They've seen friend or relative either succumb or get very sick. And so they don't want that to happen and they'll listen to anything that you know has potential believability but believability is one thing the data and the proof is another
Hey everyone, and welcome to the psychology podcast is, you know, I'm deeply interested in science and current affairs in the arrow. We are living through right now. I feel it's more important than ever to bring you topical conversations based in science. And that's what we are doing today. And we'll be continuing to do in the coming months. I have been increasingly frustrated by the spread of unsubstantiated information. Being spread all across the internet about the pandemic. It's important to recognize that when we're dealing with a very new or rapidly changing phenomenon.
Like we have been with the pandemic. Even the quote scientific consensus can easily be wrong because there's not been much time for the rigorous replicability studies to be conducted or even sometimes to accurately, measure the proper effect sizes. However, I also believe it's important that we don't create a false equivalency between very Fringe ideas that are unsupported by the current evidence base and a scientific consensus that is grounded in rigorous methodology. This is why I sought out the Council of doctor are
Topol on today's show, despite being one of the top ten, most cited, researchers in medicine and being extremely well, regarded in his field of Cardiology. He's also been a bright light on social media shining a light on the best available evidence in the pandemic. He thoughtfully considered all my questions and was very careful to make clear. What the current evidence-based says without ruling out, alternative possibilities in the future in light of new evidence. In this episode. We cover a number of hot button issues surrounding the pandemic, including
The potential use of ivermectin to end the pandemic. The potential for increased risk of myocarditis among certain populations after vaccination and we even discuss the role human psychology and human behavior has played in this pandemic. Ultimately, as you'll see. Dr. Topol is optimistic about the future of the pandemic and outlines things coming down the Horizon that should give us hope but as we discussed the major problems tend to be human problems, please leave comments on our YouTube page or on our podcast.
Site and really love to hear your reactions to this episode. So, without further Ado, I now bring you. Dr. Eric Topol. Hi. Thanks. I know. You're a busy guy. Appreciate you coming. Talk to me today. Sure. Yeah. Yeah. So do you want to just jump into it? I'm ready. Oh, good. Good. Good. Good. Well, first of all, I want to really thank you for talking today. I decided to do a bit of a PSA for my podcast. Saw a lot of information being spread all over and I've really appreciated your constant companion.
Commitment in the public to try to show as much data as you possibly can. So. I thought, if we could kind of walk through some issues that would be really helpful. If we start off by, can you kind of tell our audience a little bit about about you and your main area of specialization? Sure,
Scott. I'm an old dog, you know, having been a physician-scientist for 30-some years. I actually still practice as a cardiologist, but I also have a lot of grounding in molecular medicine, particularly.
Mix and digital. And at the beginning, the pandemic, I decided to devote some effort to try to help understand it and help share what I hope is good information. So I've been staying on that. In addition to all the other things I normally do which is heading up the Scripps. Research translational Institute here in California. Are you
running? All those tweets yourself? Because how do you have so much time? It's so helpful to us, but
everyone comes from me every single one that since I've been on,
Now, what 12 years is over 40,000 every single one and that includes, you know, whether making graphs or doing analysis, reading the Articles or preprint. Yeah, that's what I try to do is process the data and put it out there. And if everybody did that, in terms of sharing what they read, it was interesting or worthy. Then we all will get smarter
faster. Do you feel like you're constantly revising your hypotheses in?
If new evidence, like were there, any things a couple of years ago, where you may be shared some data on Twitter and have some hypotheses? And now you're like, you know what I was wrong or that the data suggests that we need to think about things differently.
Oh sure. I mean, I think we've learned a lot along the way. I mean, one, good example was the alpha variant where it looked pretty ferocious in the UK. When we first saw it, the concern was I was going to wreak havoc here in the US, but fortunately, when it arrived, we were getting going with
Nation at Full Tilt, and in fact, those are the days where you get up to, you know, three, four, four and a half million vaccinations a day. So we forwarded, it. Largely. We had a very small bump, which was great. But if you're were look at as I did at the predictions coming from Europe, it looked like, it could be a real concern. So, you know, there's a lot of moving Parts in the pandemic, no less the virus in our response and human behavior and immune Escape of new variants.
Like I'm a crunch so you can't possibly anticipate. All you turned out that, you know, Delta and Omicron really did play out like Alpha look. Like it was going to so, you know, it was kind of a forewarning about where we might be headed but it was a subsequent variant that actually did what was the concern for Alpha?
