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- [00:00]
Ryan Reynolds
Hey there Ryan Reynolds here. It's a new year and you know what that means. No, not the diet resolutions. A way for us all to try and do a little bit better than we did last year. And my resolution, unlike big wireless, is to not be a raging and raise the price of wireless on you every chance I get. Give it a try@mintmobile.com switch $45 upfront.
- [00:21]
Ollie
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- [01:04]
Julian Walker
Hi everyone, welcome to Conspirituality, where we investigate the intersections of conspiracy theories and spiritual influence to uncover cults, pseudoscience and authoritarian extremism. I'm Julian Walker.
- [01:15]
Derek Barris
And I am Derek Barris and you can find us on Instagram and threads at conspiritualitypod. We are also all individually on Blue sky, which personally I'm enjoying a lot more at the moment.
- [01:29]
Julian Walker
Me too.
- [01:30]
Derek Barris
You can also access all of our episodes ad free, plus our Monday bonus episodes over on patreon@patreon.com conspirituality or you can just grab our bonus episodes via Apple subscriptions. As independent media creators, we really appreciate your support.
- [01:53]
Julian Walker
Today we're looking at a contrarian doctor named Vinay Prasad. We've covered him a few times, but he's not as well known as his usual collaborators, which is kind of the theme here. Prasad's first exposure to a wide audience came during the pandemic, through being a YouTube sidekick type of guest for the significantly more popular Zubin Damania, otherwise known as Zdogg. Together, they nonchalantly mocked people who were still being alarmist about COVID in late 2020 as the vaccines were rolling out. They predicted that the pandemic was almost over, and it was silly to still be scared of it. But well over 400,000 people would still die in 2021. Now, true to form, in this particular crew of maverick doctors, they've never acknowledged that they were wrong about that important thing. Their style of critique continued with a generalized skepticism about school closures, masks and and vaccine boosters, even as the Delta and then Omicron variants drove the death count past a million in the US Alone. Prasad was so active in that discourse that former guest of the show for episode 155, Dr. Jonathan Howard, gave him plenty of ink in his magnum opus, We Want Them Infected. But even then, Prasad was playing second fiddle to libertarian Covid grievance mongers like Marty Mackere and Jay Bhattacharya, who was the main author of the Great Barrington Declaration. And this was the case again at the recent Stanford conference that we covered for episode 229. There, Prasad shared the stage with these fellow maverick experts. But unlike Macquarie, who's been tapped ahead the FDA and Bhattacharya, who's been nominated to lead the nih, Vinay never got the call for a Cabinet position, I know. Not even for a smaller job under the wing of RFK juniors, now shudderingly significant purview as the head of the Department of Health and Human Services.
- [03:56]
Derek Barris
Let me just add that right before we recorded, I have learned via NBC News that 15,000 doctors have signed on to a letter asking the government not to appoint Kennedy to this position, which is pretty significant. I don't expect that it'll make much of a difference, but that is quite. That is quite a sign on.
- [04:18]
Julian Walker
Yeah. Now we're looking at two specific videos from Prasad on his YouTube channel, but I dug a little further back into his catalog and I see that one month ago he made a video in which he purported to give advice on how to vet Cabinet picks. And he also in that video, predicted that Biden was going to preemptively pardon Fauci, who, like a lot of these folks, he has villainized. But I couldn't help noticing that two of his most recent videos were were giving heavy pick me vibes both to Bobby and to Daddy Trump.
- [04:51]
Derek Barris
Yeah, it's not a good look for masculine men to be pick mes. I don't know, the the manosphere is failing us right now. So if anyone is angling for a position, I'd also vote Vinay Prasad at the top of the list. I'd also put Mickey Willis in there. Perhaps he recently cut a the Media Lies about Trump mashup video that was honestly one of the saddest things I've seen in a while. But Vinay kicked off the new posting a video and it was titled who is Responsible for the Samoa Measles Outbreak what really happened. So let's listen to how he frames it.
