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- [00:01]
A
I sold my car in Carvana last night. Well, that's cool. No, you don't understand. It went perfectly. Real offer down to the penny. They're picking it up tomorrow. Nothing went wrong. So what's the problem? That is the problem. Nothing in my life goes as smoothly. I'm waiting for the catch. Maybe there's no catch. That's exactly what a catch would want me to think. Wow. You need to relax. I need a knock on wood. Do we have wood? Is this table wood? I think it's laminate. Okay. Yeah, that's good. That's close enough. Car selling without a catch Sell your car today on Carvana. Pick up fees may apply. Support comes from wise the smart way to manage the currencies you need around the globe. Fed up with losing out to hidden fees? When you send money abroad with your everyday bank, choose the smart way. Wise. You can count on the exchange rate you'd usually find on Google. No unwelcome surprises. Plus, ditch that where's my money feeling. Most transfers arrive in under 20 seconds. Join millions saving billions on hidden fees. Be smart, get wise. Download the wise app today. T's and C's apply.
- [01:07]
B
On May 15, Bloomberg published an article titled FDA swaps top drug and Vaccine Regulators in Staff Overhaul, calling it a personal shakeup. The move came in the wake of the forced resignation of FDA Commissioner Marty Macri on May 12th. And in what could have been an actual act of scientific integrity, Macri opposed the Trump administration's decision to approved flavored vapes, which the president and his tobacco lobbyist friends most certainly did not like. Shortly after his departure, the FDA quietly approved two fruit flavored vapes and issued a policy allowing them to be more widely marketed because, you know Maha Acting Director of the FDA center for Drug Evaluation and Research, Tracy Beth Hogue was quickly ushered out three days after Macquarie. Hogue is a sports medicine physician and epidemiologist who began her career studying ultra marathon runners. Shortly into COVID 19, her star rose as a contrarian who opposed lockdowns and vaccines. Now, the first time I ever came across her, it was on Twitter where she had tweeted out bragging that she had never even taken an Advil after all her marathon training. So you're probably getting a vibe if you're not familiar with her wild applause. Hogue is a longtime ally of Vinay Prasad, the hematologist oncologist who also became a second tier Covid contrarian. Prasad lasted nearly a year, sort of because he left and then came back in his role as Director of the center for Biologics Evaluation and Research at the fda. He initially quit because Laura Loomer hurt his feelings. Then he rejoined and eventually he quit again. Turns out trolling public health officials on Twitter and his podcast was slightly more aligned with his values while in his role. He also demanded that YouTube remove six videos created by our guest today, Jonathan Howard. Welcome back, Jonathan.
- [03:17]
A
Thank you guys so much for having me. It's great to be here again. How are you guys?
- [03:20]
B
Great. Always enjoy the conversations. You heard Julian chime in there. Hello, Julian.
- [03:26]
C
Well, I'm here all the time, but, you know, I think we need. We need a special blazer for Jonathan as a returning guest who's been here perhaps more than anyone else. And he also has this distinction of being someone who's been harassed by a member of the fda.
- [03:41]
B
Yes, yes, we. We will have to print up some T shirts at the very least.
- [03:44]
C
Yeah.
- [03:45]
B
I'm Derek Barrison. You're listening to a conspirituality Brief collapse at the FDA. So, Jonathan, we also have Jim O' Neill leaving his position as acting CD director. So broading out to the broader HOH HHS family. Here you have the inventor of MRNA, so called Robert Malone, who was appointed to ASIP, the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices by RFK Jr. Then he was removed by a federal judge and he called it a sabotage and complained that he lost hundreds of hours of uncompensated labor and said the press gave him an ouchie.
- [04:23]
C
He went woke.
- [04:24]
B
We have actual credible professionals leaving HHS varied wings, including Peter Marks, Richard Pazder, Susan Monorez, and the original entire 17 member ASIP panel. So the question we start with, what the hell is going on at hhs? Is this really part of some grand restructuring as Kennedy and allies claim?
