Latest / Paging America / The Yips: Trump’s Frustration with RFK Jr.

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The Yips: Trump’s Frustration with RFK Jr. · Paging America

0:00
SPEAKER_01: I probably do suffer from the problem of assigning strategy
0:04
SPEAKER_01: when there's just consequences,
0:05
SPEAKER_01: and sometimes those consequences are nuts,
0:07
SPEAKER_01: and sometimes those consequences work out for them.
0:09
SPEAKER_01: You know, they're, like, all over the map.
0:11
SPEAKER_01: And sometimes you could,
0:12
SPEAKER_01: like, fall into the trap of, like, maybe it is a little bit of strategy.
0:14
SPEAKER_01: All right, Rob,
0:15
SPEAKER_01: I think I'm convinced that the craziest door at number three is maybe
0:18
SPEAKER_01: the most likely.
0:19
SPEAKER_01: The most terrifying door.
0:20
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, certainly the most terrifying door.
0:26
SPEAKER_00: Dr.
0:26
SPEAKER_00: Rob, did you watch the Fauci hearings?
0:29
SPEAKER_00: Miles, I watched some of it.
0:31
SPEAKER_00: I watched the beginning kind of in like the first half hour or so,
0:34
SPEAKER_00: and then I just, I've seen clips and such.
0:36
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, any hot takes from you?
0:37
SPEAKER_01: It was a phalanx of idiots that were questioning him.
0:42
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, phalanx of idiots that were questioning him.
0:46
SPEAKER_01: And I just like want to highlight how Senator Bernie Moreno from Ohio Has got
0:53
SPEAKER_01: to be one of the worst people that the great state of Ohio has ever sent
0:58
SPEAKER_01: to Washington, D.C. His questions were so performative.
1:03
SPEAKER_01: They were so specific to his internal factional interests inside the Republican Party.
1:11
SPEAKER_01: And it was such a trap set for Dr. Fauci that
1:18
SPEAKER_01: It was really hard to watch.
1:20
SPEAKER_01: It was physically difficult to watch, but it's over.
1:23
SPEAKER_01: Thank God.
1:24
SPEAKER_00: He looks so proud of himself.
1:26
SPEAKER_00: Like, look at me.
1:26
SPEAKER_00: I dropped an F-bomb in the Senate.
1:28
SPEAKER_00: Look at how cool I am.
1:31
SPEAKER_00: I think the tweet with his quote was being sent right as he was saying it, right?
1:35
SPEAKER_00: So let's not pretend like this was just in the moment of his angering.
1:39
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
1:39
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
1:40
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
1:40
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
1:56
SPEAKER_01: They are turning the United States Senate into an algorithm chaser, and it's gross to watch.
2:02
SPEAKER_02: Anyway, everyone, welcome back to Paging
2:04
SPEAKER_01: America.
2:05
SPEAKER_01: This is a show where we explore the power of profit,
2:08
SPEAKER_01: shaping American healthcare,
2:09
SPEAKER_01: and its home base for your news and viewpoints from people building
2:12
SPEAKER_01: the universal healthcare movement.
2:14
SPEAKER_01: I'm your host, Miles Baker, with Dr.
2:16
SPEAKER_01: Rob Davidson, as always.
2:18
SPEAKER_01: Dr.
2:20
SPEAKER_01: Rob, where do we find you today?
2:21
SPEAKER_01: Where are you at?
2:22
SPEAKER_00: I'm in the state capital of Cyclospora here, 10,000 cases and counting.
2:26
SPEAKER_00: I'm in Lansing.
2:28
SPEAKER_00: It's the 61st anniversary of Medicare and Medicaid today.
2:32
SPEAKER_00: And I'm part of a rally with other groups championing this program that I have seen
2:39
SPEAKER_00: in my lifetime in my career as a doctor transform people's lives
2:43
SPEAKER_00: with expanded Medicaid here after the ACA and now have seen the Republican Party
2:47
SPEAKER_00: and Donald Trump.
2:48
SPEAKER_00: Gut Medicaid to give tax cuts to billionaires.
2:51
SPEAKER_00: So, yeah,
2:51
SPEAKER_00: we're here just highlighting,
2:52
SPEAKER_00: making sure people know this critical program and how we got it.
2:55
SPEAKER_00: We got to get it back.
2:56
SPEAKER_00: Well, that's great.
2:57
SPEAKER_00: That's great that we're driving local attention in the state capitol.
3:00
SPEAKER_01: Also, if I know my congressional districts,
3:02
SPEAKER_01: Lansing is in the all-important congressional battleground where Tom Barrett,
3:07
SPEAKER_01: who has been a villain par not in going after and gutting health care,
3:13
SPEAKER_01: And that is going to be,
3:15
SPEAKER_01: after the primary this coming Tuesday in Michigan,
3:17
SPEAKER_01: that is going to be an extremely competitive race.
3:19
SPEAKER_01: That is going to be critical for determining who holds the house.
3:24
SPEAKER_00: Well, thank you for doing that, Dr.
3:25
SPEAKER_00: Rob.
3:25
SPEAKER_01: Today we have a great show for folks.
3:28
SPEAKER_01: On the back half of the show, we are interviewing Dr. Dimitri Daskalakis, formerly of the CDC.
3:35
SPEAKER_01: He's a great interview,
3:36
SPEAKER_01: and stick around for that because it's always informative when we talk to Dr.
3:40
SPEAKER_01: Daskalakis.
3:42
SPEAKER_01: On a wide range of issues from public health to the institution of the CDC.
3:46
SPEAKER_01: But before we get to that,
3:47
SPEAKER_01: we're going to be covering a little bit more on Dr. Fauci's Senate hearing.
3:51
SPEAKER_01: Trump is pushing RFK to go after vaccines despite polling showing its political suicide.
3:56
SPEAKER_01: And this is a real bombshell that I think it looks like Donald Trump is now in
3:59
SPEAKER_01: the driver's seat of the anti-vaccine movement.
4:02
SPEAKER_01: And it's become a personal quest of his.
4:04
SPEAKER_01: Trump ending the subsidies for Medicare Part D drug premiums and Trump's EPA halted
4:08
SPEAKER_01: a study that clearly showed gas stoves Increase asthma.
4:11
SPEAKER_01: So let's hop into it.
4:14
SPEAKER_01: A little bit more on the hearing.
4:16
SPEAKER_01: One of the things that I think I am not,
4:20
SPEAKER_01: I still have
4:20
SPEAKER_00: uncertainty around when we reflect and we look back on the COVID era
4:25
SPEAKER_01: and we try to,
4:27
SPEAKER_01: with so much disinformation,
4:28
SPEAKER_01: we try to put reality back together when we talk about the COVID era.
4:33
SPEAKER_01: And obviously historians will hopefully do a good job.
4:36
SPEAKER_01: The goofballs in the Senate hearing really were hammering.
4:40
SPEAKER_01: This idea of a lab leak in Wuhan and how there remains sort
4:46
SPEAKER_01: of unanswered questions around where COVID originated.
4:50
SPEAKER_01: Do you have any reaction to that, Rob?
4:52
SPEAKER_01: It just felt like they were a dog on a bone.
4:56
SPEAKER_01: I'm not sure there's like an actionable item that would come on.
4:59
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
5:00
SPEAKER_00: Well, I don't know if there's an answer.
5:04
SPEAKER_00: It's like, what is the definition of is?
5:08
SPEAKER_00: Gain of function research?
5:09
SPEAKER_00: Were we funding it?
5:10
SPEAKER_00: Were we funding something else that wasn't that?
5:11
SPEAKER_00: But now in retrospect,
5:13
SPEAKER_00: they're calling it that because they want to be pissed at this guy
5:15
SPEAKER_00: because he advised the president to tell people to do things not to get sick.
5:20
SPEAKER_00: So, I guess that part,
5:22
SPEAKER_00: like if you want to have a hearing about that and that is a narrow lane you want
5:25
SPEAKER_00: to explore and you feel like as a body you should do that,
5:28
SPEAKER_00: I guess, okay, have real questions and get real answers.
5:32
SPEAKER_00: They turned it into something completely different,
5:34
SPEAKER_00: into Bernie Miranda dropping the F-bomb,
5:36
SPEAKER_00: being pissed off that there were measures in the state of Ohio that...
5:41
SPEAKER_00: You know,
5:41
SPEAKER_00: someone apparently came up with some story of someone who got arrested going to
5:44
SPEAKER_00: a JV football game.
5:46
SPEAKER_00: I don't think Dr. Fauci was there with a badge and a gun, right?
5:49
SPEAKER_00: I think this was in Ohio.
5:51
SPEAKER_00: If this even happened, I don't know.
5:53
SPEAKER_00: We can't prove it.
5:53
SPEAKER_00: So what the hell?
5:54
SPEAKER_00: Might as well just say it.