Okay:. Well, I definitely want to get into Omicron and and other juicy topics, but I just want to get something on the way now. You have no connection or
Conflicts with big farm in any way,
right? Not at all. In fact, if anything, I've challenged them throughout my career, but I have no relationships with any of the vaccine manufacturers or any of the, you know, obvious Pharma biopharma benefactors of this pandemic. Yeah.
Okay. Can you explain to our listeners, what an emergency use? Authorization, even means because you have a lot of people that are skeptical of that and they can you kind of set the record
straight and then a little bit always clarify. Well,
I mean, we only had the fire vaccine, get it a full authorization and moderna, you know, just in recent days. So the problem with the emergency use authorization originally back in November 2020 when both of those vaccines and then subsequently others. Got this EU a designation is that it is. As as it implies. It's not a full authorization. It's based on the sense that it's an emergency and the criteria for
Such an EU, a is may be effective three words may be effective. So the turns out that it's a it's a way to basically get something out there. But you do want to eventually get all the data which is 100,000 plus pages of data to the FDA for a full review. It's called a biologic licensing application be l.a. That was done for Pfizer. Now done for moderna likely will be done for other vaccines.
But also that final approval isn't for, like, all ages. For example, I mean, they're separate Amendments have to go in. So, currently there's a lot of controversy, which is quite understandable regarding this age, less than 85 for the Pfizer vaccine. But, you know, the original was aged 18. Plus, I got an e UA then now has a final approval, but, you know, we've already seen how he you a is, can
Go off the track. So hydroxychloroquine had to be withdrawn convalescent plasma had to be withdrawn. So it's not just about vaccines. I mean, there's been drugs. There's been lots of Rapid tests and PCR tests. It had to be withdrawn. So eua is are in a kind of tentative status.
So I think it'd be really helpful for you to explain to our listeners a little bit. Y, as you say, this will go down in history as one of Science and medical researchers greatest achievements. Perhaps the most
Impressive. I don't know if people really fully have the scope of why this is such an amazing scientific achievement. Having vaccines, at the rapid speed. It has
rights. Got well, here, I guess reference is that it's taken about 10 years on average from identification of a pathogen to a successful vaccine, but there are many pathogens where we never had a successful vaccine like HIV and malaria and a long list, okay.
So the fact that we not only shortened to 10 years to less than one year from the identification of Sorrows covid to, and it was successful with a 95% reduction of symptomatic. Infections is unbelievable and replicated to two different vaccines. So it wasn't just the Kuiper compression of time or acceleration. Was also the super efficacy at least to start with a course that change over time and with variant.
So that is a momentous, finding it. Obviously Builds on about three decades of mRNA efforts that were required, amazing amount of perseverance. So it wasn't just a flash in the pan sort of thing. And, you know, obviously it was facilitated by the sequencing of the virus that helped to build a template and all sorts of major science steps that and large clinical trials that made this possible. So it's the
Combination of a huge amount of basic science clinical science and trials and I think it's extraordinary and not only that but the same vaccines that were against the original ancestral strain have held up. Now two years plus into the pandemic with a third dose given to a very different strain Omicron,
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Yeah, you say what if there was a way to prevent 99% of covid? Deaths and 96%, hospitalizations safety was a validated and billions of people it was free and there was an unlimited Supply, right? So fair enough. Yeah, fair enough
words, if we all use them, if we all took the vaccines and boosters, you know, this pandemic would be not very concerning at all. But obviously today we will hit 900,000 confirmed deaths, weird lat
More of actual excess mortality and, you know, immense amount of morbidity which was a much of it unnecessary, especially after the vaccines rolled
out. Do you see it was anyone's intimate concerns coming from some of the anti-vaxxers, like, do you ever hear anything where you're like, you know what? That's fair enough. We don't have the full data yet. And so, maybe we should keep an open mind about XYZ or anything in particular. You could think of off the top of your head. Well,
I don't have a well let's put it this way after you given
over 10 billion doses for there to be claims about Sir safety concerns or lack of efficacy. It doesn't work. I mean, these are all completely bogus. All right, I do share the anti-vaxxers typically a very strong proponents of infection acquired immunity the buzz term natural, and I actually see that, that provides a very important type of immunity which is complementary to vaccines. And I've argued strongly
With the CDC that people who have had a confirmed infection should be recognized as having, some immunity, at least equivalent to one dose of vaccine and that would have reduced the polarization between these groups because you can understand. If you've gone through covid. You don't feel that you should be mandated to be getting two shots of a vaccine, right? So this is why I think this lack of recognition
Mission of a large body of data about prior covid. Now trim Unity. It's to me it's sickening because basically, it not only is ignoring the science, but it's also making the Divide even more intense than it needs to be.
