Alex Berenson on the Future of Covid 2023

CLAY: Alex Berenson joins us now, one of the true truth tellers of the 2022, 2021, 2020 cycle of insanity in this country. Alex, appreciate you joining us.

BERENSON: Thanks for having me. I mean, I do feel like 2022 is the year, you know, the world sort of started to catch up to you and me and Team Reality. I mean, it’s definitely started to happen.

CLAY: Amen. Okay. So, you had an interesting piece up about these covid shots, and I do think this is important because I hope that this holiday season, for many of you out there, even if you have crazy left-wing family members — like maybe you’re not wearing masks — asking you about your covid shot status. But there are studies out there now saying that if you get the covid shot, you may be more likely to get covid, a couple of them that you wrote about. What is the latest data on these covid shots?

BERENSON: Sure. So, yes. So, I wrote about this in my Substack, I think it was Tuesday. There are two studies, but the more important one actually just came out just a few days ago, and it’s from the Cleveland Clinic. And what the Cleveland Clinic did was look at — you know, it’s a very large workforce, a very large hospital system. It’s not just one hospital in Ohio, so they have about 50,000 employees, and about 10,000 of those employees had received the bivalent booster. In other words, the fall booster that, you know, everyone talked about or that the government is, you know, pushing as the great thing that’s going to stop you from getting covid.

And, of course, a lot of us, I think, know anecdotally that this is not true, that, you know, we know lots of people who got boosted and got covid, you know, including Rochelle Walensky, you know, a few weeks ago, the head of the CDC. So, we intuitively know this isn’t true. But what this about what the Cleveland Clinic did is they looked at infections by the number of shots that people had received, people who had been infected. And they looked at the vaccination history of those people, and it turned out — and this was pretty stunning even to me (laughs) that not only did the people who’d been vaccinated the most have the highest risk of covid.

The differential in this study was about 3.5 to one. So, you were 3.5 times more likely to be infected with the new newest variant, with the new Omicron variant. If you’d been vaccinated at least three times, then if you hadn’t been vaccinated at all. And the other thing about this was one shot was riskier than two. I’m sorry, one shot was riskier than none. Two was riskier than one, three was riskier than two. So, it was sort of a perfect — what doctors call a perfect dose response curve, which is exactly the opposite of the vaccine working. The more doses you got, the more likely you were to be infected with this virus.

CLAY: Okay, so this is a big revelation. You were one of the first people to point out — and the data certainly confirmed it — that even people who claim that they love the shots and that they’re working fantastically well are actually not getting the shots for their kids because the intake rate — thankfully — for young children, is wildly low, right? Yeah. So where does this go?

BERENSON: Yes, yes (garbled) kids under 5.

CLAY: What percent is that?

BERENSON: Below 10% for kids under 5. And the other thing that’s amazing is a significant number of people who got one shot — so people who ran out in July and August and got their kid the first shot — didn’t get the second.

CLAY: Yeah.

BERENSON: So even the true believers woke up at some point over the summer.

CLAY: So, I mean, I think that’s important: 90% of American parents of people who are 5 and younger and I’ve raised three through that point; I think you’ve got a couple in that age range now, Alex.

BERENSON: Yeah.

CLAY: Anybody out there who has done this knows that is the age when you are the most obsessed with the health of your children imaginable because they are so young; they are so vulnerable So, 90%. So, not 10% even. Even a lot of these left wingers are not actually getting their young children the covid shot, despite what they may be saying publicly about how many covid shots they’re getting themselves. So where does this leave us, Alex, in particular, now that even China now — now that even China — has said, “Hey, this covid zero,” zero covid, however you want to classify it, “is not a viable option going forward.” Essentially, they finally said in China, “Everybody is going to get this,” and the overall impact,” this is significant, they said, “is unlikely to be very substantial because the Omicron variant is so mild.” Where does this leave us as we enter into 2023 as it pertains to covid?

BERENSON: Well, you know, so I think… I mean, I think the mRNAs are effectively dead because vaccines are effectively dead. Right? It’s as you said there, kids are not getting them. And beyond that, the bivalent boosters, again, these fall boosters are a majority of adults who are over 65 haven’t gotten those, which is pretty incredible. Yeah. And you know, and so there’s been all kinds of excuses. “Oh, people didn’t know that these shots existed or, you know, it’s harder for them to get it.” It’s all lies. People know that these shots are out there and they’re being pushed to get them and they’re just rejecting them. So… So, I think they’re dead.

CLAY: Okay. So if they’re dead, do you think the significance — or sorry, what do you think about China and the zero covid basically being abandoned there, too?