5:56
SPEAKER_00: I think the other piece,
5:56
SPEAKER_00: like Ron Johnson still talking about hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin,
6:00
SPEAKER_00: like, dear God, let it go.
6:03
SPEAKER_00: Let it go.
6:04
SPEAKER_01: What effect?
6:05
SPEAKER_01: Is Ron Johnson out there peddling forsythia from the movie Contagion?
6:10
SPEAKER_01: He's out there peddling strange cures.
6:13
SPEAKER_01: Still, it's 2026.
6:14
SPEAKER_01: The global pandemic's been over for a long time.
6:19
SPEAKER_01: And why is he still out there doing this?
6:21
SPEAKER_01: It boggles the mind.
6:23
SPEAKER_01: And so much.
6:23
SPEAKER_00: Much of this goes back to dopamine and like they're continuing to cycle that,
6:29
SPEAKER_00: to feed that cycle of rage that people have about ever having been told
6:33
SPEAKER_00: to maybe don't go hang out with your friends at the bar or maybe put on a mask
6:38
SPEAKER_00: if you want to be courteous.
6:40
SPEAKER_00: And it came up with this analogy and I was so proud of it.
6:43
SPEAKER_00: And then at the dinner table, my wife and my daughter were like, yeah, that's okay.
6:46
SPEAKER_00: But to me,
6:46
SPEAKER_00: it feels
6:47
SPEAKER_00: like if you get told to go to your basement because there's
6:49
SPEAKER_00: a tornado warning in your area, right?
6:51
SPEAKER_00: You go down there, you're sitting there for an hour, killing time.
6:53
SPEAKER_00: You come back up, there was no tornado, your house is intact.
6:56
SPEAKER_00: Are you now pissed off at the National Weather Service for issuing a tornado warning?
6:59
SPEAKER_00: You know, like I washed my fruit for like three months, right?
7:04
SPEAKER_00: I washed my fruit.
7:05
SPEAKER_00: Turns out I didn't have to.
7:06
SPEAKER_00: But who the hell cared?
7:07
SPEAKER_00: You know, get over it.
7:08
SPEAKER_00: They were doing what they thought was best at the time.
7:11
SPEAKER_00: Some of it was heavy handed.
7:12
SPEAKER_00: Some of it was overdone.
7:14
SPEAKER_00: Some on the other side.
7:16
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, on the other side, they propose, like, go out and get sick, get everyone else sick.
7:20
SPEAKER_00: If grandma dies, you know, so be it.
7:23
SPEAKER_00: And don't get that vaccine because it's gene therapy.
7:26
SPEAKER_00: And meanwhile,
7:26
SPEAKER_00: I think in excess of a quarter million deaths because
7:29
SPEAKER_00: the people didn't get vaccinated.
7:30
SPEAKER_00: Like, my God, just...
7:31
SPEAKER_00: We gotta let this go.
7:32
SPEAKER_00: We gotta let this go.
7:35
SPEAKER_01: It's a reminder when people are really over the top
7:40
SPEAKER_01: in describing what they perceived as like tyranny back in the COVID days.
7:46
SPEAKER_01: A million Americans died.
7:48
SPEAKER_01: A million?
7:48
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
7:49
SPEAKER_01: That hopefully was never going to happen in our lifetime,
7:53
SPEAKER_01: never happened in my lifetime, will never happen again in our lifetime.
7:56
SPEAKER_01: Something so dramatic and such loss of life and death disease
7:59
SPEAKER_00: and disability.
8:00
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
8:01
SPEAKER_01: And so the other thing I want to share, I'll share a personal story.
8:05
SPEAKER_01: The describing of tyranny that Bernie Moreno did, the injustice of it all.
8:11
SPEAKER_01: After we were allowed to travel again or we were told it's pretty okay to travel,
8:16
SPEAKER_01: I went down to Belize and we were outside,
8:20
SPEAKER_01: took our masks off and guys in a truck in fatigues with M4s pulled us over
8:27
SPEAKER_01: and we were detained for taking off our mask outside.
8:31
SPEAKER_01: That's heavy handed, guys.
8:32
SPEAKER_00: It's harder to do public health in Central America.
8:40
SPEAKER_01: The enforcement mechanisms were really heavy-handed.
8:42
SPEAKER_01: I can't speak to the context of Central American public health with anything,
8:46
SPEAKER_01: but what they did in Italy and what they did in France,
8:49
SPEAKER_01: the things we did in America were so mild.
8:51
SPEAKER_01: Relative to what everyone else and planet Earth was doing to try to contain the virus.
8:57
SPEAKER_01: I just, I just, I don't respect it at all.
8:59
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, did you see when Moreno had people stand up,
9:01
SPEAKER_01: had him say,
9:02
SPEAKER_00: stand up if you were persecuted for your views.
9:05
SPEAKER_00: And I think Laura Trump was among the few, like, oh, dear God, just get over yourself.
9:09
SPEAKER_00: Hey, you're still alive.
9:10
SPEAKER_00: Good job.
9:11
SPEAKER_00: Way to go.
9:11
SPEAKER_00: You know?
9:13
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
9:14
SPEAKER_01: Anyway, all right.
9:15
SPEAKER_01: Moving on.
9:16
SPEAKER_01: Moving on from the Fauci hearings.
9:17
SPEAKER_01: Leave this guy alone.
9:18
SPEAKER_01: This guy's an old guy.
9:19
SPEAKER_01: He's done a lot of stuff.
9:20
SPEAKER_01: Maybe he didn't do it perfect.
9:21
SPEAKER_01: Leave this guy alone.
9:22
SPEAKER_01: So Trump to RFK Jr. saying go wild on vaccine.
9:26
SPEAKER_01: This was incredible reporting from the Wall Street Journal.
9:29
SPEAKER_01: And if you haven't read the Wall Street Journal article, please...
9:31
SPEAKER_01: Please go and do read it.
9:32
SPEAKER_01: So the Wall Street Journal reported this week that despite widespread reporting
9:36
SPEAKER_01: that RFK was being reined in on his attacks on vaccines,
9:39
SPEAKER_01: which we've covered here considerably.
9:40
SPEAKER_01: We've talked about Tony Fabrizio,
9:42
SPEAKER_01: Trump's pollster saying, stop this, stop the madness on vaccines.
9:46
SPEAKER_01: Trump is angry that he hasn't gone harder and done more.
9:49
SPEAKER_01: Saying he had the yips.
9:52
SPEAKER_01: This is from the article.
9:54
SPEAKER_01: Even though he has long been known to be skeptical of vaccinations,
9:57
SPEAKER_01: Kennedy had been asked by White House political advisors
9:59
SPEAKER_01: to tone down his vaccine
10:00
SPEAKER_00: efforts ahead of the midterms, that people said.
10:03
SPEAKER_01: Now, it was the commander-in-chief who was pushing to make the study of vaccines
10:07
SPEAKER_01: and autism more of a priority.
10:09
SPEAKER_01: The president steers nearly every conversation with his health secretary back to
10:13
SPEAKER_01: the issue, some people said.
10:14
SPEAKER_01: The president has made clear he has given Kennedy enough time and is disappointed
10:19
SPEAKER_01: that the health secretary hasn't accomplished more in the past year,
10:22
SPEAKER_01: half of the people said.
10:23
SPEAKER_01: Kennedy will be a failure if he doesn't make progress on the issue,
10:26
SPEAKER_01: the president has told aides, some of the people said.
10:28
SPEAKER_01: On one side,
10:29
SPEAKER_01: it looks like Trump himself is now trying to be the vanguard of tracking down
10:35
SPEAKER_01: the cause of autism in vaccine studies.
10:39
SPEAKER_01: It also seems, these guys are great at press, right?
10:42
SPEAKER_01: Also seems like it could be a coordinated attack on Kennedy in preparation for,
10:50
SPEAKER_01: which we've heard wide rumors that they're going to let Kennedy go after
10:53
SPEAKER_01: the midterms,
10:54
SPEAKER_01: that this is like an attempt To push Kennedy out and try to retain some
10:59
SPEAKER_01: of his anti-vaccine coalitional members.
11:02
SPEAKER_00: So I don't know which one it is.
11:04
SPEAKER_00: Can I posit a third thing?
11:07
SPEAKER_00: Could this be part of Trump's dementia, right?
11:10
SPEAKER_00: I mean, we had a...
11:12
SPEAKER_00: No, truly.
11:13
SPEAKER_00: So with frontotemporal dementia,
11:16
SPEAKER_00: you have a harder time forming new memories, like retaining new memories.
11:19
SPEAKER_00: Frequently you talk to people who suffer from dementia and they can tell you
11:23
SPEAKER_00: about something that happened back in 1952,
11:25
SPEAKER_00: like with the clarity you could not imagine.
11:27
SPEAKER_00: But like, what did you have for breakfast this morning?
11:29
SPEAKER_00: It's like not there.
