use people, you need to give it, to the people who are going to spread it the most. Like there are models where it's like, yeah, didn't end up doing this, but like, if remember they did models of like, If we were able to just give it. To those people there's certain people who tend to just be, with more people. Go

0:25:27 Rick: Right. Mm Oh, a great example. A great example I have for you is I when I was doing my PhD work I was doing a lot on flu and I remember at that time I came across this kind of controversial research study at a population level but they were the authors were suggesting in that that if we mandated all elementary school age children to get the flu vaccine no matter what, like worldwide, we would eradicate flu, basically, just because, like, you know, there's just that social, like, those types of social high contact situations you spread disease, like, it's not like

0:25:58 Thomas: Mm -hmm. Ah, man. Yeah. It's not like all the 90 -year -olds are out partying together, clubbing, and like, fuck, ah, we all caught it. They're probably getting it from their grandchildren, honestly.

0:26:14 Rick: Yeah, then they, there's so many examples of it, I mean, I, I know that we don't want to fall into the same anecdotal trap, but I mean, come on, some of those heartbreaking things that came out where some of them, like, Reddit videos or other videos of people that are dying or died of, you know, COVID because they didn't want to get the vaccine, they're on their deathbed regretting it and I mean, God, talk about gut wrenching, and, and I, I mean, this deviates from this debate, but I mean, you looking at the fact checking of when DeSantis and Newsom debated, quote, unquote, each each other, you they were talking, you know, it was totally true.

Yeah. A lot of blue States had a lot of deaths, but they were early. It was once the vaccine came out, it was a lot of red States that had more deaths and they were totally preventable. I mean, we know that hundreds of thousands of preventable deaths occurred due to the vaccine skepticism, hesitancy, all of this, everything that is like my God given right to have in this country, whatever, sure. Fine. It is. But like those people are now dead, like that is that's the

0:26:25 Thomas: Mm -hm. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, right, yeah. Right, yeah, yeah? Yeah, yeah.

0:27:17 Rick: Unfortunate grim reality they

0:27:17 Thomas: They might have honestly, they might have handed the election to Biden by dying, which is crazy. What a weird thing to think about because I do remember seeing those studies where it's the death rate was pretty comparable everywhere because it because I think a lot of those early interventions weren't super effective. But here's the other thing about this whole debate, and we'll come back to it because he makes several points like this. The question, the burden here is not every single scientist or policymaker in the wake of a brand new, they called it the Novel coronavirus, coronavirus, the standard isn't if a single one across our great fucking 50 state nation says a thing that's wrong or does a policy that's wrung, then fuck science and fuck the whole thing. That's not the standard. The standard is

0:27:21 Rick: Might have Yeah. Well, Yeah. Yeah.

0:27:49 Rick: Right. Right.

0:28:02 Thomas: Not like, yeah, you can point to this is what these folks will do on the anti-vax side, they'll point to, well, some fucking mayor of fucksville whatever had that no one could kiss, and you're like, I don't, who cares, that's, that you can find. You can find some dumb example of someone doing a bad policy, or you can, by the way, you can find an example of nationally having a bad policy that we thought was good at the time for But then, like, changed our minds because the science changed and then we moved on. But Bill will hold us to that forever.

0:28:32 Rick: And His whole point is the science. Yeah, and the silly thing is, you know, how we moved on, the science, the same, you, that you're lambasting, self-corrected. I, the reality that he is totally neglecting, I mean, he flat out calls it out saying, oh, everybody wants the science, like it's one unified thing. And it's like, as a scientist, we all know it's not one unified thing. But when you compare all the arguments and stack them up, it's ridiculously lopsided, you The things know that are really hotly debated and really like razor thin in, real minutiae, I don't know how to make it really accessible here, but it's like that deep minutia of like, what is true in biology?

0:28:34 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. Mm hmm. Mm

0:29:08 Rick: It's not, do vaccines work? That argument, it's Not like up in the air. It's like, does a mRNA vaccine that you're only getting a single protein expressed, and there's not other part of the vaccine, is that robust enough to give you long-term immunity versus the way we used to do it where you have component vaccines and you might elicit T-cell responses to more proteins than just one, you know, like that's where people are going to be really arguing and trying to Get the best Science and, you know, what's going to work, you know, who's going win out, should be the best. Silence, right? How science self-regulates. Yeah.

