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WTH Is Going on with the COVID Vaccines? Dr. Scott Gottlieb with Everything You Need to Know About the End of the COVID Road

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WTH Is Going on with the COVID Vaccines? Dr. Scott Gottlieb with Everything You Need to Know About the End of the COVID Road WTH is going on with the COVID vaccines? Dr. Scott Gottlieb with everything you need to know about the end of the COVID road Episode #80 | November 23, 2020 | Danielle Pletka, Marc Thiessen, and Dr. Scott Gottlieb Danielle Pletka: Hi, I'm Danielle Pletka. Marc Thiessen: And I'm Marc Thiessen. Danielle Pletka: Welcome to our podcast, "What the Hell Is Going On?" Marc, what the hell this week? Marc Thiessen: Well, have you finished your sandwich yet? Are you ready for the podcast now, Dany? Danielle Pletka: Yes, I'm ready for the podcast now, honestly. Basically, our listeners can just feel like they've moved into a really, really small house in which we've been living together alone for the last eight months. Marc Thiessen: While you finish your sandwich, I'll tell you what the hell's going on. What the hell is going on is both the best news and the worst news about the pandemic coming at once. We are entering or are in quite frankly, the worst phase of the pandemic yet. More hospitalizations, more viral spread, more people dying than at any point since the virus hit our shores. We're going to what Joe Biden has called a "dark winter," and it is very dark. But the good news is that there is a light at the end of the tunnel that as we get through this storm, we have now not one but two vaccines, one from Pfizer and one from Moderna, close behind, that have been proven to be 95% effective. Marc Thiessen: We have Operation Warp Speed, the Trump administration initiative that has purchased in advance hundreds of millions of doses of each of these vaccines. We have an Army General who is in charge of logistics in terms of distributing these vaccines and making sure they get to people. So, we're at a point now where in the next couple of weeks, we will have FDA approval for the first of those vaccines, hopefully FDA approval of the second one soon. We're weeks away from people getting immunized from this virus. It's an unprecedented achievement in the history of public health. Danielle Pletka: It is but it's also an unprecedented challenge. I mean, when we think about the backs and the forths and the forths and the backs and the information, the misinformation, the theories, the counter theories, it's been an exhausting and confusing year. I never doubted the ability of the United States of America to not 2 just surmount this, but to innovate in ways that others would not first and better, because we are still the freest, best, most innovative country in the world. But it's been hell. There are a lot of lessons learned that I hope we're really going to be able to take to heart in the coming years. Marc Thiessen: Oh, no doubt. I mean, through all of that, let's keep in mind that this is quite literally the greatest public health achievement in human history. The previous record for developing a vaccine for a novel virus was five years. So, we've done it in a matter of months, and not just one, but two that are proven. There's a Johnson & Johnson vaccine that's close behind. The Trump administration invested about $10 billion in I think 10 vaccine candidates. Some of those are still in development, and we're coming behind. I know this has been a very hard year. It's going to get worse before it gets better, but it's going to get better. Marc Thiessen: We're going to be able to vaccinate starting in December, the elderly population, which is the most vulnerable population. Soon after that, we're going to be able to vaccinate healthcare workers and people on the front lines. You don't have to vaccinate the entire population, because most people don't have bad outcomes from COVID. It's really a smaller cohort of people. Once you vaccinate those people, you've basically lifted the burden of the virus from society. Marc Thiessen: Why are we shutting down schools and kids go to school? It's not because we're afraid and we're trying to protect the children. It's because the teachers' unions are upset, because the teachers might get sick, and they might get it from the kids. Kids don't have bad outcomes. I think there's only 18 kids in the whole city of New York that have died from COVID. So, if you can get teachers vaccinated, then we go back to school and there's no problem. Danielle Pletka: I mean, there are kids who have had very, very serious outcomes, but you're right. Marc Thiessen: The reason we shut down the schools in spring was because most viruses attack kids first, but this one, it's actually the opposite. It's the elderly and the older people who are more vulnerable. So, the point is by next spring, it's not going to be over, but it's going to be pretty close to over. We're going to be heading of this horrible year of 2020 and all the disease burden. That's great news. America is just the best country in the face of the earth. Danielle Pletka: Well, I'm not going to disagree with you about that, because it is. But one thing I will say that will absolutely stay with me is the utterly reprehensible, disgusting, politicization of this whole thing that was so awful and so exhausting and so counterproductive in this year. I think there's probably blame to go around, but I still remember when I heard that it's only in red states that people are getting sick, because the governors just deserve it because they're so awful. It's unspeakable. We look back at ourselves and we think about ourselves as this amazing country that has done amazing things. That is really a low point for us. Do you agree or not? Marc Thiessen: I do agree. I thought you were going somewhere else with this. Usually, when you use disgusting and reprehensible, it's targeted at the 1600 Pennsylvania AMERICAN ENTERPRISE INSTITUTE | 1789 Massachusetts Ave, NW, Washington, DC 20036 | 202.862.5800 | aei.org 3 Avenue. So, I didn't know you're going the other way. Danielle Pletka: Well, that's a truism. Marc Thiessen: In modest defense of our country, keep in mind that there was a confluence of events happening and that this virus hit in the midst of an election year in the most hotly contested election in our memory, right? So, it was almost inevitable that this would be politicized. Marc Thiessen: I found just the constant refrain and blaming Donald Trump for the virus and for everything that's gone wrong. He's made his share of mistakes and the reluctance to support masking and some of the things he said about the virus just disappearing and all the rest of it. I don't defend any of that. I've criticized him in this podcast and my columns and all the rest of it. But a lot of the mistakes were made by the public health experts. They screwed up the testing for six weeks. They told us that there was nothing to worry about. Until mid-March, Dr. Fauci and all these people were out there saying, "Americans, don't change your lives. Nothing to worry about. This is not something that is going to affect most Americans." Marc Thiessen: Until all of a sudden, everybody set their hair on fire. Told us that masks don't work and not to wear masks. So, months later, when they decided masks do work, people didn't believe them. So, there was a lot of mistakes that went on that had nothing to do with him. And then also, the other thing that I found incredibly shameful was Harris and Biden both talking down the vaccine, because they knew that for all the mistakes that Donald Trump made, the vaccine is the solution. If he got credit for it, it would have hurt them enormously. Marc Thiessen: So, they started questioning whether the vaccine would be reliable, whether it would be safe. Now, you've got a population where a lot of people out there think, "Well, I don't know if I can trust this vaccine or not." I think deliberately pushed down that trust for political purposes, which I find shameful. Danielle Pletka: Yeah, look, I mean, I agree with you wholeheartedly about that. Listen, if we can get through this, we can figure out where we went wrong and where we went right. In the meantime, we still have a lot to learn. Danielle Pletka: We've got an amazing return guest who was gracious enough to find time to be with us today, Dr. Scott Gottlieb. He's a resident Fellow at AEI. He was the 23rd, Commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration. He has been working in public health as both a physician and as an entrepreneur for a very long time. He's on the Board of Pfizer. We should remind people of that, because of the vaccine, we're going to be talking a lot about Pfizer. Really one of the most astute, balanced analysts, and someone who I would listen to before almost any public health expert. So, without further ado, Scott. Marc Thiessen: Scott, welcome back to the podcast.
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