WTH is going on with life after vaccination? overly cautious approach

Episode #95 | March, 24, 2021 | Danielle Pletka, Marc Thiessen, and Dr. Marty Makary

Danielle Pletka: Hi, I'm Danielle Pletka.

Marc Thiessen: I'm Marc Thiessen.

Danielle Pletka: Welcome to our podcast, What the Hell Is Going On? Marc, what the hell is going on?

Marc Thiessen: What the hell is going on is the pandemic is coming to an end and the pandemic industrial complex doesn't want to let go. That's what's happening.

Danielle Pletka: I can tell that you're fond of this turn of phrase already, but I got to tell you, and I think a lot of people will understand this, there are a lot of good people out there who really, really just want Americans to be healthy and to recover. And there are no small percentage of people out there for whom this has become an almost insane religious experience in which the hand washing and the masking, and the distancing, and the isolation, are signs of your virtuosity and likely pathway to heaven.

Marc Thiessen: Look, the reality is we got three vaccines approved. Okay, we've got the Moderna, and the Pfizer vaccines, with just one dose, are more than like 93% effective in stopping you from getting the virus at all and 100% effective, practically, at stopping you from getting serious illness. These vaccines are going into people's arms. There is some increasing number of people who have natural immunity from having had the virus without even realizing they had the virus that is out there. And if you combine the vaccinated immunity with the recovering immunity, we're getting out of this pandemic. And there are people who have just become so attached to the power this pandemic gives them in controlling our lives and telling us what we can and cannot do.

Marc Thiessen: I mean, Joe Biden goes out and gives a speech and says, "We're going to have enough vaccines for every adult American by May. Starting May 1, every adult can get in line to get vaccinated. And by July 4th, maybe, if you're good, you can have a small barbecue in your backyard with a few friends." Are you kidding me? I mean, come on. The reality is we've got to get back to our lives. That's what the whole point of the vaccine was. How are you going to convince people to take the vaccine? Because there are people who are hesitant because it's new technology. People aren't familiar with it, who might not take it because if you don't give them the promise that you get your life back, then s like, why should

2 I take the risk if I can't have my life back?

Danielle Pletka: I think that's an element. I think that what we've tried to do on the podcast, as we've talked about this over the last year plus, when we've had Scott Gottlieb on, we've had others on, we had Moncef Slaoui, who was the Head of Operation Warp Speed, and I think the line we've tried to do together is there is virtue in moderation. In other words, what should you do? The least you can do is wear a mask. You and I both said it. The least you can do is wash your hands, stay away from other people, try not to infect them. But somehow this world of extremes has taken hold. And you see this, for example, in the fight that's gone on between Florida and California.

Danielle Pletka: So here we have Florida man, who does not do as much as perhaps he should. And then you have California man, who is the Kim Jong Un, Newsome of Covid reactions. Schools are still closed. Businesses closed.

Marc Thiessen: Beaches.

Danielle Pletka: Beaches, right? Beaches. I mean, who the hell, God don't get me started. So, and yet, Marc, you were looking at the differing outcomes in California and in Florida.

Marc Thiessen: Here's the AP story: Virus toll similar, despite governor's contrasting actions. Nearly a year after California Governor Gavin Newsome ordered the nation's first statewide shutdown because the coronavirus, masks remained mandated, indoor dining and outdoor activities are significantly eliminated. Disneyland remains closed. By contrast, Florida has no statewide restrictions. And despite the differing approaches, California and Florida have experienced almost identical outcomes in Covid-19 case rates.

Danielle Pletka: That just must be devastating to all of these corona saints. Because I can tell you, I was in Florida a couple of weeks ago, we were on the beach. People were sensible. People were wearing masks. I didn't see people in my hotel that weren't masked. People were not running up and kissing strangers. There was only one entrance to the beach so that they could take people in and make sure you weren't bringing booze with you of course coronavirus hasn't changed that.

Marc Thiessen: No Corona during corona.

Danielle Pletka: Exactly. But this goes to a larger question, and that is, how much agency you want people to have, and how much agency people believe philosophically should be handed over to the government. If you believe that the government should control every aspect of your life, what you say, what you do, who you look at, how you express yourself, where you go to school, where you live, and how much you hand over to them, then you're pretty good with the idea that they're telling you that you can't have Thanksgiving with your mom.

Marc Thiessen: Yeah.

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3 Danielle Pletka: If you're not that person, but you're still a sensible, careful person, you're starting to question what the hell is going on.