That's really unfortunate. I mean, there's there's concerns about various side effects that may come obviously the myocarditis controversy and
I've been looking into that, and if I just do my usual, Google Scholar, search, I don't find many papers that argue that at risk is greater with the vaccine than, if you get covid itself, there's some, you know, if you hone in or you double-click on very specific age groups, among males and maybe the second shot is a higher risk. Then with the booster. Can you kind of set the record for and where's the data on that right now? Because to me even to me as a scientist reading all these
Kinds of papers and reading the debates. It still bit confusing.
Yeah, you know, it's been used unfortunately, as a against the safety of vaccines when I don't think that's true. It's unfortunate. That in the team grew. Not so much in the group under age 12 when in the teen group of 12 to 17 and in young adults, mostly males across these ages that is between 18 and 30 odd. There is an increased risk of vaccine induced my occur.
Itís with mRNA vaccines. It's more with moderna than Pfizer because the moderna dose is much higher than that of Pfizer. It's almost a doubling their it's extremely rare though. And most of the cases are self-limited. However, the point that you're getting a Scott, is that the covid induce my agreed itís is much higher. Incidence. It's still low, but it's much higher incidence in the vaccines. So there is a risk there. It's million million the
And dose, it's mainly in males. It's barely shown up in the younger than age. 12, that is in a 5-2 1212 documented cases. All of them were self-limited. They did they recovered and that's among nine million doses administered to age 5 to 12. Now. That's Pfizer. There hasn't been a murder NE in the 11:55 age group. So I understand.
There's a there's a I mean, I'm a cardiologist I have deep respect for myocarditis. I can tell you. So the covid myocarditis is more common from the infection. It's also more severe and worrisome. We don't understand the mechanism of the myocarditis from the vaccine from mRNA vaccines. They don't occur with other vaccines. It's troubling when you don't understand how it occurs. Okay, I don't like that. I like to know why it occurs, right? But
but I would not at all. Hold back on using the vaccines in the team's because of this low risk, very, very low risk side effect. So that's kind of where I had some up the data at this point.
Thank you. I appreciate you being so reasonable. Dr. Topol, it seems to me and I just wanted to get your take on it, that there are some topics that are a taboo to even discuss. It seems to Buddha discuss the risks of over vaccinating young. People seems like just a taboo Topic in general.
And talking about it. I did find a very interesting perspective, from dr. Paul offit. Who said that he did not personally feel young people benefited from boosters. Then he advised his own son against getting a booster, and I respect doctor ofits credentials and, and his background. I just wanted to just have a reasonable conversation. Are your thoughts about that? Do you think it's, it's reasonable to even discuss and look at different sources of data to allow people to make the decision went out. They want to vaccinate especially within certain age groups. Were
Well, I
mean, I know Paul offered very well. We're friends. I've interviewed him a multiple times. I've been very surprised about his views about adults getting boosters, because I think the data there is absolutely unequivocal for reduction of hospitalizations the teens and younger children. I mean, there's obviously some divide their it's harder to argue with the children because of their risk being low. However, remember it's not just
Vaccinating for prevention of death or hospitalization, which the rates are low. It's also vaccinating because we know vaccines are reducing long covid which does occur in children. We also know that that with children, we want to avoid secondary attacks to their parents and their Network and their grandparents. And also we want to keep schools open. Obviously, we missed out on that almost the first year of the pendant. We sure don't want to keep seeing that happen. So there are
A good reasons because of the safety to use vaccines in children and teens, in my view, many good reasons. And there are the rare. Very, very sick kids across these different age groups. Paul offit has been against boosters from the get-go. All boosters a malt against all ages. And I have to say that among the various vaccinologist and experts, he and a few other Standalone, they are not
Their views are not shared by the majority of experts in the
field. I mean, are obviously open to discussing it and and open to new day that may come out. Do you think it's possible that data could come out someday that shows that it's probably not necessary to boost? Use the
booster for certain age groups. Oh, I we were just talking about vaccinations in young age groups as far as the booster right now. Starting today, the data that we have is
Is no age 18 plus. I'm not talking about boosters of children. No, no. And or teens, You could argue the team story with boosters if you want to maintain that high level of efficacy because of the Wayne issue. Yes, but I'm not arguing here that boosters need to be given to less than age 16 because we don't have data in that regard.