- [04:46]
A
Yeah. So I think you hit the nail on the head when you spoke about how it's a lot easier to tweet about things than to do things. I think this moment, I mean, including journalism with Barry Weiss and everything that's happening at our age, HHS is. What we're really seeing is what happens when professional content creators, you know, get high on their own supply and are actually given real world responsibility for the first time. You know, what led to Makary's downfall? As you said, the proximate cause was this vaping that he refused to approve. Although his last act as FDA Commissioner on May 5, 2025 or 2026 was to approve some of these vaping products. But he angered a lot of people at the fda. And so did Prasad and so did Hogue. You know, ranging from anti abortion activists to rare disease activists to biotech companies, they made enemies everywhere they went. And I think what we're seeing is what happened, what people. What's happening is that people who got famous based on their hypothetical Covid accomplishments, all of the wonderful things they would have done as Covid rage, they would have protected the vulnerable, they would have opened schools, are given a chance to prove their mettle and competency in the real world, and they failed. I mean, the FDA is in shambles now compared to where it was a year and a half ago when they arrived.
- [06:23]
B
Well, just this morning, we're recording Friday, the day before this published, Kennedy said that the CDC is doing a fantastic job with measles. Second straight year of over 2,000 cases. But he said they really. They really reined it in.
- [06:37]
A
Yeah. So what we're seeing with measles is all of the same myths that were spread regarding Covid are being repurposed with regards to measles as the one that you just hinted at. That is all behind us, that the worst is over. You know, but a lot of the same other myths are being repeated as well. That is only vulnerable kids who die of COVID and there's only vulnerable kids who die of measles, which is both false and gross, as you guys have, you know, coined the term soft eugenics to describe that, or that it's just kids that. That it's not measles which is actually killing these kids, it's doctors at hospitals. So all of these same myths are being recycled. But, yeah, you know, Maha is failing in every single way. It's hard to point to any sort of success that they've had.
- [07:26]
B
I just want to point out that I saw the Kennedy clip because you shared it on Blue sky, so you should definitely follow Jonathan on Blue Sky. It's where I get, actually, a lot of the information that I share on the podcast usually comes from you somehow. So, Julian.
- [07:39]
C
Yeah, follow Jonathan if you want to just be maddened by the ongoing carnage. It seems like, Derek, you were kind of setting up two categories here. There's the qualified career professionals who are throwing up their hands and resigning just in despair. And then there are these influencers and contrarians and quacks who are sort of riding a revolving door of incompetence for one reason or another. And that leaves us amazing with Marty Mackere as the one almost heroic figure because he made a stand against fruit flavored nicotine vapes. But I Want to come back around to Tracy Beth Hogue. I'm especially interested in her. She's one of these classic fox in the hen house style appointments. Former advisor to Florida Surgeon General Joseph Lapo, who infamously compared vaccine mandates to slavery while announcing that Florida schools would no longer require that any kids be vaccinated for anything at all. She also authored a study claiming to show that Covid transmission was not really, really an issue in schools. One of your favorite positions. I know, Jonathan, and another one that fear mongered the dangers of myocarditis as a side effect of COVID vaccines in young men. So she's only really in place as the acting director at the FDA center for Drug Evaluation and Research for about five or six months. Was she able to do much damage?
- [08:56]
A
I think so. I mean, I think that she the chief thing that she did along with another Covid contrarian. One of the authors of the Great Barrington Declaration is Martin Kulldorf is author this memo decimating the vaccine schedule, cutting down the number of vaccines that we give to children. The only reason was to make it more like Denmark. So there's no science, there's no data. It's just treating medicine as a popularity contest. And President Trump recently, just this past week, issued in an executive order in order again to try to slash our vaccine schedule in order to make it more like, quote, peer nations. Even though if we adopt this vaccine schedule, this will make us as an outlier in so few vaccines that we give. So we'll see if this outlasts her. But if potentially, if that's her lasting legacy, that's going to be a big problem. And even though a lot of states and doctors are going to ignore this new CDC guidance if it ever comes out, parents are hearing the message and the damage is being done, diseases are spreading and kids are getting sick and going to the hospital again.