11:31
SPEAKER_00: A seminal moment in Donald Trump becoming president in 2024 was
11:36
SPEAKER_00: when Bobby Kennedy shopped around his endorsement to the Harris campaign and to
11:40
SPEAKER_00: the Trump campaign.
11:41
SPEAKER_00: The Harris campaign said, no, thank you.
11:42
SPEAKER_00: We don't want to talk to you.
11:44
SPEAKER_00: You're crazy.
11:45
SPEAKER_00: And the Trump campaign said, what do you want?
11:46
SPEAKER_00: What do you want?
11:47
SPEAKER_00: Like, let's deal.
11:48
SPEAKER_00: What do you want?
11:48
SPEAKER_00: And what he wanted was, I want to go hog on vaccines.
11:52
SPEAKER_00: We want to do this.
11:53
SPEAKER_00: Whole of government.
11:55
SPEAKER_00: And Trump in his brain, that is the seed planted.
11:58
SPEAKER_00: This guy, Bobby Kennedy, vaccines, okay.
12:00
SPEAKER_00: Okay, what are you doing about vaccines?
12:01
SPEAKER_00: Like Tony Febreza, you don't want to talk about it.
12:03
SPEAKER_00: You don't want to talk about it.
12:04
SPEAKER_00: okay, okay.
12:04
SPEAKER_00: Next week, Bobby Kennedy.
12:05
SPEAKER_00: Hey, what are you doing about vaccines?
12:06
SPEAKER_00: Like, I don't know, man.
12:08
SPEAKER_00: That may be part of this.
12:10
SPEAKER_00: He can't help it.
12:11
SPEAKER_00: It's his cognitive state and shame on the Republicans and shame on all of them
12:17
SPEAKER_00: for letting this guy start wars and letting this guy sit there and be the president
12:21
SPEAKER_00: and act this way.
12:22
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I probably do suffer from the problem of assigning strategy
12:30
SPEAKER_01: when there's just consequences.
12:33
SPEAKER_01: And sometimes those consequences are nuts.
12:35
SPEAKER_01: And sometimes those consequences work out for them.
12:38
SPEAKER_01: And sometimes those consequences are just, they're all over the map.
12:41
SPEAKER_01: And sometimes you could fall into the trap of maybe it is a little bit of strategy.
12:45
SPEAKER_01: All right, Rob,
12:45
SPEAKER_01: I think I'm convinced that the craziest door number three is maybe the most likely.
12:51
SPEAKER_00: The most terrifying door.
12:52
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, certainly the most terrifying door.
12:55
SPEAKER_01: In other news,
12:57
SPEAKER_01: Trump ends subsidies for Medicare drug premiums, which,
13:00
SPEAKER_01: you know,
13:01
SPEAKER_01: as a guy who's talking about bringing down the price of drugs all the time
13:04
SPEAKER_01: because he sees how well it pulls,
13:06
SPEAKER_01: this is a real slap in the face of people who rely on those subsidies.
13:12
SPEAKER_01: So the Trump administration announced on Tuesday that It intended to end
13:16
SPEAKER_01: a Biden-era program that for the past two years has helped tamp down the cost
13:19
SPEAKER_01: of monthly premiums for drug coverage for people on Medicare.
13:22
SPEAKER_01: The decision means that millions of Americans 65
13:24
SPEAKER_01: and older could face higher Medicare drug premiums next year when the cost
13:28
SPEAKER_01: of living is already a major concern.
13:30
SPEAKER_01: That could be politically damaging for Republicans in the midterm elections,
13:33
SPEAKER_01: but it's not really going to be felt by people until next year.
13:36
SPEAKER_01: In the weeks leading up to November,
13:37
SPEAKER_01: Medicare beneficiaries could experience sticker shock while shopping
13:40
SPEAKER_01: for next year's drug plan.
13:42
SPEAKER_01: Okay, so in like the weeks later,
13:44
SPEAKER_01: so like right before,
13:45
SPEAKER_01: but it feels like something that takes a little longer to like leak into
13:47
SPEAKER_01: the general population's consciousness.
13:49
SPEAKER_01: But I mean, that's just like, that's just raising drug prices.
13:52
SPEAKER_01: That's all that is.
13:53
SPEAKER_01: That's like, hey, pay more.
13:54
SPEAKER_01: I said- And it's not even drug prices,
13:56
SPEAKER_00: just to have the insurance, right?
13:58
SPEAKER_01: So even if you don't take medications- Your overall cost, you want to have that.
14:02
SPEAKER_01: Your overall cost.
14:02
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you want to have that.
14:04
SPEAKER_00: Maybe it's 20, 30, 40 bucks a month, but it's like real money.
14:08
SPEAKER_00: That's like food you could buy, right?
14:10
SPEAKER_00: That's gas in your tank.
14:12
SPEAKER_00: Not that much gas anymore, but these are real dollars.
14:16
SPEAKER_00: And just like this,
14:18
SPEAKER_00: it's like every week we see something new on ways they are trying
14:21
SPEAKER_00: to make healthcare Less affordable and less accessible.
14:24
SPEAKER_00: It's unbelievable.
14:25
SPEAKER_00: It's unbelievable that I don't know how they run on this shit.
14:27
SPEAKER_00: I don't know how they run on it.
14:29
SPEAKER_00: I don't think they do.
14:30
SPEAKER_01: I don't think they do, Rob.
14:31
SPEAKER_01: So we're going to do more on elections here starting next week on the show
14:37
SPEAKER_01: as they relate to health care.
14:38
SPEAKER_01: But the polling is crazy.
14:41
SPEAKER_01: The polling is crazy.
14:42
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
14:43
SPEAKER_01: Donald Trump, like, we, like,
14:45
SPEAKER_01: think that these guys are untouchable,
14:47
SPEAKER_01: that they are, like, wandering through the world, like, Teflon, Don, all this.
14:50
SPEAKER_01: It's not true.
14:51
SPEAKER_01: Donald Trump is as unpopular as George W.
14:55
SPEAKER_01: Bush during the height of the Iraq War when
14:58
SPEAKER_01: the Republican Party was functionally washed away.
15:01
SPEAKER_01: And there are some structural problems now.
15:03
SPEAKER_01: There are less competitive seats.
15:04
SPEAKER_01: The Senate map is harder and harder and harder.
15:07
SPEAKER_01: But this is a crazy environment where the Democratic brand is still unpopular.
15:12
SPEAKER_01: But the Republican Party, in terms of popularity, is in absolute shambles because of this guy.
15:18
SPEAKER_01: So do away with this idea that this guy is impervious
15:22
SPEAKER_01: and experiences no consequences for his actions.
15:25
SPEAKER_01: Because we're watching one of the most unpopular people ever.
15:30
SPEAKER_01: Like in the presidency,
15:32
SPEAKER_01: wander into the midterms and we're going to see what that ends up looking like.
15:35
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
15:35
SPEAKER_00: Man.
15:36
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
15:36
SPEAKER_00: Well, we'll see.
15:37
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
15:37
SPEAKER_01: So everybody's trying to, he's like, I need the record.
15:40
SPEAKER_01: I need to be the best.
15:41
SPEAKER_01: I'm going to raise,
15:42
SPEAKER_01: I'm going to make drug,
15:43
SPEAKER_01: I'm going to make drug insurance more expensive right before the election.
15:47
SPEAKER_00: Right.
15:50
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
15:51
SPEAKER_01: In other news,
15:51
SPEAKER_01: this is relevant to me and I'll tell you why in a second,
15:55
SPEAKER_01: but Trump doesn't want Americans
15:56
SPEAKER_01: to know their gas stove is potentially harming their health.
15:59
SPEAKER_01: So in 2025,
16:01
SPEAKER_01: researchers at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland and
16:04
SPEAKER_01: a local hospital network were studying the health impacts of gas stoves on people
16:07
SPEAKER_01: with asthma.
16:08
SPEAKER_01: They had barely begun their study when the Trump administration yanked their funding
16:11
SPEAKER_01: from an $18 million EPA grant.
16:13
SPEAKER_01: However, the data from just a handful of households of people with asthma was very clear.
16:18
SPEAKER_01: It does seem like gas stoves potentially have causation, correlation with asthma.
16:26
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
16:28
SPEAKER_01: Whether it is because they don't like electric stoves and they are disinterested
16:33
SPEAKER_01: in electrification, or they are just like doing culture wars on magnet stoves.
16:40
SPEAKER_01: This is a strange thing to do.
16:42
SPEAKER_01: And I wonder what your reaction to this is, Rob.
16:47
SPEAKER_01: You've been around a little bit longer.
16:48
SPEAKER_01: You probably had gas stoves longer.
16:50
SPEAKER_01: I have a gas stove.
16:51
SPEAKER_01: I have a gas stove.
16:52
SPEAKER_00: And I have mild asthma.
16:53
SPEAKER_00: And I had a son growing up who had it.