- [05:29]
Vinay Prasad
I see a lot of people on the eve of RFK Jr. S confirmation hearings talking about his role in Samoa, which suffered in a terrible measles outbreak in 2019. What is his role? What did he do there? Is he responsible? That's what I hear people saying. I had a chance to read through the history of this topic. I read a number of really elegantly written, sort of interdisciplinary summaries of the events that occurred, and I had a chance to reflect upon it. And I think the answer is you can't really blame him because the timeline doesn't make sense. Let me just walk you through the bare bone fact.
- [06:01]
Julian Walker
Yeah. This is not an original idea that he's having here. A lot of people in the sphere that we cover are doing this kind of laundering of what happened in Samoa. Right.
- [06:12]
Derek Barris
But he sees a lot of people, Julian. There's a lot of people. You know, it's a. It is a disingenuous framing as well, because we actually wrote about the Samoa incident for time magazine in June 2023. We being the collective three of us at conspirituality. Here's the paragraph.
- [06:29]
Julian Walker
By 2019, Kennedy was the leading buyer of anti vax ads on Facebook and was implicated in a measles outbreak in Samoa that infected 5,700 and killed 83. The outbreak followed the tragic deaths of two children who had received contaminated vaccines. Kennedy traveled to Samoa and was pictured with a local anti vax advocate. This was followed by Children's Health Defense sending a letter to the Prime Minister of Samoa urging him to question the general safety of the measles, mumps and rubella, or MMR vaccine. This tragedy echoed the measles outbreaks in Somali immigrant communities in Minnesota in 2011 and 2017.
- [07:11]
Derek Barris
So I don't want to be language, please, here, but language actually means something. Words mean things, and implicated in and responsible for are very different things. Kennedy was implicated in the sense that he contacted the government and warned about the supposed dangers of the vaccine after there was public distrust in vaccines when, as we flagged, two children died when those MMR vaccines were not prepared correctly.
- [07:39]
Julian Walker
Yeah. And just to be clear on that, this was an incredibly tragic event. Two nurses mixed a kind of muscle relaxant with the vaccines when they gave them to these kids as a complete, honest mistake. And it actually had nothing to do with there being anything wrong with the vaccines themselves.
- [07:57]
Derek Barris
Right. But it did spark a nationwide distrust of vaccines, which is kind of understandable. And then the government went out and tried to rebuild that trust. So that happened. And then Kennedy visited Samoa in June 2019 when there was blood in the water due to that distrust. Couple months later, actually in August, two months later, a passenger in New Zealand, from New Zealand brought the disease from Auckland to Upolu in August. But it wasn't declared an outbreak until October. In their book, which I'm reading right now, it's called Calling the Art of Skepticism in a Data Driven World. It's by Carl T. Bergstrom and Jevin D. West. And they write that distraction can itself be a form of disinformation. And that line popped into my head when I saw Vinay's video title. Because if you're looking for distraction, nothing better than to stick the words in critics mouths that they never actually uttered. There was, as Prasad later himself states, a convergence of factors that led to the outbreak no one ever said Kennedy was responsible for. But a lot of people noticed the timeline of his visit and his potential influence on the government and Samoan citizens. So from that opening clip that I played, Prasad then lists out the problems with the measles outbreak. And it includes a long standing distrust of white people in Samoa and the nation's embrace of alternative medicines, the island's horrible record keeping. So who knows how many people are really vaccinated anyway.
- [09:34]
Julian Walker
Oh yeah.
- [09:35]
Derek Barris
And then he goes on to talk about other island nations that have lower coverage rates, which has nothing to do with Samoa. It's just a complete what about this? So from there he goes on to discuss the possible reasons that 83 people died during this outbreak.
- [09:50]
Vinay Prasad
The Samoa measles outbreak occurred because of a constellation of factors including an impoverished population, a recent history in historical terms of having measles long standing, poor vaccination rates, the manslaughter of two children, a cover up, poor health literacy, poor health infrastructure, poor government messaging, suspending the MMR vaccination program by the government, and a country drawn to traditional ideas of health and medicine. It cannot be RFK Jr. Okay? It can't be him because he only got there June 2019. The vaccine rate has already been rock bottom and the rate was so low the measles outbreak was imminent. The die had already been cast. Him going there, whatever he said, it couldn't have caused it because the damage was already done. It was already primed to be caused. Okay? It was already set up.