0:29:09 Thomas: Hmm, yeah. No, good point.

0:29:35 Thomas: Right, right. That's a great point. I think that philosophically, it There is can be some edge cases and some tough problems presented when you're not a scientist and you're trying to understand science. And it is true that scientists will disagree. It is true that there's areas of science that get wrong and then they eventually correct. And so there is a certain sense in which you could make the argument, well, if they're wrong about this, could they be wrong about anything? How do you know? Now, and it's a complicated problem. It's actually an interesting epistemological problem. I make a great point in that. Look, the things that science, quote unquote, is wrong about is not the fucking major fundamental things that, you know, like its its little things on the margins. And also there's a lot of times where Bill Maher identifies like, quote, unquote, science getting something wrong where it's actually just policy was wrong. Wrong.

0:29:59 Rick: Right.

0:30:18 Rick: Yeah, and

0:30:29 Thomas: Yeah, the news.

0:30:28 Rick: The newspaper Or The newspaper.

0:30:29 Thomas: It's the newspaper, it's policy, it's crazy.

0:30:30 Rick: He Blamed They Had To retract. Well, they're not researchers, they're non-scientists.

0:30:32 Thomas: Yeah. The they it's the they they're

0:30:36 Rick: The the they. Well, He Literally, he goes off about the New York Times and how they had to retract it.

0:30:38 Thomas: Always in on it. Let's get to that. We'll keep going then. Here so, so people didn't need it, and and thinks we can magically just identify those people ahead of time, and that's wrong for a million reasons that we already discussed. So let's see where they go from there. Oh,

0:30:43 Rick: Oh god. Okay.

0:30:52 Clip: Something like 1900 kids who died of COVID. No, I don't think that that's right. How many of them died from the vaccine? And the thinking now is that, well, probably

0:31:02 Rick: We need to pause right here. So from the UNESCO website, as of December of 2023, among the 4.4 million COVID deaths reported in this database, 0.4% were children under the age of 20, which is a total of 17,400 people under the age of 20

0:31:22 Thomas: I'm actually suspecting that whatever Seth was, his number might've been low, but it also might've Been United States could have been. I, yeah, yeah.

0:31:26 Rick: Wildly low. He doesn't specify one way or another. But I just want to clarify, because Bill Maher's like, oh, I don't think it's that much. I am looking at the think I I said UNESCO, but it's a UNICEf dashboard right now, and they separate it out between under 10 years old and from 10 to 19, and it's about split down the middle.

0:31:34 Thomas: I know. Yeah.

0:31:47 Thomas: I mean, that sucks. Sucks. And want to ask you just for the sake of fairness, is Seth right that nobody died from the vaccine? I just want, just crossing all the t's, dotting the I's. Yeah.

0:31:56 Rick: I couldn't find information on anybody dying from, I think he couched it very prudently in that I'm sure there probably were some deaths from the vaccine, but they're not anywhere on the scale they're not, it's not a blip

0:32:08 Thomas: How many Is it going to be there are There are Also deaths from like bowling, you know, there are deaths from, you relative risk and

0:32:11 Rick: Yeah. Right. Yes. More deaths from bees, things, I'm sure you I mean, I don't know. I, I I couldn't find it. Yeah.

0:32:17 Thomas: Oh, God. Yeah. Yeah. I've seen that movie. I've been watching

0:32:23 Rick: Right. My girl. That was terrible scarring and

0:32:23 Thomas: It. I've never seen My Girl. I never recovered from it. That might be, My Girl might explain most of my life, honestly. So I'm fucking crying as a kid being like, why is this happening? I don't understand why someone made a movie like this. That's apparently for kids. What are we doing here? The story of my wife.

0:32:31 Rick: Yeah.

