Dr. Marty Makary: How About Follow the Data?
11 Feb 2022
BUCK: Weโve got Dr. Marty Makary with us now, Johns Hopkins University Medical Center and the author of The Price We Pay. Dr. Makary, great to have you back, sir.
DR. MAKARY: Great to be with you.
BUCK: So, youโve got some updates for us I understand on a little something called natural immunity which โ despite what the CDC has led a lot of people to believe โ is a real thing that really matters.
DR. MAKARY: (chuckles) Well, the test of time has caught up with the deniers and we did this giant study out of Johns Hopkins. My research invited people in, we tested their blood, and what we found is that if you had covid in the past, 99.3% of those people had circulating antibodies, and those antibodies were present almost two years after infection.
So, the debate is over. Now itโs time to just recognize, are we really following the science, or are we following politics? Because I hear about high-level meetings in the government among public health officials and theyโre basically political meetings. Should we agree to this or not? And itโs like, how about follow the data?
CLAY: So, whatโs gonna happen now, Dr. Makary? Are we just gonna goโฆ? All the people who were saying vaccine mandates, mask mandates, as theyโre all just disappearing, are people just gonna pretend that that never happened? I just donโt know, like, where we go from here, right? Like Iโm in L.A., Buckโs in New York City, there are places that are saying, โHey, we have to see your vax card.โ Is it just gonna disappear and then people gonna be like, yeah, well, as if it never happened? In your mind where does it go from here?
BUCK: Well, people are angry. Theyโre not willing to just say, โYou know what? You really screwed up society for two years. Weโre just gonna forgive you and move on.โ People want honesty. They want some accountability. This was the biggest public health intervention in human history. You had a Johns Hopkins study come out two weeks ago evaluating the effect of that giant intervention. And basically, Fox and Wall Street Journal were the only places that covered it.
CLAY: Amazing.
DR. MAKARY: People are seeing through it.
BUCK: Dr. Makary, when are we gonna be able to get a sense, do you think it is possible for us to get a sense of what the actual exposure to the American people of this virtue was? I mean, I remember in the early days there was serology testing being done to get a sense of just antibody levels in the general population.
And in New York City alone in June of 2020, if I recall correctly, 20% in June of 2020 of the city had already had โ you know, had had covid at that point in time. Do we have any way, do you think weโll be able to get a sense as to how many people in this country have actually had covid at this point? โCause it strikes me as a very important part of the data to see whether any of this mitigation stuff, any of the lockdown strategies had really any effect at all.
DR. MAKARY: Yeah. Youโre right. It was 20% just a couple months into the pandemic of people in New York and then it was one-in-two Americans by the end of the year according to a Columbia University study after Year One. So โ and the people who are unvaccinated, most of them have natural immunity. What people donโt realize is almost 90% of those truckers in Canada are vaccinated. The ones that donโt, I can almost guarantee you theyโve got natural immunity. So thatโs the reality. People areโฆ You know, they want to move on. They know the realityโs in the data.
BUCK: Do you have any senseโฆ? What do you think is the percentage of the American people? Does anyone know or can anyone do a study? Do you think 80% of the country, 70% of the countryโs been infected? Do we have any idea?
DR. MAKARY: We donโt. I think itโs 90 to 95% have either vaccinated or natural immunity. Remember when Omicron was ripping through the population, we were documenting half a million to three-quarters of a million cases a day. And were only capturing one in three to one in five cases. So we were adding almost 1% of our population or half of 1% per day in that group that has natural immunity.
Thereโs very few people left. When you talk about kids, you know, and this rush to get every 6-month-old vaccinated, theyโve all been exposed actually and it changes the calculus. They wonโt break down these studies that they put out by those who had the infection in the past. And thatโs why, if you remember, Denmark had the study nobody could explain that the unvaccinated had lower rates of transmission. Well, thatโs because they had more natural immunity.
CLAY: Dr. Makary, whatโs gonna happen in your mind, with schools? What should happen, what will happen? Obviously, we just played a clip of Las Vegas schoolteacher announcing the kids donโt have to wear masks anymore. There has been discussions, and some states have already said theyโre going to mandate if, like California, that kids have to all get the covid vaccine. What do you think will happen, what should happen as it pertains to kids and covid shots and masking going forward?
DR. MAKARY: Well, I think most of the country is just saying, โWeโre done. Look, we made tremendous sacrifices. Weโre not gonna be playing these games about if you get vaccinated then you can stay in school like they did with masks.โ They see through the phoniness of a lot of this stuff.