- [10:32]
Julian Walker
Okay, hold on a second. RFK is an anti vax activist, but when he got there, the vaccine rates were already so low because vaccines actually prevent measles as they had done in Samoa for quite a long time because they had really good vaccination rates. Somehow there's no connection there between there being this terrible medical accident and trust in vaccines waning and then probably the biggest anti vax advocate in the world visiting the country and posing for photos with the local anti vax people. There's no connection there.
- [11:03]
Derek Barris
No, he just likes Samoa, you know, in the summer. Who doesn't travel to Samoa in the summer from upstate New York or your second home in California or your third home wherever. But again, no one said he caused it. And if they did, they certainly didn't look into the whole story. And that's not RFK shtick anyway. He's not going to go into communities without vaccine hesitation. It appears he'd rather wait for instances to emerge than travel there as an ambassador. I mean, you know what, good for Prasad for listing the refusal vaccine as as a reason for the outbreak. Yeah, at least he's not being full of anti vaxxer there. But his defense of Bobby feels completely performative. But that didn't stop Children Health Health Defense's blog the Defender from publishing an article the day after Prasad's video that they called fact checking mainstream media. Did RFK cause measles outbreak in Samo killed 83 children. It was written by a woman named Brenda Beletti, PhD, who obviously has a doctorate in epidemiology. No, I'm sorry. It's actually in human geography which is a very cool field of study that has nothing to do with vaccinology.
- [12:15]
Julian Walker
But she can find Samoa on a map, right?
- [12:18]
Derek Barris
Yeah, well human geography is actually even a little bit different. So possibly. She writes that media outlets allege that Kennedy played a key role in the tragedy of Samoa. That's her quote. She includes a link so there must be some damning evidence there. So me being me, I clicked on that link and it land on the kff. That's the Kaiser Family foundation health news website and it was a roundup of RFK jr's vaccine skepticism, which I don't think that's really what it is. So CHD should actually be happy about that. But on Kaiser's site this is what they actually write.
- [12:57]
Julian Walker
Kennedy had visited Samoa four months before the outbreak and met with anti vaccine advocates.
- [13:04]
Derek Barris
That's it. That's true. This is just facts.
- [13:07]
Julian Walker
Mainstream. Just mainstream like hyperbole.
- [13:11]
Derek Barris
And KFF is actually a very good website. So it's. And, but it's not really mainstream media. You know, KFF and Stat News are probably two of the best resources we have for reporting on health and science. But I wouldn't call them like the lamestream media.
- [13:28]
Julian Walker
They're totally captured by Big Pharma though.
- [13:30]
Derek Barris
So there and just so people are clear, there is actually a distinction between Kaiser Permanente, the the Healthcare System and Kaiser Family Foundation. Now though they were founded by the same family, but they are distinct entities. So the reporting on KFF is not influenced by Kaiser Permanente. I think that's because sometimes people might confuse that.
- [13:52]
Julian Walker
Yeah.
- [13:52]
Derek Barris
After the visit, Kennedy then sent a letter to the Prime Minister of Samoa. So here's Brian Deer, who I love. He is the reporter who uncovered Andrew Wakefield's bogus Van vaccine autism link. He was sued by Wakefield, his book on the topic. I mean, we only know about the depths of Wakefield's egregiousness because of Brian D. Air. So he wrote in the New York Times in November 2024.
- [14:17]
Julian Walker
The following In November 2019, when an epidemic of measles was killing children and babies in Samoa, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Who in recent days became Donald Trump's pick to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, sent the Prime Minister of Samoa a four page letter. In it, he suggested the measles vaccine itself may have caused the outbreak. He claimed that the vaccine might have failed to produce antibodies in vaccinated mothers sufficient to provide infants with immunity, that it perhaps provoked the evolution of more virulent measles strains, and that children who received the vaccine may have inadvertently spread the virus to other children. Please do not hesitate to contact me if I can be of assistance. He added, writing in his role as the chairman of Children's Health Defense and Anti Vaccine Group.