- [10:11]
B
Yeah.
- [10:11]
C
And something that I found interesting and actually kind of surprising about Hoag's attempt to change the vaccine schedule for babies and children is that it was actually blocked by the judge in the same lawsuit that led to Robert Malone, a famous inventor of MRNA vaccines, stepping down. And this is the American Academy of Pediatrics vs. Kennedy case. So I'm wondering, is the court system, do you think, turning out to be a, a hopeful bulwark against some of these maniacs achieving their goals?
- [10:41]
A
Yeah, I mean, I think we're seeing that across the spectrum and our federal government is that the courts are kind of acting like a check again. I think even if the CDC officially adopts Kind of these positions or not. I think it's, it's the damage has already been done because it just is creating this vibe that you don't need these vaccines even though they have spared, yeah, you know, millions of children, a great deal of suffering.
- [11:09]
B
There was just a report that came out here in Oregon that we have now gone well below herd immunity with not only kindergarten vaccinations, which is usually a tracking mechanism that's, that's pretty widespread. But in K through 12 vaccinations, in fact it is now the highest school year in recorded history for requested exemptions of something like 11%. What happens if we keep going this route with just like as someone who spends so much time thinking about public health, like what does that do to us?
- [11:44]
A
Yeah, it's not going to be a mystery. I mean measles being the most contagious disease out there is clearly the canary in the coal mine. Other diseases are going to take decades before their harm is seen. I mean, if a child gets infected with HPV now, or a teenager, something like this, you know, that may cause a HPV related cancer when they're 50 or 60. So we're going to be seeing this for decades to come. Or hepatitis B, for example, can cause hepatocellular carcinomas, liver cancer basically decades from now. So we're going to be dealing with the consequences of this for the rest of our careers and the rest of our lives. And I think a lot of these MAHA doctors will say what really broke trust in vaccines is what happened during the COVID pandemic. It was booster mandates for college kids neglecting obviously their own role in this. And one thing that they tried to do to try to sell this decimation of the vaccine schedule, you know, Marty Macri, as you said, or J. Bhattacharya, is they absurdly tried to claim that they were trying to increase trust in vaccines by creating a hierarchy of vaccines. They're saying, ah, you know, here are the vaccines that you really need. As if vaccines were in competition with each other. And again, this was something that they did a lot during COVID They tried to say if you vaccinate children for Covid, parents will then refuse to vaccinate, vaccinate their child against the MMR and the polio vaccines. Obviously they presented no data for this because it was something they just made up.
- [13:15]
B
So going back to Macri Makary, I, I say shit wrong all the time, but I his last name for some reason always just baffles me. The same day the Bloomberg Article that I cited earlier came out. You published an article entitled no one should care about or trust anything Dr. Marty McCary says ever again. So tell me how you really feel, Jonath.
- [13:41]
A
Yeah. It's hard to overstate the amount of damage that he has done. He was one of the few doctors who I was aware of before COVID as having spread disinformation. He was the originator of the myth that medical air is the third leading cause of death, which, if you run the statistics on that, it would mean that most people who die in hospitals die due to medical error. So that's one of these zombie myths that we, you know, that we only need 10 use 10% of our brain, or we need to drink eight glasses of water per day.
- [14:15]
B
That was my next question. I want to hear other things that he's done wrong. But I've covered this before, I think, in a bonus. Can you break down the extremely limited data set that Macri looked at for that study? And maybe. Why did it rise to such prominence when it was such a small study?
- [14:34]
A
Yeah, I'd have to be totally honest with you. Totally. To review it again, to give you the exact details. Someone who actually wrote a great rebuttal of it back when he was a reasonable doctor was Dr. Vinay Prasad back in 2016.
- [14:48]
B
Well, wasn't it. Wasn't it just. Yeah, okay, sorry. It was just one cohort in Florida with Medicaid patients, something of that.