Marc Thiessen: Yep. And that's why you've tuned into this podcast. Look, the reality is we're not there yet, but we're really close to the end of this pandemic, or at least the end of the worst of this pandemic. And the interesting thing is, is that because we focused the early vaccinations on the elderly, the death rate is plummeting. So you've got all the pandemic industrial complex running around saying cases, cases, cases, and no, what we need to be looking at is the death rate, the hospitalization rate. And are people dying from this virus? Because at some point young people getting the virus, having asymptomatic virus, and not getting sick and not dying and not going to hospitals is not the same thing as when we had 15,000 people dying in nursing homes in New York state in the early stage of this virus. And at some point, we've got to be able to accept that Covid is going to be with us for a very long time. It's permanent. It's going to be part of our ecosystem, and we're going to have to learn to live with it.

Marc Thiessen: And we're not going to be living with it by not having indoor dining, by not letting our kids go to sports, by not being able to visit our grandparents and hug our grandparents. That's not living with the virus. That's living in fear of the virus. And we have vaccines that are incredibly effective. We are so blessed to be living in 2021 at the moment when science has been able to vanquish this thing through vaccine technology that was unthinkable even a few years ago, and it's giving us our lives back. We need to take our lives back.

Danielle Pletka: So, to talk about this, and again, to talk about it in an intelligent and measured way.

Marc Thiessen: Unlike what I just said.

Danielle Pletka: Usually I would say that. Look, you were okay. And you're exactly right. It's living with, not living in fear of, and that's the transition we have to make. Marty Makary has been writing about this in the pages of the Wall Street Journal. And he's going to join us to talk about how we can make a transition from fear to management. Martin, also known as Marty Makary is a surgeon, he's a best- selling author. He is a Professor of Public Health Policy at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. He's also a surgical oncologist and he practices at Johns Hopkins. He's consulted with the World Health Organization. He's an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine. In short, Marty is a pretty serious physician.

Marc Thiessen: He knows what the hell's going on. And he's going to tell us right now. Well, Marty, welcome to the podcast.

Dr. Marty Makar...: Great to be with you, Marc.

Marc Thiessen: It's great to be with you virtually. So, look, you had a great op-ed in the Wall Street Journal where the headline was Covid prescription? Get the vaccine, wait a month, return to normal. Why can't the CDC say that? And what are you recommending?

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4 Dr. Marty Makar...: I'm not sure Marc, how infection control and epidemiology specialists ran the world, or got to run the world right now. What do they know about poverty, and education, and public policy, and suicide, and substance abuse? So, what we have is a group of folks at the CDC in their own little tunnel, where they're only thinking about the virus transmitting, and our battle is not against just virus replication, it's against valuing human life. And so, what happened was when the CDC asks a bunch of infection control and epidemiology specialists, "Hey, what can you do after you get vaccinated?" Guess what? They tell you very little and they have 15 stipulations and conditions. And it's so confusing that basically the public is going to ignore it. People are going to do what they're going to do. And I can tell you as a doctor, you don't always want to just tell people what they can't do. You want to figure out what they're going to do and tell them how to do that safely.

Danielle Pletka: So, let's just talk a little bit about the course of this, because one of the things that I think you highlight in this piece, but also in several other op-eds you've written is the various dimensions of the disease, but also the fact that you think that more people have had it than realize it. And that goes a lot to the question of our ability to begin to reopen as well. So just talk a little bit about that from soup to nuts so people understand.

Dr. Marty Makar...: Well, thank you, and thank you for letting me talk about this. This is something I'm dying to talk about, and it's so hard on the brief soundbites of television. Immunity is not just vaccinated immunity, it's natural immunity from prior infection. Now, first of all, let me just say, vaccinated immunity appears to be more durable. Ten years from now that vaccinated immunity is going to be better than natural immunity. But in figuring out when we're going to hit herd immunity, we've got to factor in natural immunity and the medical establishment has been dismissive of it. Fauci has basically been so dismissive of it that his path to herd immunity is only through vaccinations, right? And you hear that over and over again. How many times has he said we need to, and this is a quote, "We need to vaccinate 70 to 85% of the population in order to reach herd immunity." Totally dismissive of natural immunity.