- [15:06]
Derek Barris
Yeah, Vinay, RFK didn't cause the outbreak. Did he play a role in spreading FUD fear, uncertainty and doubt about vaccines in June 2019? His very presence in the nation as a chairman of CHD suggests so, as does this letter he sent as the outbreak was going on. Okay, one more clip from this video. Vinay calls RFK Jr. A third party commentator when it comes to vaccines. So he can't actually be that influential when it comes to vaccine hesitancy. But then here he slips this in.
- [15:42]
Vinay Prasad
Now Anthony Fauci is like a central player in the government response to COVID 19. So his role is much larger than Joe Rogan's response role in the COVID 19 pandemic because he is just a third party commenter.
- [15:53]
Julian Walker
Wow.
- [15:53]
Derek Barris
Yeah. So if you didn't catch that, basically he's making the argument that because Foushee is a government Official who has some legislative power in terms of what's decided in terms of public health. He is on the front lines. And if there's any problems with vaccines, blame him first. But people like Bobby and Joe Rogan, I mean, who are they anyway? They're not very influential or anything. So who really listens to their opinions?
- [16:17]
Julian Walker
Yeah. And not to mention that your name is Kennedy and you're writing a letter to the Prime Minister of Samoa making up a completely pseudoscience explanation for why this. There's a terrible measles epidemic happening.
- [16:29]
Derek Barris
That's from my video. Now I know, Julian, you clipped one as well.
- [16:34]
Julian Walker
Yeah. So the video that we're looking at from my angle here is about the US withdrawing support from the who. The who, which is something that Prasad recommends. It's in the title of the video. He references a recent statement from Trump about wanting to do exactly this. And the usual suspects, who we can only assume are mainstream medical experts, Prasad says are objecting to this proposal. Perhaps eager to identify, to identify himself as an admirer of the. Donald Vinay jumps into explaining that the WHO claims to be an organization that bases its recommendations on science, but during the pandemic was instead dishonestly advancing a political agenda. Here's his first objection.
- [17:20]
Vinay Prasad
Number one, the WHO on lockdowns in 2020. Here's what they write. What is the WHO's position on lockdowns as a way of fighting COVID 19 large scale physical distancing measures and movement restrictions, often referred to as lockdowns, can slow COVID 19 transmission by limiting contact between people. Well, they got a bit of a problem there because we actually don't know even today if that claim is true, and they certainly didn't know it then. What we had seen in the 2020 COVID 19 in 2020, in the pandemic was the most unprecedented restrictions that democratic governments placed on their citizens. Restrictions against travel, restrictions on visiting your loved ones who are dying in the hospital, restrictions against church gatherings and funerals that were enforced by the police state. That's the whole point of lockdowns. The government is telling you you can't do that and they will arrest you, detain you, ticket you if you do. That's the point of a lockdown. We learned that idea in Western societies from China because China, of course, a totalitarian government can weld people into their buildings, but the United States and European nations typically don't do that because we are free democracies. Now, people who support this policy claim it saved lives. There's actually Very little evidence to support that claim. I will make the argument. I think that the harms outweigh the benefits of lockdown. I'm happy to make that argument.
- [18:38]
Derek Barris
Two things that jump out here. First of all, it's not unprecedented. If you study the 1919 influenza epidemic, there were lockdowns in many U.S. cities. Cities. So this is just you. You have to study history to know that. But it is not unprecedented. And I hear this claim all the time. Second thing, I am not aware of any arrests that were on the table if people were caught outside during. Anywhere in the US So I. I'm not even sure what he's referencing there.
- [19:06]
Julian Walker
I find that these. These Covid revisionist types, they love to use the word lockdown because it has this police state kind of flavor. Right. And so then there's this implication that we were under this incredible tyranny. Quarantine measures represented like some kind of real jackbooted thing. And so comparing it to. To China is extraordinary.