- [14:56]
A
And I think what he did is he reviewed the chart of these, you know, extremely sick people who ended up dying. And he went back and said, if there was any instance where a perfect decision wasn't made, we're looking backwards. You think, oh, boy, maybe they should have given an extra, you know, 2 milligrams of potassium, but they gave it two hours late. Therefore, that was a medical error that killed the patient. So it was really sort of saying anyone who died in the hospital, who, even if they were there for two months and every decision wasn't perfect, they're considering that someone who died of a medical error.
- [15:30]
C
Well, the rebuttal to this should be that they died with medical error, not from medical error. Right, right.
- [15:36]
A
And that segues very well into all of the myths that he spread during COVID It's impossible to summarize it all, but one of the myths that he spread it was that no healthy child died of COVID which was totally false, totally gross. And death is not the only bad outcome from COVID Five years ago, in 2021, he was saying that we had Herd immunity to Covid. And anyone who denied that we had herd immunity to Covid was lying to the public just to manipulate them. He claimed that one COVID infection led to lifelong immunity and that health officials denied the pat power of natural immunity because they wanted to scare people. So he really did two things. He spread a copious amount of COVID disinformation and he spread doubt and mistrust about his predecessors. He claimed that the leading source of misinformation during the pandemic was the federal government. He testified that before Congress. And so he just spread doubt and mistrust. And again, he was given his chance to prove his real world mettle and he totally failed. He didn't do anything that he claimed that he would have done.
- [16:53]
B
I know this is going to be pure speculation because that's all any of us have to go on, but what are the incentives for doing this?
- [17:00]
A
Yeah, I mean, I think it's. It's a combination of six years ago. I think a lot of doctors saw that frontline health care workers were getting cheered and they kind of wanted to be part of that. They wanted to, you know, have applause for them. And I think that a lot of people genuinely underestimated Covid in 2020 in good faith. Although actually Marty Makary was not someone who underestimated Covid in April 2020. He was out there saying, this is a horrible disease and we need to contain it. But a lot of other people did, like John Ioannidis, Martin Kulldorf, Jay Bhattacharya, Scott Atlas, the boys from Stanford. And they just couldn't admit air. They were speculating that Covid was going to kill 10 to 40,000. They were saying this time six years ago in 2020, that we were basically past the peak. And obviously they went on to become pro infection, saying that the best way to get rid of COVID was to spread Covid. And I think they just had a hard time saying, oops, we were wrong about all that.
- [18:06]
C
Yeah, I mean, obviously we're in the realm of psychological speculation here, but that does seem to me to be a personality type that thrives on. I'm going to be the guy who just has the common sense take that. The institutions are missing because they're like caught up in their procedural bullshit. And then once they get a taste of getting that, those accolades and that fame, they're just like, this is, this is my lane now. I'm going to milk this for all that it's worth. And it's. It sort of supersedes any ability to be self aware about, ooh, I'm making some mistakes that are super consequential.
- [18:38]
A
Correct. And I think they bought into the myth that they were Covid superheroes more powerful than the virus. They actually believed that because they, they called for schools to be open, they called for the vulnerable to be protected. I mean, these were things that no one could argue against. Right? Open schools are good. Protecting vulnerable people is good. So it's not that they were necessarily wrong about those things, but there's a big difference between calling for things and doing for things. For example, Dr. Vinay Prasad boasted that he tweeted a hundred times about the need for more randomized controlled trials. So no one is going to say, oh, we should have had fewer randomized controlled trials. But it's just that it's easier to say these things than to do them. And when he had his chance, he did zero randomized controlled trials and several that started, for example, randomized control randomized trials of the COVID vaccines. They failed to enroll enough people, so he failed.
- [19:48]
C
So it's kind of like the Monday morning quarterback gets given the job as the head coach. And it's like, okay, let's see. Like you've been calling this from the sideline for the entire season and you think you know how to win the Super Bowl.