16:54
SPEAKER_00: And I'm just like, well, shit,
16:57
SPEAKER_00: if I knew this at the time we were,
16:59
SPEAKER_00: you know,
17:00
SPEAKER_00: we bought the house and we were kind of making decisions,
17:02
SPEAKER_00: I probably would have replaced a gas stove.
17:04
SPEAKER_00: You know, I don't now because it's just my wife and I, my asthma is not an issue.
17:10
SPEAKER_00: But people should at least get to know about it to make decisions.
17:14
SPEAKER_00: I mean,
17:15
SPEAKER_00: it wasn't like Trump stopped a plan to remove all gas stoves from the market and
17:19
SPEAKER_00: to rip them out of people's kitchens.
17:21
SPEAKER_00: I mean, okay, that probably is a little aggressive.
17:24
SPEAKER_00: But just to get information out there, how does this affect you and your life?
17:28
SPEAKER_01: This has always been, I thought with Trump, the most totalitarian thing they do.
17:32
SPEAKER_01: The thing that looks most...
17:33
SPEAKER_01: They do all sorts of things that look autocratic,
17:35
SPEAKER_01: but the things that look like old world totalitarian is the ending of information
17:42
SPEAKER_01: from the state that can be relied on.
17:44
SPEAKER_01: Whether that's like making sure a study
17:46
SPEAKER_01: that doesn't confirm their ideological priors is axed,
17:51
SPEAKER_01: or whether that's like,
17:52
SPEAKER_01: you know, remember when he changed the course of the hurricane?
17:56
SPEAKER_01: Oh, yeah.
17:57
SPEAKER_01: Trump won.
17:59
SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's just like this impulse to try to change reality so it fits your narrative
18:05
SPEAKER_01: and just make sure you can't trust anything.
18:07
SPEAKER_00: But it works.
18:08
SPEAKER_00: It works on his base.
18:09
SPEAKER_00: If you watch the interview videos like I do,
18:12
SPEAKER_00: people say they support him because he stopped eight wars.
18:14
SPEAKER_00: And when they're asked, which eight wars?
18:15
SPEAKER_00: I don't remember.
18:16
SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
18:17
SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's worked through all the time, right?
18:20
SPEAKER_01: It's like the reconstruction of history in the totalitarian states in the 20s.
18:24
SPEAKER_01: The Khmer Rouge called it year zero.
18:26
SPEAKER_01: I mean, like...
18:27
SPEAKER_01: Any place where you have just really bad faith leaders in government,
18:32
SPEAKER_01: whether that's the extreme versions of that in the earlier 20th century or
18:36
SPEAKER_01: whether that's now, which it's like light autocracy.
18:40
SPEAKER_01: It's extremely stupid.
18:43
SPEAKER_01: It's not as violent.
18:45
SPEAKER_00: It is if you are in the targets of ice, right?
18:50
SPEAKER_00: It is to some people, for sure.
18:52
SPEAKER_00: It is, yeah.
18:52
SPEAKER_00: The mass violence isn't as obvious
18:54
SPEAKER_01: to people,
18:54
SPEAKER_01: but it's the ending of information you can believe in.
18:58
SPEAKER_01: It's extremely annoying.
18:59
SPEAKER_02: I like a gas stove, Rob.
19:00
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
19:01
SPEAKER_01: I do.
19:03
SPEAKER_01: I agree.
19:03
SPEAKER_01: I do, too.
19:04
SPEAKER_01: My spouse is a person who's interested in climate,
19:08
SPEAKER_01: and she made us get a magnet stove, an induction stove.
19:14
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
19:15
SPEAKER_01: It burns my popcorn.
19:17
SPEAKER_01: It burns the crap out of it.
19:19
SPEAKER_01: It's unedible.
19:20
SPEAKER_00: Why are you cooking popcorn on the stove?
19:23
SPEAKER_01: I like cooking popcorn on the stove.
19:24
SPEAKER_01: I've always liked cooking popcorn on the stove.
19:27
SPEAKER_00: That's your weakest argument.
19:29
SPEAKER_01: Well, I can't do it anymore.
19:32
SPEAKER_01: I can't do it anymore because it burns my popcorn.
19:33
SPEAKER_01: Welcome to the 80s.
19:34
SPEAKER_01: Otherwise,
19:35
SPEAKER_00: it's a nice device.
19:35
SPEAKER_01: It's a nice stove.
19:42
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, well, I'm sorry about your popcorn woes, but you have not convinced me.
19:46
SPEAKER_00: But I agree with you.
19:46
SPEAKER_00: I like a gas stove, man.
19:48
SPEAKER_00: Although the induction ones, you can go on and off pretty quick.
19:50
SPEAKER_00: You can boil water on an animal.
19:52
SPEAKER_00: I don't own an animal.
19:53
SPEAKER_00: I don't cook my popcorn on the stove.
19:55
SPEAKER_00: But other than that, I'm with you.
19:57
SPEAKER_01: The best way to cook popcorn for people.
20:00
SPEAKER_01: If you're not at the movie theater, best way to cook popcorn is on a gas stove.
20:03
SPEAKER_01: Other than that, you can boil water with an induction stove in like under a minute.
20:06
SPEAKER_01: It's extremely convenient if you're trying to get dinner out.
20:09
SPEAKER_01: But I wish they'd finish the study.
20:12
SPEAKER_01: I hope they're able to finish the study.
20:13
SPEAKER_01: I hope they're able to get this information out and people can make informed choices
20:18
SPEAKER_01: about the risk profile they want to put in their house for them and their kids.
20:22
SPEAKER_01: Anyway.
20:22
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
20:22
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
20:23
SPEAKER_01: The U.S. has hit two tragic public health milestones recently.
20:26
SPEAKER_01: So first, in the five months remaining in 2026, our country's had more measles cases.
20:31
SPEAKER_01: That at any time in the past 35 years,
20:33
SPEAKER_01: international health officials will meet later this year to determine if the US
20:36
SPEAKER_01: and Mexico have lost their measles-free status.
20:38
SPEAKER_01: It seems like that's the direction we're headed.
20:40
SPEAKER_01: The US eliminated local measles spread in 2000 by maintaining high vaccination rates.
20:45
SPEAKER_01: However,
20:46
SPEAKER_01: those rates have fallen in recent years to below the 95% coverage needed
20:50
SPEAKER_01: to prevent outbreaks.
20:51
SPEAKER_01: The second milestone is the extraordinary cases of cyclospora that we're seeing in
20:56
SPEAKER_01: the United States.
20:58
SPEAKER_01: Obviously,
20:59
SPEAKER_01: drawing a causal line,
21:01
SPEAKER_01: like a straight line, Bobby Kennedy didn't make the lettuce dirty.
21:07
SPEAKER_01: But it does seem like there is just a real
21:11
SPEAKER_02: lack of reaction
21:13
SPEAKER_01: from HHS
21:16
SPEAKER_01: and its other entities to what's happening across the country
21:20
SPEAKER_01: on these two outbreaks.
21:22
SPEAKER_01: What are your thoughts, Rob?
21:23
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, we don't have to belabor it because we talked about this with Dr.
21:25
SPEAKER_00: Daskalakis quite a bit, and he's certainly an expert beyond either of us.
21:29
SPEAKER_00: However, the one big take-home I took from what he said was it's the communication piece, right?
21:35
SPEAKER_00: In a crisis,
21:36
SPEAKER_00: in an outbreak,
21:37
SPEAKER_00: probably second to investigating the outbreak,
21:40
SPEAKER_00: which if any of you,
21:41
SPEAKER_00: if you just want to take a fun class,
21:43
SPEAKER_00: outbreak investigation, I took one with my MPH, it's just fun.
21:46
SPEAKER_00: It's like being a detective, but like with sickness.
21:48
SPEAKER_00: It's cool.
21:50
SPEAKER_00: But beyond that, right, beyond that function, it's communication.
21:54
SPEAKER_00: It's just keeping people in the know.
21:56
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I always say, like, I don't care.
21:59
SPEAKER_00: In any aspect of life, if my car's being fixed, whatever, it's going to run late.
22:02
SPEAKER_00: Or if I'm on an airplane, it's going to take off.
22:03
SPEAKER_00: Just let me know.
22:04
SPEAKER_00: Am I number three in line or am I number eight in line?
22:07
SPEAKER_00: That's fine.
22:07
SPEAKER_00: I can adjust accordingly.
22:09
SPEAKER_00: But, yeah,
22:09
SPEAKER_00: so letting people know what the hell is going on,
22:11
SPEAKER_00: I mean, Last week, Kennedy said, oh, the crisis is well-contained.
22:15
SPEAKER_00: And then the reality is, no, the cases are still going up.
22:17
SPEAKER_00: They can lag for weeks or even months.
22:19
SPEAKER_00: And they think there could be more than just the one cluster now coming out
22:23
SPEAKER_00: of Taylor Farms' DeMexico lettuce.