- [19:27]
Derek Barris
There was a book or there is a book that's in Powell's that I almost picked up the last time I was there. But I do want to read, and it's about seven centuries of pandemic measures around the world. And I want to read it specifically because, again, when I hear about things like unprecedented, many different countries have approached pandemics in different ways. And it's something I want to be able to educate myself better on, because again, time that I hear one of these contrarians make these claims, I'm just like, I don't know, like, there have been health measures throughout history, and they're not all coming from totalitarian states. And just like anything, the US Got some things right this time and we got some things wrong. That's basically the history of all pandemics. It just behooves all of us to know some parts of that history so we can actually make better informed decisions the next time the next one rolls around, which could be very soon. But if you're listening to the bird flu contrarians right now, it's all part of the plan.
- [20:28]
Julian Walker
Yeah. It's also the history of how scientific knowledge evolves. It's the history of, you know, imperfect public health responses on the fly to novel viruses. And the fact that he lists these different things like, oh, they were stopping you from getting on a plane. Well, you know, we're in the midst of a pandemic and a bunch of people in an enclosed space for many hours breathing one another's air, moving from city to city when there is A highly contagious virus going around. Yeah, that's a bad idea. This is not, you know, you're not being oppressed. But notice here, you know, Trump of course, says a lot of things, but Prasad is echoing one of Trump's statements here about maybe the quarantine measures are more harmful than the disease and we wouldn't want that, which of course is nuts. He goes on to say that if, and to be clear, just in case anyone's listening, going, well, what about, you know, people who lost their jobs and people who had a really, really hard time due to Pand? Yeah, that's really terrible. It's terrible that quarantine measures affect all of us in different ways and sometimes disproportionately so, of course, but we're living in the real world and we're dealing with a very specific problem. He goes on to say that if you look at the data, this is his argument on two neighboring counties, one of which had quote, unquote, lockdown and the other didn't. If you look at the cell phone data, you'll see that the mobility of those phones in those two counties is still roughly comparable. So on the one hand he's saying lockdowns are this terrible, oppressive thing. On the other hand, he's saying people don't obey it anyway. So what he goes on to say is that the fear mongering on the news will already have limited the movements as much of people as much as they're going to be limited. But lockdowns just serve to bring the police state in with no actual positive effects. And as you said, where are all these stories of people being locked up and put in jail and fined? But notice who that he also disputes the quarantine measures even having any positive effect. And here he does the classic Vane Prasad move that I've covered before. And our friend Jonathan Howard really loses his mind about and writes many pages on in his book when covering Prasad and others who do this. And that move is very common amongst anti vaxxers and other pseudoscience purveyors. It's basically pointing out that almost impossible studies simply haven't been done. It's a massive moving of the goalposts, so we can't know for sure whether or not recommendations made based actually on the huge body of existing science and sound reasoning and common sense are really just examples of political bias. RFK Jr does this frequently when he claims that placebo controlled double blind safety trials have simply never been done on any vaccines. He's of course wrong about that because there have been plenty of safety trials that meet those criteria. But he's also moving the goalposts in ways that postulate impossible standards. Like, if you think it through, it would not be ethical to have a control group of infants and children who were left unvaccinated for unpleasant and even deadly conditions that have been reduced to a very low incidence by vaccines already. Like, we have decades of data to look at that says, you know what, this really works and it's really safe. But that doesn't just mean that there's no way of knowing. It's exactly the same with this. There has never been and there will never be a pandemic in which scientists can spring into action and say, let's enact the public health policies we believe will save lives in this county, but let the other county just roll the dice. That'd be completely unethical. Except, as we've covered before, Sweden kind of actually did do this for a short while because they rejected the WHO's guidelines. And we have data on this, and it resulted in at least 20 times more deaths in Sweden in the first six months of the pandemic than in Norway. WHO followed the guidelines, even though Sweden then course corrected and started actually applying quarantine measures with high compliance, because they have the kind of population and culture where people actually really went along with those quarantine measures once they realized they were necessary. Sweden was still on average, 10 times higher than their Nordic neighbors in terms of death rate during 