- [19:59]
A
Well, yeah, no, no, that, that, that's exactly right. And so they, they are unable to do any of the things that they previously called for. For example, Jay Bhattacharya, now that he is in charge of the cdc and it's his job to protect us from Ebola and the hantavirus, taking very dramatic steps to try to limit those viruses, which, by the way, might be a good thing. I don't know if this is coming from him or if it's coming from the White House. And the last thing they need right now is headlines of Americans with Ebola and Hantavirus. But he is locking people up, literally in these quarantine facilities in Nebraska, threatening them with jail time if they leave. So he is doing everything that he swore he would not do if given power. To say nothing of the fact of all the censorship that has been coming out of our hhs. I mean, all of these guys rose to power claiming that they had been censored and silenced because YouTube removed one of their videos or Twitter deprioritized one of their tweets. And these guys are engaged in a vast censorship regime. Both the CDC and the FDA censored studies that made the COVID vaccines Look good. And the shame shingles vaccine look good. They're banning entire fields of research. Anything that they deem dei, they have purged, you know, many respected officials. So everything that they complained about, they are now doing times 10.
- [21:31]
B
I'm reading Kevin Hall's book right now, Food Intelligence. And he, he is, he is basically he. His research is the foundation of so much of what Maha says. But then because his most recent research on ultra processed foods did not find what Kennedy wanted it to, they wouldn't allow him to publish it. So that's just another example of that, what's been going on over there. I also want to point out that Mackerey's study on medical errors predates Covid. So he seems a bit primed to have become a contrarian for the reason Julian and then, and then you, Jonathan, pointed out. But, but I want to go to your favorite person, Vinay, for a moment because I'm just wondering what he's been up to since leaving the FDA. I was, I was went to his YouTube channel and I noticed that his last video is very exciting. It's called Fiber how much do you need? So it seems like he's. And it had like 200 views, so it seems like he's doing pretty well over there.
- [22:34]
A
Yeah, I think the positive about them having flamed out is that they are no longer relevant. You know, he wrote, you know, Vinay Prasad got famous, you know, calling for better studies, calling for better research, and, you know, not all of it was bad work. Right. He actually made, I think, important points in the oncology field, but no one is going to care anymore that he calls for things because again, he had his chance and he failed. So I think his audience is drastically diminished as it deserves to be. You know, his views are now irrelevant. That doesn't mean that he should be unaccountable. However, I think that some of his actions at the FDA should follow him around for the rest of his career. For example, just after Thanksgiving, he sent a memo to over 1,000 people at the FDA, which was of course immediately leaked, claiming that the COVID vaccine had killed at least 10 children. He and Marty Makary made the rounds, the media rounds, saying the Biden administration covered this up. We're gonna release it to the public. And it was not released to the public until after they all left, when Senator Ron Johnson, this conspiracy theorist senator from Wisconsin, released it in a memo. Although journalist slash doctor, or doctor slash journalist Jeremy Faust had also gotten a hold of the official CDC publication ahead of time and basically Zero children were definitively known to have died from the COVID vaccine. Two were listed as probable and five were listed as possible. So if you consider that about 50 million children in the United States received some dose of the COVID vaccine, we're talking about possibly a 1 in 10 million, 1 in 20 million event. But I think every time V and A Persad gives a talk, hopefully no one will invite him, but if they do, he should be asked, you know, why did you release this memo and why didn't you correct the record once it became out there known that at the most, you know, two children probably died and five possible. So it's just obfuscation. But his reputation, which was good before the pandemic, is now zero. I mean, his career as a public commentator is over. At least I hope it definitely should be.
- [25:13]
B
Well, surprise, Jonathan, I have Vinay here in the waiting room and he's going to join us now.
- [25:19]
C
He's going to join us now to explain why he and his followers who have stayed with him really need some fiber to help them with a little condition being full of something.
- [25:29]
B
And I want to thank our sponsor today.