Wonderful. Thank you. Yeah, that was really a warning about that Ivermectin. Okay, Ivermectin, so I would
Fuses me about it because I'm trying to I'm trying to read all the studies and get to the truth. I do see that this meta-analysis that they came out, that people like, Brett Weinstein were talking about and using that as data. I see a lot of problems than analysis, small, sample sizes, Etc. What I'm trying to stand is when I read, Andrew, Brian atolls response to that. They said that even if they exclude this particular study Bell gods, are there still a queer results showing that 49 percent mortality in favor of ivermectin? An 87%
auction covid-19 infection in favor of ivermectin. That can you kind of set the record straight from that are a kind of clarify what the best available data? You've seen says, because even from a scientific paper approach. It's a little bit confusing to get to the truth.
Yeah. I mean, I reviewed all the data at the time, with Sam Harris on his podcast.
I love that episode. By the way,
you know, thanks. And you know, I think the important thing here is as I pointed out then and I still stay with it now.
Is there may be a signal of ivermectin, having some efficacy? However, we can't be sure because there hasn't been any good trial large enough with the same dose. And also you want to ideally see it replicated to prove it. So that's why what we have is we've had two studies that had to be retracted because of Fraud and those were the largest studies and we're left with this hodgepodge of many different small trials. And other one was just came out and preprint this week.
It's not significant on its own and just, you know, lumping them together, you Stitch something with different Doses and different indications and it's basically You can conclude anything from that, right? So I would love to see, you know, large trials with Ivermectin versus placebo with a fixed dose or testing multiple doses for the different indications. That is as a treatment, or is it prevention, but for people to go ahead and insert that it would cure the pandemic, it would end the pandemic.
The night in 99% of cases would be prevented by Ivermectin and do emergency podcasts on Joe Rogan. For example, that's where you cross the line. So, you know, I think until there's proof, like there's proof for Paxil of it, right and other treatments that are done properly. Then you can't be, you know, hyperbolic and make these ridiculous claims. And so that's the unfortunate part. I have never used the word horse pills or any of these demeaning.
Stuff because I think there's potential for Ivermectin. It's not over yet. But just get the darn Data before you broadcast about how it will pure and end the pandemic.
Now, you're seeing that all over the place you're seeing people running with with the slightest of of data that fits. What? What some people seems like, what they want to be true. What's your take?
Yeah. There's various reasons for this Ivermectin. We saw with hydroxychloroquine to, right? And here we did.
Anybody, who everybody wants kind of a cure and a miracle and something that's very easily attainable, that's inexpensive and, you know, mass-produced. Sure. We all want that and it's in some ways. It's predatory because if you say it does that and you don't have the data and, you know, it's widely available, whether it's through veterinarians or whatever. The way you get, it it creates trouble because you give people false hopes and it's really
Unfortunate. And we don't want that to happen because a pandemic. Obviously a lot of people are subject to their worried and they've seen friend or relative either succumb or get very sick. And so they don't want that to happen and they'll listen to anything that you know has potential believability but believability is one thing the data and the proof is another.
Now you raised some really good points here. I mean, we're living through such a time of uncertainty.
And it's almost like the scientific method itself is coming under attack because people really just don't have patience for it. I mean, this, I, you know, as a graduate student, you spend five years sometimes, trying to figure out the most minut of something and, you know, and you you're trained as a scholar to have that sort of patience, but you know, now, you know, we're living through time for such personal decisions we have to make and we want to know what do what do we do? So it's a it's difficult.
It's a difficult for scientists to watch the scientific method in The Institute. Scientific institutions be under such strong attack. And I'm sure it's very, very hard for you to see it too.
Absolutely.
So, okay. What's the pandemic planned? Dr. Peter McCulloch says early treatments were suppressed quote in order to promote fear suffering isolation hospitalization and death. What's the latest data evidence you've seen on that for against
that? Well, I couldn't disagree more fervently from that statement.
As far as the plan, I mean, it's pretty obvious that we need to achieve containment. We've never gotten there and that hopefully, we're starting to decline with the current surge. That's kind of a combined s Delta and a concert. And, you know, we still have over 120,000 people in the hospital with covid and we have currently 26 hundred plus deaths a day and we're over 80% of the desk that we had.