22:27
SPEAKER_00: And so to say that,
22:29
SPEAKER_00: you're just,
22:31
SPEAKER_00: it's almost like, I mean,
22:32
SPEAKER_00: it's worse,
22:32
SPEAKER_00: but it's almost like George Bush on the aircraft carry mission accomplished, right?
22:36
SPEAKER_00: And then 20 years later, we're trying to figure out how the hell to get out of the mess.
22:39
SPEAKER_00: It's a real travesty.
22:41
SPEAKER_00: And again, he didn't dirty the lettuce, but he sure as hell is making things worse.
22:44
SPEAKER_01: We do have an expert here.
22:45
SPEAKER_01: We're going to talk more about that.
22:47
SPEAKER_01: We'll talk more about this and reaction to the Fauci hearing and a bunch
22:51
SPEAKER_01: of other interesting topics.
22:52
SPEAKER_01: So why don't we throw to that right now?
22:56
SPEAKER_00: All right.
22:56
SPEAKER_00: Welcome back, everyone.
22:57
SPEAKER_00: Miles and I are really excited today to be joined by Dr. Dimitri Daskalakis.
23:01
SPEAKER_00: Dr. Daskalakis is a former director of the National Center for Immunization
23:05
SPEAKER_00: and Respiratory Diseases at the CDC and principal of Dr. Dimitri Consulting.
23:09
SPEAKER_00: He's an infectious disease physician and public health leader recognized
23:12
SPEAKER_00: for his expertise in infectious diseases and emergency response
23:15
SPEAKER_00: with leadership experience.
23:17
SPEAKER_00: In addition to the CDC at the New York Department of Health and Mental Hygiene,
23:20
SPEAKER_00: and in the White House National Impact Response.
23:22
SPEAKER_00: Dr. Daskalakis, welcome
23:24
SPEAKER_02: back to Paging America.
23:25
SPEAKER_02: Thank you, Dr. Davidson.
23:26
SPEAKER_02: Nice to see you, and hi, Miles.
23:27
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's good to have Miles on this one.
23:29
SPEAKER_00: Well, you know,
23:29
SPEAKER_00: we had some prepared questions,
23:30
SPEAKER_00: but like in the moment,
23:32
SPEAKER_00: just wanted to see if you caught any of the Dr.
23:35
SPEAKER_00: Fauci hearings in the Senate with Rand Paul and his cast of characters,
23:40
SPEAKER_00: and if you had any thoughts on what we all saw yesterday.
23:43
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I mean, I did catch some of it, didn't catch all of it.
23:49
SPEAKER_02: But I do think that having also been a target
23:52
SPEAKER_02: of Rand Paul's obsessive behaviors myself,
23:58
SPEAKER_02: I understand the circumstance that makes it hard for Dr.
24:03
SPEAKER_02: Fauci to speak in any way that could potentially incriminate him.
24:10
SPEAKER_02: Because if someone's actively looking,
24:12
SPEAKER_02: To incriminate you by your words, I feel like that is a really radioactive space.
24:17
SPEAKER_02: And so I saw that as an ongoing effort to pull down science, to discredit experts.
24:25
SPEAKER_02: And I often like to say it's really easy to judge an emergency response when you're
24:31
SPEAKER_02: in the passenger seat.
24:33
SPEAKER_02: But I would invite Senator Paul to go into the driver's seat of such a thing.
24:39
SPEAKER_02: He is a physician.
24:40
SPEAKER_02: And physicians do run emergency responses in public health.
24:45
SPEAKER_02: And so I think it is one thing to a Monday morning quarterback
24:49
SPEAKER_02: and quite another thing to live it primarily.
24:51
SPEAKER_02: You know,
24:53
SPEAKER_02: I count Dr.
24:54
SPEAKER_02: Fauci among like You know,
24:55
SPEAKER_02: not a hero,
24:56
SPEAKER_02: I think he's a great guy,
24:58
SPEAKER_02: but as a mentor because he has sort of,
25:01
SPEAKER_02: I have sought his advice in my career and many of my mentors had been trained
25:06
SPEAKER_02: by him.
25:06
SPEAKER_02: And so I definitely do think that some hubris Which is definitely demonstrated
25:12
SPEAKER_02: in his personal journal, is understandable because he's human.
25:18
SPEAKER_02: And that does not eclipse in any way the millions of lives
25:21
SPEAKER_02: that he has personally saved,
25:23
SPEAKER_02: whether it be through work domestically or Or internationally with PEPFAR,
25:28
SPEAKER_02: or for the fact that he's trained so many of the infectious disease leaders in
25:31
SPEAKER_02: the country that we can probably,
25:33
SPEAKER_02: you know,
25:33
SPEAKER_02: McDonald style,
25:35
SPEAKER_02: say that he has saved billions and billions of lives because of the fact
25:38
SPEAKER_02: that he has mentored people into becoming experts in public health
25:42
SPEAKER_02: and infectious diseases.
25:43
SPEAKER_02: So you need to cut a guy a break for actually like being in the moment
25:49
SPEAKER_02: and doing what you have to do and being impressed that Bono said something nice
25:53
SPEAKER_02: about you.
25:54
SPEAKER_02: I would also be impressed.
25:55
SPEAKER_02: I mean, and also remember,
25:57
SPEAKER_02: like a lot of the criticism is coming from people who I would describe clinically
26:01
SPEAKER_02: as narcissists.
26:02
SPEAKER_02: So I feel like the glass house is a glass house.
26:05
SPEAKER_02: And so careful when you throw stones because,
26:07
SPEAKER_02: you know, I don't see Dr. Fauci creating AI videos of himself wrestling people.
26:13
SPEAKER_00: So one of the best takes I saw was they said in a room full of people
26:17
SPEAKER_00: who stand up every day, look in the mirror and say, good morning, Mr. President.
26:20
SPEAKER_00: That's really kind of rich.
26:21
SPEAKER_00: Like, I mean, this guy has an ego, right?
26:23
SPEAKER_02: You know, I'm going to tell you like one of my best Dr. Fauci stories.
26:28
SPEAKER_02: And it's something that I think he said to other people is when I started at
26:31
SPEAKER_02: the M-Pox in the monkeypox response,
26:34
SPEAKER_02: M-Pox response at the White House, um,
26:37
SPEAKER_02: I spoke to him and he's like, listen,
26:39
SPEAKER_02: you need to walk in under that west wing awning as if there will be the last time
26:43
SPEAKER_02: that you're walking in that door because you have to go in there and say hard things
26:47
SPEAKER_02: and not what people want to hear.
26:49
SPEAKER_02: And so, newsflash, he's human, and newsflash, he did that with the best evidence that he has.
26:55
SPEAKER_02: So this isn't hero worship, this is just a reality.
26:57
SPEAKER_02: I have been in a micro version in his situation, and it's hard.
27:02
SPEAKER_02: And so, get out of the back seat, y'all.
27:05
SPEAKER_02: Come to the front seat if you want to see what it's like.
27:08
SPEAKER_01: One of the things that really struck me was how they, Dr.
27:11
SPEAKER_01: Fauci seems to be held to a standard that if he said,
27:14
SPEAKER_01: Anything wrong at any time in a global pandemic,
27:18
SPEAKER_01: one of the most complicated situations with the most variables that there could be,
27:22
SPEAKER_01: then it discredits all the work that he does.
27:27
SPEAKER_01: Versus the people that were doing the questioning,
27:29
SPEAKER_01: particularly Moreno's questioning was
27:32
SPEAKER_01: gross after watching the hearing yesterday.
27:35
SPEAKER_01: But these guys, they're wrong all the time.
27:38
SPEAKER_01: They're approving Kennedy.
27:41
SPEAKER_01: Who's saying all manner of quackery.
27:44
SPEAKER_01: And it's just like, if they get one or two things right, we lift it up.
27:49
SPEAKER_01: It reads like such an incredible double standard.
27:51
SPEAKER_01: I mean, double shocker.
27:53
SPEAKER_02: I mean, that's the newsflash.
27:55
SPEAKER_02: I love...
27:57
SPEAKER_02: Dr. Fauci more for being human.
27:59
SPEAKER_02: I often saw him as not this more iconic infectious disease doctor,
28:07
SPEAKER_02: but this is a human and he has human feelings.
28:11
SPEAKER_02: And I think that that just makes him more of a good person,
28:17
SPEAKER_02: even though he's been in this challenging circumstance.
28:19
SPEAKER_02: And again, these people have been working in mis- and disinformation the entire time.
28:24
SPEAKER_02: And so calling him a liar or a narcissist is kind of doublespeak.
28:32
SPEAKER_01: One more thing I wanted to zero in on from the hearing.
28:36
SPEAKER_01: Moreno from Ohio had this
28:39
SPEAKER_02: technique that he was using over and over and over again
28:41
SPEAKER_02: where he was,
28:42
SPEAKER_01: and some of them didn't seem particularly true.