BERENSON: Yeah, it’s funny you mention China because that’s going to be my next Substack, by the way, and I’m glad to have you as a reader, because you do seem to read most of them, which is pretty cool. But so, you know, I think, you know, what there is to say about China is that China is… First of all, they’re not going to go with the mRNA because they don’t want our vaccines. That’s 100% clear. They are just going to open up and they’re going to have a few bad weeks and then it’s probably going to be like Hong Kong where they’re done. Okay?

And for people who are being what you and I used to call Team Apocalypse, China has a real problem, right? Because if things open up and go badly, it means the lockdowns were useless. Okay? If things open up and go well, it means their vaccines are actually better than our vaccine, because guess what? Australia, Taiwan, countries that opened this year after locking down and used the Western vaccines have had a lot of problems with covid this year. So if you’re the New York Times, on the one hand, you’re kind of rooting for, you know, things to be terrible in China, which is an awful thing to say, but it is how the coverage reads. On the other hand, you know, that means the lockdowns were useless.

CLAY: Yeah.

BERENSON: Whatever happens in China, it will be a failure from the “covidians,” right? It will be more proof that the Swedish strategy was the correct strategy. Now, I do think they’re going to have a wave. I think there’s going to be a significant number of deaths, which they’re going to lie about. They’re already clearly lying about those. And then it’ll be done, because that’s what happened in Hong Kong, which is the most like China in terms of, you know, age of population, obviously, ethnicity, population density and the vaccines they used.

So Hong Kong had a bad spring and now it’s done with covid. So the countries that are not done with covid and are going to seemingly have to live with this for a while longer are countries like us and countries in Europe that use the super-fancy new vaccines. Those vaccines just look worse and worse and worse as time goes on. I mean, clearly, they did some good in early 2021, but ever since then, they’ve looked like a worse and worse bet.

CLAY: So this is why I’m really intrigued by what’s going on in Florida and the fact that they are essentially opening a grand jury in the state of Florida. Ron DeSantis is to look at whether there was fraud from Moderna and Pfizer. Now, I know — and this is me putting on my lawyer hat, Alex. I know that there was immunity given to rush these covid shots out — and I’m not even calling them vaccines and haven’t been for a long time.

BERENSON: Right.

CLAY: They’re just a shot. Right? And so are you at all intrigued to see whether there may be some states that start to pursue fraud charges, you know, try to get some of this taxpayer-funded profits back from Moderna and Pfizer over effectively a shot they sold to us on a fraudulent basis? Because, as you have pointed out — and we pointed out on this show for a long time, Alex — they told you, “If you get these shots, you will neither get nor spread covid. It will basically end.”

BERENSON: Yep.

CLAY: That didn’t happen. And most of the time when you are sold a product and that product is sold for profit and it doesn’t do what they told you it would do, that is called fraud. And the company that produces that would be sold, to say nothing of the deleterious impact that might be coming from the covid shot, which I may want to hold you on to ask. But that first question, do you think there are lawsuits that should be filed to bring back the profits over these shots?

BERENSON: Well, I mean, I think, look, I’m glad Ron DeSantis, who’s really been in the lead on this from, you know, late March 2020, early April 2020. And I’m old enough to remember, as you are, Clay, people at the Washington Post and elsewhere saying that Ron DeSantis should be tried for manslaughter —

CLAY: Oh, yeah.

BERENSON: — because he didn’t lock down Florida quickly enough. Ron DeSantis understands the science and has followed this better than any other politician in the United States. And, look, I think it’s a long shot. I think it’s going to be very hard because Pfizer’s going to say… First of all, they’re going to say, “We have immunity.” Second of all, they’re going to say, “We, you know… We were under enormous pressure. Society wanted these. We did the trials as best we could and as fast as we could,” and this is what they found, “and yeah, the protection didn’t last, but we didn’t know that. So proving…. Proving that they didn’t know that. You know, that’s where you know, that’s where we’re going to have to see what the documents show. But they have a strong defense. But am I glad DeSantis is doing this? I’m absolutely glad he’s doing this.

CLAY: Can you come back for a couple of minutes to close out the hour? Because I want to ask you this question: Should people be concerned about the all-cause mortality rates that are going up? Is there any evidence to reflect that that is really connected in any way to the shots? Can you come back and help us break that down?

BERENSON: Absolutely. I’d love to talk about that.

CLAY: Okay, perfect.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

CLAY: Okay, Alex. All-cause mortality appears to be rising substantially in many countries that got substantial amounts of covid shots.

BERENSON: Yes.

CLAY: Is that connected? Should we be concerned about what that data is showing?

BERENSON: Yeah. I mean, I definitely think we should be concerned. Just to be clear, when we talk about covid shots, I always distinguish between the sort of standard, inactivated virus, old-style vaccine that the Chinese and the Indians, you know, or other countries use and the mRNA vaccine.