Dr. Marty Makar...: And people are wondering why Biden's timeframe is 4th of July and Christmas, well look who his chief medical advisor is. I would love Dr. Fauci to explain the California data that came out after my Wall Street Journal piece talking about natural immunity plus vaccinated immunity. And that data showed in sort of just random sampling throughout California, massive study presented at California Medical Association by top scientists at UCSF found that the percentage of Californians with circulating antibodies to Covid-19 was 38%. This was done back a month and a half ago. So just add to that the number of infections since then, add to that the fact that it takes a few weeks for antibodies to mount, and that affirms, if you will, that about half the country has natural immunity and that they're so dismissive. I'm so frustrated. I was watching an interview by the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Dr. Marty Makar...: This is probably the ultimate in the medical establishment, right? Old school thinking. And they asked the CDC director, Dr. Rochelle Walensky about natural immunity and she basically kind of says, "Let's just say that the skeptics are right and that it's say 20%." Well, guess what? It's about 50% percent. And by the

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5 way, it's not just antibodies that give you immunity, it's T cells. I could show you study after study. Here's the title of one of them. This is a study in Nature, one of our top journals. It's titled, Not just antibodies: B cells and T cells mediate immunity to Covid-19 . That's the title.

Danielle Pletka: So, listening to you, I told Marc I wanted to interject here because at AEI, we have a lot of conversations about secular religion. And one of the striking things that has taken place in the last year is fewer and fewer Americans go to church and synagogue and mosque. Fewer and fewer Americans believe in God, but they look for substitutes. And what you were talking about reminded me of the granting of indulgences in the middle ages. Your only path to salvation is through this one thing that you have to do that I have dictated. I mean, this is craziness that there's no national debate. Has there been a backlash to you for what you're saying about this, that goes against the sort of the Tony Fauci orthodoxy?

Marc Thiessen: Saint Tony.

Danielle Pletka: Saint Tony. Forgive me. Sorry, Marc.

Dr. Marty Makar...: That's funny. Gosh, Marc and I, I remember, had these conversations kind of in the green room before going on TV sort of early in the pandemic just as it was starting. And remember, Marc, I was telling you, Dr. Fauci if he got anointed to be a saint, but he has been very wrong and we've put our whole faith in stock in one man who missed the pandemic, failed to sound the alarm, never prepared us for the crisis that we hit. We got lucky on ventilators, but I was pretty upset. Then he was wrong on masks. He's wrong on schools. He's wrong on so many things. He's a nice guy, but he's one doctor. And how he got this title of our nation's top infectious diseases expert. How do you get that title by the way? I mean, can I be our nation's top pancreas surgeon?

Marc Thiessen: His serene highness Joe Biden has granted it on him, apparently.

Dr. Marty Makar...: Him and the media. I mean, every single week out there saying basically nothing. I've never once in my life heard Dr. Fauci say something that I've learned from because he talks in such generalities. But anyway, I think a bunch of doctors, to answer your question, have reached out to me. I'd say of all the doctors that I talked to, who I know and don't know, or who reached out to me, I d say about two thirds have said, "Marty, thank you for giving us the other point of view. That's what I've believed, and I haven't really had a voice." And honestly, I might otherwise have been an outcast in this, except that I've got some pretty big platforms being a tenured professor at Johns Hopkins, having published 300 scientific peer reviewed articles, being a member of the National Academy of Medicine, being a practicing physician. So, if it weren't for those chops, I don't think this opinion would be out there. I think we'd be listening to the JAMA, Rochelle Walensky conversation about sort of downplaying and saying maybe it's 20% of those guys are right.

Marc Thiessen: And so, explain the theory that there's the natural immunity and then it's combined with vaccine immunity, gets us to herd immunity pretty quickly. You wrote in February that we should be at herd immunity in April. Explain that and how it works and are we getting there?

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6 Dr. Marty Makar...: That's right. And look, it may be May. And I think we should all have humility in public discourse to say, look, we might discover something that is different from what we projected. And so, we've got to have that openness. But look, we're right on track for herd immunity in April and May, maybe late April, but we've already hit herd immunity for healthcare workers. Why is that? Because just as you said, Marc, if you add vaccinated immunity, which is most healthcare workers and natural immunity. By the way, a lot of healthcare workers got infected. That's a lot of combined immunity and same with nursing homes. They're about to hit herd immunity.