28:45
SPEAKER_01: I was trying to find instances of them,
28:47
SPEAKER_01: but he would find instances of sort of extraordinary events that he would try
28:53
SPEAKER_01: to cherry pick out of like all the events that could have happened in America during
28:56
SPEAKER_01: the pandemic.
28:57
SPEAKER_01: And he would find these instances of extraordinary events and try to paint Try
29:02
SPEAKER_01: to use them like they were trends or like they were something
29:06
SPEAKER_01: that everyone experienced when I think it was...
29:09
SPEAKER_01: They were such fantastical tales that I bet very few people experienced them.
29:14
SPEAKER_01: And it did strike me that it was a trap for Fauci.
29:19
SPEAKER_01: That the whole thing was set up as a trap and a little bit of theater.
29:24
SPEAKER_01: A little bit of theater.
29:25
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, not a lot of theater.
29:27
SPEAKER_01: Sorry, I don't want to diminish it.
29:27
SPEAKER_01: It was like total theater.
29:29
SPEAKER_02: Effectively, again, let's go into the oversight wagon.
29:35
SPEAKER_02: Certain members of HHS have stood in front of these committees and have lied.
29:40
SPEAKER_02: And the oversight is nil.
29:43
SPEAKER_02: This is all about retribution.
29:48
SPEAKER_02: The mission of so many of these folks is to prove that they weren't wrong.
29:55
SPEAKER_02: In a world where everyone is looked at as I'm going to quote one of my mentors.
30:03
SPEAKER_02: There's no such thing as a perfect white hat.
30:05
SPEAKER_02: There is some gray there.
30:07
SPEAKER_02: Not everybody is a white hat versus a black hat at the rodeo.
30:10
SPEAKER_02: They're gradations,
30:11
SPEAKER_02: but I feel like Dr.
30:13
SPEAKER_02: Fauci's hat is a lot closer to white than some of the people
30:16
SPEAKER_02: that were questioning him.
30:17
SPEAKER_02: Sure.
30:18
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
30:19
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
30:20
SPEAKER_00: I mean, and so we got to witness that,
30:22
SPEAKER_00: but boy,
30:23
SPEAKER_00: we've witnessed, since we had you last on, so much coming out of your former agency.
30:27
SPEAKER_00: The CDC hasn't had a permanent director since your colleague, Dr.
30:30
SPEAKER_00: Susan Menares, was fired in August of last year, now on her second acting director.
30:35
SPEAKER_00: How do you think that lack of permanent leadership has impacted the agency's ability
30:40
SPEAKER_00: to function, and how do you think it impacts the people who are working?
30:42
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, so imagine if you were in a company and the board of directors never picked a CEO.
30:47
SPEAKER_02: It means that they don't really value your company.
30:50
SPEAKER_02: Let's put it in terms that people understand outside of the agency.
30:52
SPEAKER_02: So if you're sitting there,
30:54
SPEAKER_02: and also,
30:54
SPEAKER_02: by the way, all of your higher middle management leaders are all acting people.
30:59
SPEAKER_02: They're not hiring new people.
31:02
SPEAKER_02: Seemingly, they tried to hire a couple of center directors.
31:05
SPEAKER_02: And newsflash, no one applied because what a terrible job.
31:10
SPEAKER_02: So I think that that's like the reality that it feels like,
31:13
SPEAKER_02: you know, A,
31:14
SPEAKER_02: the place is a hijacked plane,
31:16
SPEAKER_02: continues to be hijacked,
31:18
SPEAKER_02: B, by not Having a permanent director, it feels as if they are not valued.
31:24
SPEAKER_02: And C, you can't plan, nor can you have strategy if there's no one there driving it.
31:31
SPEAKER_02: And Jay Bhattacharya, I'm sure, has great capacity, but NIH and CDC are kind of both tanking.
31:37
SPEAKER_02: So neither of them are going very well.
31:40
SPEAKER_02: So I think that it really implies the issue.
31:43
SPEAKER_00: We talked to you in October.
31:44
SPEAKER_00: Do you think anything has improved since last fall, since we last talked?
31:48
SPEAKER_00: Is anything going in a direction we can trust or be proud of?
31:53
SPEAKER_00: It's okay.
31:54
SPEAKER_00: Not a trick question.
31:55
SPEAKER_02: I've got to say,
31:57
SPEAKER_02: the thing that is still to be proud of is that you have folks in there
32:01
SPEAKER_02: who are really excellent scientists,
32:05
SPEAKER_02: who are civil servants, who are hanging in there.
32:09
SPEAKER_02: You're not seeing it,
32:10
SPEAKER_02: but they're really working to maintain the health of the country and the areas
32:15
SPEAKER_02: that they can.
32:16
SPEAKER_02: But I can tell you,
32:17
SPEAKER_02: and there's more stuff coming where they're just not at the table for any of
32:22
SPEAKER_02: the most important decisions.
32:23
SPEAKER_02: I think they're having some issue with their ability to stay there because
32:30
SPEAKER_02: if you're just doing work that no one cares about,
32:33
SPEAKER_02: normal human reaction is, I can't do this forever.
32:36
SPEAKER_02: I think that they're stabilized from the perspective of a lot of what
32:41
SPEAKER_02: the internal stuff is,
32:43
SPEAKER_02: but I do think that they're still living in a world where they're undervalued or,
32:48
SPEAKER_02: frankly, actively devalued.
32:50
SPEAKER_01: I think about this a lot, whether I would have the...
32:53
SPEAKER_01: If I was a public health practitioner and I was at the CDC,
32:56
SPEAKER_01: and maybe my department or my area of expertise hadn't been totally demolished
33:01
SPEAKER_01: by Bobby Kennedy's weird pursuits,
33:04
SPEAKER_01: and I was still able to do something Some of my work is the endurance it would take
33:08
SPEAKER_01: to say,
33:10
SPEAKER_01: I'm going to ride this out and I'm going to be one of the people that helps rebuild
33:13
SPEAKER_01: after the fact.
33:14
SPEAKER_01: I think that person's making a heroic act that's filled with tedium.
33:19
SPEAKER_01: Sometimes heroism is also tedious.
33:23
SPEAKER_01: It's an extraordinary effort.
33:24
SPEAKER_01: If anyone's listening to this and doing that, thank you.
33:29
SPEAKER_01: They're all doing it.
33:31
SPEAKER_02: I mean, the folks who are there are really trying to steady the ship.
33:34
SPEAKER_02: And also,
33:35
SPEAKER_02: I say very frequently,
33:37
SPEAKER_02: the moment that I left had to do with the moment
33:39
SPEAKER_02: that I could no longer mitigate their bad decisions because of
33:43
SPEAKER_02: the circumstance they created.
33:44
SPEAKER_02: So as long as you're able to mitigate what's happening,
33:47
SPEAKER_02: I feel like there's definitely reason to stay.
33:51
SPEAKER_02: And so I don't I don't see them as complicit.
33:55
SPEAKER_02: I don't see them as like, oh,
33:55
SPEAKER_02: they're inside a weaponized CDC because they're trying to,
34:00
SPEAKER_02: as they weaponize it,
34:01
SPEAKER_02: they try to mitigate it to make it less of impact on real people so
34:05
SPEAKER_02: that there's something that can be built upon.
34:07
SPEAKER_02: I won't say rebuild because I don't think we should rebuild.
34:09
SPEAKER_02: I think we should build new.
34:10
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I get that.
34:12
SPEAKER_02: But yeah, so they're, I think, hanging on, but by a strain.
34:16
SPEAKER_00: Well, boy,
34:17
SPEAKER_00: in light of that,
34:17
SPEAKER_00: this week as we're talking and these people are practicing their heroic,
34:22
SPEAKER_00: tedious heroism,
34:23
SPEAKER_00: whatever you want to call it,
34:24
SPEAKER_00: we hit two tragic public health milestones this week with
34:27
SPEAKER_00: the cyclospora outbreak being the worst in U.S.
34:30
SPEAKER_00: history and then the number of annual measles cases, the highest in 35 years.
34:35
SPEAKER_00: A little over halfway through the year.
34:36
SPEAKER_00: So first,
34:37
SPEAKER_00: with the measles this year,
34:40
SPEAKER_00: how much can we lay this at the feet of Trump or RFK Jr. or leadership?
34:45
SPEAKER_02: I think, first of all, really important to not make things up, right?
34:49
SPEAKER_02: The rates of measles immunization has been going down for years
34:55
SPEAKER_02: and more consistently after the pandemic.
34:59
SPEAKER_02: However,
35:00
SPEAKER_02: the work of CDC and public health had been to try to really establish and earn
35:08
SPEAKER_02: the trust to be able to boost that up.
35:11
SPEAKER_02: Okay, well, goodbye.
35:13
SPEAKER_02: So that work to try to make it better has been demolished by these people
35:20
SPEAKER_02: who are looking to potentially further constrain the vaccine.