0:32:40 Rick: And, and the really hard part is I did try to look into this, and there, there are some journal articles that talk about it. But there's some, like, the cardiovascular issues that have been seen, you know, 26 cases of myocarditis and, you know, one study and whatnot. But overall, it's really hard to figure out what the number of vaccine deaths are on there because of all the misinformation on the internet.

0:33:01 Thomas: Yeah.

0:33:01 Rick: Like, I'm having a hard time digging through and getting real comprehensive stats because the research papers that I'm finding are what they looked at. It's not a national kind of like, like, comprehensive accounting, it's what is published from that journal article, Know, you there are definitely deaths. But, in you this paper, they're talking about 26 cases from a comprehensive study. Doesn't mean that's, you know, that's not all the deaths, but it's, we're not in the hundreds of thousands, we are not in the millions, we are not even in the hundreds, right? Probably, like maybe all told, maybe in the hundreds. And it's usually from myocarditis from what I understand.

0:33:02 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah.

0:33:26 Thomas: Mean Fucking Shit. 26 Yeah. It's Ridiculous. So

0:33:41 Rick: So it's problem with the heart.

0:33:41 Thomas: What's that again, what's the myocarditis? Oh, but

0:33:44 Rick: Your heart basically, I'm not a heart doctor, I don't know. But there seems

0:33:48 Thomas: Is it, but is related, how Is it related to the vaccine exactly? Interesting.

0:33:52 Rick: To be something that, you know, can cause basically inflammation of the heart is how I understand it, that there's something that about the vaccine, particularly in younger men more than women. There seems to be a gender difference in that. But also shown the itself can also cause this inflammation. So this the possible outcomes of having COVID list. So it's unclear, is it the vaccine components of the part that is specific to COVID? Or is it like spike protein from COVID that's in the vaccine that,

0:34:07 Thomas: Oh, Okay. Right. Yeah. Geez, or Could it be that they also got exposed to COVID if we're talking about at 26 people? I mean, out of how many gajillions that got the vaccine, worldwide,

0:34:32 Rick: Right. Right. Yeah. Millions, tens of millions of people have had the vaccine and you know, you are talking probably, oh

0:34:44 Thomas: I'd hope it was more than that, right? Are you talking about the US?

0:34:46 Rick: Yeah. The U.S. Yeah. Yeah. Tens of millions in the U. S. For sure. I mean, I would love it to be hundreds of civilians in The U.S., that would make more sense, but um, and it's not, to you know, every single one of those deaths is tragic. I mean, I totally you know, I, that that does not discount a single thing about that side of it, and anybody who's lost somebody, uh, from, from this like really rare condition

0:34:47 Thomas: Okay, yeah, yeah. Sure. Could be a hundred million. I don't know. Yeah. Yeah, of course. Yeah yeah.

0:35:05 Thomas: But my only point is with numbers that small, you Like maybe it is that the vaccine just up and killed those 26 people. Or if you're saying there could be a possible connection to COVID itself, who the fuck knows if they also, those 26 People didn't happen to get exposed to COVID as well at that time when get like, that's just, that'S so small. I mean, I don't know how we could divine anything from that.

0:35:07 Rick: Yeah right I mean, that number could be higher because, because, you know, you're going to have people argue. And yes, you there there could have been something where, you know, there was there was something that wasn't detected that was, you Know, led to a chain of events from the vaccine, but you're still talking edge, edge, edged cases like, I

0:35:32 Thomas: Yeah.

0:35:44 Thomas: Right. Let's see where they go from here.

0:35:45 Clip: Most kids are not going to die from COVID. So why bother with the vaccine? Because it's only going to be a few hundred kids, right? I don't know how many kids died. That seems very high. At one point, the New York Times grossly, in terms of misinformation, they had to apologize. They got it completely wrong. She reported something like 900,000 children have been hospitalized, and it was like 63,000. So

0:36:10 Thomas: An article published by New York Times reporter Apoorva Mondavilli, okay, reported on. Times readers were told that nearly 900,000 children have been hospitalized with COVID since the pandemic began. Correction issued. So that was Wednesday. Correction issued Thursday. Notes the correct number is 63,000. Okay. Yeah. No, that seems bad.