Dr. Marty Makar...: North Dakota has basically hit herd immunity. I don't think anyone's reporting this, but they've had days with zero deaths. They had six straight days with zero deaths. And what I never anticipated was how that piece talking about how we're going to have herd immunity late spring and a normal summer became politicized. I had no idea of what was happening. I don't really do politics. And so, what I realized was Congress was trying to jam this $1.9 trillion spending bill in, in the name of Covid. And here's some chump from Johns Hopkins saying, hey, Covid might be mostly gone soon.

Danielle Pletka: Well, so partly because I wanted to, and not because I have the scientific chops to actually judge, I want this to be true. Because I think that for many Americans the light at the end of the tunnel has become vitally important for a whole variety of reasons that you laid out. But let me ask you a question about this herd immunity then. So, if this is the case, then why are the Europeans in such a bad place? They got hit harder than we did. Their second wave was worse than ours was, and they're all living on top of each other and they're about to go into yet another lockdown. Why does this theory of herd immunity not work there?

Dr. Marty Makar...: Well, first of all, they have lower rates of natural immunity in the estimation of a lot of folks. Maybe they sheltered them better during their lockdowns, but they may have lower rates of natural immunity. Second of all, their vaccine rollout is much more delayed than ours. We're probably top three in the world in our vaccine rollout after Israel and the UK. And then if you look at the strains that everyone's so worried about in places where they're common in the US, look at Texas where 40% of the strain now is the B117 strain.

Marc Thiessen: Which one by the way?

Dr. Marty Makar...: That's the UK variant. So, the UK variant, go to the UK. I mean, they're way down in cases. Go to South Africa where the B1351 strain there is the dominant strain, cases are way down. Look, I'm a little concerned about the Brazilian strain. It's really not that common in the United States and the modelers say it's going to be crowded out by other strains, so it won't dominate. And we ve got to keep an eye on this New York stain. They've had a little persistent infection at a time when the rest of the country is plummeting. But either way the vaccines seem to be 100% effective against those strains. That's the big story. And it's just a race.

Marc Thiessen: So, another comparison that's been made, the Associated Press had a story the other day, the headline was Virus's Toll Similar Despite Governor's Contrasting Actions , and contrasting California, which has been under the strictest, Stalinist lockdowns you could possibly impose, with Florida, which has basically

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7 remained relatively open. And they basically have seemed to have no difference in their COVID outcomes. Have I described that accurately? And what does that tell us about the efficacy of the lockdowns?

Dr. Marty Makar...: Well, I appreciate what you're getting at, Marc, and that is we've got to interpret things that we see in the data. You cannot, as a scientist, be intellectually honest and just ignore certain signals in the data. And that's basically what I tried to do when I observed a 77% drop in daily cases six weeks after January 8th, after our peak, remember? No one was talking about that, and I'd go on and say, "Hey, by the way, guys, folks, cases are down 77%."

Dr. Marty Makar...: And I think right now we've got to do the same with California and Florida. And the reality is that honest scientists that I know, who are basically making these conclusions, are saying, "Look, we can learn from this data, and we've learned about how excessive and restrictive you can be." We're going to learn more about the downside of that, by the way. That research takes time to do. You saw a little sneak peek of that a week ago with the study that showed self-harm among kids, kids trying to hurt themselves and coming to the hospital was up 300% in parts of the country last year. So, we're going to get more and more of that, right? Sexual abuse, substance abuse, the hunger crisis, all of that stuff is going to come out later, and we're going to look back, and it'll be a dark chapter. But we've got to interpret that data, and it made no sense to close beaches. Where's humility in our society?

Danielle Pletka: Well, what a great question. That's a whole other podcast.

Danielle Pletka: So, I wanted to ask you about exactly that word. You tweeted out, and I think folks are going to be listening to you and they're going to say, "Oh, he's just one of those conservatives. Those anti-mask, 'come to the party' kind of guys who hates lockdowns." No. I think that that would be an unfair rap. And one of the best pieces of evidence I saw was what you tweeted about Governor Abbott, and you used just that word, "humility." What did you think when he pulled down the Texas mask mandate?

Dr. Marty Makar...: Well, look, I get letting capacity restrictions up to individual business owners. That's easy for them to enforce. And it depends on their ventilation and other things. But the strong anti-masking language that he put out there, I just thought it was premature. And if I were advising him, I would have advised against it. Look, I know people always want to peg you, right? They listen. They're like, "Hmm, maybe I like this guy, Marty, but wait a minute. Is he one of us, or is he one of them?" I wrote the first article, in the New York Times of all places, on universal masking, way back in April. And I basically said, "Look, we've got to have a semi-open society. And we can do that if we just mask."