2021. And this is something that these revisionist historian Covid grievance mongers will usually leave out. They'll look at the overall arc and say, well, look, Sweden did great in the end. Well, yeah, that's after those first few months of absolute catastrophe that they then had to adapt to. Now, the term lockdown, as I've said, is always a big red flag for me, especially when he's evoking the bogeyman of the police state, China. We had nothing even remotely comparable. But these guys are quick to cry authoritarianism about public health measures while cheering on, ironically, maga's ascendancy towards actual authoritarianism. Now, next up, Prasad wheels out his favorite hobby horse, which is about masking kids. No, studies, he says, show that this is actually helpful. So why is the US giving a billion dollars to the WHO when they just pull opinions out of their asses? And that's a direct quote here. He's going to do the standard contrarian thing of saying public health officials were lying when they said the first vaccines would create herd immunity if enough people got them. We've heard this again and again because of course, now we know about the variants and the need for boosters, et cetera. But he frames the scientific process of adapting to unfolding data as dishonestly. And then he leaves out the massive data point that by mid-2021, as much of as 98% of people being hospitalized and dying from COVID were in fact unvaccinated. Here's the statement that really jumped out to me with regard to what I think Vinay's actual motivation is behind making this video.
- [26:35]
Vinay Prasad
Many of the WHO positions directly subverted Trump's intuition and Trump's decision making in 2020. The WHO's positions actually very likely cost him the 2020 election because he disagreed with masking kids, for instance. He probably didn't give a shit. And he probably didn't give a shit about masking in general because he never wore a mask. Okay. I think that he happened to be correct on both those points. The evidence does not support those kinds of strategies. And now we have lots of studies. But even back then I thought the available evidence from the Cochran review was pretty negative. But the WHO took the opposite stance, which hurt his political prospects. So why should the United States pay for a third party to issue recommendations for health emergencies that are not based in science and that are inherently partisan, that support the policy preferences of the Democratic Party, but not the Republican Party? The United States shouldn't do that. The next issue, I think, of course, is sovereignty. The United States actually hands over authority to cause to declare pandemic emergencies to the who to Tedro from our sovereign nation. The United States cannot be beholden to a third party over our own sovereignty.
- [27:42]
Julian Walker
Yeah, he should have stopped after he said Trump didn't give a shit. He's right about that. But, oh, boy, Daddy. Trump had his election chances scuppered by the WHO election interference. What about our sovereignty?
- [27:55]
Derek Barris
But that minute just perfectly encapsulates so much of like what we hear from the contrarians. We didn't listen to Donald Trump, who is educated in no science whatsoever. A man who thinks that you have a limited store of energy so you shouldn't exercise and you should inject bleach.
- [28:15]
Julian Walker
And maybe find a way to shine ultraviolet light into the body as just.
- [28:19]
Derek Barris
An idea and stare straight up during an eclipse. Yes, we. That man we should listen to. But the who, which is not a partisan agency, organization that, that, you know, they really messed up our politics in the here in the US it is when you step back from all of this again and again. You know, it's mind boggling. And I talk to so many different people on a regular basis who work within this field of identifying misinformation and trying to put out good science and health. And honestly right now they are all deflated because they're just looking at all the work they do and then they see just idiots like Vinay Prasad just. And he's not even like you said earlier, he's more of a bit player. There are many more bigger names here and they just see the sort of momentum they're getting on social media in terms of influence and now legis potentially legislatively. And I understand their pain. I don't think any of them are going to stop and I'm not going to stop either. But it does feel overwhelming considering the platform they've been given and they can just talk out of their asses all day and people just eat it up and it's a really hard wave to combat right now.
- [29:38]
Julian Walker
Yeah, and there's another piece here too which a lot of this America first isolationist libertarian political lens, it just always strikes me as so incredibly lacking in an understanding of, of some of the greatest achievements of the 20th century in the post World War II era which has to do with international cooperation. It has to do with NATO, it has to do with the un it has to do with the World Court and it has to do with organizations like the WHO where you say, hey, if we cooperate we can get a handle on these things in a way that helps more people and gets ahead of these problems and tries to limit the types of catastrophes that had happened prior. And people like Prasad are basically saying ah, we don't need that stuff anyway. And they have no, no idea how bad it can get. And to me it just screams privilege.