For vaccination in January of 2021. So our country isn't doing well. And in order for us to get our house in order we need to get all of, you know, all things going that is, we need to have rapid test widely available. We need to use when we have indoor Gatherings, use the appropriate mass as a new CDC, a morbidity. And mortality mortality report was out today about the efficacy of hi.
Grade Mass. Like KN 95 and and 95 with some 80% reduction of infections. So for indoor, Gatherings with air, filtration ventilation, those sorts of things until we get this containment level, which hopefully, we also will see high quantities of packs of it available. So that people who do get covid will be able to get pills a five-day pack that they can basically suppress the chance of
Progression and get 90% reduction of their viral load very quickly through pills that are much easier to take than infusions. And you know, eventually we're going to be in really good shape, but we are going to have covid around for years to come but it's really been are anemic response. We've done very poor with vaccinations in this country. There's been a Fierce and I vaccine and I science and eye mask and growing.
Momentum movement against the progress that we could have made. And that's why we're so far behind many other countries around the world that have basically gotten Omicron under wraps, and they're going to be in much better shape. We're at 63 percent vaccination. There are countries that are 85 90 percent of their population vaccinate. We're a 25% boosters. There are countries that are 65 percent plus boosted, and we've left a lot of our elderly unprotected, so our future.
Depends on our ability to execute and you know, we are missing on many different fronts and we also have lack of data capture and processing by our CDC, poor communication. You know, that's where I would describe that Improvement has to be made so that we can get as quickly as possible to get the containment that all of us want. Yeah, for
sure.
It just seems like so much of it is is actually psychological. I mean, I wonder if are there more or they're more conspiracy theories or less Trust of the scientific findings in America than there are in the countries that have higher rates of vaccination. How much of it is psychological? How much can I is a psychologist. Help out here
where I wrote an editorial in Science magazine a couple of weeks ago about that. We need unity and message that we've had infighting among our Public Health agencies. That's the last thing you want in the pin down there.
Yeah, go on the one hand. You don't want conspiracy conspiracy theories. On the other hand. You don't want the public health agencies with different takes on everything. And the other thing we need is, we are missing leadership at the HHS which oversees FDA and NIH and CDC. And that secretary Xavier Becerra needs to show up and show leadership, make the data become available widely quickly and also get rid of the
fight. So these are you know, these are it's not if you want to call it psychology, but these are app, you know absence of leadership human. Yes human issues. Human issue. Exactly human issues and human behavior have been holding us back and I hope eventually we can you know, get on the much better
try. Yeah. Well, it sounds like we're on our own worst. Enemy in a lot of ways. Look I appreciate your time today. I want to put this out in kind of set the record straight and some where the data is on that you
Sort of last words of dare. I say hope for this pandemic.
Well, I'm very optimistic and I do think we are going to be in good shape and hopefully a stable position eventually. I hope that over the course of the weeks and months ahead. You know, things are going to look much better than they have in recent times. I do think and I've written about and worked on with others. The idea the concept of pushing towards a pan coronavirus vaccine, which would protect us from all variants in the future.
ER that I think is something that's really worthy and hopefully that's going to get traction. But otherwise, you know, we need to do much better preparation so that when someday there's another pandemic we don't have such poor response that were ahead of it. And in fact we need to invest in that preparation is a really good review paper today in science, advances that takes us through how the cost of doing that is around one-twentieth, of the cost of a pandemic.
And so we need to put in resources so that we're prepared for the Long Haul. Because we haven't yet in recent decades, gotten behind the public health importance in this country to prevent what's happened with covid-19.
Yeah, and there's a lot of people who just have a lot of misconceptions about, what exactly this vaccine mRNA vaccine actually does. Some people think it's gene therapy, you know, can you can you can make it very clear that is not actually change the genetic structure.
You know, that's not how this vaccine works. Yeah, I mean, this is
preposterous. This has been put out by Robert Malone and others. It's completely fraudulent. There is no change of the genetic of a human being from an mRNA nanoparticle package that goes in as a vaccine. So this is, this is the kind of stuff that's really held us back and we can't
can't tolerate. Well, I really appreciate your time today and then
keep keep it up. Keep up the good public science communication in the research. Thank you. Thanks. Kara.
Thanks for listening to this episode of the psychology podcast. If you'd like to react in some way to something you heard I encourage you to join in the discussion at the psychology podcast.com or on our YouTube page, the psychology podcast. We also put up some videos of some episodes on our YouTube page as well. So you'll want to check that out. Thanks for being such a great supporter of the show and tune in next time for more on the mind, brain behavior, and creativity.