Marc Thiessen: This is when Dr. Fauci was saying you don't need one, right?

Dr. Marty Makar...: Right. He was late to the party. He's one of these guys that you have a birthday party, and he shows up at like 11:30 with a bottle of wine, and everyone's leaving. Nice guy. You feel bad for him.

Marc Thiessen: You've pointed out this weekend that we could get to a point where we're going

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8 to still have cases, but zero deaths, right? Because the vulnerable population has been effectively vaccinated, has immunity either through natural immunity or through vaccinated immunity. And the pandemic industrial complex, those are my words, not yours, is going to keep pushing for restrictions, because they found this excuse to exercise power over people's lives, and it's addictive. I mean, how are we going to break this country free once we've beaten the pandemic? How do we beat the pandemic industrial complex that wants to run our lives?

Dr. Marty Makar...: Well, your prediction is perfect, and exactly what I've drafted an article to say exactly this, and it's titled America's Next Big Argument. Now, I don't know. I write for therapy sometimes, so I don't even know if this will get published, but it's basically saying, look, here's what's going to happen. Cases are going to linger. They're going to persist. Even though hospitalizations are going to plummet to almost nothing, deaths are going to plummet. I mean, we've immunized now 65% of everyone over 65 years of age, and we're hitting states like New Mexico. Heck, one in three adults walking on the street has received a vaccine, and then you add to that the natural immunity, which like we said in California, might be 50%, we're doing pretty good.

Dr. Marty Makar...: So, what's going to happen is, and watch. Watch, this will happen. Hospitalizations and deaths are going to plummet over the next two months, but some cases are going to linger. Do you know why? We're still going to have cases, and it's young people. It's because they're last in the vaccine line. It's that simple. Some of them feel sort of the moral hazard of being inappropriately liberated because they perceive, "This is over." They're sick of it. Either way, young people are going to comprise the cases that linger into May, and maybe even into early June.

Dr. Marty Makar...: And you're going to have those who want this pandemic to keep going. Believe it or not, I don't know if they just want to be right. They're entrenched in their position. They've had these models. They're the so-called experts, and they're going to point to those cases and say, "We can't change anything. We have to stay locked down because these cases are a real public health threat." But you know what the truth is? Those are young people with asymptomatic cases or mild cases the vast majority of the time.

Dr. Marty Makar...: And that's the argument that we're about to watch take place in May, is the significance of those cases. We already saw the CDC did it two weeks ago. If you remember, they said they saw an uptick in the data, and they warned everybody, right? And the CDC director said, "We've seen this movie play out before." No. It's a different movie. It's a different movie theater, because there's fewer people susceptible. And the cases now are younger, and they're getting younger and younger. And the uptick was not an uptick. It was delayed reporting because of the Texas ice storm. So, this sort of jump on anything and create this fear I don't think it's productive right now.

Danielle Pletka: So final question for me, and I think you've been talking a little bit with Marc about the path forward, but what I liked about one of your most recent pieces was you really talked about a plan. And as you said, it's one thing to tell people what they can't do, and this has really been the year in which a lot of closet

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9 dictators have reveled in the idea of their control over people's lives. Never before in the history of man, has your maître had so much control over your life in a restaurant. But you actually laid out some ideas for what we could do. So, what's your sort of 10 commandments of a return to normal life in a sequenced and intelligent way?

Dr. Marty Makar...: Well, I think the formula is pretty simple. Get your vaccine. I would personally recommend people get a single dose and delay the second dose to about 12 weeks, until we're no longer supply constrained. That's a policy we should have adopted a long time ago. You get incredible protection from the first dose in the short-term.

Dr. Marty Makar...: And I would, if you've had Covid, step aside in the vaccine line and let other people go first. Let's get people protected. One dose is better than none. After you have a first dose, give it four weeks for the vaccine to kick in, and then live a normal life. It's that simple. If we can be clear with our messaging, people are going to understand it and follow it. Not like the vaccine allocation guidance the CDC gave us two weeks after the vaccine was out there and said, "Oh, group 1C and 4B and 6Q." You know what? Just go by age. It's simple. And we would have saved more lives, like the UK.

Dr. Marty Makar...: And so, I'd say, get your vaccine. Give it four weeks. Live your life. For the next several weeks, I think it's reasonable for people just to continue to wear masks when they're in a crowded indoor public gathering. It's just too hard to enforce a sort of selective masking policy. That's what business leaders say. And we're almost at the finish line. Look, we're going to have to be vigilant for the fall. We may have to be ready to flip the switch on and get our masks out of the closet. Maybe. We'll see. We'll see. I'll try to be honest at that time.