- [30:28]
Derek Barris
Just one other note that's parallel to this. You know we're recording this and Julian, you're in Los Angeles. But during these wildfires and I lived in Los Angeles for 11 years, I've already been in touch with a number of friends who have lost everything in their lives or, or family members who have moved in with my friends because they lived in Pacific Palisades, which is an area of Los Angeles I spent more time in than most any other because of the friends I had there and different opportunities for things and just watching A, the right wing media just blaming people right now for this and then B listening to wellness influencers just fire up those conspiracy theories. They though it's the Maui wildfires over and over. Again is another level of, of deflation that's happening because people are really suffering right now. It's overwhelming. I can't imagine what it would be like to be in that city. At the moment. I am seeing some discussion about climate change. I think it's a good conversation to have generally. I've seen some good articles, I've seen some people who seem to have a little schadenfreude around it, which is up. But I, I, I'm a little more forgiving that while in the middle of it, you're gonna make your like moral stance on things. But at the same time these are climate change driven activities, why this is happening. So I'm a little more forgiving of that. But watching people like Prasad, because this is the playbook, just use tragedies as an opportunity to grab attention for themselves right now instead of maybe just donating to organizations or just expressing solidarity or being like, this sucks. I hope everyone's okay. That's a very human thing to do. And there are, there are different levels of the COVID contrarians and Prasad has just always been one that's kind of at the bottom of the barrel in terms of just trolling and manipulating data and using a platform to confuse people. And as sort of the thesis of this episode. Oh yeah, from my perspective, and I believe from yours, just being like, hey, I want to get in on this too. It makes this just this environment, to use a wellness term, incredibly toxic.
- [32:51]
Julian Walker
Yeah, the terrain gets really susceptible. And what does it get susceptible to? Audience capture and self serving ambition. Where these types of influencers figure out, wow, I get a ton more engagement when I take these kinds of contrarian positions. I'm going to push really hard. And look, some of my buddies who've been doing the same thing are rising to the highest levels of power. But let's go back to masks, the boring old topic of masks. Because he says, you know, there's these, this is just a really bad intervention. There's no evidence to support it. So masks became the symbol of compliance versus rebellion during the pandemic. We saw this again and again. Inconvenience versus defiance. Oh my God, it's so awful that they're making me wear a mask.
- [33:36]
Derek Barris
Yeah, who would wear a mask during a wildfire either, right?
- [33:39]
Julian Walker
Yeah. Obviously someone who's totally cucked the science and public health recommendations on MAS masks indeed went through confusing and contradictory convolutions and we've covered that. The efficacy of masks and specifically of which mask you're using and which specific virus you're trying to stifle is still controversial, and there have been some systematic reviews on this, notably from the bmj. I'll include a link in the show notes for this one saying that masks reduced infection by 25% to 71%. That's a pretty wide stretch with others saying that.
- [34:16]
Derek Barris
That.
- [34:16]
Julian Walker
No, we think it was as low as 3%. More evidence is of course required. But the bottom line is that during that first year, the medical system was massively overloaded. This is the crucial fact that I feel these people always leave out, because Italy, Iran and India, not to mention New York City, had already given us horrific scenes of dead bodies piling up because of that overload. So we were trying all of the existing methods that we know can help to flatten the curve, help to reduce transmission. Then overall, the available data show that at the very least, masking made a positive difference, likely a very significant one. One study showed a 70% decrease in risk to others. That was the big thing that we were trying to emphasize at the time, right? You're actually protecting the people around you. A 70% decrease in risk to others when masking behavior increased by just percent. So we've already kind of said it, but it seems to me that only a certain kind of gets so preoccupied with continuing to stoke public grievance about things like masks and being asked not to get on a plane when there is an incredibly deadly and virulent or contagious virus spreading around.