35:28
SPEAKER_02: We're okay
35:33
SPEAKER_02: with
35:37
SPEAKER_02: FDA moving forward peptides with no data to inject into people some
35:44
SPEAKER_02: of the peptides which could potentially be growth factors for cancer,
35:49
SPEAKER_02: but we're not okay with immunizing children against diseases that could kill them.
35:54
SPEAKER_02: The problem is that Another one of my mentors in public health says,
36:00
SPEAKER_02: when you don't know what you're doing, at least be consistent.
36:06
SPEAKER_02: It's a really good piece of public health.
36:09
SPEAKER_02: Full ambiguity and you don't know what to do.
36:12
SPEAKER_02: The best you can do is at least be internally consistent
36:15
SPEAKER_02: so you're not chasing your own tail and looking crazy.
36:18
SPEAKER_02: I think that the measles situation When you think about measles elimination,
36:23
SPEAKER_02: there are three things that allow you to keep measles elimination.
36:26
SPEAKER_02: One, a public health system that's able to respond to outbreaks.
36:29
SPEAKER_02: Two, an environment that supports high levels of vaccination.
36:33
SPEAKER_02: And three,
36:34
SPEAKER_02: demonstrating that you don't have continuous transmission of measles in the country
36:38
SPEAKER_02: for more than 12 months.
36:39
SPEAKER_02: So we probably lost on the 12 months now for sure,
36:42
SPEAKER_02: given like the Utah outbreak and sort of the story there.
36:45
SPEAKER_02: Is this Secretary of Health Trying to create an ecosystem where we're going
36:49
SPEAKER_02: to have higher vaccination rates.
36:51
SPEAKER_02: And by dismantling public health nationally and locally,
36:55
SPEAKER_02: are we creating a system that's able to respond nimbly to measles?
36:58
SPEAKER_02: So welcome to not having elimination, whether there's transmission for 12 months or not.
37:04
SPEAKER_02: We have an F in how the public health leadership is not supporting
37:10
SPEAKER_02: the public health infrastructure to do its job.
37:14
SPEAKER_01: The amount of human beings that talk to me that I would not have expected
37:18
SPEAKER_01: that are talking to me about peptides or like experimenting with
37:22
SPEAKER_01: like gray market,
37:23
SPEAKER_00: Chinese,
37:23
SPEAKER_00: possibly carcinogenic
37:25
SPEAKER_01: peptides is like, it's just actually pretty remarkable.
37:27
SPEAKER_01: Pretty like otherwise responsible people I know are like,
37:31
SPEAKER_01: do we have any insight into,
37:33
SPEAKER_01: it seemed like that process was Not the normal process by any stretch.
37:38
SPEAKER_02: Do you need insight into like how this happens?
37:41
SPEAKER_02: I mean, like,
37:42
SPEAKER_02: you know,
37:42
SPEAKER_02: I'm not at the FDA,
37:43
SPEAKER_02: but I mean,
37:44
SPEAKER_02: seemingly there was a pretty good amount of pushback by FDA scientists,
37:47
SPEAKER_02: but the advisory committee that's been created by
37:50
SPEAKER_02: the current leadership is conflicted because they produce peptides.
37:53
SPEAKER_02: I mean, like what you're seeing,
37:54
SPEAKER_02: this whole story around like the things that are the priorities
37:59
SPEAKER_02: of this health secretary is really closely tied to his conflicts of interest.
38:05
SPEAKER_02: And so this is what this is about.
38:08
SPEAKER_02: So I think you're seeing permissive environments for peptides with not great data,
38:14
SPEAKER_02: despite scientists saying this isn't a great idea and
38:17
SPEAKER_02: an advisory committee that's stacked in the favor of getting them out there.
38:21
SPEAKER_02: I mean, I don't know for a fact,
38:23
SPEAKER_02: but I betcha that if you look at the Maha patent,
38:26
SPEAKER_02: that it probably has something about peptides in it.
38:28
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
38:29
SPEAKER_00: Talk about a place for oversight, right?
38:31
SPEAKER_00: As you were talking about earlier.
38:34
SPEAKER_02: I've read parts of the patent.
38:35
SPEAKER_02: I'm just assuming, again,
38:37
SPEAKER_02: this is not factual information,
38:40
SPEAKER_02: but if they're internally consistent with what they've done,
38:43
SPEAKER_02: it always seems And so, you know, getting peptides on the market.
38:49
SPEAKER_02: And again, I have the same thing.
38:50
SPEAKER_02: I have friends who are like, oh, this is great.
38:52
SPEAKER_02: I get muscles and I can get tan and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, which is, it is what it is.
38:57
SPEAKER_02: And, you know,
38:57
SPEAKER_02: people are able to make these decisions,
38:58
SPEAKER_02: but like it is after all the responsibility of the regulatory component
39:04
SPEAKER_02: of our government to make sure that things
39:07
SPEAKER_02: that are formally marketed are actually safe and are adequately studied.
39:12
SPEAKER_02: So gray market, people are always going to do what they're going to do.
39:15
SPEAKER_02: But getting this weird vote of confidence from lofty heights,
39:20
SPEAKER_02: even if you know that the person is otherwise a mess or a liar,
39:25
SPEAKER_02: it still subconsciously signals to you that something's okay.
39:29
SPEAKER_02: I mean, when Macari left, Left FDA.
39:33
SPEAKER_02: He did some interview with, I think, a health magazine.
39:37
SPEAKER_02: And he goes, peptides are fine.
39:38
SPEAKER_02: They're just proteins.
39:39
SPEAKER_02: We eat proteins and we inject them.
39:41
SPEAKER_02: Dot, dot, dot.
39:42
SPEAKER_02: MRNA vaccines are just mRNA and our body makes mRNA.
39:46
SPEAKER_02: Seemingly, there's a problem with that.
39:48
SPEAKER_02: So it's like, at least be consistent, y'all.
39:50
SPEAKER_00: Anything we eat, we can inject for
39:52
SPEAKER_02: Dr. McCarty.
39:54
SPEAKER_00: Just stick some avocado in a syringe and slam it in, baby.
39:58
SPEAKER_02: And these are smart people, Demetri.
39:59
SPEAKER_02: These are smart people, right?
40:00
SPEAKER_02: Oh, wait.
40:01
SPEAKER_02: You know, preons,
40:02
SPEAKER_02: which are proteins that function, like,
40:06
SPEAKER_02: they give you, like,
40:07
SPEAKER_02: you know, mad cow disease and all that stuff, they're also proteins that we eat.
40:12
SPEAKER_02: And they're harmful.
40:13
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
40:14
SPEAKER_02: So it's like this, like, where in the world do you say you can inject a protein?
40:19
SPEAKER_02: It's just a protein.
40:20
SPEAKER_02: Like, no.
40:22
SPEAKER_02: Like, not true.
40:24
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
40:24
SPEAKER_00: And then, I mean,
40:25
SPEAKER_00: so we have been talking about it for longer
40:28
SPEAKER_00: than I think anyone would ever think explosive diarrhea,
40:30
SPEAKER_00: but cyclospora is, I mean, I'm in Michigan and like 10,000 cases now in Michigan.
40:35
SPEAKER_00: And I've seen people clinically and like,
40:37
SPEAKER_00: it's mostly like benign in a sense that you're probably not going to die from it,
40:41
SPEAKER_00: but it is not benign when it comes to sitting on the toilet for a week straight,
40:45
SPEAKER_00: missing work.
40:46
SPEAKER_00: I mean, it is rough.
40:47
SPEAKER_00: Is there something the CDC could have done?
40:50
SPEAKER_02: Immunocompromised people.
40:52
SPEAKER_02: I do HIV care.
40:53
SPEAKER_02: Psychospora used to be an opportunistic infection that we would see in the 90s.
40:56
SPEAKER_02: And so if you got it in the right person, they may die.
40:59
SPEAKER_02: You know,
40:59
SPEAKER_02: I do think that like FDA and CDC,
41:01
SPEAKER_02: like this one's like a kind of more ambiguous one, right?
41:04
SPEAKER_02: Like this is a big outbreak and these outbreaks are hard.
41:07
SPEAKER_02: And so identifying what the source is, is hard.
41:11
SPEAKER_02: Forget that part.
41:12
SPEAKER_02: Communication has sucked.
41:16
SPEAKER_02: When I was at CDC,
41:18
SPEAKER_02: we would have at minimum a weekly press availability to be able
41:23
SPEAKER_02: to tell people what's going on.
41:24
SPEAKER_02: I don't think that they've done press on this for about three weeks.
41:28
SPEAKER_02: So God bless the scientists.
41:30
SPEAKER_02: They're working hard,
41:31
SPEAKER_02: good on the FDA,
41:32
SPEAKER_02: the scientists trying to identify the source and moving quickly,
41:35
SPEAKER_02: as quickly as they can.
41:36
SPEAKER_02: It is a hard thing to do.
41:38
SPEAKER_02: Everybody is talking about it.