Danielle Pletka: I won't be able to do that. I'm going to have such a giant bonfire.

Marc Thiessen: A bonfire of masks.

Dr. Marty Makar...: I've been wearing a mask my whole adult life as a surgeon. And it's kind of funny to hear these conversations now, but it may be a brief thing that we ask people to do, selectively. Asian cultures have done it selectively. If you think you might have had symptoms or a cough, or you might have been around someone, or you're worried, then you wear a mask. And if you don't, you live your normal life.

Marc Thiessen: So final question from me just because there's two types of vaccine hesitancy. There's one, there's the hesitancy of people who just don't trust vaccines and are worried about it. But that's not the one I want to talk about. There's a sort of a hesitancy to return to normal life among people who are vaccinated, because they're not quite sure what the vaccine is going to do for them. For example, okay, so let's say Pfizer or Moderna, 94% effective, I think it's 92% after the first dose, is that right, without the second dose?

Dr. Marty Makar...: That's right.

Marc Thiessen: Okay. So that means 92% that I'm not going to get Covid at all. It's almost 100%

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10 that if I do get it, it's going to be very mild. Is that right?

Dr. Marty Makar...: Yeah. It's 100% effective in preventing death after four weeks. Yeah.

Marc Thiessen: And so then, people are saying, "So, okay, but if I can get it, can I still carry it and give it to other people?" There was an Israeli study that came about that, if you could talk about that. And also, people are worried about, there's a lot of things, this Covid is such a weird virus compared to flu and other things in the sense that it's not just respiratory, it causes blood clots, it's caused neurological problems. They've got the long haulers who are having these long-term effects. Does the vaccine protect you against that?

Dr. Marty Makar...: Yes, it does. And thanks for bringing that up, Marc, because I think some people have asked themselves, "Do I just get the infection or do I get the vaccine? Maybe I'll just get the infection like we used to do a chicken pox." Well, you want to get the vaccine. The vaccine is about 50,000 times safer. You don't want long haul symptoms. You don't want to run the risk of being in an ICU. You want to get the vaccine. We want everybody to get this vaccine, get a first dose for now. If you're really worried about it, get a first dose and maybe give it three months for the second dose. We want everyone to get the vaccine.

Dr. Marty Makar...: But you're thinking about it right. The Israeli study showed that you really don't transmit it once you get the vaccine. Once you're four weeks out from that first dose of the vaccine, the risk of asymptomatic disease was less than 6%.

Dr. Marty Makar...: There's a million viruses in the world. And most of them live in the animal kingdom and a few have crossed over, less than 1% crossover into humans. We're never going to extinguish viruses from planet earth. If somebody asks me, "Hey, if I leave my home, can I get bacterial meningitis?" The answer will always be, yes. But the risk is so minuscule. It's low enough that the risk of profound isolation and loneliness is far more likely to kill you. And I think at this point, we've got to recognize that people are dying from the epidemic of being isolated.

Danielle Pletka: Those are wise words, indeed. I wish we were able to have an intelligent national debate about this, as opposed to those who have got that old time religion and the apostates, which is what it is basically come down to. You've been terrific. And I hope people listen to, I think, your cautious encouragement. That's where we should be now. And I think, people should absolutely get back to their lives. Amen to that.

Marc Thiessen: Thank you, Marty.

Danielle Pletka: So, I think the thing that has not gotten enough attention, and I know that once the orthodoxy accepts the notion that we can talk about anything post-Covid, it will get a lot of attention, but it deserves it now, is the cost of these shutdowns, is the cost, is the impact. And the drug use, the alcoholism, the isolation, the loneliness, the fear. And that's just at my house.

Marc Thiessen: That predated the pandemic, Dany.

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11 Danielle Pletka: Thank you, Marc. Thank you so much. No, seriously, the rise in suicides, especially among young people. This has had an untold cost on people's lives. And I would say that there has been something that could almost be characterized as indifference on the part of the authorities about that impact.