CLAY: Yes.

BERENSON: There’s also something called the DNA vaccine, which is the Johnson & Johnson vaccine that we used, and we thought we made a great bet here. We thought, “These vaccines are so much more effective. You know, they raise your antibody levels so much more than these old vaccines. We’re really going to beat covid with this.” Well, of course, that didn’t happen. And as we talked about on the previous segment and, as I’ve written about in my Substack, it now looks like that certainly with the Omicron variant, there may be negative efficacy. Okay. But there’s a second issue, right?

So negative efficacy is a problem. It’s not that big a problem as long as the variants stay mild. It just means, “Hey, you’re more likely to get this cold over and over again.”

CLAY: Yes.

BERENSON: If a serious variant shows up, then we’d have a problem. Fortunately, that hasn’t happened. Right? Beyond that, there’s sort of the direct potential for side effects. So, you got this technology; it was tested in 35,000 people who were examined for about three months for safety, and then we gave it to a billion people. There are signs, as we know, that these vaccines can cause myocarditis, which is a, you know, an inflammation of heart tissue in young men — and pericarditis, which is related to that — and then in some cases, that can be fatal.

But there’s this bigger issue, which is in a lot of countries — especially in Europe, but also Australia, Taiwan, other countries that use these vaccines and vaccinated basically everybody — all-cause mortality — in other words deaths from cancer and heart disease and Alzheimer’s and diabetes and everything else — is up a lot this year. Okay. And we don’t know why. And the people who are pro-vaccine say, “Oh, it’s because of delayed medical care.” Well, let me tell you a little secret. You know, in Australia, they locked down in 2020 and 2021.

They didn’t really have any big problems with medical care. Okay? The delayed medical care is not the answer. Then they say, “Well, it’s long covid,” okay? But long covid, how come? How come countries where there was no covid in 2020, 2021 or almost no covid seem to be having it. And there’s something else. It’s it started to go down this excess mortality earlier this year, and then we boosted and it went back up. And this fall we boosted again or basically only elderly people, and guess what?

All-cause mortality went up again, only in elderly people. And now the booster campaign. There’s one good thing — I have one good piece of news in all of this — which is now that the booster campaigns have basically ended or been rejected in a couple countries, that report these deaths pretty quickly, mortality seems to be going down again a little bit. But if you add all this up (laughing), to me, it’s hard to escape the conclusion that the vaccines should be looked at as potential culprit number one. Not that we can prove it at this point, but that they should be looked at as the most likely causes. And I want to say one other thing.

As you know, there’s this documentary out there called Died Suddenly. There’s a lot of nonsense floating around that, you know, 50% — deaths are up 50%, deaths are up 100%. That’s not true. Okay. Deaths are up 10 to 15%, which if you’re a vaccine company or you’re a public health bureaucrat, that’s what you… I mean, it’s not what you want, but it means you can deny that anything real is happening. If deaths were up 100%, we’d all know. So, what I try to do with this is be honest without trying to scare people. I want to sound the alarm. I want people to be aware that this, you know, that there’s this risk out there. This is a question that must be answered, but not to tell people, “Hey, you took these vaccines; you’re going to drop dead tomorrow,” because that that’s not true and that’s alarming.

CLAY: How much rather would you be people like you and me who never got these covid shots and maybe kept your kids from getting them, than the people who have gone out and gotten five or six of these covid shots based on the data that you’re seeing?

BERENSON: Oh, there’s no question! I mean, I especially you know, I mean… Look, we’ve all gotten covid now, right?

CLAY: Yeah.

BERENSON: Whether or not you got the shots, you are at risk from Omicron. And as we said in the previous segment and I wrote about in the ‘stack, you weren’t at higher risk it looks like from… So what benefit did anybody derive? The only exception is if you are really high risk last year. There was a brief period when maybe you avoided getting Delta or the original variant, and those were pretty dangerous. You know, if you were 350 pounds or if you were 85 years old, those variants could actually have killed you. And Omicron is probably a little bit less likely to do that. So those people might have benefited. But for somebody like you or me, somebody under 50 — which I still barely am — who’s in reasonable health, there was no benefit to the shots. And for kids, I mean, I’m so glad that my wife and I agreed about this. I’m so glad we didn’t get the shots.

CLAY: Amen. Alex, if there was any actual journalism awards that were given based on legitimate journalism, you would have won them all over the last three years for what you have been doing. I appreciate you being on the show so much. Have a great start to 2023 and thanks for spending time with us here at the end of 2022.

BERENSON: Talk to you in 2023, Clay. Thanks.