41:40
SPEAKER_02: And there's a lot of like myth and confusion in the media because of the silence
41:45
SPEAKER_02: from CDC and FDA.
41:48
SPEAKER_02: If they ponied up and said something, it would go better.
41:52
SPEAKER_02: But because those communications people at CDC,
41:55
SPEAKER_02: who I can tell you,
41:56
SPEAKER_02: and I hope they're listening,
41:58
SPEAKER_02: the political-appointed communications folks at CDC and HHS are horrible.
42:04
SPEAKER_02: And it is their fault that we're not hearing the communication that we need on anything.
42:11
SPEAKER_02: Silenced.
42:12
SPEAKER_00: It is complicit.
42:13
SPEAKER_00: Public health, when it works, should be behind the scenes.
42:15
SPEAKER_00: You shouldn't hear about it, right?
42:16
SPEAKER_00: You should just be able to eat what you eat and not hear about it.
42:19
SPEAKER_00: When there's an outbreak,
42:20
SPEAKER_00: when there's a crisis,
42:21
SPEAKER_00: they need to flip the switch and you need to hear from them all the time.
42:24
SPEAKER_02: I disagree.
42:25
SPEAKER_02: Oh, go ahead, yeah.
42:27
SPEAKER_02: So this is what got us into the trouble, right?
42:30
SPEAKER_02: So public health judifully making sure everything is okay
42:34
SPEAKER_02: and no one knowing what they do is what got us in trouble.
42:36
SPEAKER_02: So I think that the new public health needs to be very clear about its return
42:40
SPEAKER_02: on investment and the benefit it provides to people.
42:44
SPEAKER_02: And I agree with you in an outbreak,
42:47
SPEAKER_02: if you're going at like level five for normal, you need level 10 for communication.
42:52
SPEAKER_02: So, you know, I find this like, you know, not okay for that or Ebola.
42:58
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I wanted to ask you about Ebola because we had Dr.
43:00
SPEAKER_00: Craig Spencer on a few, like a month ago or so.
43:02
SPEAKER_00: And, you know, Craig, I'm sure.
43:04
SPEAKER_00: And, you know,
43:05
SPEAKER_00: he got U.S.
43:07
SPEAKER_00: famous back when he came back with Ebola,
43:08
SPEAKER_00: but then has done a lot of work, as I'm sure you have as well.
43:11
SPEAKER_00: And I think I saw you signed on to a letter kind of telling
43:14
SPEAKER_00: the administration like their policy of not repatriating exposed patients
43:19
SPEAKER_00: or individuals was the wrong path.
43:21
SPEAKER_00: I'd love to hear your thoughts on that.
43:23
SPEAKER_02: I think that this is less of an issue of domestic and more of an issue of
43:28
SPEAKER_02: the bulldozer that they took to global health.
43:31
SPEAKER_02: So people are going to have died because of what they've done to PEPFAR.
43:35
SPEAKER_02: But when I was doing the national MPOX response,
43:39
SPEAKER_02: we were leveraging PEPFAR to be able to do better work for MPOX.
43:44
SPEAKER_02: When you get rid of USAID and you get rid of PEPFAR,
43:47
SPEAKER_02: what happens is you have no ground truth of what's happening.
43:52
SPEAKER_02: When I was at CDC in December,
43:55
SPEAKER_02: we had some mysterious infection that was hitting people in the Democratic Republic
44:01
SPEAKER_02: of Congo.
44:02
SPEAKER_02: We heard about it when there were about 30 infections.
44:05
SPEAKER_02: We then worked with USAID to accelerate testing,
44:08
SPEAKER_02: and we were able to figure out that it was malaria and not Ebola.
44:12
SPEAKER_02: But this festered because no one's monitoring that house anymore
44:17
SPEAKER_02: because they got rid of everybody.
44:19
SPEAKER_02: So when you think of this,
44:21
SPEAKER_02: think of it as a really clear example of why we need
44:26
SPEAKER_02: to have Really rational global health policy that both does the good work
44:34
SPEAKER_02: of HIV treatment and prevention,
44:36
SPEAKER_02: but also realizing that that's what keeps the system warm if you have to flex
44:41
SPEAKER_02: to be able to deal with something like Ebola.
44:43
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure.
44:45
SPEAKER_00: You alluded to this a little bit.
44:46
SPEAKER_00: I appreciate your pushback on the public health being silent.
44:48
SPEAKER_00: I guess I would say public health in general has maybe thought of itself that way,
44:53
SPEAKER_00: and probably that has been a problem.
44:55
SPEAKER_00: But now that you've had about a year away from the CDC,
44:57
SPEAKER_00: some time to reflect,
44:59
SPEAKER_00: what are your thoughts on how CDC, HHS,
45:01
SPEAKER_00: the public health infrastructure is either rebuilt or fixed
45:05
SPEAKER_00: or whatever term you want to use after this group is gone?
45:09
SPEAKER_02: This is not about rebuilding.
45:10
SPEAKER_02: It needs to be about reimagining.
45:12
SPEAKER_02: Because the circumstance that we're in now is because of the way that
45:16
SPEAKER_02: the system was trained and built in the past.
45:18
SPEAKER_02: And so I think that we need to think about this.
45:23
SPEAKER_02: We've licked our wounds.
45:24
SPEAKER_02: We know that they're terrible.
45:25
SPEAKER_02: Moving on.
45:26
SPEAKER_02: And so the next thing is to start figuring out the plan.
45:29
SPEAKER_02: For like what it needs to look like and frankly,
45:32
SPEAKER_02: to take advantage of what they've destroyed because,
45:35
SPEAKER_02: you know,
45:35
SPEAKER_02: not to sound like,
45:36
SPEAKER_02: not to sound like,
45:37
SPEAKER_02: like some kind of, uh, of,
45:40
SPEAKER_02: you know,
45:40
SPEAKER_02: religion major in college,
45:41
SPEAKER_02: which I was,
45:42
SPEAKER_02: but like, like in destruction, there is like amazing capacity for creation.
45:46
SPEAKER_02: Right.
45:47
SPEAKER_02: So the things that they got rid of, maybe it's okay.
45:50
SPEAKER_02: Um, that we like that we need to sort of reboot and start from there.
45:53
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
45:54
SPEAKER_00: I mean, before we finish up,
45:56
SPEAKER_00: just wondering what you're up to these days and how is it going with Dr.
46:00
SPEAKER_00: Dimitri Consulting, LLC?
46:01
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, no, that's going great.
46:03
SPEAKER_00: And I'm,
46:03
SPEAKER_00: you know,
46:03
SPEAKER_02: working clinically, seeing patients in New York City, which has been wonderful.
46:09
SPEAKER_02: So, you know,
46:09
SPEAKER_02: I think and get to sort of like be in the environment of public health
46:15
SPEAKER_02: in New York City, which is like just so much fun.
46:17
SPEAKER_02: So, yeah, I think it's going great.
46:19
SPEAKER_02: I am real happy to be near the ground because I also get to sort
46:24
SPEAKER_02: of ground truth some of the things that we're hearing from from up above.
46:29
SPEAKER_02: So it's been great.
46:31
SPEAKER_02: I'm so happy.
46:31
SPEAKER_00: Thank you for your expertise and your perspective.
46:35
SPEAKER_00: And as always, yeah, thanks for being here.
46:37
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, thank you.
46:39
SPEAKER_01: Great interview, Rob.
46:40
SPEAKER_01: Always learn so much when we talk to Dr. Daskalakis, and I hope we get to do it again.
46:44
SPEAKER_01: Today's episode was written by Chris Savage, Dr.
46:46
SPEAKER_01: Rob Davidson, and me, Miles Baker.
46:48
SPEAKER_01: It was produced by Peter Ogburn and Chris Savage.
46:50
SPEAKER_01: It was edited by Peter Ogburn and April Stewie.
46:53
SPEAKER_01: Our music is by Annette Summers.
46:54
SPEAKER_01: We are trying to grow our YouTube audience so we are able to communicate
46:57
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46:59
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47:21
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47:23
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47:29
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47:32
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47:33
SPEAKER_01: Join the fight for better American healthcare by becoming a member of the Committee
47:36
SPEAKER_01: to Protect Healthcare.
47:37
SPEAKER_01: You can visit the committee at www.committetoprotect.org to learn more.
47:42
SPEAKER_01: And Dr. Davidson, from here, I think you're headed out to rally at the Michigan Capitol.
47:48
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
47:48
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
47:49
SPEAKER_00: And then next week, I'm going to be with you in Chicago in studio.
47:52
SPEAKER_00: So we're going to see how that works.
47:54
SPEAKER_00: We're going to see how that works.
47:55
SPEAKER_01: But I look forward to seeing you there.
47:57
SPEAKER_01: Have a good week.
47:57
SPEAKER_01: You as well.
47:58
SPEAKER_01: Have a good rally.
47:58
SPEAKER_00: Cheers, everyone.
47:59
SPEAKER_00: Thanks for listening.