Marc Thiessen: No doubt. And also, people not taking care of other medical conditions that are going to go on. The people who missed their cancer visits and screenings and put off treatment because of this. I think one of the things that Marty said that I think is exactly right, and really struck home with me, is that you've got these epidemiologists in their silos who've been told, "You're in charge. We're going to listen to the scientists." Well, you know what? That's not the whole of the policy and that's not the whole of the issue. If you said to America, let's say Covid never happened, and you said to the epidemiologist, "How can we stop the seasonal flu?" "Well, we could lock down the whole country and we can all wear masks and wash our hands and not have indoor dining and all the rest of it." Well, guess what? We've succeeded in defeating the seasonal flu this year with all the methods that are involved in COVID.

Danielle Pletka: Right. Are you going to do that next year?

Marc Thiessen: We're going to do that next year? Exactly. And so, okay, early on in this pandemic, we didn't have the hospital capacity. It was killing older people and people in large numbers. When you get to the point where we have the ability to get the death toll down to pretty close to zero or very small, then at that point, the epidemiologists aren't the ones who are in charge anymore, because it's not just that issue. We had to do all those things early on, because we didn't know enough about the virus, because hospitals were being overrun, because it was killing a lot of people. We didn't have the vaccines yet.

Marc Thiessen: We will be able to go back and look at whether these lock downs were really effective. The California versus Florida thing is really interesting. And it's going to take a long time to figure out whether all these lock downs were useful or whether we ended up destroying millions of people's lives and jobs for nothing. But now we know going forward with the vaccines, when we can get the death tolls down to almost zero, when COVID is still going to be in the ecosystem, but it's not going to be dominating the ecosystem, then at some point we have to start letting go and letting people rebuild the economy, rebuild their lives.

Danielle Pletka: Well, amen to that. And again, we should be allowed to have a normal national conversation about this. It shouldn't be dominated by fanatics on either side, of the crazy people who are anti-vaxxers and anti-maskers versus fanatics who think they should live their lives in a plastic bag.

Marc Thiessen: But also, people who got it wrong. I'm sorry, when we look back on this and we do our sort of, how the military always does an after-action report, we're going to have to do an after-action report on this pandemic and what we did wrong, what we did right. Because it's going to happen again because no doubt some other virus is going to jump into the human ecosystem like that. The public health experts screwed this up royally.

Danielle Pletka: And the World Health Organization. Don't forget them.

AMERICAN ENTERPRISE INSTITUTE | 1789 Massachusetts Ave, NW, Washington, DC 20036 | 202.862.5800 | aei.org

12 Marc Thiessen: Yeah. But I mean, the CDC, they screwed up. They wouldn't let private labs do tests. They screwed up the testing and contaminated the test kits. They used a flu surveillance system in the first six weeks of this thing. The way they did it, they missed the spread.

Danielle Pletka: Looking for love in all the wrong places.

Marc Thiessen: They were looking for love in all the wrong places. They were waiting for people to present in hospitals with respiratory disease, because that's how the flu presents, and this was spreading asymptomatically. And so, they thought, "Oh, no big deal. There's nothing." Everybody's been running around with all these, and I don't want to bring Trump into it because I know that sets you off, but everybody's been running around with their worst Trump quotes from this time last year. Where are the worst Fauci quotes from this time last year? Where are the worst Dr. Redfield quotes from this time last year? Because all of them were saying, "Very low risk for America." Fauci said, "If you want to go on a cruise, go on a cruise if you're young and healthy. But if you're older, probably not."

Danielle Pletka: Here's a word to the wise, don't go on a cruise ever.

Marc Thiessen: No. We got to bring back the cruise industry, Dany. You have your vacation choices, others have others. But the point is that we're listening to the people who got it wrong about when we can live our lives again.

Danielle Pletka: Right. People don't have what Marty said, humility.

Marc Thiessen: Exactly. And thank God we have people like Marty with some humility who are willing to call out the people that got it wrong and tell us what we can do.

Danielle Pletka: Amen to that. Hey, join the conversation, everybody. We know there are strongly held feelings about this on lots of parts of the spectrum. And we're always delighted to hear from you with ideas, suggestions, subscribe, review, send it to your mom, send it to your dad, send it to your brothers, your sisters, your friends, your enemies.

Marc Thiessen: How about this, sit together with your grandparents and listen to it together.

Danielle Pletka: There you go.

Marc Thiessen: In person.

Danielle Pletka: Not just on July 4th. Amen to that. Thanks for listening.

Marc Thiessen: Take care.

AMERICAN ENTERPRISE INSTITUTE | 1789 Massachusetts Ave, NW, Washington, DC 20036 | 202.862.5800 | aei.org