They know that population immunity is high, and they know that healthy kids are virtually resilient to this severe illness. So I think people are just gonna reject it all except in the pockets of the country where youโve got people like Sonia Sotomayor who truly believed that a hundred thousand kids were in the hospital, and those politicians are gonna try to cater to those people.
BUCK: Speaking to Dr. Marty Makary, author of The Price We Pay, and professor at Johns Hopkins University Medical Center. Dr. Makary, what is your assessment right nowโฆ? When someone says to you mRNA technology in the fight against covid, what do you want to say to them?
I just kind of wonder here, what has the data really shown us in terms of, is it protective against infection from Omicron at all? Is it only protective against hospitalization and death? Do we have a sense as to at what level? That discussion has also fallen away as a lot of the mask mandates and some of the mania seems to be fading around it.
DR. MAKARY: Well, I hope one of the takeaways is people, I hope, realize you cannot just believe what pharma is saying. And they can do some amazing things. Thereโs good scientists there and they develop good products. But when the messaging comes out, โHey, we have a new variant. Just take another dose of our vaccine that we invented for prior variants โ and, by the way, weโre going to create another vaccine specific to Omicron.
โBut just take another dose of what we have now until we come up with another one and then takeโฆโ I hope people see through this. The vaccine trial in kids 6 months to 5 years failed. It was a randomized controlled trial. It failed. There is no difference. And instead of saying, โHey, letโs scrap this and move on and try something different,โ what they did is they told the FDA, โPlease approve this, and just trust us.
โWeโll get a third dose by the time this is out there, and that will help you.โ I think people are seeing through this right now. They want to move on. And itโs not just this. Itโs all of it. It was the whole groupthink, surface transmission, the barbaric hospital visitation policies, school closings, the narrow dozing interval was too short, cloth masks, ignoring natural immunity, boosting people, all of it. People are sick of all of it.
CLAY: Dr. Makary, what would you tell parents, because there still are parents who are listening to us that are trying to decide โ because thereโs a lot of pressure being put on them; you know this โ to go get their kids vaccinated for covid. This may turn into the next battle royale before all is said and done. Iโve been open.
I think my kids have had covid. Iโm not going to getโฆ Iโm not anti-vax, but Iโm not getting my young kids the covid shot. I donโt think they need it. I think theyโve likely had it, given that both myself and my wife have had it. What would you tell the average parent out there about their kids, especially young kids?
DR. MAKARY: Well, I would tell them to follow the science because in Pfizerโs own vaccine trial in kids 5 through 11 it said that no kid who had covid in the past got covid. So regardless if they got the vaccine or not they were immune. So if they have natural immunity, nobody should be getting a vaccine if theyโre young and healthy. For kids who have a comorbidity, I do believe in vaccinating those. Those are the high-risk kids, and those are the kids that benefit from the vaccine.
BUCK: Dr. Makary, before we let you go, are we, by the summer, gonna have to think about a lot of this stuff coming back, a lot of these debates coming back in November, December? Or do you think enough of the medical community and just the American people in general have seen this for what it is โ not everybody, but enough โ that weโre not gonna have to have these battles again?
โCause I worry โ Iโm here in New York City โ that, come November, right after the elections, all the sudden theyโre gonna say, โTime to put those masks on everybody! Just in indoor settings, just for a while, maybe two masks, maybe get a booster. Weโre gonna make you get a booster or weโre gonna fire you.โ can see it all happening again. Do you think thatโs a concern we should have?
DR. MAKARY: Yes. And Iโll tell you, I saw the school debate coming last spring when the teachers unions were saying, โWeโre just gonna get to the end of this year and then weโll be good for the fall and we believe school should be opened the fall,โ and I said, wait a minute. They are gonna come up with new arguments. And youโre going to see a bump in cases in the fall, guaranteed.
Just like we are with influenza and parainfluenza and rhinovirus and every other virus that circulates year to year. And some media gonna report that we just had a 400% increase in covid this coming November and thatโs gonna be a headline even though the cases went from two to eight per 100,000 and thereโs high population immunity. So, yes, I think we need to learn our lessons and prepare for a rational argument.
BUCK: Dr. Makary, author of The Price We Pay, Johns Hopkins University Medical Center. Dr. Makary, always illuminating, sir. Thanks for spending some time with us.
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