- [25:31]
A
You know, on a, on a more serious note, I mean, I do think that the medical profession we did, did fail the general public in failing to rein in these bad faith actors. I think we showed extraordinary bravery six years ago, rushing into the rooms of COVID patients before we were vaccinated and before we knew, you know, how contagious this disease was and you know, decent number of doctors and nurses and respiratory techs and everyone else paid for that with their lives. But when it came to these bad faith disinformation doctors, they were, you know, Vinay Prasad literally got promoted a couple years ago and they were platformed, they were treated as reasonable actors with good ideas who we just need to listen to. You know, all they wanted to do was have poor kids in school and end lockdowns. So I think the medical profession, you know, kind of failed the public. The same way police departments shuffle bad cops from one department to another or religious organizations have shuffled sex abusing creep least, you know, from one parish to the next. I, I think we let the public down that.
- [26:42]
B
Well, you preempted my last question, Jonathan, and it is something hopeful potentially because you recently published an article on science based medicine which you framed as a sincere message to Jay Bhattacharya. I noticed that the URL slug is locked down. J2 so what is that? Who was locked down? J1 and what is this message about?
- [27:08]
A
So I think maybe the two was the fact that Dr. Jay Bhattacharya has been nicknamed by unhappy staff at the nih. They nicknamed him Podcast J because instead of doing his job, he spent his time in his safe space doing what we're doing now, podcasting, which I do a lot of that, too. There's nothing wrong with it, public communication, but it's a lot easier to podcast than it is to actually do. And again, Jay Bhattacharya became famous based on his opposition to lockdowns. He will now frame that, as I was saying, as just someone who wanted schools open and churches open and he cared about minority children going to school, when in reality, he opposed mitigation measures because he actively wanted people infected, because he felt that the mass infection of unvaccinated people under age 60 to 70 would end the pandemic in three to six months. If you actually read the Great Bering and Declaration, it's all about herd immunity via natural immunity. But now that it's his job to stop viruses and keep Americans safe again, he is using strict lockdowns to try to accomplish that, because he knows that if Ebola or Hantavirus, neither of which is going to become a pandemic because they're not nearly as contagious as Covid was to get out in the news, that would look horrible for him and his administration. But he has ceded the principle that in extraordinary circumstances, the government can take extraordinary actions to keep Americans safe from dangerous viruses. And as long as he's doing that, whatever his motivation is, he will have my support.
- [28:56]
C
I mean, I just have to say, too, that a lot of the changes that have happened at the level of government as a result of these contrarians gaining so much influence means that countries outside of America that used to get all kinds of support and aid and infrastructure around how to manage these sorts of events are now just left completely at the mercy of things like Ebola.
- [29:19]
A
Yeah, and it's gonna be more dangerous for Americans, too. Right? What happens overseas, especially with contagious diseases, is not gonna stay overseas. These diseases will find a way into our country one way or another. You know, I'm not saying Ebola is necessarily gonna find the way in. I mean, it's. It's a hard disease to transmit, fortunately, via bodily fluids, but it's happened before. We had an Ebola patient at my hospital, Bellevue Hospital, Dr. Craig Spencer. So it's good, I suppose, that Jay Bhattacharya has committed himself to taking these diseases seriously, even though he has destroyed his Covid reputation in the process. He's obviously trying to say, oh, you know, there's a big difference between locking down all of society and locking down a couple of COVID you know, patients with hantavirus, which he's right about. But it just shows that he has again ceded the principle that drastic measures are needed for, you know, to prevent drastic harm.
- [30:20]
B
Well, if anyone wants to read your sincere message, it's in the show notes along with some of your other writings. Thank you as always for joining, Jonathan.
- [30:28]
A
No, my pleasure. Thank you so much for having me. It's always a treat. When you're a maintenance engineer in a beverage manufacturing plant. You keep production lines moving and quality on track because there is no room for slowdown. With Grainger's vast selection of high quality motors, sensors, belts and hard to find parts, you can get what you need fast and all in one place. So nothing gets in the way of getting the job done. Call 1-800-GRAINGER clickgrainger.com or just stop by Grainger for the ones who get it done.