0:36:26 Rick: Yep. And so I in that 24 hours, everybody was wildly misled, and I think that completely derailed all things that could be considered true. Yeah. For 24 hours, yeah.

0:36:42 Thomas: One reporter. For one day. Yeah, for one. I didn't even know this happened. This wasn't, it's not like, since I'm part of the big they, you and I, by the way, we're part of big they. Say according to Bill Maher I wasn't I guess I we missed this uh email that we were supposed to believe that 900,000 kids were hospitalized, that was not at all central to my, uh, of anything ever in this

0:36:46 Rick: Yeah. I didn't know it happened either. Yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah, of course. Yeah. And and the, the actual saddest part about that is, like, 63,000 kids being hospitalized is a staggering number, and it's, it's actually now looks not that big of a deal because it was accidentally reported as 900,000 the day before. Like, that was an accident, and that was bad that the reporter did it, but the reason that it's bad is because the full gravity of the 63,000 was muted because of that. Do, yeah.

0:37:05 Thomas: Yeah yeah, yeah and I'm trying to understand why, like, it sucks that this person did that, I, I don't know why, uh, Apurva Mandavilli did that oh yeah or, or by the way, maybe she was motivated by fucking whatever, it sounds like she was probably motivated ideologically somewhat, even if she was, again, what is the standard by which we're trying to evaluate this, is it if any, any single fucking person in the country gets something wrong, or, by the way, lies, let's say lies, if anyone lies on quote unquote, the big they side, then, and by the way, the lie stands for a whole 24 hours before it's corrected.

0:37:38 Rick: Sure but people make mistakes I'm also like sure yeah right yeah yeah

0:38:10 Thomas: Then, then the whole, the whole scientific conspiracy is blown up. Dr. Rick, it's over. Get quit your job. Dr. Rick. You don't.

0:38:16 Rick: There to be a class action lawsuit of, no, I mean, it's absolutely crazy, and to me it's the thing that are really underlined with that was, like, New York Times is a newspaper, it's not fact. Right? They're reporting on things, they might be spinning it in a certain way, but the source material is still stance, right? Like, it's not like the New England Journal of Medicine reported 900,000, you know, like, it, it's still, like, this is a, this is communication air, not a fact air, and that, that's where, like, Bill Maher is trying to say, like, oh, I mean, there's all these communication errors and people get it wrong, and so you believe any facts or something, he kind of is implying that, which is ridiculous and and and ludicrous, and again he's just pivoting, it's the rumba effect of, like, oh, yeah, you blocked me there, I'll just pivot to over here now. Yeah.

0:38:28 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yep. And, thing is adults, I think can deal with, well, I shouldn't say an adult should be, ought to be able to deal, with the fact that sometimes people get something wrong somewhere. And then you just, you just are like, oh, someone got that wrong. Yeah. Yeah.

0:39:18 Rick: I've gotten a lot of things wrongs yeah I'm, I'm wrongs a lot, man, yeah, you know, it's like, but I think actually my pride as, as a scientist is that when I'm wrong, the next time I'm with people, that's the first thing I lead with, was, hey, I was wrong and I want to shine a light on I wanted

0:39:35 Thomas: Oh, and I love that too. Bill Maher's like, talk about misinformation. Yeah. I don't think usually disinformation campaigns like fucking, you North Korean style, Trump style. I don't usually issue a correction 24 hours later. I actually don't think that's how they do that. In fact, it's the opposite. They never correct themselves, themselves, ever. Trump, Trump will double down, triple down, quadruple down for the rest of his life, he'll lie further if you call him out, like, he'll be like, and furthermore, more of a lie, that's how that works. Yeah.

0:39:38 Rick: Yeah yeah yeah and then and then he'll say, no, no, I'm not, you are, you're doing that, and then he'll actually tell you the worst thing he's doing, by accusing you of doing that first, you know, the thing we don't know about, right? Right? Oh,

0:40:08 Thomas: No puppet yeah yeah, all cool, I'm going to leave that preview there. There's plenty more on Patreon if you'd like to go listen. Patreon.com/seriouspod. Was so fun. Thanks again to Dr. Rick, and hope you enjoyed that. I'll see you next time.